CHAPTER 47

"What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry."

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."

He smiled with an understanding far beyond mere understanding. It was one of those

rare smiles that carries an eternal reassurance, encountered only a few times in life. It seemed to face—or seemed to face—the entire external world for an instant, then

focused on YOU with an irresistible bias in your favor. It understood you just as much as you wished to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself,

and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that you hoped to convey at your best. Exactly at that moment, it vanished—and I was left looking at an elegant

young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech barely missed being absurd.

Some time before he introduced himself, I had gotten a strong impression that he was choosing his words with care.

Almost as Mr. Sterling revealed his identity, a butler hurried over with the news that Chicago was calling him on the wire. He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us in turn.

"If you need anything, just ask for it, old sport," he urged me. "Excuse me. I'll join you again later."

Once he was gone, I immediately turned to Casey—to express my surprise. I had expected Mr. Sterling to be a florid and corpulent man in his middle years.

"Who is he?" I asked. "Do you know?"