“I can only say that I assume I was. I’m a normal, decent sort of man, and I can’t think I’d consciously set out on a trip of any sort undressed! But I’ve no doubt my swashing around in the ice-filled river did for my clothes. Probably, as related by the Ancient Mariner, ‘the ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around: it cracked and growled and—something or other—and howled, like noises in a swound.’ You see, I still know my ‘Familiar Quotations’ by heart.”
“That’s a queer phase,” and Wise shook his head. “It may be you are a poet——”
“Well, I haven’t poetized any since my recrudescence.”
“And that’s another queer thing,” pursued the detective. “Most victims of aphasia can’t remember words. You are exceptionally fluent and seem to have a wide vocabulary.”
“I admit it all,” and Rivers looked a little weary, as if he were tired of speculating on his own case.
“Now, to change the subject, how are you progressing, Mr. Wise, with your present work? How goes the stalking of the murderer?”
“Haven’t got him yet, Mr. Rivers, but we’ve made a good start. You know the details?”
“Only the newspaper accounts, and such additional information as Mr. Brice has given me. I’m greatly interested,—for,—tell it not to Gath detectives,—I fancy I’ve a bent toward sleuthing myself.”
Pennington Wise smiled. “You’re not alone in that,” he said, chaffingly, but so good-naturedly that Rivers took no offense.
“I suppose it’s your reflected light that makes everybody who talks with you feel that way,” he came back. “Well, if you get up a stump, lean on me, Grandpa,—I’m ’most seven.”