“I’m Hodge Backmaker,” I muttered in despair. “I—I work here.” I was conscious of not having shaved that morning, that my pants and jacket did not match, that my shirt was not clean.
I suppose I expected her to say nastily, So I see! or the usual, It must be fascinating! Instead she said, “I wonder if youve run across The Properties of X by Whitehead? Ive been trying to get a copy for a long time.”
“Uh—I.... Is it a mystery story?” “I’m afraid not. It’s a book on mathematics by a mathematician very much out of favor. It’s hard to find, I suppose because the author is bolder than he is tactful.”
So naturally and easily she led me away from my embarrassment and into talking of books, relieving me of self-consciousness and some of the mortification in being exposed at my humble job by the “representative” of the telegram. I admitted deficient knowledge of mathematics and ignorance of Mr Whitehead though I maintained, accurately, that the book was not in stock, while she assured me that only a specialist would have heard of so obscure a theoretician. This made me ask, with the awe one feels for an expert in an alien field, if she were a mathematician, to which she replied, “Heavens, no. I’m a physicist. But mathematics is my tool.”
I looked at her with respect. Anyone, I thought, can read a few books and set himself up as an historian; to be a physicist means genuine learning. And I doubted she was much older than I.
She said abruptly, “My father is interested in knowing something about you.”
I acknowledged this with something between a nod and a bow. She had been examining and gauging me for the past half hour. “Your father is Thomas Haggerwells?”
“Haggerwells of Haggershaven,” she confirmed, as though explaining everything. There was pride in her voice and a hint of superciliousness.
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss Haggerwells, but I’m afraid I’m as ignorant of Haggershaven as of mathematics.”
“I thought you said you’d been reading history. Odd youve come upon no reference to the Haven in the records of the past seventy-five years.”