“Regrettable as his bad taste is,” said Kent with a solemn face, “I fear that Doctor Breed doesn’t regard me with that confidence and esteem which one reads of in illuminated resolutions.” “And you want me as an accelerator, eh?” smiled the lawyer. “All right. It’s the Jane Doe permit you’re after, I suppose.” “Which?” “Jane Doe. They buried the corpse from Lonesome Cove under that name. Unidentified dead, you know.” “Of course! Of course!” assented Kent. “If you’re looking for anything queer in the official paper you won’t find it.” “You’ve examined it yourself?” “Yes.” “Good! Nevertheless, I’d like to see the record.” Together they went to the medical officer’s quarters. Doctor Breed had come in fifteen minutes before. Without preliminary, Lawyer Bain said: “I want to see that Jane Doe certificate again.” “Aren’t you afraid of wearin’ out the ink on it, Adam?” retorted the other with a furtive grin. “And I,” said Chester Kent in his suavest manner, “venture to trouble you to show me the certificate in the case of Wilfrid Blair.” Something like a spasm shook the lineaments of Doctor Breed’s meager face. “Blair!” he repeated. “How did you know—” He stopped short. “How did I know that Wilfrid Blair is dead?” Kent finished for him. “Why, there has been time enough, hasn’t there?” The physician’s hands clawed nervously at his straggling hair. “Time enough?” he murmured. “Time enough? I’m only just back from the Blair place myself.” “News travels faster than a horse,” observed Kent. “It don’t travel as fast as all that,” retorted the medical officer, and shut his teeth on the sentence as if he could have bitten the tongue that spoke it. “Ah,” commented Kent negligently. “Then he died within two hours or so?” “This morning,” retorted the other. “It’s all in the certificate.” “All?” inquired Kent, so significantly that Lawyer Bain gave him a quick look. “All that’s your business or anybody else’s,” said Breed, recovering himself a bit. “Doubtless. And I’m to be permitted to see this document?” Breed pushed a paper across the table. “There it is. I just finished making it out.” “I see,” said Kent, giving the paper a scant survey, “that the cause of death is set down as ‘cardiac failure’.” “Well. What’s the matter with that?” “Just a trifle non-committal, isn’t it? You see, we all die of cardiac failure, except those of us who fall from air-ships.” “That record’s good enough for the law,” declared the medical officer doggedly. “Who was the attending physician?” “I was.” “Indeed! And to what undertaker was the permit issued?” “It was issued to the family. They can turn it over to what undertaker they please.” “Where is the interment to be?” “Say, looky here, Mr. Man!” cried the physician, breaking into the sudden whining fury of hard-pressed timidity. “Are you trying to learn me my business? You can go to hell! That’s what you can do!”