"Well," I said, "you're a beauty, aren't you?"
He eyed me owlishly. Even at this early hour, I was grieved to see, he
showed signs of having looked on the bitter while it was brown.
"Beauty?" he echoed.
"What have you got to say for yourself?"
It was plain that he was engaged in pulling his faculties together by
some laborious process known only to himself. At present my words
conveyed no meaning to him. He was trying to identify me. He had seen
me before somewhere, he was certain, but he could not say where, or
who I was.
"I want to know," I said, "what induced you to be such an abject idiot
as to let our arrangement get known?"
I spoke quietly. I was not going to waste the choicer flowers of
speech on a man who was incapable of understanding them. Later on,
when he had awakened to a sense of his position, I would begin really
to talk to him.
He continued to stare at me. Then a sudden flash of intelligence lit
up his features.
"Mr. Garnick," he said.
"You've got it at last."
He stretched out a huge hand.
"I want to know," I said distinctly, "what you've got to say for
yourself after letting our affair with the professor become public
property?"
He paused a while in thought.
"Dear sir," he said at last, as if he were dictating a letter, "dear
sir, I owe you--ex--exp--"
"You do," said I grimly. "I should like to hear it."
"Dear sir, listen me."
"Go on, then."
"You came me. You said, 'Hawk, Hawk, ol' fren', listen me. You tip
this ol' bufflehead into sea,' you said, 'an' gormed if I don't give
'ee a gould savrin.' That's what you said me. Isn't that what you said
me?"