“Great God!” exclaimed Grey, amazedly, “and did I seem sane--rational?”
“Perfectly,” O’Hara answered; “you were the character to the smallest detail. Your voice was the only peculiar thing about you. You spoke like a deaf man, with practically no inflection.”
“Oh, yes; frequently. He was really very clever. He had a wonderful fund of general knowledge. There was scarcely a subject with which he was not familiar. But his specialty was phrenology. He told me that in his youth he had known Dr. Spurzheim, the pupil of Dr. Franz Gall, the founder of the science, that he had studied under him and gone very deeply into the matter. He was a chemist, too, and from something he let drop one day I got the impression that he had experimented considerably with anæsthetics, narcotics, and that sort of thing.”
“And to some purpose, apparently,” put in Grey. “But his object, O’Hara? What in heaven’s name could have been his object? I never knew him--never saw him to my recollection until he was dying.”
“Ah, lad, we haven’t got that far yet, but we’ll know before we’re through.”
And then he went on with his story. He was with the quartet a great deal in London, he said. He showed them about, and they were all very appreciative. They stopped there until the middle of May and then they moved on to Paris. Without any intention of prying into their affairs he had observed that Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald had a good deal of correspondence with parties in Kürschdorf.
“And what was my attitude towards them all?” Grey inquired. “Was I very sociable or was I reserved?”
“You were rather dignified,” O’Hara answered; “and now I come to think of it, they treated you with considerable deference, though they endeavoured to dissemble it whenever I was about. Miss von Altdorf seemed quite fond of you, old chap, and it was amusing to note how Captain Lindenwald insisted on making love to her at every opportunity, only to be gently, but firmly, repulsed. As for that young woman I found her most charming,--and you did too, apparently. Of course, as she was your niece, you could take her to dine tête-à-tête and to places of amusement unchaperoned, and you did very frequently, much to Lindenwald’s annoyance. Whatever the plot is, Grey, I feel satisfied that she is not in it.”