f him as if you had known him for a long time," I returned,
and I think my lips must have curled a little; but if I was
unappreciative of the hospitality which I was enjoying, my excuse was
my great weariness.

"Oh dear, no," he demurred; "I've been coming here for years--late at
night, you understand, for a bite occasionally. I never saw him until
last fall--got talking to him--I always like to talk to waiters, to get
their ideas. I found him a curious chap, better educated than most of
them and surprisingly well informed--surprisingly. He seemed to have
knocked around a good deal."

"Had been a waiter in Hoboken, I suppose," said I, "and in
Philadelphia----"

"In Hoboken!" My sarcasm nettled Marshall. "He told me that he had
never been a waiter at all until he came here; he was simply looking
for an opportunity to find something really congenial. He was fresh
from Canton. In Hoboken!" Tom Marshall leaned toward me aggressively.
"Why, man, he has been everywhere--through the South Seas, in----"

There _was_ something familiar in the tall, thin figure, something that
even the waiter's jacket and the waving napkin could not hide.

"What's up now?" Marshall cried.

I had half risen from my chair and turned. Talcott and Grant were
leaning over their table, elbows resting there, heads close together.
And behind Talcott's chair the black figure was bent until the hands
could touch the floor. He was brushing up scattered crumbs. As I
looked, he raised his head, and it seemed to me that he had forgotten
his menial task, had forgotten his menial place, for he was very still.
He was no longer dusting. The napkin fell from his outstretched hand.
He was listening to the muttered, maudlin conversation as though from
the chaos of it he gathered some sober words of truth.

I looked at my companion. "In the South Seas, you said, Marshall. Has
he spoken of San Francisco? Do you know his name?"

Marshall sprang from his chair. I was up too, and it was to see the
Professor with a hand on Talcott's collar, shaking him, holding him at
arm's length as he shook him, as though this man were some contemptible
thing that he would touch as little as he could and yet must hold to
and shake until it was cleansed of its vileness.

CHAPTER XX

For myself I should have chosen the hut where I first met the Professor
above the home to which he led me in the early morning. If the old was
tumble-down, dark and ill-furni