"Certainly. As soon as I found out what the device was, I remembered all about the family. Sit down there, if you want to know. You don't mind Rose doing my hair?"
"You're as pretty as a picture, Ethra, and you are perfectly aware of it. Go on and tell me, please."
"It's a well-known family, Jim—or was. The early ones were Crusaders and Templars, I believe. Their history ever since has been mixed up with affairs oriental.
"There was a De Châtillon who had a row with Saladin, and I think was slain by that redoubtable Moslem. The daughter of that De Châtillon married a paladin of some sort who took her name and her father's quarterings and added a blue fanion and a human head to them; also three yaks' tails on a spear support the arms. Why, I don't remember. It's in that book over there, I suppose.
"Anyway, it seems that some king or other—Saint Louis, I believe—created the first son of this paladin and of the daughter of De Châtillon a Prince of Marmora with the Island of Tenedos as his domain.
"Of course one of the Sultans drove them out. Fifty years ago the family was living in Tours, poor as mice, proud as Lucifer of their Principality of Marmora and Tenedos—realms which no Châtillon, of course, had ever been permitted to occupy since the Crusades.
"The family is extinct—some tragedy, I believe, finished the last of the Châtillons. I don't remember when, but it probably is all recorded in that book over there."
"May I borrow it?"
"Certainly. But where in the world did that exceedingly soiled pillowcase come from?"
"Don't have it washed just yet, Ethra. A man discovered it in a safe which was the private property of that scoundrel, Constantine Wildresse.