"You were once, if you are not now, Meudon's business partner. You must have heard of his disappearance. On his way from Honda to Bogota he--well, he simply vanished. That's the only way to describe it. It all happened, no one knows how, a few days ago. The same thing took place some years ago when he was living here with you. You know all about the details of that first disappearance." "You are mistaken," interrupted Raoul. "David Meudon left me for a number of months. On his return he failed--or didn't think it worth while--to explain his absence." "That is all very well. Perhaps he could, perhaps he couldn't explain it. At any rate, you thought that absence sufficiently peculiar to make it the subject of an article for the Psychological Journal." Raoul flinched perceptibly under this statement. His cool indifference took on the sort of cordiality that repels one more than open enmity. Bending over the table before which he was standing, he occupied himself in elaborately sorting and rearranging some papers at which he had been working. "Of course," he said, "I know you now! Mr. Harold Leighton. I didn't place the name at first, which was altogether stupid of me. I have often wanted to meet you. As a matter of fact, I heard of your coming. It's a rare treat in this out-of-the-way part of the world to run across a man who has advanced our knowledge of psychology as you have." The profuse compliment was not relished by the old savant. "I am not aware that I have advanced our knowledge of psychology, as you put it, one iota," he said testily. "But I am here to add to the small stock of what I have already learned." "You must have found David a rare problem!" exclaimed Raoul. "You know him, perhaps, better than I do." "Yes, I know him. That is, in a way. Engaging sort of chap. Clever, and all that. Mysterious, too, don't you think? So, he has disappeared again, you say?" "Don't tell me that you have not known of it! The whole town has been talking about it." "Rumors, only rumors," protested Raoul. "I would like to hear the real facts." "This gentleman, General Herran, with whom Mr. Meudon was traveling, can tell you the facts, such as they are. But I can't see why you should need them." Raoul turned to Leighton's companion, who had been trying to follow what the two men were saying. As they talked in English, a language of which he knew scarcely a word, he could make very little of it. Asked, in Spanish, to give the details of his ride with David, he made an excellent story of it, relating something of the discussion that had absorbed them while on the road together, the friendly feeling that had grown up between them, its touch of conviviality, and their abrupt separation in the midst of their encounter with the regiment of volunteers. Raoul listened intently to Herran's narrative, his glance roving restlessly from the narrator to his companion and back again, as if to compare the effect on both of what was said.