"Say, at least, when you write to your paper, that I offered to kiss you, will you not?"
Meantime, the leader had finished signing the papers. The secretary took them and swung on his heels with something between a military bow and a drunken swagger. "Remember, comrade," he said in a threatening tone as he passed out, "you are watched."
The Bolshevik leader looked after him with something of a shudder.
"Excuse me a moment," he said, "while I go and get rid of this tobacco."
He got up from his chair and walked away towards the door of an inner room. As he did so, there struck me something strangely familiar in his gait and figure. Conceal it as he might, there was still the stiff wooden movement of a Prussian general beneath his assumed swagger. The poise of his head still seemed to suggest the pointed helmet of the Prussian. I could without effort imagine a military cloak about his shoulders instead of his Bolshevik sheepskin.
Then, all in a moment, as he re-entered the room, I recalled exactly who he was.
"My friend," I said, reaching out my hand, "pardon me for not knowing you at once. I recognize you now..."
"Hush," said the Bolshevik. "Don't speak! I never saw you in my life."
"Nonsense," I said, "I knew you years ago in Canada when you were disguised as a waiter. And you it was who conducted me through Germany two years ago when I made my war visit. You are no more a Bolshevik than I am. You are General Count Boob von Boobenstein."
The general sank down in his chair, his face pale beneath its plaster of rouge.