Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/15

 “Mr. Harley,” he began, and his high, thin voice afforded yet another surprise, “I feel somewhat ill at ease to—how do you say it?—appropriate your time, as I am by no means sure that what I have to say justifies my doing so.”

He spoke most fluent, indeed florid, English. But his sentences at times were oddly constructed; yet, save for a faint accent, and his frequent interpolation of such expressions as “how do you say?”—a sort of nervous mannerism—one might have supposed him to be a Britisher who had lived much abroad. I formed the opinion that he had read extensively, and this, as I learned later, was indeed the case.

“Sit down, Colonel Menendez,” said Harley with quiet geniality. “Officially, my working day is ended, I admit, but if you have no objection to the presence of my friend, Mr. Knox, I shall be most happy to chat with you.”

He smiled in a way all his own.

“If your business is of a painfully professional nature,” he added, “I must beg you to excuse me for fourteen days, as I am taking a badly needed holiday with my friend.”

“Ah, is it so?” replied the Colonel, placing his hat and cane upon the table, and sitting down rather wearily in a big leathern armchair which Harley had pushed forward. “If I intrude I am sorry, but indeed my business is urgent, and I come to you on the recommendation of my friend, Señor Don Merry del Val, the Spanish Ambassador.”

He raised his eyes to Harley’s face with an expression of peculiar appeal. I rose to depart, but:

“Sit down, Knox,” said Harley, and turned again to the visitor. “Please proceed,” he requested. “Mr.