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homespun. He seemed to be entirely unconscious of any oddity in his apparel, and his costume had the look of having been worn as a matter of course. It did not look like fancy-dress. And he looked like a man in acute distress. As Harrison and Pepe entered, he wrung his hands. A door to another room closed decisively.
    Carroll ignored the short man for a moment. He shook hands with his two visitors.
    “This is a surprise!” he said in a tone compounded of curiosity and vexation. “I didn’t think anybody knew where I was, or would give a damn if he did. How on earth did you happen to find me? And when you found out, why on earth… No. I won’t ask why you bothered. You’ll tell me.”
    Then he said abruptly, “This is my brother-in-law, M. Dubois.” In French he said briskly, “These gentlemen were students of mine, some years ago. They have come to pay their respects.”
    The plump Frenchman in the astonishing costume seemed a trifle, a small trifle, relieved, without being wholly reassured. He said uncomfortably, “ Enchanté, messieurs .”
    “Have a chair,” said Carroll, with the same briskness. He continued to ignore the plump man’s costume. “Tell me what you’ve been doing, and that sort of thing. I take it you graduated, and you’re doing Europe, and somehow—but Heaven knows how!—you heard of me pining away in obscurity and disgrace, and you’ve called on me for some irrational reason.”
    Pepe sat down, rather gingerly. He eyed the man in the antique-style garments. Harrison said awkwardly:
    “I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy, sir.”
    “Not at all! Not at all!” said Carroll. “Why should I?”
    “Because,” said Harrison, “I have to ask you—and I can’t justify asking—if you’re acquainted with a—that is do you know…” He stopped. Then he said abruptly:
    “There’s a man named de Bassompierre. Have you ever heard of him?”
    “No,” said Carroll briskly. “I haven’t. Why?”
    Harrison sweated. The plump Frenchman said:
    “ Pardonnez-moi, messieurs, mais …”
    Carroll nodded to him and he went out, with something of the air of a man escaping agitation in one place to go and be more agitated somewhere else.
    “This de Bassompierre,” said Harrison painfully, “wrote to Cuvier and explained the Mendelian laws of heredity to him. In detail.”
    “He probably meant well,” said Carroll charitably. “What of it?”
    “He also told Ampère about alternating currents,” said Harrison, “and Lagrange about statistical analysis, and Champollion about hieroglyphics. And be wrote to the Academy of Sciences about nuclear physics.”
    “If they wanted the information and didn’t have it,” said Carroll pleasantly, “I don’t see why he shouldn’t give it to them.” Then he stopped short. He stared. Then he said very carefully: “Did you say Cuvier, and then Ampère, and then Lagrange?”
    “And Champollion,” said Pepe wryly, “about hieroglyphics.”
    Carroll stared hard at Harrison, and then at Pepe, and then back again. He pursed his lips. Then he said with extreme care, “Would you mind telling me when this happened?”
    “He wrote to Cuvier about the Mendelian laws,” said Harrison, “in 1804. To Ampère, in 1807. To Laplace, whom I didn’t mention before, in 1808. To the Academy of Sciences, in 1812.”
    Carroll remained conspicuously still for a long moment. Then he spoke more carefully still:
    “And he told them, you say…”
    Harrison repeated what he’d told Pepe the day before. The notes and correspondence of certain much-esteemed learned men, in the custody of the Bibliothèque Nationale, contained such-and-such items. One M. de Bassompierre had written to those learned men and had given them exact information which did not exist when he gave it. Harrison explained in detail, feeling the frustrated confusion of one who knows he is talking pure lunacy which happens to be fact.
    But Carroll listened with intense and concentrated