"You think they had a past?" suggested Miss Raven.
"Everybody has a past," answered Lorrimore. "It may be this; it may be that. But nearly all the problems of the present have their origin and solution in the past. Find out what and where those two middle-aged men had been, in their time!—and then there'll be a chance to work forward."
The rain cleared off soon after we had finished tea, and presently Miss Raven and I took our leave. Lorrimore informed us that Mr. Raven had asked him to dinner on the following evening; he would accordingly see us again very soon.
"It will be quite an event for me!" he said, gaily, as he opened his garden gate. "I live like an anchorite in this place. A little—a very little practice—the folk are scandalously healthy!—and a great deal of scientific investigation—that's my lot."
"But you have a treasure of a servant," observed Miss Raven. "Please tell him that his plum-cake was perfection."
The Chinaman was just then standing at the open door, in waiting on his master. Miss Raven threw him a laughing nod to which he responded with a deep bow—we left them with that curious picture in our minds: Lorrimore, essentially English in spite of his long residence in the East; the Chinaman, bland, suave, smiling.
"A curious pair and a strange combination!" I remarked as we walked away. "That house, at any rate, has a plenitude of brain-power in it. What amazes me is that a clever chap like Master Wing should be content to bury his talents in a foreign place, out of the world—to make curries and plum-cake!"
"Perhaps he has a faithful devotion to his master," said Miss Raven. "Anyway, it's very romantic, and picturesque, and that sort of thing, to find a real live Chinaman in an English village—I wonder if the poor man gets teased about his queer clothes and his pigtail?"
"Didn't Lorrimore say he was a philosopher?" said I. "Therefore he'll be indifferent to criticism. I dare say he doesn't go about much."
That the Chinaman was not quite a recluse, however, I discovered a day or two later, when, going along the headlands for a solitary stroll after a stiff day's work in the library, I turned into the Mariner's Joy for a glass of Claigue's undeniably good ale. Wing was just coming out of the house as I entered it. He was as neat, as bland, and as smiling as when I saw him before; he was still in his blue jacket, his little cap. But he was now armed with a very large umbrella, and on one arm he carried a basket, filled with small parcels; evidently he had been on a shopping expedition. He greeted me with a deep obeisance and respectful smile and went on his way—I entered the inn and found its landlord alone in his bar-parlour.