For a moment I was surprised to see the stout and rubicund Slingsby in
Lisbon. He was drinking a vermouth and seltzer at five o'clock in the
afternoon at a cafe close to the big hotel. But at that time Portugal
was still a neutral country and a happy hunting ground for a good many
thousand Germans. Slingsby was lolling in his chair with such
exceeding indolence that I could not doubt his business was pressing
and serious. I accordingly passed him by as if I had never seen him in
my life before. But he called out to me. So I took a seat at his
table.
Of what we talked about I have not the least recollection, for my eyes
were quite captivated by a strange being who sat alone fairly close to
Slingsby, at one side and a little behind him. This was a man of
middle age, with reddish hair, a red, square, inflamed face and a
bristly moustache. He was dressed in a dirty suit of grey flannel;
he wore a battered Panama pressed down upon his head; he carried
pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and he sat with a big bock of
German beer In front of him. But I never saw him touch the beer. He
sat in a studied attitude of ferocity, his elbow on the table, his
chin propped on the palm of his hand, his head pushed aggressively
forward, and he glared at Slingsby through his glasses with the fixed
stare of hatred and fury which a master workman in wax might give to a
figure in a Chamber of Horrors. Indeed, it seemed to me that he must
have rehearsed his bearing in some such quarter, for there was nothing
natural or convinced in him from the brim of his Panama to the black
patent leather tips of his white canvas shoes.