“Now,” she said, when all was done, “I must go.  I shall be back soon.  Shake hands with me and say thank you.”

She smiled down into his face, as he looked slowly up at her, huddled like a lay figure between the arms of the big chair.

“Yes?” she said encouragingly, for his lips had moved.

“I feel,” he said in a whisper——­

“Yes,” urged Mary.  “What?”

“Hope!” he said, aloud, and gave her his hand.

The cab of the village bore her to the station over roads tearful with rain, and arrived there just as the London train came to a stop.  The tall figure of Professor Fish, jumping from his compartment and turning to slam the door vehemently, struck her as oddly familiar; the man’s personality stood in high relief from his surroundings.  Yet there was a certain disturbance in his manner as he greeted her—­a touch of the confidential, which added to her curiosity.  He sat opposite to her in the cab, so that when he leaned forward to speak, with his hat pushed impatiently back, his big insistent face was thrust forward close to hers, and his great shoulders humped as though in effort.

“This is a very annoying thing, Miss Pond,” he began, as the cab started back along the tree-bordered road.  “A most annoying thing; privacy was absolutely essential.  Here is something done, a big thing, too; and when only privacy, reticence, quiet are essential, we have this infernal fuss on our hands.”

He spoke with all his habitual force and volume; but something in him suggested to Mary that he did so consciously and of purpose.

“Well,” she said; “there’s nobody about here that is likely to guess at your experiment.  That isn’t the trouble, you know.  The trouble is that people say they recognize Mr. Smith as a man who is wanted by the police, who is supposed, too, to be dead.  So, you see, the only thing wanted is an explanation.”

“Explanation!” He put the word from him with a gesture of his big, smooth hands.

Mary nodded, scanning him coolly.  “Yes,” she said; “I can understand that an explanation might be difficult.”

Professor Fish laughed shortly, a mere bark of sour mirth, and turned to look through the rain-splashed window of the cab.

“Difficult!” he repeated, and turned his face to her again.  “Not at all difficult, my dear Miss Pond, but awkward.  Lord! it wouldn’t do at all!” His eyes behind his glasses became keen and lively.  He looked at her carefully.

“He’s talked to you, eh?  You’ve heard his story?”

“Yes,” answered Mary.  “Once; it was very wonderful.”

He nodded, still scrutinising her.  “I wish I could make him talk,” he said thoughtfully.  “However——­” he shrugged his big shoulders and was silent.

There was a pause then, while the wheels squelched through the mud below, and the rain beat rhythmically on the windows and roof of the cab.  Its noise seemed to ally itself to the interior smell of the vehicle, an odor of damp leather and stale straw and ancient stables.  The Professor stared intently through the wet glass, and Mary remembered, with a touch of amusement, her first meeting with him, when she had sat beside him and occupied her thoughts with the flabby phantom of Smith.