“In that case,” said Warren, obeying a quick signal from his accomplice, “I’ll stroll in the garden, while you present Mr. Jones to Livius.”
Colonel Graeme led the way to a lofty wing, once used as a drawing-room, but now the repository for thousands of books, which not only filled the shelves but were heaped up in every corner.
“I must apologize for this confusion, sir,” said the host. “No one is permitted to arrange my books but myself. And my efforts, I fear, serve only to make confusion more confounded. There are four other rooms even more chaotic than this.”
At the sound of his voice a man who had been seated behind a tumulus of volumes rose and stood. Average Jones looked at him keenly. He was perhaps forty-five years of age, thin and sinewy, with a close-shaven face, pale blue eyes, and a narrow forehead running high into a mop of grizzled locks. Diagonally across the front part of the scalp a scar could be dimly perceived through the hair. Average Jones glanced at the stranger’s hands, to gain, if possible, some hint of his former employment. With his faculty of swift observation, he noticed that the long, slender fingers were not only mottled with dust, but also scuffed, and, in places, scarified, as if their owner had been hurriedly handling a great number of books.
Colonel Graeme presented the new-comer in formal Latin. He bowed. The scarred man made a curious gesture of the hand, addressing Average Jones in an accent which, even to the young man’s long-unaccustomed cars, sounded strange and strained.
“Di illi linguam astrinxere; mutus est,” said Colonel Graeme, indicating the younger man, and added a sentence in sonorous metrical Greek.
Average Jones recalled the Æschylean line. “Well, though ‘a great ox hath stepped on my tongue,’ it hasn’t trodden out my eyes, praises be!” said he to himself as he caught the uneasy glance of the Roman.
By way of allaying suspicion, he scribbled upon a sheet of paper a few complimentary Latin sentences, in which Warren had sedulously coached him for the occasion, and withdrew to the front room, where he was presently joined by the Johns Hopkins man. Fortunately, the colonel gave them a few moments together.
“Arrange for me to come here daily to study in the library,” whispered Jones to the Latin professor.
The other nodded.