When she was gone, a puzzled look filled the Inspector’s eyes.  “She has been like that for the last six months,” he explained.  “Tremendously interested in this man Keith and his fate.  I don’t believe that I have watched for your return more anxiously than she has, Conniston.  And the curious part of it is she seemed to have no interest in the matter at all until six months ago.  Sometimes I am afraid that brooding over her father’s death has unsettled her a little.  A mighty pretty girl, Conniston.  A mighty pretty girl, indeed!  And her brother is a skunk.  Pst!  You haven’t forgotten him?”

He drew a chair up close to his own and motioned Keith to be seated.  “You’re changed, Conniston!”

The words came out of him like a shot.  So unexpected were they that Keith felt the effect of them in every nerve of his body.  He sensed instantly what McDowell meant.  He was not like the Englishman; he lacked his mannerisms, his cool and superior suavity, the inimitable quality of his nerve and sportsmanship.  Even as he met the disquieting directness of the Inspector’s eyes, he could see Conniston sitting in his place, rolling his mustache between his forefinger and thumb, and smiling as though he had gone into the north but yesterday and had returned today.  That was what McDowell was missing in him, the soul of Conniston himself—­Conniston, the ne plus ultra of presence and amiable condescension, the man who could look the Inspector or the High Commissioner himself between the eyes, and, serenely indifferent to Service regulations, say, “Fine morning, old top!” Keith was not without his own sense of humor.  How the Englishman’s ghost must be raging if it was in the room at the present moment!  He grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

“Were you ever up there—­through the Long Night—­alone?” he asked.  “Ever been through six months of living torture with the stars leering at you and the foxes barking at you all the time, fighting to keep yourself from going mad?  I went through that twice to get John Keith, and I guess you’re right.  I’m changed.  I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.  Something—­has gone.  I can’t tell what it is, but I feel it.  I guess only half of me pulled through.  It killed John Keith.  Rotten, isn’t it?”

He felt that he had made a lucky stroke.  McDowell pulled out a drawer from under the table and thrust a box of fat cigars under his nose.

“Light up, Derry—­light up and tell us what happened.  Bless my soul, you’re not half dead!  A week in the old town will straighten you out.”

He struck a match and held it to the tip of Keith’s cigar.