The whole thing was too preposterous to be true.

He gnawed his moustache and smoked cigarette after cigarette.
Satan, back from a prowl around the compound, ran up to him and touched his hand with a cold, damp nose.

Sheldon caressed the animal's ears, then threw himself into a chair and laughed heartily.

What would the Commissioner of the Solomons think?
What would his people at home think?
And in the one breath he was glad that the partnership had been effected and sorry that Joan Lackland had ever come to the Solomons.

Then he went inside and looked at himself in a hand-mirror.