“My friend of the four legs,” he said, “it is a thousand pities that you are dumb.”
Paul was still examining the dead man with that callousness which denotes one who, for love or convenience, has become a doctor. He was a doctor—an amateur. He was a Caius man.
Steinmetz looked down at him with a little laugh. He noticed the tenderness of the touch, the deft fingering which had something of respect in it. Paul Alexis was visibly one of those men who take mankind seriously, and have that in their hearts which for want of a better word we call sympathy.
“Mind you do not catch some infectious disease,” said Steinmetz gruffly. “I should not care to handle any stray moujik one finds dead about the roadside; unless, of course, you think there is more money about him. It would be a pity to leave that for the police.”
Paul did not answer. He was examining the limp, dirty hands of the dead man. The fingers were covered with soil, the nails were broken. He had evidently clutched at the earth and at every tuft of grass, after his fall from the saddle.
“Look here, at these hands,” said Paul suddenly. “This is an Englishman. You never see fingers this shape in Russia.”
Steinmetz stooped down. He held out his own square-tipped fingers in comparison. Paul rubbed the dead hand with his sleeve as if it were a piece of statuary.
“Look here,” he continued, “the dirt rubs off and leaves the hand quite a gentlemanly color. This”—he paused and lifted Steinmetz’s handkerchief, dropping it again hurriedly over the mutilated face—“this thing was once a gentleman.”
“It certainly has seen better days,” admitted Steinmetz, with a grim humor which was sometimes his. “Come, let us drag him beneath that pine-tree and ride on to Tver. We shall do no good, my dear Alexis, wasting our time over the possible antecedents of a gentleman who, for reasons of his own, is silent on the subject.”
Paul rose from the ground. His movements were those of a strong and supple man, one whose muscles had never had time to grow stiff. He was an active man, who never hurried. Standing thus upright he was very tall—nearly a giant. Only in St. Petersburg, of all the cities of the world, could he expect to pass unnoticed—the city of tall men and plain women. He rubbed his two hands together in a singularly professional manner which sat amiss on him.