“A Professor ‘Allorsen to see you, sir. He wants to look at the Peruvian skulls.”
“Hallorsen!” said Adrian, startled. “Are you sure? I thought he was in America, James.”
“‘Allorsen was the name, sir; tall gentleman, speaks like an American. Here’s his card.”
“H’m! I’ll see him, James.” And he thought: ‘Shade of Dinny! What am I going to say?’
The very tall and very good-looking man who entered seemed about thirty-eight years old. His clean-shaven face was full of health, his eyes full of light, his dark hair had a fleck or two of premature grey in it. A breeze seemed to come in with him. He spoke at once:
“Mr. Curator?”
Adrian bowed.
“Why! Surely we’ve met; up a mountain, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Adrian.
“Well, well! My name’s Hallorsen—Bolivian expedition. I’m told your Peruvian skulls are bully. I brought my little Bolivian lot along; thought I’d like to compare them with your Peruvians right here. There’s such a lot of bunk written about skulls by people who haven’t seen the originals.”
“Very true, Professor. I shall be delighted to see your Bolivians. By the way, you never knew my name, I think. This is it.”
Adrian handed him a card. Hallorsen took it.
“Gee! Are you related to the Captain Charwell who’s got his knife into me?”
“His uncle. But I was under the impression that it was your knife that was into him.”
“Well, he let me down.”
“I understand he thinks you let him down.”
“See here, Mr. Charwell—”
“We pronounce the name Cherrell, if you don’t mind.”
“Cherrell—yes, I remember now. But if you hire a man to do a job, Mr. Curator, and that job’s too much for him, and because it’s too much for him you get left, what do you do—pass him a gold medal?”
“You find out, I think, whether the job you hired him to do was humanly possible, before you take out your knife, anyway.”
“That’s up to the man who takes the job. And what was it? Just to keep a tight rein on a few dagoes.”
“I don’t know very much about it, but I understand he had charge of the transport animals as well.”
“He surely did; and let the whole thing slip out of his hand. Well, I don’t expect you to side against your nephew. But can I see your Peruvians?”
“Certainly.”
“That’s nice of you.”
During the mutual inspection which followed Adrian frequently glanced at the magnificent specimen of Homo Sapiens who stood beside him. A man so overflowing with health and life he had seldom seen. Natural enough that any check should gall him. Sheer vitality would prevent him from seeing the other side of things. Like his nation, matters must move his way, because there was no other way that seemed possible to his superabundance.
‘After all,’ he thought, ‘he can’t help being God’s own specimen—Homo transatlanticus superbus’; and he said slyly: “So the sun is going to travel West to East in future, Professor?”
Hallorsen smiled, and his smile had an exuberant sweetness.
“Well, Mr. Curator, we’re agreed, I guess, that civilisation started with agriculture. If we can show that we raised Indian corn on the American continent way back, maybe thousands of years before the old Nile civilisation of barley and wheat, why shouldn’t the stream be the other way?”
“And can you?”
“Why, we have twenty to twenty-five types of Indian corn. Hrwdlicka claims that some twenty thousand years was necessary to differentiate them. That puts us way ahead as the parents of agriculture, anyway.”
“But alas! no type of Indian corn existed in the old world till after the discovery of America.”
“No, sir; nor did any old-world type cereal exist in America till after that. Now, if the old-world culture seeped its way across the Pacific, why didn’t it bring along its cereals?”
“But that doesn’t make America the light-bringer to the rest of the world, does it?”
“Maybe not; but if not, she just developed her own old civilisations out of her own discovery of cereals; and they were the first.”
“Are you an Atlantean, Professor?”
“I sometimes toy with the idea, Mr. Curator.”
“Well, well! May I ask if you are quite happy about your attack on my nephew?”
“Why, I certainly had a sore head when I wrote it. Your nephew and I didn’t click.”
“That, I should think, might make you all the more doubtful as to whether you were just.”
“If I withdrew my criticism, I wouldn’t be saying what I really thought.”