“Who,” he pleaded in a shaking and hollow whisper, “are you?”
Here was a stumper, by jingo! and not a minute to think it out. But the answer came all right.
“My name’s Tembarom. T. Tembarom.” And he grinned his splendid grin from sheer sense of relief. “I’m a New Yorker--Brooklyn. I was just forked in here anyhow. Don’t you waste time thinking over me. You sit down here and do your durndest with Miles Hugo.”
Tembarom did not look as though he had slept particularly well, Miss Alicia thought, when they met the next morning; but when she asked him whether he had been disappointed in his last night’s experiment, he answered that he had not. The experiment had come out all right, but Strangeways had been a good deal worked up, and had not been able to sleep until daylight. Sir Ormsby Galloway was to arrive in the afternoon, and he’d probably give him something quieting. “Had the coming down-stairs seemed to help him to recall anything?” Miss Alicia naturally inquired. Tembarom thought it had. He drove to Stone Hover and spent the morning with the duke; he even lunched with him. He returned in time to receive Sir Ormsby Galloway, however, and until that great personage left, they were together in Mr. Strangeways’ rooms.
“I guess I shall get him up to London to the place where Sir Ormsby wants him,” he said rather nervously, after dinner. “I’m not going to miss any chances. If he’ll go, I can get him away quietly some time when I can fix it so there’s no one about to worry him.”
She felt that he had no inclination to go much into detail. He had never had the habit of entering into the details connected with his strange charge. She did not ask questions because she was afraid she could not ask them intelligently.
During the passage of the next few weeks, Tembarom went up to London several times. Once he seemed called there suddenly, as it was only during dinner that he told her that he was going to take a late train, and should leave the house after she had gone to bed. She felt as though something important must have happened, and hoped it was nothing disturbing.
When he had said that Captain Palliser would return to visit them, her private impression, despite his laugh, had been that it must surely be some time before this would occur. But a little more than three weeks later he appeared, preceded only half an hour by a telegram, asking whether he might not spend a night with them on his way farther north. He could not at all understand why the telegram, which he said he had sent the day before, had been delayed.