Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/164

 "Have you, by any chance, a twin brother?" he asked, surveying the count, detail by detail.

"I have not the pleasure," responded the count, smilingly opaque.

"Strange, Count Eckstrom," mused Henry, as frankly absorbed in some haunting memory. "I've seen a face exactly like yours—somewhere—exactly. Strange, too, that when Miss Billie introduced you the other day I thought I had heard your voice before."

The count laughed, but a bit nervously, perhaps. "As I have said—there are many gassed voices. As for my face: if I have a double, do not charge me with his sins, I pray you. I have enough to answer for."

"Perhaps, instead, he will have virtues that we can credit you with," tormented Harrington.

But Billie, who prided herself on her discernment, felt hopelessly fogged. "Whatever are you two men talking about?" she demanded.

"We are talking, Miss Boland, about someone who looks and sounds like me," smiled Count Eckstrom, with a gesture of suave condescension toward Harrington.

"More like you than you look and sound like yourself, Count Eckstrom," indicated Henry, without a trace of a smile. "Have you ever by any chance been in India?"

"And why India, in particular, Mr. Harrington?" Billie interposed as protecting her guest. "Count Eckstrom has been every where."

"Because, in India I have heard that magicians sometimes bring the dead to life."

"Hum! Ahem! Oh—oh, by the way!" Mr. Boland immediately became explosive and interjectory,