“I dunno—I wouldn’t swear it wasn’t—but it’s different.”
“Yes, yes; of course, that picture would not represent him in his ordinary state of mind; but if he were terribly angry about something, might his face be like that?”
“I’ve never seen Mr Kolbecker put out; always most civil he was and paid his way regular; he wasn’t a beauty, but I never found him anything but a gentleman. Only just before he went away Mrs Stairs, who does the rooms of the gentleman lodgers, said to me, ‘Mrs Summers, that man do give me the creeps.’
“‘Which man?’ I says.
“‘The top-floor front,’ she replies.
“‘Mr Kolbecker?’ I said.
“‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the German.’
“‘Well,’ I replied to her, ‘as long as he don’t creep away without settling his bill, it’s all I cares about him.’”
“You think this might possibly be a portrait of Mr Kolbecker?”
“Well, I couldn’t swear to it,” said she, fixing her gaze again upon the thing. “At first, when you asked me, I’d have said not, but when I look longer it seems to me there’s a likeness, but if you wish to see what he was really like I can show you his photograph.”