Part 8 (1/2)

”You'll take a cigarette?”

”I thank you; if you do not mind, I smoke my pipe.”

He took from his pocket a worn leather case, which he opened, disclosing a small, browned clay bowl of the kind workmen use; and, fitting it with a red stem, he filled it with a dark and sinister tobacco from a pouch. ”Always my pipe for me,” he said, and applied a match, inhaling the smoke as other men inhale the light smoke of cigarettes. ”Ha, it is good! It is wicked for the insides, but it is good for the soul.” And clouds wreathed his great beard like a storm on Mont Blanc as he concluded, with gusto, ”It is my first pipe since yesterday.”

”That is being a good smoker,” I ventured sententiously; ”to whet indulgence with abstinence.”

”My dear sir,” he protested, ”I am a man without even enough virtue to be an epicure. When I am alone I am a chimney with no hebdomadary repose; I smoke forever. It is on account of my young friend I am temperate now.”

”He has never smoked, your young friend?” I asked, glancing at my visitor rather curiously, I fear.

”Mr. Saffren has no vices.” Professor Keredec replaced his silver-rimmed spectacles and turned them upon me with serene benevolence. ”He is in good condition, all pure, like little children--and so if I smoke near him he chokes and has water at the eyes, though he does not complain. Just now I take a vacation: it is his hour for study, but I think he looks more out of the front window than at his book. He looks very much from the window”--there was a muttering of subterranean thunder somewhere, which I was able to locate in the professor's torso, and took to be his expression of a chuckle--”yes, very much, since the pa.s.sing of that charming lady some days ago.”

”You say your young friend's name is Saffren?”

”Oliver Saffren.” The benevolent gaze continued to rest upon me, but a shadow like a faint anxiety darkened the Homeric brow, and an odd notion entered my mind (without any good reason) that Professor Keredec was wondering what I thought of the name. I uttered some commonplace syllable of no moment, and there ensued a pause during which the seeming shadow upon my visitor's forehead became a reality, deepening to a look of perplexity and trouble. Finally he said abruptly: ”It is about him that I have come to talk to you.”

”I shall be very glad,” I murmured, but he brushed the callow formality aside with a gesture of remonstrance.

”Ha, my dear sir,” he cried; ”but you are a man of feeling! We are both old enough to deal with more than just these little words of the mouth!

It was the way you have received my poor young gentleman's excuses when he was so rude, which make me wish to talk with you on such a subject; it is why I would not have you believe Mr. Saffren and me two very suspected individuals who hide here like two bad criminals!”

”No, no,” I protested hastily. ”The name of Professor Keredec--”

”The name of NO man,” he thundered, interrupting, ”can protect his reputation when he is caught peeping from a curtain! Ha, my dear sir! I know what you think. You think, 'He is a nice fine man, that old professor, oh, very nice--only he hides behind the curtains sometimes!

Very fine man, oh, yes; only he is a spy.' Eh? Ha, ha! That is what you have been thinking, my dear sir!”

”Not at all,” I laughed; ”I thought you might fear that _I_ was a spy.”

”Eh?” He became sharply serious upon the instant. ”What made you think that?”

”I supposed you might be conducting some experiments, or perhaps writing a book which you wished to keep from the public for a time, and that possibly you might imagine that I was a reporter.”

”So! And THAT is all,” he returned, with evident relief. ”No, my dear sir, I was the spy; it is the truth; and I was spying upon you. I confess my shame. I wish very much to know what you were like, what kind of a man you are. And so,” he concluded with an opening of the hands, palms upward, as if to show that nothing remained for concealment, ”and so I have watched you.”

”Why?” I asked.

”The explanation is so simple: it was necessary.”

”Because of--of Mr. Saffren?” I said slowly, and with some trepidation.

”Precisely.” The professor exhaled a cloud of smoke. ”Because I am sensitive for him, and because in a certain way I am--how should it be said?--perhaps it is near the truth to say, I am his guardian.”

”I see.”

”Forgive me,” he rejoined quickly, ”but I am afraid you do not see. I am not his guardian by the law.”

”I had not supposed that you were,” I said.

”Why not?”