"What," I demanded suspiciously, "is that?"
"Lat's Mista You," he said, nodding his head and summoning another hundred of wrinkles to his damp, polished face.
"That ain't my name. You don't know my name," I accused him.
"Mista Yen Sin gottee name, allee light."
The thing fascinated me, like a serpent.
"Whose name is that, then?" I demanded, pointing to a collar on the counter between us. The band was half-covered with the cryptic characters, done finely and as if with the loving hand of an artist.
Yen Sin held it up before his eyes in the full glow of the lamp. His face seemed incredibly old; not senile, like our white-beards mumbling on the wharves, but as if it had been a long, long time in the making and was still young. I thought he had forgotten me, he was so engrossed in his handiwork.
"Lat colla?" he mused by-and-by. "Lat's Mista Minista, boy."
"Mister Minister Malden?"
And there both of us stared a little, for there was a voice at the door.