There was a mixture of servility and impudence in the man's manner which galled me. He spoke like a fawning sponger: and yet with just such a suggestion of threat and familiarity in his manner as might come from a low associate in some dirty work which he thought gave him a hold over me.
"What is it you want?" I spoke as sternly as before; and the fellow cringed and bowed as he answered with the same suggestion of familiar insolence.
"What have I waited here five hours for but to speak to your lordship privately—waited, as I always do, patiently. It's safer inside, lieutenant."
"Come in, then." It was clearly best for me to know all he had to say.
As soon as we were inside and I had turned up the lights I placed him close to the biggest of them; and a more villainous, hangdog looking rascal I never wish to see. A redhaired, dirty, cunning, drinking Jew of the lowest class; with lies and treachery and deceit written on every feature and gesture. The only thing truthful about him was the evidence of character stamped on his self-convicting appearance.
"I wonder what you are to me," I thought as I scanned him closely, his flinty shifting eyes darting everywhere to escape my gaze.
"Well, what do you want? I'm about sick of you." A quick lifting of the head and eyebrows let a questioning glance of mingled malice, hate, and menace dart up into my face.
"Lieutenant, your child is starving and his mother also; and I, her father, am tired of working my fingers to the bone to maintain them both."
"What are you working at now?" I asked with a sneer. I spoke in this way to hide my unpleasant surprise at the unsavoury news that lay behind his words. The more I looked at him the more was I impressed with a conviction of his rascality: but the fact that he was a scoundrel did not at all exclude the possibility that some ugly episode concerning me lay behind. On the contrary it increased the probability.
"I've not come to talk about my work, but to get money," said my visitor in a surly tone. "And money I must have."