"Well, come in," he said and pulled me into the sitting room of the flat. "I've got us something for supper. Here, drink this up."
"O'Hara!" I cried.
And he laughed. "I'm glad to see you, too." He gripped my shoulder and then thrust a glass into my hand. "Drink it up. That's good. The principle of the funnel."
"But where—? Colonel Tournant told me—"
"Now, here's another, though you may nurse it longer if you wish," O'Hara said, and filled my glass. "The supper will keep, it's tinned stuff anyway. Colonel Tournant told you, eh? I'll give him the shock of his life. Aren't you going to sit down?"
"Not until you tell me where you've been?"
"Really," he said, "you'd better sit down. Because it so happens that I am going to tell you. That's the chair for you. Attend to your drink. And while you're doing that, I'll take you back for a moment to the 74th degree of latitude and the 163rd degree of longitude, one year ago plus four days."
He raised his glass. When he put it down it was empty.
"If you saw Tournant, you know that much," he said. "But I don't think he could have told you what I found there."
"The sudden gale?" I asked. "The thunderhead—"