“An old chap as mad as a March hare. A gentleman, too, and a scholar; talks all sorts of mad languages—Latin and Greek and the Lord knows what. He’s been a schoolmaster, I should say, and what brought him down to this—drink or drugs or just ordinary madness—I don’t know.”
The stranger looked with interest at the unconscious man, and old George, as if suddenly realizing that he was under scrutiny, woke up with a start and sat blinking at the other. Then he shuffled slowly to his feet and peered closely into the stranger’s face, all the time sustaining his mumbled conversation.
“Ah,” he said in a voice rising from its inaudibility, “a gentleman! Pleased to meet you, sir, pleased to meet you. Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, but you have not changed.”
He relapsed again into mutterings.
“I have never met him before,” the stranger said, turning to Connor.
“Oh, old George always thinks he has met people,” said Connor with a grin.
“A gentleman,” old George muttered, “every inch a gentleman, and a munificent patron. He bought a copy of my book—you have read it? It is called—dear me, I have forgotten what it is called—and sent to consult me in his—ah!—anagram——”
“What?” The stranger’s face was ashen, and he gripped Connor by the arm. “Listen, listen!” he whispered fiercely.
Old George threw up his head again and stared blandly at the stranger.
“A perfect gentleman,” he said with pathetic insolence, “invariably addressing me as the ‘professor’—a most delicate and gentlemanly thing to do.”