l table in front of him and his head on his hand, sat
Captain Macedoine.

"He was old. He showed, as we say, the ravages of time. And not of time
only. Time alone could not furrow a human face into so many distorting
folds and wrinkles. As I recalled the sleek, full-fed condition of his
big smooth-shaven face when I had known him in the old days, I was
revolted at the change. It was as though an evil spirit had been
striving for years to leave him, and had failed. The cheeks were sunk
into furrows of gray stubble and had sagged into sardonic ridges round
the thin, wavering line of the mouth. The red eyelids blinked and
twitched among the innumerable seams that ran back to the sparse,
iron-gray hair. The nose, quite a noble and aquiline affair once, was
red at the end, and querulous, like the long lean chin and reedy neck.
Only the brow gave any hint that he might not be a casual loafer at a
railroad station willing to carry your grip for a few pennies. High,
narrow, and revealed remorselessly by the passing of the years, it was
the brow of the supreme illusionist, the victim of an implacable and
sinister spiritual destiny. I have said that when I saw him the
previous evening he had the look of a man trying to win back into the
world. Now that I saw him more clearly, he looked as though he had come
back, at some frightful cost, and regretted it.

"He was listening to someone I could not see at the moment, and raising
his eyes with a regularly recurring movement that was almost mechanical.
I shifted a little to take in another view of the small, shabbily
furnished room. Standing by the end of a sofa, on which I could see a
girl's feet and skirt, was a dark young man brushing his frock coat and
talking with what struck me as absurd eloquence. He had never shaved;
his face was obscured in a sort of brown fungus and was blotchy about
the forehead and chin. His black eyes rolled as he talked and flourished
the brush. He seemed to be describing something highly creditable to
himself. This, I may tell you, was Monsieur Nikitos, visible in business
hours as a clerk at Gruenbaum's elbow, or in a bare barn of an outer
office. He came over to the table, and sitting down near Captain
Macedoine, opened an account book. This was evidently a _seance_ of the
Anglo-Hellenic Development Company, I thought, and I moved back to the
path. I had no desire to spy upon any of these people, you understand. I
had to find Siddons, and even the in