“Where is he?”
“You haven’t a second to spare,” I cried, giving her the ticket and pressing the envelope into her hand. “You will learn everything later. Miralda is pardoned. And now go, or it will be too late;” and I urged her away in the direction of the barrier, without giving her time to question me.
She hesitated, walked away a few steps, paused in doubt, and was turning back, when the call to the passengers to enter the train came. She choked back a hundred unspoken questions, hurried through the barrier and got into the train.
With a sigh of satisfaction I watched it move along the platform and disappear in the darkness, and then turned to Miralda. Her disguise was really wonderful. The complexion was darkened almost to the tan of a mulatto, and the skin of the forehead, nose and upper half of the cheeks was lined very cunningly and had the wrinkled look of age: on the left side of the face was what looked like the cicatrice of a bad wound or burn, and on the right a large disfiguring claret-coloured birth-mark. Both mark and scar extended to the lips, and along the edges of both and across the lower lip was fastened a cleverly moulded skin-covered plastic pad which gave the appearance of the flabby cheeks and fat double chin of a woman of middle age, the lower part being lost in the folds of a neckerchief.
The effect was grotesque, and as I stared at her in amazement, the upper part of her face crinkled, while the lower remained stolidly impassive. “Are you trying to smile?” I asked.
“You look comical enough to make any one smile,” she replied, her lips scarcely moving, as she spoke through her nearly-closed teeth.
“I suppose I do. But have you seen yourself in a glass? Whoever did that, knew his business; but you—you are not exactly pretty, you know. I can scarcely believe it is really you.”
“You are not even clean,” she retorted, tossing her head.
“I haven’t a hideous birth-mark and a double chin, at any rate.”
“But you’re a Jew with a hook nose and your grey beard is as dirty as it is long.”