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Page 41
"And you have done all this without saying a word to me?" said the
doctor, half grieved, while the lawyer and the professor both laughed
heartily.
"Well," said Erik, "I do not think that I have committed any great
crime. I have only made inquiries as to the requisite amount of
knowledge, and I have mastered it. I should not have made any use of it
without asking your permission, and I now solicit it."
"And I shall grant it, wicked boy," said the doctor, "But to let you set
out all alone now is another matter--we will wait until you have
attained your majority."
Erik submitted to this decision willingly and gratefully.
However, the doctor was not willing to give up his own ideas. To search
the sea-ports personally he regarded as a last expedient. An
advertisement on the other hand would go everywhere. If Patrick
O'Donoghan was not hiding away, they might possibly find him by this
means. If he was hiding, some one might see it and betray him. He
therefore had this advertisement written in seven or eight different
languages, and dispatched to the four quarters of the globe in a hundred
of the most widely circulated newspapers.
"Patrick O'Donoghan, a sailor, has been absent from New York for
four years. A reward of one hundred pounds sterling will be paid to
any one who can give me news of him. Five hundred pounds sterling
will be given to the said Patrick O'Donoghan if he will communicate
with the advertiser. He need fear nothing, as no advantage will be
taken of him.
"DOCTOR SCHWARYENCRONA.
"Stockholm."
By the 20th of October, the doctor and his companions had returned to
their homes.
The next day the advertisement was sent to the advertising agency in
Stockholm, and three days afterward it had made its appearance in
several newspapers. Erik could not repress a sigh and a presentiment
that it would be unsuccessful as he read it.
As for Mr. Bredejord, he declared openly that it was the greatest folly
in the world, and that for the future he considered the affair a
failure.
But Erik and Mr. Bredejord were deceived, as events afterward proved.
CHAPTER X.
TUDOR BROWN, ESQUIRE.
One morning in May the doctor was in his office, when his servant
brought him a visitor's card. This card, which was small as is usual in
America, had the name of "Mr. Tudor Brown, on board the 'Albatross'"
printed upon it.
"Mr. Tudor Brown," said the doctor, trying to remember whom he had ever
known who bore this name.
"This gentleman asked to see the doctor," said the servant.
"Can he not come at my office-hour?" asked the doctor.
"He said his business was about a personal matter."
"Show him in, then," said the doctor, with a sigh.
He lifted his head as the door opened again, and was surprised when he
beheld the singular person who answered to the feudal name of Tudor, and
the plebeian name of Brown.
He was a man about fifty years of age, his forehead was covered with a
profusion of little ringlets, of a carroty color, while the most
superficial examination betrayed that they were made of curled silk; his
nose was hooked, and surmounted with an enormous pair of gold
spectacles; his teeth were as long as those of a horse, his cheeks were
smooth, but under his chin he wore a little red beard. This odd head,
covered by a high hat which he did not pretend to remove, surmounted a
thin angular body, clothed from head to foot in a woolen suit. In his
cravat he wore a pin, containing a diamond as large as a walnut; also a
large gold chain, and his vest buttons were amethysts. He had a dozen
rings on his fingers, which were as knotty as those of a chimpanzee.
Altogether he was the most pretentious and grotesque-looking man that it
was possible to behold. This person entered the doctor's office as if he
had been entering a railway station, without even bowing. He stopped to
say, in a voice that resembled that of Punch, its tone was so nasal and
guttural:
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