Instantly Mr. Blodgett smiled too, and again extended his hand. “Glad to see you,” he said. “Sit down.” Then looking at me keenly, he added, “You’ve done a lot of bleaching or scrubbing since we met.”
“In the interval my face has been hidden from the sun-god of my fathers.”
“Ah!” Then his Americanism cropped out by a question: “Are you European or Asiatic?—for you are too dark to be the one, and too white to be the other.”
“My parents were American, and I was born in New York.”
“The deuce you were! Then why were you masquerading in Arab dress and with a brown face in Tangier, and why did you say you came from some mountains in Asia?”
“I was for the time an Arab, and I was last from the Altai Mountains,” I explained, and smilingly added, “Is my explanation satisfactory?”
“Well, I suppose you spoke by the book,” he replied. “Wherever you were born, I’m glad to see—Hold on!” he cried, interrupting his own speech. “Why did you call yourself Dr. Rudolph Hartzmann, of Leipzig, if you were an American?”
“I did not,” I denied, startled by his question, for my identity with the pseudonym was known only to my professors and publishers.
“You weren’t living in Tangier under the name of Hartzmann?” he inquired.
“No.”