When Larcher left, a few minutes later, he was so far under the spell of the newcomer's amiability that he felt as if their acquaintance were considerably older than three-quarters of an hour.
Nevertheless, he kept ransacking his memory for the circumstances in which he had before heard the name of Turl. To be sure, this Turl might not be the Turl whose name he had heard; but the fact that he had heard the name, and the coincidences in his observation of the man himself, made the question perpetually insistent. He sought out Barry Tompkins, and asked, “Did you ever mention to me a man named Turl?”
“Never in a state of consciousness,” was Tompkins's reply; and an equally negative answer came from everybody else to whom Larcher put the query that day.
He thought of friend after friend until it came Murray Davenport's turn in his mental review. He had a momentary feeling that the search was warm here; but the feeling succumbed to the consideration that Davenport had never much to say about acquaintances. Davenport seemed to have put friendship behind him, unless that which existed between him and Larcher could be called friendship; his talk was not often of any individual person.
“Well,” thought Larcher, “when Mr. Turl comes to see me, I shall find, out whether there's anybody we both know. If there is, I shall learn more of Mr. Turl. Then light may be thrown on his haunting my steps for three days, and subsequently turning up in the rooms of people I visit.”
The arrival of Mr. Turl, at the appointed hour the next afternoon, instantly put to rout all doubts of his being other than he seemed. In the man's agreeable presence, Larcher felt that to imagine the coincidences anything but coincidences was absurd.
The two young men were soon bending over the book of engravings, which lay on a table. Turl pointed out beauties of detail which Larcher had never observed.
“You talk like an artist,” said Larcher.
“I have dabbled a little,” was the reply. “I believe I can draw, when put to it.”
“You ought to be put to it occasionally, then.”