"Take that card to the manager as my complaint, and tell him to dismiss you," he said, somewhat haughtily. "I'm Christopher Morris, promoter of the Yukon Dredging Company."
The servant took the pasteboard, a little awed. Ainsworth had not caught the stranger's surname, but he snapped at the mention of his especial enterprise.
"The Yukon Dredging Company!" he exclaimed suspiciously. "If you are the promoter of that scheme, I warn you to watch out for me. I'm Ainsworth, the law-machine, and I'm convinced that the Dredging Company is a mere swindle. Be careful! I'll put the Crown after you at the very first opportunity."
The object of his censure sniffed in scorn, but Ainsworth continued:
"You invited my antagonism. Now perhaps you'll regret it. If anything angers me, it is the loss of my self-respect, and those Frenchmen took me for an idiot. But you sound decidedly out of place next the Sahara, my friend. You should be at the Arctic end of a different continent. What are you hunting in Algiers–floating capital?"
"No," was the answer. "I am hunting my wife. I arrived but an hour ago from Tangier, where the cursed doctors quarantined me for a chill which they insisted on calling fever. When after twenty days' hammering at their thick heads I convinced them of their mistake, they let me out, and I found my wife had hurried away to escape infection." He laughed, and with a cold, indignant significance intensifying his words, repeated: "Hurried away to escape infection!"
"Your wife," echoed the puzzled lawyer. "What has that to do with your offensive attitude? What has that to do with Rex Britton?"
"They tell me that in finding Britton I shall find my wife!"
Understanding rushed upon Ainsworth, and he, as well as Trascott, was stirred to fiery excitement. He shook the man roughly by the shoulder. "Your name?" he breathlessly demanded. "What did you say was your name?"
"Morris–Christopher Morris," was the answer. "My wife's name is Maud, and the devil gave her the prettiest face in England."