"Quite well, Mr. Carless!" he answered. "As if it were yesterday. He used to come here a good deal, you know." "Do you think you'd know him again, Portlethwaite, after all these years?" asked Mr. Carless. "Thirty-five years, mind!" The elderly clerk smiled--more assuredly than before. Then he looked significantly at a corner of the room, and Mr. Carless took the hint, and rising from his chair, went aside with him. Portlethwaite whispered something in his employer's ear, and Carless suddenly laughed and nodded. "To be sure--to be sure--I remember now!" he said aloud. "Thank you, Portlethwaite: that's all. Well, gentlemen," he continued, returning to his desk when the clerk had gone. "I think the best thing you can do is to bring your client here--if he is the real and genuine article, he will, I am sure, be very glad indeed to meet three persons who knew him quite intimately in the old days--Mr. Driver, Mr. Portlethwaite and myself. And I really don't know that there's any more to do or say." The two visitors rose, and Methley looked at Mr. Carless in a questioning fashion. "Am I to go away with the impression that you believe our client to be an impostor?" he said quietly. "Frankly I do!" answered Mr. Carless. "So do I!" exclaimed Mr. Pawle. "Emphatically so!" "In that case," said Methley, "I see no advantage in bringing him here." "Not even anything to your own advantage?" suggested Mr. Carless, with a keen glance which passed from one partner to the other. "You, as reputable practitioners of our profession, don't want to be mixed up with an impostor?" "We should be very sorry to be mixed up in any way with an impostor, Mr. Carless!" said Methley. Mr. Carless pursed his lips for a moment as if he were never going to open them again; then he suddenly relaxed them. "I tell you what it is, gentlemen!" he said. "I'm only anticipating matters in saying what I'm going to say, and I'm saying it because I feel sure you are quite sincere and genuine in this affair and are being deceived. If you will bring your client here, there are three of us in this office who, as my old clerk has just reminded me, can positively identify him on the instant if he is the man he claims to be. Positively, I say, and at once! There!" "May one ask how?" said Woodlesford. "No!" exclaimed Mr. Carless. "Bring him! Telephone an appointment--and we'll settle the matter as soon as he sets foot inside that door." "May we tell him that?" asked Methley. "You can do as you like," answered Mr. Carless. "Between ourselves, I shouldn't! But I assure you--we can tell in one glance! That's a fact!" The two solicitors went away; and Viner, who had closely watched Methley during the interview, followed them out and hailed Methley in the corridor outside Mr. Carless' room.