The voice ceased abruptly. Mr. Baruch, at his desk, moved slightly like one who disposes of a trivial interruption, and bent again to the matter before him. Between his large, white hands, each decorated with a single ring, he held a small oblong box, the size of a cigar-case, of that blue lacquer of which Russian craftsmen once alone possessed the secret. Battered now by base uses, tarnished and abraded here and there, it preserved yet, for such eyes as those of Mr. Baruch, clues to its ancient delicacy of surface and the glory of its sky-rivaling blue. He had found it an hour before upon a tobacconist's counter, containing matches, and had bought it for a few kopeks; and now, alone in his office, amid his catalogues of lathes and punches, he was poring over it, reading it as another man might read poetry, inhaling from it all that the artist, its maker, had breathed into it.
There was a telephone at work in the Vice-Consulate now a voice speaking in staccato bursts, pausing between each for the answer. Mr. Baruch sighed gently, lifting the box for the light to slide upon its surface. He was a large man, nearing his fiftieth year, and a quiet self-security a quality of being at home in the world was the chief of his effects. Upon the wide spaces of his face, the little and neat features were grouped concisely, a nose boldly curved but small and well modeled, a mouth at once sensuous and fastidious, and eyes steadfast and benign. A dozen races between the Caspian and the Vistula had fused to produce this machine-tool agent, and over the union of them there was spread, like a preservative varnish, the smoothness of an imperturbable placidity.
Footsteps crossed the landing, and there was a loud knock on his door. Before Mr. Baruch, deliberate always, could reply, it was pushed open and Selby, the vice-consul, his hair awry, his glasses askew on the high, thin bridge of his nose, and with all his general air of a maddened bird, stood upon the threshold.
"Ah, Selby, it is you, my friend!" remarked Mr. Baruch pleasantly.
"And you wish to see me yes?"
Selby advanced into the room, saving his eyeglasses by a sudden clutch.
"Say, Baruch," he shrilled, "here's the devil of a thing! This place gets worse every day. Feller comes into my office, kind of a peddler, selling rugs and carpets and shows a sort of passport; Armenian, I guess, or a Persian, or something; and when I tell him to clear out, if he doesn't go and throw a kind of a fit right on my floor!"
"Ah!" said Mr. Baruch sympathetically. "A fit yes? You have telephoned for the gorodski pomosh the town ambulance?"
"Yes," said Selby; "at least, I had Miss Pilgrim do that, my clerk, you know."
"Yes," said Mr. Baruch; "I know Miss Pilgrim. Well, I will come and see your peddler man." He rose. "But first see what I have been buying for myself, Selby." He held out the little battered box upon his large, firm palm. "You like it? I gave forty kopeks for it to a man who would have taken twenty. It is nice yes?"
Selby gazed vaguely. "Very nice," he said perfunctorily. "I used to buy 'em, too, when I came here first."