Ashton-Kirk smiled through the thickening smoke. It were as though he had convinced himself of something.
“Your defence of present day interests is so keen,” said he, “that I’m inclined to hope this case you have holds some exceptional features.”
Scanlon nodded.
“And yet,” with a gesture, “I’m not so sure. I can’t put my fingers on a single thing, or even give it a name.”
“It has something to do with this young fellow Campe, I think you said.”
“It has all to do with him,” stated Mr. Scanlon. “And that’s one of the things that makes it so queer. He’s the last one I’d expected to get mixed up with anything of the kind; and he’s a gone youngster if somebody with more stuff than I have don’t step in and take a swing at it.”
There was a short silence; the smoke from the cigar mingled with that of the pipe; eddying in the draught from the window they wove in and out intricately, finally mingled and drifted out into the big world.
“Suppose you go carefully over the affair as you know it,” suggested Ashton-Kirk. “I got very little of it over the telephone.”
Scanlon drew at the cigar and gazed at the opposite wall where there hung that Maxfield Parrish print of the wonder-stricken brown sailors, peering into the unknown from the bow of their ship.
“If this was my own matter,” said he, “I could take every individual happening by the neck and shake the information right out of it. But as it stands, I’ve only got a good straight look at one thing that’s at all plain to me.”