“Your voice?” repeated Pendleton. “Yes, it sounds familiar” (he was lying), “but somehow I can’t—”
I kept chuckling, and he looked hurt; so I said, “Of course you can’t. I’m Bannerlee, Alfred Bannerlee.”
The announcement drove him back a pace. “No!”
“Emphatically yes.”
He was studying me intently now, quite rapt. “But how on earth did you find your way up the Vale? It must be full of stinking fog down there in New Aidenn.”
“I came down the Vale!” I announced. “There’s a thimbleful of mist up in the north, too.”
“Down the Vale! You say you came down the Vale!” Then suddenly realization and recognition of me burst upon him for the first time, and he reached for my hand and gave it a good pumping, grasped my elbow, and took me inside. “My dear man, my dear fellow, you must have had a sickening time. Delighted to have you with us. By gad! How on earth did you ever find this nook in the woods?”
“I’m an antiquarian, you know, a nomad. I might better ask how you did the same,” I rejoined. “And, er, are you the butler?”
“No. Of course not. I’m the host. Why, what do you mean?” He stared at me with the old uncertainty.
“You answered my knock with remarkable alacrity.”