They might just as well have been brothers, chips off the same block. When Nealman stood among them it seemed as if he might change names with any one of them, and hardly any one could tell the difference. There was nothing distinguishing about their clothes—all were well-dressed, either in white or tweeds; their skins had that healthy firmness and good color that is seen so often in men that are free from financial worry; their hair was cut alike; their linen was similarly immaculate; their accent was practically the same. Finally they were about the same age—none of them very young, none further than the first phases of middle-age.
Lemuel Marten was of course the most distinguished man in the party. Born rich, he had pushed his father’s enterprises into many lands and across distant seas, and his name was known, more or less, to all financiers in the nation. His face was perhaps firmer than the rest—his voice was more commanding and insistent. He was, perhaps, fifty years of age, stoutly built, with crinkling black hair and vivid, gray eyes. From time to time he stroked nervously a trim, perfectly kept iron-gray mustache.
Hal Fargo had been a polo-player in his day. Certain litheness and suppleness of motion still lingered in his body. His face was darkly brown, and white teeth gleamed pleasantly when he spoke. A pronounced bald spot was the only clew of advancing years. He was of medium height, slender, evidently a man of great personal magnetism and charm.
Joe Nopp was quite opposite, physically—rather portly, perhaps less dignified than most of his friends. I put down Nopp as a dead shot, and later I found I had guessed right. For all his plump, florid cheeks and his thick, white hands, he had an eye true as a surveyor’s instrument, nerves cold and strong as a steel chain. He was a man to be relied upon in a crisis. And both Edith and I liked him better than any of the others.
Lucius Pescini was an aristocrat of the accepted type—slender, tall, unmistakably distinguished. His hair was such a dark shade of brown that it invariably passed as black, he had eyes no less dark, sparkling under dark brows, and his small mustache and perfectly trimmed beard was in vivid contrast to a rather pale skin.
Of Major Kenneth Dell I had never heard. He had been an officer in the late war, and now he was Bill Van Hope’s friend, although not yet acquainted with Nealman. The two men met cordially, and Van Hope stood above them, the tallest man in the company by far, beaming friendship upon them both. Dell was of medium size, sturdily built, garbed with exceptionally good taste in imported flannels. He also had gray, vivid eyes, under rather fine brows, gray hair perfectly cut, a slow smile and quiet ways. Solely because he was a man of endless patience I expected him to distinguish himself with rod and reel.
Bill Van Hope, Nealman’s friend of whom I had heard so much, was not only tall, but broad and powerful. He had kind eyes and a happy smile—altogether as good a type of millionaire-sportsman as any one would care to know. Nealman introduced him to me, and his handshake was firm and cordial.
Nealman took them all into the great manor house: I went with Nealman’s chauffeur to see about the handling of their luggage. This was at half-past four of a sunlit day in September. I didn’t see any of the guests again until just before the dinner hour, when a matter of a broken fly-tip had brought me into the manor house. Thereupon occurred one of a series of incidents that made my stay at Kastle Krags the most momentous three weeks of my life.
It was only a little thing—this experience in Nealman’s study. But coming events cast their shadows before—and certainly it was a shadow, dim and inscrutable though it was, of what the night held in store. I had passed Florey the butler, gray and sphynx-like in the hallway, spoke to him as ever, and turned through the library door. And my first impression was that some other guest had arrived in my absence.