“Then probably your cigarette-case comes from Delhi also?” The oval eyes of the other shot over him in an inquiring glance.
“My cigarette-case? No—are you travelling perhaps in skins, colleague? Do you deal in Cashmir goats?”
“I have everything. My house trades in everything.”
“You do not come from Calcutta?”
“No! not from Calcutta.”
“Bad weather down there. All my leather is spoilt.”
“Is it so damp there?”
“Vapour bath, I tell you; a real vapour bath!”
Heideck had long since made up his mind that he had a Russian before him. But, in order to be quite on the safe side, he made a jocular remark in Russian. His new acquaintance looked up astonished.
“You speak Russian, sir?”