"Do you mean that you are the son of Hamel, the R.A., who used to be in these parts so often?
He was my brother's friend." "I am his son." "But his son was killed in the San Francisco earthquake.

I saw his name in all the lists.

It was copied into the local papers here." Hamel knocked the ashes from his pipe.
"I take a lot of killing," he observed.

"I was in that earthquake, right enough, and in the hospital afterwards, but it was a man named Hamel of Philadelphia who died." Mr.Fentolin sat quite motionless for several moments.

He seemed, if possible, to have shrunken into something smaller still.