"Be patient with me another minute, monsieur," Lanyard devoted at least that much time to anxious thought. "Yesterday," he at length submitted, "was the third of November, Nineteen Twenty-two."
"You're going to have trouble, my friend, makin' that statement jibe with the log, which calls today the fifth of June, Twenty-three."
Lanyard lifted a hand to beg for grace, and did the sum in his head while the Englishman sat watching him with what all but insufferably seemed to be contemptuous amusement. But one couldn't afford to resent that yet.
A double line deepened between Lanyard's brows. His first guess had evidently been a poor one: the elapsed time proved that Morphew hadn't picked him up unconscious after the crash, hurried him in that condition back to New York, and caused him forthwith to be shanghaied.
"Seven months to be accounted for," he mused aloud—"seven months lost out of life!"
"Oh?"
None but a Briton could have infused so much cynic incredulity into one lonely syllable. In spite of himself Lanyard flushed.
"Oblige me, monsieur, by believing that, between losing consciousness in that motor crash of November fifth, and regaining it after being thrown from a ladder half an hour ago, I remember nothing."
"Astonishin'."
"Even so, not—I believe—a case without precedent."