"Hullo, Hugh!" exclaimed Hilyer. "Frightfully glad to see you home again, but rotten sorry for the occasion. You don't know Mrs. Hilyer, I believe."
Hugh bowed to her with cold precision.
"Thanks, Hilyer—" just a shade of emphasis on the family name—"it was kind of you to come. We are keeping bachelors' hall, Mrs. Hilyer, and I am afraid our entertaining resources are limited."
"Don't let that bother you," protested Mrs. Hilyer affably, "and if you and your friends want any lively diversion on the quiet, remember we keep liberty hall over at Little Depping. We wanted our—"
But I lost the thread of her conversation as I found myself staring into those same evil green eyes that I had seen peering out of the shadows of the Hilyer pew the morning of the funeral. The man they belonged to had entered the room immediately after the Hilyers. He would have challenged attention in any company with his amazing personality, the strange force that radiated from him. He had the long arms, short, thick legs and enormous body of a gorilla, capped by a beautifully-modeled head. His forehead was high; his clean-shaven face was very white; his jaw was square, without being prognathous. But his eyes were his outstanding feature. They were large and vividly green like a cat's.
The man baffled you. The expression of his face was dreamy, preoccupied. He had the appearance of a thinker, a recluse. But underneath his outward seeming I sensed another self, lurking as if in ambush. He was handsome in an intellectual way. Yet I found him repulsive.
Hilyer, undeterred by Hugh's frosty greeting, dropped his hand on this man's shoulder, and began introducing him. I noticed that the Englishman let his hand lie there only a minute, and then almost snatched it away.
"Signor Teodoreschi, gentlemen! The Italian chemist. And my other friends, Countess Sandra Yassilievna and Count Serge Vassilievich! I ought to explain they are brother and sister!"
This last with a well-bred leer.
"And Hilmi Bey, gentlemen! If you knew your Levant, you would recognize him without introduction."