If you would have
the leisure----"
"Certainly," and I waved toward a chair. "Sit down."
"In one moment," he said. "You will pardon me," and he disappeared
through the doorway.
He was back almost at once with a handful of cigarettes, which he
placed on the table. Then he drew up a chair. With a little
deprecatory gesture, he used one of my matches to light a cigarette.
"It was truly for the gas," he said, catching my smile; "and the gas
for the cigarette!"
There was something fascinating about the man; an air of good-humor,
of comradeship, of strength, of purpose. My eyes were caught by his
stodgy, nervous hands, as he held the match to his cigarette; then
they wandered to his face--to the black hair flecked here and there
with gray; to the bright, deep-set eyes, ambushed under heavy brows;
to the full lips, which the carefully arranged mustache did not at all
conceal; to the projecting chin, with its little plume of an imperial.
A strong face and a not unhandsome one, with a certain look of mastery
about it----
"It is true that I need advice," he was saying, as he slowly exhaled a
great puff of smoke which he had drawn deep into his lungs. "My name
is Martigny--Jasper Martigny"--I nodded by way of salutation--"and I
am from France, as you have doubtless long since suspected.
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