Then we both stood there, staring at that chap who called himself Rog Tanlu. He was dressed in a glove-fitting garment that appeared to be made of fawn-colored silk—which was odd enough. But the man himself looked still stranger. He was no Iranian—no Kurd, Kashgais nor Bakhtiaris. I could have sworn to that.
He was very light skinned—lighter than any Persian—with a kind of pallor, although not an unhealthy look, as though he'd spent all his life indoors.
"Do not be alarmed," he said, smiling at us, and with a friendly look in his light blue eyes. "I can well understand your surprise at finding me here. But I shall explain everything. Meanwhile, I have prepared food, thinking you might be hungry. Will you join me?"
He started dishing out those broiled fowls—black partridges, or "durraj," I judged them to be—with the air of a man enjoying his first outdoor picnic and getting a big kick out of it.
"Here, Dr. Chadwick," he said, handing Doc one of those birds on a big leaf for a dish. "And here's one for you, Mr. Lavin."
Well, I took that broiled fowl and looked for a place to sit down. You see my name is Lavin, Curt Lavin, but how he'd found it out was a puzzler. I looked at Doc Champ. He was staring at this Rog Tanlu as if seeing a ghost, or a man from Mars.
That kind of knocked me out. I put a lot of dependence on Doc's knowledge of human tribes and such. But evidently he couldn't tag on our host any more than I could.
I started to sit down on a flat rock near the fire. And then I saw something standing on that rock—a thing like a tubular flashlight, eight inches tall, with a globe of silvered glass at the upper end.
"You are wondering at the way I speak your language," I heard this Rog Tanlu saying to Doc Champ. "I have been learning it during the last few days, but as yet am very lacking in fluency."
"You—you've been learning English?" Doc Champ kind of gulped.