Respuesta :

The narrator in the story has a companion who is still in "the East," rather than the West, where the storyteller is living. The storyteller's companion composes and requests that he look into a man named Simon Wheeler to discover how his, the storyteller's friend's, companion Leonidas W. Smiley is. Leonidas Smiley is a childhood companion of the storyteller's companion.

Answer:

I feel like he has a close relationship with Smiley, therefore that provokes him  to ask about him. When he talks to Simon Wheeler, he gets a different perspective on a story that he might have only heard about.

Explanation: