Tompkins gazed at Turl, then at the speaker, and finally--with a wondering inquiry--at Larcher. It was Turl who answered the inquiry.
"Mr. Bagley is perfectly sane and serious," said he. "He declares I am the Murray Davenport who disappeared a few months ago, and thinks you ought to be able to identify me as that person."
"If you gentlemen are working up a joke," replied Tompkins, "I hope I shall soon begin to see the fun; but if you're not, why then, Mr. Bagley, I should earnestly advise you to take something for this."
"Oh, just wait, Mr. Tompkins. You're a well-informed man, I believe. Now let's go slow. You won't deny the possibility of a man's changing his appearance by surgical and other means, in this scientific age, so as almost to defy recognition?"
"I deny the possibility of his doing such a thing so as to defy recognition by _me_. So much for your general question. As to this gentleman's being the person I once met as Murray Davenport, I can only wonder what sort of a hoax you're trying to work."
Bagley looked his feelings in silence. Giving Barry Tompkins up, he said to Larcher: "I don't see any lawyer here that I'm acquainted with. I was a bit previous, getting let in to decide that bet to-night."
"Perhaps Mr. Tompkins knows some lawyer here, to whom he will introduce you," suggested Turl.
"You want a lawyer?" said Tompkins. "There are three or four here. Over there's Doctor Brady, the medico-legal man; you've heard of him, I suppose,--a well-known criminologist."
"I should think he'd be the very man for you," said Turl to Bagley. "Besides being a lawyer, he knows surgery, and he's an authority on the habits of criminals."
"Is he a friend of yours?" asked Bagley, at the same time that his eyes lighted up at the chance of an auditor free from the incredulity of ignorance.
"Nor I," said Larcher; "and I don't think Murray Davenport ever did."
"Then if Mr. Tompkins will introduce Mr. Larcher and me, and come away at once without any attempt to prejudice, I'm agreed, as far as our bet's concerned. But I'm to be let alone to do the talking my own way."
Barry Tompkins led Bagley and Larcher over to the medico-legal criminologist--a tall, thin man in the forties, with prematurely gray hair and a smooth-shaven face, cold and inscrutable in expression--and, having introduced and helped them to find chairs, rejoined Turl. Bagley was not ten seconds in getting the medico-legal man's ear.