CHAPTER XXXV MRS. MAY IS PLEASED
Geoffrey was fain to confess that he couldn't quite follow. He turned to Ralph, who once more had recovered his old expression—an expression tinged with profound regret. From the hall below came the tones of Rupert Ravenspur demanding to know what it was all about.
"Go and tell your grandfather," Ralph said quietly. "Everybody who comes near us is fated, it seems. Poor Tchigorsky is no more. He was a mysterious man, and wonderfully reticent as to his past life, but he was the most interesting man I ever met. But I shall never hear anything more about Tibet."
"He was a very old friend of yours?" Marion asked.
"Not so very old," Ralph replied. "And I should hardly call him a friend. We were mutually interested in certain scientific matters. But as to the marvelous side of things he told me nothing."
Speaking by the letter this was perfectly true. Tchigorsky had told Ralph nothing, for the simple reason that they had learned and suffered together.
"Then why did he come here?" Marion demanded.
"To try to solve the mystery. He declared that Orientalism was at the bottom of it. But we shall never know now. Tchigorsky is no more, and such knowledge as he may have possessed has gone down to the sea with him."
Marion turned away with a sigh. Slight as their acquaintance had been, she had been drawn to Tchigorsky, she said. Strange that whoever tried to help the house of Ravenspur should come under the ban.