"You mean Jack Adams! I feel it! I know it! Is he still living?"
"He is alive and well," he said, "and your prompt recognition demonstrates that you are the man I am looking for. I bring you word from Jack Adams. He was also a trusted friend of mine, in whom I felt deeply interested, when he occupied the humble position of cabin boy on a steamer between New York and Liverpool."
His words came to me like a flash of sunlight, dispelling at once the clouds which had seemed to paralyze all my energies. I felt that any word from Jack Adams would be an inexpressible relief to my present agitated state of mind. I grasped my visitor's hand with a warmth I could not restrain, and with an enthusiasm that must have appeared to him effusive, I said:
"Thank God! Your words thrill me with delight. I will esteem any message from Jack Adams a blessing, and the messenger a benefactor. You are indeed a welcome visitor, and you have placed me under bonds of gratitude by removing a most oppressive burden from my mind."
He returned the pressure of my hand in a manner I had hardly expected, and handed me a card on which was traced a significant inscription in Jack's well known handwriting which, if any confirmation was necessary, would have removed every possible doubt. Shaking his hand again I asked:
"Will we ever have a world of truth such as has been the dream of every altruist?"
"Jack has found it," said my visitor, "and we must make it. That is the mission he sends me on. He has made it his life work to discover just how this may be accomplished with the greatest ease, and to convey the information to us."
"Then you are doubly welcome," I said. "Be seated and make yourself at home. I hail you as a brother in a common cause, even if, as yet, I have no name by which to call you."
"Excuse me," he said, "I should have introduced myself before, but I was so overjoyed at finding Dr. Day that I forgot he knew nothing about me. My name is Leo Vincennes. I have been in the public service in some capacity, ever since I came to years of maturity; as soldier, sailor, scout, and later, as civil engineer and explorer. I come now from Alaska, and my special business here is to see you and deliver a message, committed to my care by our esteemed brother and co-worker, Jack Adams."
I had moved my chair as near to him as decorum would permit, and said in reply: