information regarding the missing Farquharson
seemed preposterous when one reflected how out of touch with the
world he had been, but, to my astonishment, Major Stanleigh's clue
was right, for he had at last stumbled upon a man who had known
Farquharson well and who was voluminous about him--quite willingly so.
With the _Sylph_ at anchor, we lay off Muloa for three nights, and
Leavitt gave us our fill of Farquharson, along with innumerable
digressions about volcanoes, neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what
not. There was no keeping Leavitt to a coherent narrative about the
missing Farquharson. He was incapable of it, and Major Stanleigh and
myself had simply to wait in patience while Leavitt, delighted to
have an audience, dumped out for us the fantastic contents of his
mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, and all. He was always getting
away from Farquharson, but, then, he was unfailingly bound to come
back to him. We had only to wait and catch the solid grains that now
and then fell in the winnowing of that unending stream of chaff. It
was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had its compensations.
At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as he was dull and
boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become a little
demented, as if his brain had been tainted by the sulphurous fumes
exhaled by the smoking crater above his head. His mind smoked,
flickered, and flared like an unsteady lamp, blown upon by choking
gases, in which the oil had run low.

But of the wanderer Farquharson he spoke with precision and authority,
for he had shared with Farquharson his bungalow there in Muloa--a
period of about six months, it seemed--and there Farquharson had
contracted a tropic fever and died.

"Well, at last we have got all the facts," Major Stanleigh sighed
with satisfaction when the _Sylph_ was heading back to Port Charlotte.
Muloa, lying astern, we were no longer watching. Leavitt, at the
water's edge, had waved us a last good-by and had then abruptly
turned back into the forest, very likely to go clambering like a
demented goat up the flanks of his beloved volcano and to resume
poking about in its steaming fissures--an occupation of which he
never tired.

"The evidence is conclusive, don't you think?--the grave,
Farquharson's personal effects, those pages of the poor devil's diary."

I nodded assent. In my capacity as owner of the _Sylph_ I had merely
undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage t