“Compel—eh?” repeated the other, a hard smile playing about the young man’s lips. Diamond was a queer figure and strange persons had always attracted him. Through the ugly little doctor he had gained this remarkable knowledge of an uncanny secret withheld from the world for over two thousand years. He was reflecting what a “boom” the discovery would be for that great daily newspaper of which he was one of the Board of Directors.
“Then you agree that we shall at once turn our attention to Copenhagen—eh?” he asked.
“Certainly—the sooner the better.”
“We have no photograph of your friend—a most unfortunate fact.”
Diamond gave a detailed description of the dead man, and his friend, crossing to his writing-table, wrote it carefully at his dictation.
“I’ve been in Copenhagen several times,” Frank remarked, “so I know that city fairly well. I wonder whether the man we seek is a professor at the University?”
“Our first object is to establish the dead man’s identity.”
“He may have lied, and perhaps was not a Dane after all! He may have been a Norwegian, or even a Swede.”
Diamond raised his deformed shoulders and answered:
“True, as he was so bent upon concealing his identity he may well have lied to me regarding his nationality. Yet we must risk that, don’t you think?”