As he shook hands with him the Professor made a mental note of him as an embodiment of strength, keenness, and quiet inflexibility: a summing-up which was pretty near the truth.
"Good afternoon, M.Hendry," he said, as the hands and eyes met.
"Good afternoon, Professor," returned the other in a gentle voice, and almost perfect English.

"May I ask to what happy circumstance--at least, I hope it is a happy one--I owe the honour of making the acquaintance of the gentleman who has succeeded in mystifying all the mathematicians of Europe ?" "Well," said Franklin Marmion with a smile, "I don't know whether there is so very much honour about that, but I do know that your time is very valuable and that I have already taken up a good deal of it by bringing you all the way out here, so I will come to the point at once.

But wait a moment.

Come down into my study.

We can talk more comfortably there." When the Professor had given his guest a cigar and lit his pipe, he said quite abruptly: "It is about the Zastrow affair." If he had said it was about the last Grand Ducal plot in the Peterhof, M.Hendry could not have been inwardly more astonished.