"Another thing," Hubbard continued. "I don't know much about the Elizabethans, but I'm prepared to bet that a good many of 'em were youngsters. While old Burleigh was nodding, some infant just out of his cradle was getting away with it. At all events, there's no reason that I can see why he shouldn't as well be twenty as ninety—every practical reason why he should, in fact."
"Do you mean young Smith's like that?" I suddenly asked.
Perhaps it wasn't quite fair. When a man has the pluck to talk on these lines it is rather a cold douche to bring it all down to one finite and fallible human being. Even the pentecostal flame may flicker at times. But I noticed that Hubbard did not say No. Indeed, he did not answer me at all. His eyes were on the child with the fiddle again and the living, climbing fingers.
"Clever hands, aren't they?" he said. "Wish I could play the fiddle."
IX
It was a little later, when we came to speak of the optophone, that I found him to be still firmly rooted in the conviction that Esdaile's cellar contained the solution of at least a portion of our mystery. He was quite unshakable on this point. I will not trouble to re-state his recapitulation of the events of the morning of the farewell breakfast. Of subsequent events, I may say, he knew little.
"Well, I won't pretend to understand you," I said at last. "If you seriously think that Esdaile's got some sort of an optophone in his house——"
He waved his hand impatiently, as if to beg of me not to be an ass.
"Oh, cut that out. I'm not given to melodrama any more than you are. Of course he hasn't; that's infantile. But what is there to prevent there being something peculiar about the ordinary acoustics of the place—perfectly ordinarily and naturally, but one of these freakish effects—there are such things—an echo's the commonest example, of course—then there are these whispering effects—vagaries of sound——" He tailed off.