"Well, I don't know, Horace. It is one requiring a great deal of subtility. I have come for your assistance."
"Huh!" said the doctor again, and nodded. "I'm with you."
Prelice reflected for a few moments before beginning an explanation of his errand. He did not know how much to tell and how much to withhold. Horace saw his hesitation, and ascribed it to the right cause.
"I must know everything, Prelice," he said quickly, "else I do not assist. I have no notion of working in the dark, and failing through ignorance."
"You can read my thoughts as usual, I see," commented the visitor; "some more of that clairvoyant business, I expect. Well, I have a case to lay before you which will tax your occult powers to the utmost."
"Fire away," said Horace, and placing his hands on the table rocked to and fro, looking absurdly like a monkey. "The Missing Link" they called him in the Wilds, and certainly the name was deserved. Horace was a small man with a long body, short legs, and lengthy arms; very powerfully built, and very shaggy in appearance. Prelice looked at the doctor's large head covered with tangled red hair; at his beard and moustache of the same hue, untrimmed and untidy, concealing nearly all his flat face; and at his big horn-rimmed spectacles, which hid the brightest and keenest of blue eyes. He wore an old pair of flannel trousers, and a still older flannel shirt, the sleeves of which were turned up over two hairy wrists encircled with Matabele wire bracelets. To complete his barbaric looks his large ears, furry as those of a faun, were adorned with gold rings. A more quaint or a more extraordinary figure was not to be met with outside a Freak Museum. And Dr. Horace should have been exhibited in one, if only on account of the beautifully executed tattooing, which Prelice could see on his sunburnt arms, and on his chest, through the unbuttoned shirt.
No one would have taken this man-monkey to be a clever and learned scholar with a heart of gold and a fund of knowledge second to none. Prelice knew and esteemed him, and had fought with him—for the doctor was obstinate—and beside him in the Naked Lands at the Back-of-Beyond, when both held their lives in their hands. All the same, being fastidious, he sincerely wished that when the doctor returned to civilisation, he would leave behind him in the wilderness his uncouth manners and shabby dress and general appearance of being a prehistoric man of Lady Sophia's favourite Stone Age.
"Go on, go on," said Horace impatiently, "don't keep me waiting. I have lots to do, and can't waste time."
"You have lots to do in the way of dress, I think. Come and have a Turkish bath, and visit the nearest barber. Then I can take you to my tailor to be clothed properly, and——"
Horace interrupted characteristically by throwing his pipe at the young man. It was deftly fielded and returned. "Do you remember Easter Island?" asked Prelice when the doctor was again smoking; then in reply to a consenting grunt: "I see you do. And the Sacred Herb, eh?"