He
begged me, if I could spare the time, to come over and spend a week
with him. He enclosed a hundred-pound cheque for my expenses,
making no apology for doing so. He was complimentary about my first
book, which he had been reading, and asked me to telegraph him my
reply, giving me his real name, which, as I had guessed it would,
proved to be one of the best known in the financial world. My time
was my own now, and I wired him that I would be with him the
following Monday.
He was lying in the sun outside the hut when I arrived late in the
afternoon, after a three-hours' climb followed by a porter carrying
my small amount of luggage. He could not raise his hand, but his
strangely brilliant eyes spoke their welcome.
"I am glad you were able to come," he said. "I have no near
relations, and my friends--if that is the right term--are business
men who would be bored to tears. Besides, they are not the people I
feel I want to talk to, now."
He was entirely reconciled to the coming of death. Indeed, there
were moments when he gave me the idea that he was looking forward to
it with an awed curiosity. With the conventional notion of cheering
him, I talked of staying till he was able to return with me to
civilisation, but he only laughed.
"I am not going back," he said.
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