Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/155

 powerful hands and arms and slightly bowed, almost bulldog legs. Yet he was not of that aggressive kind which would make a show of physical strength without good and sufficient cause.

"You have charge of Mr. Thornton?" inquired Kennedy.

"Yes," was the curt response.

"I trust he is all right here?"

"He wouldn't be here if he was all right," was the quick reply. "And who might you be?"

"I knew him in the old days," replied Craig evasively. "My friend here does not know him, but I was in this part of Westchester visiting and having heard he was here thought I would drop in, just for old time's sake. That is all."

"How did you know he was here?" asked the man suspiciously.

"I heard indirectly from a friend of mine, Mrs. Pitts."

"Oh."

The man seemed to accept the explanation at its face value.

"Is he very—very badly?" asked Craig with well-feigned interest.

"Well," replied the man, a little mollified by a good cigar which I produced, "don't you go a-telling her. but if he says the name Minna once a day it is a thousand times. Them drug-dopes has some strange delusions."

"Strange delusions?" queried Craig. "Why, what do you mean?"