"What, little Queerfellow? He's—er—all right, isn't he? What about him? Tell me about him."
This too I told him as well as I was able. And I may say that I noted with pleasure, as perhaps the real beginning of a valued friendship, that there did not seem to be any question in Hubbard's mind as to what kind of man I was myself. He was quite content to accept my summing-up of Monty.
"So it's between 'em, you think, whatever it is?"
"Or else I give it up," I replied.
"I wonder if you're right," he mused.... "But then," he added suddenly, "what about all that time he spent in the cellar?"
From that point our conversation took for a time a curious little turn.
For Hubbard, while seeming to have no explanation that as a sensible man he must not reject as fantastic, seemed nevertheless to be reluctant to let something go. He seemed to hint and to dismiss and then to hint again, to come to the brink of saying something and then to leave it unsaid after all. And again I had the feeling that though he had known Philip Esdaile for only two years as against my twenty, in some things he might be the familiar and I the outsider.
Then again he seemed to decide to take a risk. He spoke to the paper-weight in his palm.
"You don't happen to know anything about these new sound-appliances, do you?" he asked.
"No. Which are they?"