“Which means—what?”
“Which means that, according to my theory, there should be something more than now appears on the surface to explain this unaccountable resemblance between the pirate and the count.”
“Surely, Nick, you don’t mean to accuse the count of——”
“I don’t mean to accuse anybody of anything. I am merely endeavoring to explain a circumstance which strikes me as being remarkable, to say the least.”
“But, Nick——”
“Wait, please. If you had been the only one to notice the resemblance, I should have paid no attention whatever to it.”
“Thanks, awfully!”
“I don’t mean my remark that way, Max. I do mean that your unsupported theory in that respect would not have been of sufficient importance to have attracted my attention. I should, in that case, have regarded it merely as a phantom of your own brain.”
“I see what you are getting at.”
“No, you don’t—yet. Not quite.”