Fortunately, the dead know not the doings of the living, else would the artistic Miochin family be turning eternally in their uneasy graves, with the rapidity of spinning bobbins.
Danjuro came out with his usual profound salute and low hiss.
Hiss is perhaps not the proper word, for the sound is made by the intake of air between closed teeth, and is intended to represent delight beyond words.
And, indeed, when Danjuro beheld M’Gourley entering with a client ready to be shorn, the sound came from him as no empty compliment, but as a natural expression of his true feelings.
It was different as regards Leslie. Danjuro looked on Leslie with the nervous dread with which you or I might look upon a mischievous lunatic.
Leslie had once nearly spoiled a bargain—a delightful bargain from the dealer’s point of view, a disgraceful swindle viewed by the cold light of English ethics.
An English Member of Parliament had been trepanned into paying two hundred pounds for a pair of vases worth, maybe, twenty. Mac in his jubilation boasted before Leslie, and Leslie had “put the stopper on,” caused the money to be returned, with a note to the effect that the jars were now discovered (from some documents connected with them) to be imitation, and not as represented when bought.
The Member of Parliament, instantly concluding that this was a swindle, and that he had obtained priceless articles by accident, refused to accept the money, or return the jars.
And thus was he done brown on his own spit, and basted by his own right hand, for in his book of travels, “Amongst the Japs,” he mentioned the transaction, and, worse still, sent a copy of the book to Danjuro, with the passage marked with blue pencil.
Dan read the passage with the aid of a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and with a face mirthless as a shovel.