"Following his wife's leaving him," Sherrill went on, "Corvet saw very little of any one. He spent most of his time in his own house; occasionally he lunched at his club; at rare intervals, and always unexpectedly, he appeared at his office. I remember that summer he was terribly disturbed because one of his ships was lost. It was not a bad disaster, for every one on the ship was saved, and hull and cargo were fully covered by insurance; but the Corvet record was broken; a Corvet ship had appealed for help; a Corvet vessel had not reached port.... And later in the fall, when two deckhands were washed from another of his vessels and drowned, he was again greatly wrought up, though his ships still had a most favorable record. In 1902 I proposed to him that I buy full ownership in the vessels I partly controlled and ally them with those he and Spearman operated. It was a time of combination—the railroads and the steel interests were acquiring the lake vessels; and though I believed in this, I was not willing to enter any combination which would take the name of Sherrill off the list of American shipowners. I did not give Corvet this as my reason; and he made me at that time a very strange counter-proposition—which I have never been able to understand, and which entailed the very obliteration of my name which I was trying to avoid. He proposed that I accept a partnership in his concern on a most generous basis, but that the name of the company remain as it was, merely Corvet and Spearman. Spearman's influence and mine prevailed upon him to allow my name to appear; since then, the firm name has been Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman.
"Our friendship had strengthened and ripened during those years. The intense activity of Corvet's mind, which as a younger man he had directed wholly to the shipping, was directed, after he had isolated himself in this way, to other things. He took up almost feverishly an immense number of studies—strange studies most of them for a man whose youth had been almost violently active and who had once been a lake captain. I cannot tell you what they all were—geology, ethnology, nearly a score of subjects; he corresponded with various scientific societies; he has given almost the whole of his attention to such things for about twenty years. Since I have known him, he has transformed himself from the rather rough, uncouth—though always spiritually minded—man he was when I first met him into an educated gentleman whom anybody would be glad to know; but he has made very few acquaintances in that time, and has kept almost none of his old friendships. He has lived alone in the house on Astor Street with only one servant—the same one all these years.
"The only house he has visited with any frequency has been mine. He has always liked my wife; he had—he has a great affection for my daughter, who, when she was a child, ran in and out of his home as she pleased. He would take long walks with her; he'd come here sometimes in the afternoon to have tea with her on stormy days; he liked to have her play and sing to him. My daughter believes now that his present disappearance—whatever has happened to him—is connected in some way with herself. I do not think that is so—"
Sherrill broke off and stood in thought for a moment; he seemed to consider, and to decide that it was not necessary to say anything more on that subject.
"Recently Corvet's moroseness and irritability had very greatly increased; he had quarreled frequently and bitterly with Spearman over business affairs. He had seemed more than usually eager at times to see me or to see my daughter; and at other times he had seemed to avoid us and keep away. I have had the feeling of late, though I could not give any actual reason for it except Corvet's manner and look, that the disturbance which had oppressed him for twenty years was culminating in some way. That culmination seems to have been reached three days ago, when he wrote summoning you here. Henry Spearman, whom I asked about you when I learned you were coming, had never heard of you; Mr. Corvet's servant had never heard of you....
"Is there anything in what I have told you which makes it possible for you to recollect or to explain?"
Alan shook his head, flushed, and then grew a little pale. What Sherrill told him had excited him by the coincidences it offered between events in Benjamin Corvet's life and his own; it had not made him "recollect" Corvet, but it had given definiteness and direction to his speculations as to Corvet's relation to himself.
Sherrill drew one of the large chairs nearer to Alan and sat down facing him. He felt in an inner pocket and brought out an envelope; from the envelope he took three pictures, and handed the smallest of them to Alan. As Alan took it, he saw that it was a tintype of himself as a round-faced boy of seven.
"That is you?" Sherrill asked.
"Yes; it was taken by the photographer in Blue Rapids. We all had our pictures taken on that day—Jim, Betty, and I. Mr. Welton"—for the first time Alan consciously avoided giving the title "Father" to the man in Kansas—"sent one of me to the 'general delivery' address of the person in Chicago."