'It may do that,' he said, dropping suddenly into prose, 'but it doesn't find missing property. I shall have to buy one, which will be annoying, when that one has been kicking about ever since I came from Liverpool. Ah! here it is. I've saved at least four and sixpence, which to a man in my delicate position is a largish sum. For, after all, you can't insult a man by pursuing him about London with a cigar-case that cost less.'
He opened the little crocodile-skin trifle and looked into it.
'It has been used as a letter-case before now, and it would rather complicate matters if I left one of somebody's notes sticking in the lining. Things are a little bit that way as it is. The world is very, very small. A remark, by the way, which is invariably made by people who have more than one creditor. But it is strange that I should have run right into the midst of this Ferrier set. One would think that there was only one county in England, and that was Derbyshire.'
He sighed a little, but brightened as his eye fell on the chair which Roland had occupied two nights before. His voice took up the song again as he returned his belongings to something like order. He had just made his sitting-room presentable again when the waiter appeared, and offered, with an air of virtuous and respectful protest, a folded piece of paper, which had been white once, but since that time had apparently sojourned in the pockets of one who carried his meals about with him.
'Seductive billet-doux,' said Litvinoff, as he took it. 'Is it by chance a tinker's bill?'
'It was brought, sir,' said the waiter, 'by a man who appears to be a foreigner. He said he'd wait for an answer.'
'Show that distinguished gentleman up.'
While his order was being obeyed, Litvinoff looked at the paper again. It was not a letter or a bill, after all; but seemed intended to answer the purpose of a visiting card, for all that was written on it was 'Johann Hirsch.'
Litvinoff was not altogether unaccustomed to being called upon by foreign gentlemen with bold and original views on the subject of visiting-cards. He never refused to see any of these visitors, and always sent them away charmed with the beauty of his sentiments and the liberality of his intentions, and occasionally with something more substantial.
As the waiter closed the door and retreated with a glance of politely veiled contempt, the man whom he had shown in came forward, and Litvinoff recognised in him at once the person who had been so interested in the 'Prophetic Vision' on Sunday evening. He offered the visitor his hand with sunny cordiality.