Blenkiron hove himself from the sofa and waddled to a cupboard.
“You boys must be hungry,” he said. “My duo-denum has been giving me hell as usual, and I don’t eat no more than a squirrel. But I laid in some stores, for I guessed you would want to stoke up some after your travels.”
He brought out a couple of Strassburg pies, a cheese, a cold chicken, a loaf, and three bottles of champagne.
“Fizz,” said Sandy rapturously. “And a dry Heidsieck too! We’re in luck, Dick, old man.”
I never ate a more welcome meal, for we had starved in that dirty hotel. But I had still the old feeling of the hunted, and before I began I asked about the door.
“That’s all right,” said Sandy. “My fellows are on the stair and at the gate. If the Metreb are in possession, you may bet that other people will keep off. Your past is blotted out, clean vanished away, and you begin tomorrow morning with a new sheet. Blenkiron’s the man you’ve got to thank for that. He was pretty certain you’d get here, but he was also certain that you’d arrive in a hurry with a good many inquirers behind you. So he arranged that you should leak away and start fresh.”
“Your name is Richard Hanau,” Blenkiron said, “born in Cleveland, Ohio, of German parentage on both sides. One of our brightest mining-engineers, and the apple of Guggenheim’s eye. You arrived this afternoon from Constanza, and I met you at the packet. The clothes for the part are in your bedroom next door. But I guess all that can wait, for I’m anxious to get to business. We’re not here on a joy-ride, Major, so I reckon we’ll leave out the dime-novel adventures. I’m just dying to hear them, but they’ll keep. I want to know how our mutual inquiries have prospered.”
He gave Peter and me cigars, and we sat ourselves in armchairs in front of the blaze. Sandy squatted cross-legged on the hearthrug and lit a foul old briar pipe, which he extricated from some pouch among his skins. And so began that conversation which had never been out of my thoughts for four hectic weeks.
“If I presume to begin,” said Blenkiron, “it’s because I reckon my story is the shortest. I have to confess to you, gentlemen, that I have failed.”
He drew down the corners of his mouth till he looked a cross between a music-hall comedian and a sick child.