“Ah!” I exclaimed, with a smile, “I see you recognize me, though we were only passers-by on the Lake of Garda! I must apologize for this intrusion, but, as a matter of fact, my servant Browning described a gentleman who called upon me a few days ago, and I at once recognized him to have been you. He was rather rude to you, I fear, and——”
“My dear fellow!” he interrupted, with a hearty, good-natured laugh. “He only did his duty as your servant. He objected to my infernal impertinence—and very rightly, too.”
“It was surely no impertinence to call upon me!” I exclaimed.
“Well, it’s all a question of one’s definition of impertinence,” he said. “I made certain inquiries—rather searching inquiries regarding you—that was all.”
“Why?” I asked.
He moved uneasily in his padded writing-chair, then reached over and placed a box of cigarettes before me. After we had both lit up, he answered in a rather low, changed voice—
“Well, I wanted to satisfy myself as to who you were, Mr. Biddulph,” he laughed. “Merely to gratify a natural curiosity.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “Why should your curiosity have been aroused concerning me? I do not think I have ever made a secret to any one regarding my name or my position, or anything else.”
“But you might have done, remember,” replied the thin-faced rector, looking at me calmly yet mysteriously with those straight grey eyes of his.
“I don’t follow you, Mr. Shuttleworth,” I said, much puzzled.