Nevertheless, he kept ransacking his memory for the circumstances in
which he had before heard the name of Turl. To be sure, this Turl might
not be the Turl whose name he had heard; but the fact that he _had_ heard
the name, and the coincidences in his observation of the man himself,
made the question perpetually insistent. He sought out Barry Tompkins,
and asked, "Did you ever mention to me a man named Turl?"
"Never in a state of consciousness," was Tompkins's reply; and an equally
negative answer came from everybody else to whom Larcher put the query
that day.
He thought of friend after friend until it came Murray Davenport's turn
in his mental review. He had a momentary feeling that the search was
warm here; but the feeling succumbed to the consideration that Davenport
had never much to say about acquaintances. Davenport seemed to have put
friendship behind him, unless that which existed between him and Larcher
could be called friendship; his talk was not often of any individual
person.
"Well," thought Larcher, "when Mr. Turl comes to see me, I shall find,
out whether there's anybody we both know. If there is, I shall learn more
of Mr. Turl. Then light may be thrown on his haunting my steps for three
days, and subsequently turning up in the rooms of people I visit."
The arrival of Mr. Turl, at the appointed hour the next afternoon,
instantly put to rout all doubts of his being other than he seemed. In
the man's agreeable presence, Larcher felt that to imagine the
coincidences anything _but_ coincidences was absurd.
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