The man’s body was heavier than one would have gathered from looking at his face. His stomach bulged prominently against his vest. His hands were small, the fingers long and tapering. I judged that he was probably five or six years older than his sister.

Sandra Birks said, “This is the man who’s going to serve the papers on Morgan, Bleatie.”

He looked at me then, a peculiarly disconcerting stare from cat-green eyes on either side of the bandaged beak. “For Christ’s sake!” he said, and then, after a moment, “What’s his name?” And the way his voice came through the bandages made it sound as though he’d said, “Whad’s hid nabe?”

“Donald Lam,” I told him.

“I want to talk with you,” he said.

“I wish you would,” Sandra chimed in. “You know time’s precious. Morgan may leave the country any time.”

“He won’t leave the country without me knowing it,” Bleatie said. “Look here, Doctor, how about it? Are you finished?”

The young doctor cocked his head on one side as a sculptor might survey a finished masterpiece.

“You’ll get by now,” he said, “but no sudden exertion, nothing which will run up a quick blood pressure and start a hemorrhage. For three or four days take a mild laxative. Take your temperature every four hours. If you start running a fever, get in touch with me at once.”

“All right,” Bleatie said. “Get out, the whole outfit of you. I’ve got something to say to Lam. Go on, Sandra, and you too, Alma. Go have a drink. Beat it.”

They went out like a bunch of chickens being shooed out of a garden patch. Before the blast of that dominating personality, the doctor lost his paternal sick-room manner and scuttled out through the door along with the rest. When the door was closed, the green eyes turned once more to me. “Are you with a lawyer?” he asked.

I had some difficulty understanding his conversation at first. He talked like a man with a clothespin clamped over his nose. “No,” I said, “I’m with a bureau of investigation.”

“How well do you know Sandra?” There was suspicion in his eyes, a suspicion which, for the moment, I couldn’t understand.

“I met her for the first time about five minutes ago.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Nothing except what Miss Hunter told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Nothing.”