“Where are you going to stay in Paris?” he asked suddenly.
“I stayed at the Brighton in the Rue de Rivoli the last time I was there,” Hopford answered, “but I thought this time of finding some little place in Clichy—my friend lives in Montmartre. Why do you ask?”
“A friend of mine, a mental specialist—incidentally he is interested in your sort of work, and is wonderfully shrewd in putting two and two together—has a quaint little appartement in the rather slummy Rue des Petits Champs, near the Place Jeanne d’Arc. If you would like to stay with him I know he would like to have you, and I feel confident you would hit it off together. He and I shared a house in Hong Kong, when I practiced there, and after a while I appointed him my locum tenens in Shanghai.”
“Shanghai!”
Hopford seemed suddenly interested. For several seconds he did not speak.
“Curious coincidence that,” he said at last. “I just wanted to meet someone who knew Shanghai, and I had forgotten you had lived in Hong Kong.”
“The friend I speak of knows Shanghai inside out, which I am afraid I don’t,” Johnson answered. “Shall I give you an introduction to him?”
“I wish you would, Johnson,” Hopford answered eagerly. “And under the circumstances I should like to stay with him, if he will have me. Do you happen ever to have known a man in Shanghai named Fobart Robertson?”
“I should say so!” his companion exclaimed. “One of the worst—a mere adventurer. He married——”
He checked himself.