I accepted; anything would do that paved the way to better knowledge.

“Your name is Madden, I think,” said I.  “My old friend Stennis told me about you when I came.”

“Yes, I am sorry he went; I feel such a Grandfather William, alone among all these lads,” he replied.

“My name is Dodd,” I resumed.

“Yes,” said he, “so Madame Siron told me.”

“Dodd, of San Francisco,” I continued.  “Late of Pinkerton and Dodd.”

“Montana Block, I think?” said he.

“The same,” said I.

Neither of us looked at each other; but I could see his hand deliberately making bread pills.

“That’s a nice thing of yours,” I pursued, “that panel.  The foreground is a little clayey, perhaps, but the lagoon is excellent.”

“You ought to know,” said he.

“Yes,” returned I, “I’m rather a good judge of—­that panel.”

There was a considerable pause.

“You know a man by the name of Bellairs, don’t you?” he resumed.

“Ah!” cried I, “you have heard from Doctor Urquart?”

“This very morning,” he replied.

“Well, there is no hurry about Bellairs,” said I.  “It’s rather a long story and rather a silly one.  But I think we have a good deal to tell each other, and perhaps we had better wait till we are more alone.”

“I think so,” said he.  “Not that any of these fellows know English, but we’ll be more comfortable over at my place.  Your health, Dodd.”

And we took wine together across the table.

Thus had this singular introduction passed unperceived in the midst of more than thirty persons, art students, ladies in dressing-gowns and covered with rice powder, six foot of Siron whisking dishes over our head, and his noisy sons clattering in and out with fresh relays.

“One question more,” said I:  “Did you recognise my voice?”

“Your voice?” he repeated.  “How should I?  I had never heard it—­we have never met.”

“And yet, we have been in conversation before now,” said I, “and I asked you a question which you never answered, and which I have since had many thousand better reasons for putting to myself.”

He turned suddenly white.  “Good God!” he cried, “are you the man in the telephone?”

I nodded.

“Well, well!” said he.  “It would take a good deal of magnanimity to forgive you that.  What nights I have passed!  That little whisper has whistled in my ear ever since, like the wind in a keyhole.  Who could it be?  What could it mean?  I suppose I have had more real, solid misery out of that ...”  He paused, and looked troubled.  “Though I had more to bother me, or ought to have,” he added, and slowly emptied his glass.

“It seems we were born to drive each other crazy with conundrums,” said I.  “I have often thought my head would split.”

Carthew burst into his foolish laugh.  “And yet neither you nor I had the worst of the puzzle,” he cried.  “There were others deeper in.”