In any case he was there, sound in wind and limb, a tall, square-shouldered, ruddy man of thirty-five, seated behind an oak desk, turning Hollister’s card over in his fingers with an anticipatory smile.  Blankness replaced the smile.  A sort of horrified wonder gleamed in his eyes.  Hollister perceived that his face shocked the specialist in B.C. timber, filled Mr. Lewis with very mixed sensations indeed.

“You have my card.  It is several years since we met.  I dare say you find me unrecognizable,” Hollister said bluntly.  “Nevertheless I can identify myself to your satisfaction.”

A peculiarity of Hollister’s disfigurement was the immobility of his face.  The shell which had mutilated him, the scalpels of the German field surgeons who had perfunctorily repaired the lacerations, had left the reddened, scar-distorted flesh in a rigid mold.  He could neither recognizably smile nor frown.  His face, such as it was, was set in unchangeable lines.  Out of this rigid, expressionless mask his eyes glowed, blue and bright, having escaped injury.  They were the only key to the mutations of his mind.  If Hollister’s eyes were the windows of his soul, he did not keep the blinds drawn, knowing that few had the hardihood to peer into those windows now.

Mr. Lewis looked at him, looked away, and then his gaze came slowly back as if drawn by some fascination against which he struggled in vain.  He did not wish to look at Hollister.  Yet he was compelled to look.  He seemed to find difficulty in speech, this suave man of affairs.

“I’m afraid I shouldn’t have recognized you, as you say,” he uttered, at last.  “Have you—­ah——­”

“I’ve been overseas,” Hollister answered the unspoken question.  That strange curiosity, tinctured with repulsion!  “The result is obvious.”

“Most unfortunate,” Mr. Lewis murmured.  “But your scars are honorable.  A brother of mine lost an arm at Loos.”

“The brothers of a good many people lost more than their arms at Loos,” Hollister returned dryly.  “But that is not why I called.  You recollect, I suppose, that when I was out here last I bought a timber limit in the Toba from your firm.  When I went overseas I instructed you to sell.  What was done in that matter?”

Mr. Lewis’ countenance cleared at once.  He was on his own ground again, dealing with matters in which he was competent, in consultation with a client whom he recalled as a person of consequence, the son of a man who had likewise been of considerable consequence.  Personal undesirability was always discounted in the investment field, the region of percentum returns.  Money talked, in arrogant tones that commanded respect.

He pressed a button.

“Bring me,” he ordered the clerk who appeared, “all correspondence relating to this matter,” and he penciled a few sentences on a slip of paper.

He delved into the papers that were presently set before him.