"Scarcely a word."
To my surprise he nodded approval at that answer.
"I have parties of natives traveling all over the country gathering folk lore, and ethnographical particulars, but they get into a village and sit down for whole weeks at a time, drawing pay for doing nothing. I need an Englishman to go with them and keep them moving."
"All well and good," I said, "but I understand the government is not in favor of white men traveling about at random."
"But I am known to the government," he answered. "I have been accorded facilities because of my professional standing. Have you references you can give me?"
"No," I said. "No references."
I thought that would stump him, but on the contrary he looked rather pleased.
"That is good. References are too frequently evidence of back-stairs influence."
All this while he kept eying me between mouthfuls. Whenever I seemed to look away his eyes fairly burned holes in me. Whenever food got in his beard (which was frequently) be used the napkin more as a shield behind which to take stock of me than as a means of getting clean again. By the time his breakfast was finished his beard was a beastly mess, but he probably had my features from every angle fixed indelibly in his memory. The sensation was that I had been analyzed and card indexed.
"I pay good wages," he remarked, and then stuck his face, beard and all, into the basin of warm water his boy had brought. "Where did you get that rifle?" he demanded, spluttering, and combing the beard out with his fingers.