“You were once, if you are not now, Meudon’s business partner. You must have heard of his disappearance. On his way from Honda to Bogota he—well, he simply vanished. That’s the only way to describe it. It all happened, no one knows how, a few days ago. The same thing took place some years ago when he was living here with you. You know all about the details of that first disappearance.”
“You are mistaken,” interrupted Raoul. “David Meudon left me for a number of months. On his return he failed—or didn’t think it worth while—to explain his absence.”
“That is all very well. Perhaps he could, perhaps he couldn’t explain it. At any rate, you thought that absence sufficiently peculiar to make it the subject of an article for the Psychological Journal.”
Raoul flinched perceptibly under this statement. His cool indifference took on the sort of cordiality that repels one more than open enmity. Bending over the table before which he was standing, he occupied himself in elaborately sorting and rearranging some papers at which he had been working.
“Of course,” he said, “I know you now! Mr. Harold Leighton. I didn’t place the name at first, which was altogether stupid of me. I have often wanted to meet you. As a matter of fact, I heard of your coming. It’s a rare treat in this out-of-the-way part of the world to run across a man who has advanced our knowledge of psychology as you have.”
The profuse compliment was not relished by the old savant. “I am not aware that I have advanced our knowledge of psychology, as you put it, one iota,” he said testily. “But I am here to add to the small stock of what I have already learned.”
“You must have found David a rare problem!” exclaimed Raoul.
“You know him, perhaps, better than I do.”
“Yes, I know him. That is, in a way. Engaging sort of chap. Clever, and all that. Mysterious, too, don’t you think? So, he has disappeared again, you say?”