"But naturally," Lanyard returned with the utmost naïveté. "Why should I not, seeing it is my name?"
"Well! there you are. Cases of submerged identity always go by another name while their first personality is under the cloud. But you came aboard as André Duchemin, you admit you're André Duchemin now; and I daresay you were André Duchemin at the time of that motor crash, what?"
"That settles it, as I see it." Conceit restored encouraged anew an attitude of exasperating patronage. "You'll find it will all come back to you, everythin' you've forgotten, bit by bit as the shock of your tumble wears off. It would be a damned interestin' thing from a professional view point if this should turn out to be a true case of mislaid identity; but I'm afraid you needn't hope for that."
"Mean to say, you'll find it's somethin' much more simple and elementary with you. You've had a bad fall and a rap on the head that recalls a similar mishap several months old, and for the time being everythin' that happened in between seems to have been wiped out. But I'll go bail it will all come back to you inside of twenty-four hours."
"As soon as you've had a sound sleep, that is--same thing. Let me send you in a powder, and by dinner time you'll be ready to apologize for tryin' to take advantage of my innocent and trustin' nature. What do you say?"
Lanyard said that monsieur was too kind . . . "But a favour, my dear doctor," he added with a tolerably crest-fallen air. "We won't find it necessary to tell our fellow passengers what a sorry fraud I am, will we?"
"Oh! I won't be the one to expose you," Bright replied with vast pleasure in his ambiguity. "And you won't have a chance to tell on yourself before the sea goes down a bit. Meanin' to say, madam la comtesse is a poor sailor. But, you see, your anxiety not to be made a laughin' stock to her proves that your memory is improvin' every minute."
"One wastes time trying to deceive you," Lanyard admitted with humility. "But there is one thing, I believe, that might aid my recovery: a look at the passenger-list. Do you think you could by any chance find a copy for me?"
Contentment with his great cunning sustained this shock with poor grace: the surgeon frowned a frown of impatience mixed with mystification. Was it possible this chap still imagined he had found an easy dupe? However, one had to be diplomatic . . .