With the shyness of a boy, he accepted first the firm pressure of her hand and then a seat which was another piece of ancient Egyptian furniture.
"Dr. Scriven will be with you in a few minutes," she said. "Unfortunately he is a little delayed by an official visitor from Washington. The unexpected always happens over here. Meanwhile...."
She suddenly interrupted herself. The searching look of her deep blue eyes startled Lee by its directness. There was in it a depth of understanding and of sympathy which penetrated to his heart. He felt as if she already knew about him and knew everything. It lasted only a few seconds before she continued, but in a different, a warmer voice:
"I think we can drop the usual conventions," she said. "We know you, Dr. Scriven and I. We know your work as published in the journal of entomology. It is the work of a man of genius. You are not the kind of man whom I must entertain with the usual small talk about the weather, how you have enjoyed your trip, or whether you feel very tired—as you probably do—and all the rest of it. That is routine with most of our visitors; it's quite a relief to feel that I can dispense with it for once."
Lee had blushed under this frankness of compliment as if a decoration had been pinned to his breast. "Thank you, Miss Dahlberg, you put me at my ease. I've been out in the wilderness for so long that I've lost the language of the social amenities. I really feel like another Rip van Winkle. All this," he made a sweeping gesture, "is tremendously new and surprising to me. There are so many burning questions to ask...."
The girl gave him a smile of sympathy. "Of course," she said, "and I can imagine some of them. To begin with, we owe you an explanation and an apology for having used the methods of deception in getting you here. As you probably know by now the work we're doing here is closely connected with the National defense. Whether we like it or not, military secrecy forces us to use roundabout ways in contacting scientists who happen to work in some context with our field, especially if they live in foreign lands. That's why in your case we have used the good offices of the Department of Agriculture in bringing you here. Dr. Scriven feels terrible about this. He feels that to be lifted out from one desert just to be dropped into the middle of another must be a fierce disappointment to you. For this and all the disturbance of your work—can you manage to forgive us Dr. Lee?"
The sincerity in these regrets was such that Lee hastened to reply: "You don't owe me any apology, Miss Dahlborg," he reassured her. "Naturally it is impossible for me to see any connection between my work with ants and termites and the problems of National Defense. But I am an American; I wouldn't doubt for a moment the legitimacy of your call." The girl nodded: "Besides you have fought for your country in the second world war," she added. "And also you are the son of General Jefferson Lee of the Marines. You understand of course that we had you investigated before calling you here; do you mind very much?"
Again Lee blushed; this time even deeper than before. He squirmed in his seat. "No, I guess not. I suppose it's necessary. Now that I'm going to meet Dr. Scriven, who is he? I probably ought to know—forgive my ignorance."
"You really don't know about him?" The girl sounded surprised. "He's a surgeon. He's considered the foremost living brain-specialist. Remember the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals? Dr. Scriven did the post-mortems on their brains. He wrote a book that made him famous."