Glancing down, I happened to see on his desk an odd knife, which I fancy he had brought from India.

The blade was of steel, dangerously sharp, the hilt of gold, carved to represent some heathen figure.
Then the captain looked up from Archie's letter and his cold gaze fell full upon me.
"My dear fellow," he said, "to the best of my knowledge, I have no cousin named Archibald Enwright." A pleasant situation, you must admit! It's bad enough when you come to them with a letter from their mother, but here was I in this Englishman's rooms, boldly flaunting in his face a warm note of commendation from a cousin who did not exist! "I owe you an apology," I said.

I tried to be as haughty as he, and fell short by about two miles.

"I brought the letter in good faith." "No doubt of that," he answered.
"Evidently it was given me by some adventurer for purposes of his own," I went on; "though I am at a loss to guess what they could have been." "I'm frightfully sorry--really," said he.

But he said it with the London inflection, which plainly implies: "I'm nothing of the sort." A painful pause.