The face he scanned was lean and worn in feature, darkly weathered, framed
in hair whose jet already boasted an accent of silver at either temple--the
face of a man inured to hardship, seasoned in suffering, strong in
self-knowledge. The incandescence of an intelligence coldly dispassionate,
quick and shrewd, lighted those dark eyes. Distinctively a face of Gallic
cast, three years of long-drawn torment had served in part to erase from
it wellnigh all resemblance to both the brilliant social freebooter of
ante-bellum Paris and that undesirable alien whom the authorities had
sought to deport from the States. Amazing facility in impersonation had
done the rest; unrecognisable as what he had been, he was to-day flawlessly
the incarnation of what he elected to seem--Monsieur Duchemin, gentleman,
of Paris.
Impossible to believe his disguise had been so soon penetrated....
And yet, again, that gossip of the smoking room....
Police work? Or had Ekstrom's creatures picked up his trail once more?
Beneath that urbane mask of his, a hunted, wild thing poised in question,
mistrustful of the very wind, prick-eared, fangs agleam, eyes grimly
apprehensive.
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