“May I, without discourtesy, inquire why you are interested?” he questioned.
“We are interested,” answered the New Yorker, promptly, “because he is our personal friend. I have known him for years, and Lieutenant O’Hara here has been with him, he tells me, continually from the day he left America.”
The three were still standing; but now the Chancellor motioned his visitors to be seated.
“You in turn interest me,” he said, as he took a chair and sat down facing them. “How long, Mr. Van Tuyl, have you known him? For how many years?”
“Ten at least,” was the answer. “He came down to the Street when he was twenty. He was with Dunscomb & Fiske in 1893, I remember.”
“The Street?” repeated the Count, questioningly.
“Yes, Wall Street. You knew he was a Wall Street stock broker, didn’t you?”
The Chancellor paled perceptibly, his eyes widened a trifle and the straight line of his lips narrowed under his close-cropped moustache.
“Yes,” he returned, diplomatically, after an instant’s pause. “Yes. His name, I think, was Grey, was it not?”
“Grey. Yes, Carey Grey.”