Five minutes later, one of Stanley’s deputies ushered into the chief dispatcher’s office a man from whom Allan shrank instinctively as from a serpent. He was a thin, undersized fellow, with a face deeply pitted and with the ghastly pallour which smallpox sometimes leaves behind it. But it was not the complexion so much as the eyes which disgusted and repelled. It is difficult to describe the effect they produced—they were so venomous, so bloodshot, so reptilian.
“Is your name Hummel?” Allan asked, speaking with an effort not to show his repulsion.
“Yes, sir.”
“You seem to have had a good deal of experience.”
“Ten years of it,” answered Hummel, confidently.
“What was the trouble?”
“What trouble?” demanded Hummel truculently.
“How does it come you’re here?”
“Oh! Well, I never got a square deal. I ain’t no bootlicker I guess is the reason.”
There was already a trace of hostility in his tone, as though he dimly felt the aversion his appearance had occasioned.