“Well, it’s a long story, but, if you’re doing nothing to-night, come over to my hotel and dine and I’ll tell you. By itself the coin isn’t much, but I’ve got two other exhibits which fit in. What is it ‘Sapper’ says? ‘Once is nothing, twice is coincidence, three times is a moral certainty.’ I think I’ve got a moral cert.”
And not another word would he say on the matter then, shifting the conversation to France and Palestine, old scraps, old friends, all the miscellany of memories that make up the wandering soldier’s life.
I slipped home and changed, and then to his hotel, where I found him awaiting me in the lounge with a tall, clean-shaven, fair-haired, blue-eyed man who seemed to carry a smack of the sea about him, though somehow I did not set him down as a sailor.
“You’ve not met Forsyth, have you, Harry?” said Wrexham. “This is Lake, Alec; you’ve heard me speak of him often enough.”
As we shook hands while Wrexham busied himself attracting a servant for short drinks, I took stock of Forsyth. Taller than me by at least three inches—and I stand five feet ten in my socks—and broad with it, he looked the epitome of fitness. His skin was clear and smooth as a girl’s, yet tanned to a ruddy brick colour that spoke of days of open air, clean fresh winds, and hot sunshine.
I couldn’t quite place him, but somehow he conveyed an idea of big open spaces, and all the breadth of clean mental outlook that sometimes goes therewith.
Wrexham handed us out sherries, and marshalled us into a cool corner.
“Three wanderers well met, I think. Here’s to us.” He turned to me.
“Forsyth knows, perhaps, more Greek than you, Harry. He describes himself as a doctor, and tags weird letters after his name. But his real amusement in life is studying ethnology and anthropology and things like that.”
“I’ve always been keen on ethnology, especially that of Eastern Europe, as a hobby; and after finishing my medical studies, I spent some months pottering about Greece on my own. It’s a fascinating mixture of people down in the Balkan Peninsula to any one keen on studying different races. Also, I was one of those freaks with a leaning to Greek, even at school, before I came over to England.”