As soon as the train came to a stand, Captain Ducie vacated his seat and went in search of the refreshment-room.  On coming back five minutes later, he was considerably disgusted to find that he was no longer to have his compartment to himself.  The seat opposite to that on which he had been sitting was already occupied by a gentleman who was wrapped up to the nose in rugs and furs.

“Any objection to smoking?” asked the Captain presently as the train began to move.  He was pricking the end of a fresh cigar as he asked the question.  The words might be civil, but the tone was offensive; it seemed to convey—­“I don’t care whether you object or not:  I intend to enjoy my weed all the same.”

The stranger, however, seemed in nowise offended.  He smirked and quavered two yellow-gloved fingers out of his furs.  “Oh, no, certainly not,” he said.  “I, too, am a smoker and shall join you presently.”

He spoke with the slightest possible foreign accent, just sufficient to tell an educated ear that he was not an Englishman.  If Captain Ducie’s features were aquiline, those of the stranger might be termed vulturine—­long, lean, narrow, with a thin, high-ridged nose, and a chin that was pointed with a tuft of thick, black hair.  Except for this tuft he was clean shaven.  His black hair, cropped close at back and sides, was trained into an elaborate curl on the top of the forehead and there fixed with cosmetique.  Both hair and chin-tuft were of that uncompromising blue-black which tells unmistakably of the dye-pot.  His skin was yellow and parchment-like, and stretched tightly over his forehead and high cheek-bones, but puckering into a perfect net-work of lines about a mouth whose predominant expression was one of mingled cynicism and suspicion.  There was suspicion, too, in his small black eyes, as well as a sort of lurking fierceness which not even his most urbane and elaborate smile could altogether eliminate.  In person he was very thin and somewhat under the middle height, and had all the air of a confirmed valetudinarian.  He was dressed as no English gentleman would care to be seen dressed in public.  A long brown velvet coat trimmed with fur; lavender-coloured trousers tightly strapped over patent leather boots; two or three vests of different colours under one made of the skin of some animal and fastened with gold buttons; a profusion of jewellery; an embroidered shirt-front and deep turn-down collar:  such were the chief items of his attire.  A hat with a very curly brim hung from the carriage roof, while for present head-gear he wore a sealskin travelling cap with huge lappets that came below his ears.  In this cap, and wrapped to the chin in his bear-skin rug, he looked like some newly-discovered species of animal—­a sort of cross between a vulture and a monkey, were such a thing possible, combining the deep-seated fierceness of the one with the fantastic cunning, and the impossibility of doing the most serious things without a grimace, of the other.