“That’s right, sir, but the man in Knights-bridge sold a box on Thursday to a doctor.”
“Did you get the name?”
“Bone-Gardner, I think it was a Dr. Otto Bone-Gardner.”
“Baumgartner, I expect you mean!” cried Thrush, straightening a wry face to spell the name. “I’ve heard of an Otto Baumgartner, though I can’t say when or where. What’s his address?”
“He couldn’t tell me, sir; or else he wouldn’t. Suppose he thought I’d be turning the doctor out next. Old customer, I understood he was.”
“For d’Auvergne Cigarettes?”
“I didn’t inquire.”
“My good fellow, that’s the whole point! I’ll go myself and ask for the asthma cigarettes that Dr. Baumgartner always has; if they say he never had them before, that’ll be talking. His being a doctor looks well. But I’m certain I know his name; you might look it up in Who’s Who, and read out what they say.”
And Mullins did so with due docility, albeit with queer gulps at barbaric mouthfuls such as the list of battle-fields on which Dr. Baumgartner had fought in his martial youth; the various Universities whereat he had studied psychology and theology in an evident reaction of later life; even the titles of his subsequent publications, which contained some long English words, but were given in German too. A copious contribution concluded with the information that photography and billiards were the doctor’s recreations, and that he belonged to a polysyllabically unpronounceable Berlin club, and to one in St. James’s which Mullins more culpably miscalled the Parthenian.
“Parthenon!” said Thrush, as though he had bitten on a nerve. “But what about his address?”