He seemed to
perceive no soul in that crowded room; he might have been
walking in a jungle. I never came across such a perfect expression
before and I never shall again. It was insolence and not insolence;
it was modesty and not modesty. His hair was fair, extraordinarily
ordered in a wave, running from the left temple to the right; his
face was a light brick-red, perfectly uniform in tint up to the roots
of the hair itself; his yellow moustache was as stiff as a toothbrush
and I verily believe that he had his black smoking jacket thickened
a little over the shoulder-blades so as to give himself the air of the
slightest possible stoop. It would be like him to do that; that was
the sort of thing he thought about. Martingales, Chiffney bits,
boots; where you got the best soap, the best brandy, the name of
the chap who rode a plater down the Khyber cliffs; the spreading
power of number three shot before a charge of number four
powder . . . by heavens, I hardly ever heard him talk of anything
else. Not in all the years that I knew him did I hear him talk of
anything but these subjects. Oh, yes, once he told me that I could
buy my special shade of blue ties cheaper from a firm in
Burlington Arcade than from my own people in New York.
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