I'll thank you to lend me a razor.'
I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an
hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his
gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair
was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he
carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model,
even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had
had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in
his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.
'My hat! Mr Scudder--' I stammered.
'Not Mr Scudder,' he corrected; 'Captain Theophilus Digby, of
the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I'll thank you to
remember that, Sir.'
I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own
couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things
did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.
I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce
of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had
done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him
as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much
gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at
valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.
'Stop that row, Paddock,' I said.
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