This was the third time he had called. His two former visits had been unrewarded, but that morning a letter had come from him, couched in careful phrases, the purport of which had been a request for an interview on a "matter of some moment."
Challis frowned, and rose from among an ordered litter of manuscripts.
"I shall have to see this man," he said to Lewes, and strode hastily out of the library.
Crashaw was perfunctorily apologetic, and Challis, looking somewhat out of place, smoking a heavy wooden pipe in the disused, bleak drawing-room, waited, almost silent, until his visitor should come to the point.
"... and the—er—matter of some moment, I mentioned," Crashaw mumbled on, "is, I should say, not altogether irrelevant to the work you are at present engaged upon."
"Indeed!" commented Challis, with a lift of his thick eyebrows, "no Polynesians come to settle in Stoke, I trust?"
"On broad lines, relevant on broad, anthropological lines, I mean," said Crashaw.
Challis grunted. "Go on!" he said.
"You may remember that curious—er—abnormal child of the Stotts?" asked Crashaw.
"Stotts? Wait a minute. Yes! Curious infant with an abnormally intelligent expression and the head of a hydrocephalic?"