CHAPTER XI
I F I don’t smoke, I’m afraid I can’t talk,” said Baltazar.
Sheepshanks smiled politely. “You remember my little weakness? But pray smoke. I’ve got used to it of late years. Times change, and we with them.”
Baltazar filled and lit his pipe.
“A couple of weeks ago,” said he, “I had all but complete two epoch-marking mathematical treatises. I had got systems and results you good people here had never dreamed of. I had also stuff in the way of Chinese scholarship that would have been a revelation to the Western world. Then German aircraft dropped bombs on my house, a hermitage in the middle of a moorland, and wiped out the labour of a lifetime. They also nearly killed a young c******n whom I regard as an extraordinary mathematical genius and about whom I want to consult you. T
