“God bless my soul!” said Sheepshanks. “We thought you must be dead. Do sit down.”
Baltazar laughed as he turned to deposit hat and stick on a side-table; then he came and clapped both his hands on the elderly don’s lean shoulders.
“You apostle of primness! Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Of course I’m glad, my dear fellow. Exceedingly glad. But your sudden resurrection rather takes one’s breath away.” He smiled. “Let us both sit down, and you can tell me all about it.”
CHAPTER XI
IF I don’t smoke, I’m afraid I can’t talk,” said Baltazar.
Sheepshanks smiled politely. “You remember my little weakness? But pray smoke. I’ve got used to it of late years. Times change, and we with them.”
Baltazar filled and lit his pipe.
“A couple of weeks ago,” said he, “I had all but complete two epoch-marking mathematical treatises. I had got systems and results you good people here had never dreamed of. I had also stuff in the way of Chinese scholarship that would have been a revelation to the Western world. Then German aircraft dropped bombs on my house, a hermitage in the middle of a moorland, and wiped out the labour of a lifetime. They also nearly killed a young Chinaman whom I regard as an extraordinary mathematical genius and about whom I want to consult you. They also, thereby, revealed to me a fact of which I was entirely unaware, namely, that the war had been going on for a couple of years.”
He leaned back in his chair and drew a few contented puffs. His host passed a hand over perplexed brows and leaned forward.