"How long do you contemplate remaining in Venice?" I asked, after the little pause that followed his last speech.
"I scarcely know," he answered. "My movements are most erratic. I am that most unfortunate of God's creatures, a wanderer on the face of the earth. I have no relations and few friends. I roam about as the fancy takes me, remain in a place as long as it pleases me, and then, like the Arab in the poem, silently take up my tent and move on as soon as the city I happen to be in at the time has lost its charm. I possess a pied-à-terre of four rooms in Cairo, I have lived amongst the Khabyles in the desert, and with the Armenians in the mountains. To sum it up, I have the instincts of the Wandering Jew, and fortunately the means of gratifying them."
What it was I cannot say, but there was something in his speech that grated upon my feelings. Whether what he had said were true or not, I am not in a position to affirm, but the impression I received was that he was talking for effect, and every one will know what that means.
"As you are such a globe-trotter," I said, "I suppose there is scarcely a portion of the world that you have not visited?"
"I have perhaps had more than my share of travelling," he answered. "I think I can safely say that, with the exception of South America, I have visited every portion of the known globe."
"You have never been in South America then?" I asked in some surprise.
"Never," he replied, and immediately changed the conversation by inquiring whether I had met certain of Anstruther's friends who were supposed to be on their way to Venice. A few minutes later, after having given him an invitation to dinner on the next evening, I bade him good-bye and left him. On my return my wife was eager to question me concerning him, but as things stood I did not feel capable of giving her a detailed reply. There are some acquaintances who, one feels, will prove friends from the outset; there are others who fill one from the first with a vague distrust. Not that I altogether distrusted Martinos, I had not seen enough of him to do that; at the same time, however, I could not conscientiously say, as I have already observed, that I was altogether prepossessed in his favour.
The following morning he accepted my invitation for that evening, and punctually at half-past seven he made his appearance in the drawing-room. I introduced him to my wife, and also to Miss Trevor when she joined us.
"My husband tells me that you are a great traveller," said Phyllis, after they had seated themselves. "He says you know the world as we know London."
"Your husband does me too much honour," he answered modestly. "From what I have heard of you, you must know the world almost as well as I do. My friend, Anstruther, has told me a romantic story about you. Something connected with a South Sea island, and a mysterious personage named——"