Part 11 (1/2)

Describe him again.”

I described my man again, and he followed every point on his fingers.

”Well,” he said; ”I could have sworn I knew every man who ever fished at Blank, but this fellow----Oh, wait a minute! You say he is tall and bulky and had travelled. Why, it must be old Carstairs. And yet it can't be. Carstairs was never married and was never in Parliament.”

He pondered again.

Then he said, ”You're sure it wasn't a clean-shaven bald man with a single eyegla.s.s?”

”Quite,” I said.

”Because,” he went on, ”if he had been, it would have been old Peterson to the life.”

”He wasn't bald or clean-shaven,” I said.

”You're sure he said Blank?” he inquired after another interval of profound thought.

”Absolutely,” I replied.

”Tell me again what he was like. Tell me exactly. I know every one up there; I must know him.”

”He was a vigorous, bulky, very tall man,” I said, ”with a pointed beard and a ma.s.s of grey hair under a Panama; and he used to go to Blank every August. He had been a great traveller and knew Persia; he had been in Parliament, and one of his sons was in the siege of Mafeking.”

”I don't know him,” he said.

II. DR. SULLIVAN

It had been decided that there never was such a resemblance as is to be traced between my homely features and those of a visitor to the same hotel the previous year--Dr. Sullivan of Harley Street. This had become an established fact, irrefutable like a proposition of Euclid, and one of my new friends, and a friend also of the Harley Street physician who had so satisfyingly and minutely antic.i.p.ated my countenance, made it the staple of his conversation. ”Isn't this gentleman,” he would say to this and that habitue of the smoking-room as they dropped in from the neighbouring farms at night, ”the very image of Dr. Sullivan of Harley Street, who was here last year?” And they would subject my physiognomy to a searching study and agree that I was. Perhaps the nose--a little bigger, don't you think? or a shade of dissimilarity between the chins (he having, I suppose, only two, confound him!), but, taking it all around, the likeness was extraordinary.

This had been going on for some time, until I was accustomed, if not exactly inured, to it, and was really rather looking forward to the time when, on returning to London, I could trump up a sufficient ailment to justify me in calling upon my double in Harley Street and scrutinising him with my own eyes. But last night my friend had something of a set-back, which may possibly, by deflecting his conversation to other topics, give me relief. I hope so.

It happened like this. We were as usual sitting in the smoking-room, he and I, when another local acquaintance entered--one who, I gathered, had been away for a few weeks and whom I had therefore not yet seen, and who (for this was the really important thing to my friend) consequently had not yet seen me.

In course of time the inevitable occurred. ”Don't you think,” my friend asked, ”that this gentleman is the very image of Dr. Sullivan of Harley Street, who was here last summer?”

”What Dr. Sullivan's that?” the new-comer inquired.

”Dr. Sullivan of Harley Street, who was fis.h.i.+ng here last summer. Don't you remember him? The very image of this gentleman.”

”The only Dr. Sullivan I know,” replied the new-comer, ”is Dr. Sullivan of Newcastle. He's a very old man by now. A very learned man too. He has a wonderful private museum. He----”

”No, no, the Dr. Sullivan I mean was from Harley Street--a specialist--who took the Manor fis.h.i.+ng last summer and stayed in the hotel.”

”Dr. Sullivan of Newcastle is a very old man--much older than this gentleman,” replied the stranger, ”and not a bit like him. He's a most interesting personality. He is the great authority on the South Sea Islanders. You should see his collection of Fiji war clubs.”

”But that's not the Dr. Sullivan I mean. You must remember him,” said my impresario; ”we all used to meet evening after evening, just as we're doing now--Dr. Sullivan of Harley Street, the specialist, a clean-shaven man, exactly like this gentleman here. Every one has noticed the likeness.”