“I think that was the ultimate conclusion.”
“I suppose they searched for me?”
“Oh, yes, they searched. They followed up every clue. There were columns in the papers for days—yes, for weeks.”
Grey sighed audibly.
“I can’t understand it,” he said, with something of distress in his voice; “I never thought my head was weak. To be sure, I’d been under rather a strain, with the market in the unsettled condition it was, but my memory was always clear enough. Why, I could give you the closing price and highest and lowest of about every active stock on the list, day after day, without an error of an eighth. By the way, do you know how things have been going in the Street? What’s New York Central now—and St. Paul?”
“Really, I have lost track, Grey,” replied Frothingham indifferently.
“I must get a Paris Herald,” the man who had been out of the world for five months continued; “I’m the modern Rip Van Winkle. Thousands of things have happened—must have happened, and I’m in blank ignorance. I just cabled to New York—to Mallory, my partner, and——”
“You what!” exclaimed Frothingham, in amazement.
“Cabled to Mallory. You know him—Dick Mallory, my partner. He’ll be surprised to hear I’m alive, I suppose.”
“Good God, man!”