“I’m very sorry,” said he, in his precise, nasal voice, “to appear stupid. But you have put forward half a dozen such amazing propositions in one breath that I can’t quite follow you.”
A smile gleamed in Baltazar’s eyes. “I thought that would get you,” he remarked placidly. “But it’s an accurate presentment of my present position.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Sheepshanks. “But you surely haven’t been living a recluse on a moor for the last twenty years?”
“Oh no,” replied Baltazar. “Eighteen of them I spent in China. I went out straight from here.”
“To China? Dear me,” said Sheepshanks. “What an extraordinary place to go to from Cambridge.”
“Didn’t anybody guess where I had vanished to?”
“Not a soul, I assure you. Your disappearance created a sensation. Quite a sensation. A painful one, because you were a man we could ill afford to lose.”
“It’s good of you to say so. But it’s odd that no one seemed to be interested enough in me to reason out China. You all knew I was keen on Chinese.” He cast a swift glance around the bookshelves that lined the room, and shot out an arm. “I shouldn’t be surprised if that’s my little handbook—Introduction to the Language, on a Scientific Basis.”
Sheepshanks’ myopic vision followed Baltazar’s pointing finger.
“Yes. It’s somewhere there. You haven’t changed much from the creature of flashes that you used to be.”