I bowed and asked him to be seated, but he continued erect, peering up at me with eyes that watered behind his steel-bowed spectacles. He was an odd, unkempt figure of a man; his scraggly beard barely managed to screen his collar-button, for he wore no tie; his sparse, gray locks fell quite to the greasy collar of his coat, an antique frock, once black but now of a greenish hue; and his inner collar was of celluloid like his dickey and like the cuffs which rattled about his lean wrists as he shook my hand.
"My name is Percival—Hiram De Lancey Percival," he said. "De Lancey was my mother's name."
"Will you come into my office, Mr. Percival?" I asked.
"No—no, thank you—that is, I am not a patient," he explained. "I just called on my way to—"
He wet his lips, and as he said "New York" I fancied I could detect beneath the casual manner he assumed, no inconsiderable self-satisfaction, accompanied by a straightening of the bent shoulders, while at the same moment he touched with one finger the tip of his collar and thrust up his chin as if the former were too tight for him. With that he laid his old felt hat among the magazines on my table and took a chair.
"The fact is," he continued, "I am a former protègè of the late Rev. David Primrose, of whom you may—"
He paused significantly.
"Indeed!" I said. "I knew Dr. Primrose very well. He was a neighbor of ours. His daughter—"
My visitor's face brightened visibly and he hitched his chair nearer to my own.