If you're agreeable we may as well get that signed and mailed to New York." I expected to see him look surprised, but he simply sat down at the table, read the contract over, and signed it.
Then we went out on to a veranda that was shut off from the street by brown _kaskas tatties_.
"How long does it take you to grow a beard ?" was his first, rather surprising question.
It was not long before I learned how differently he could treat different individuals.

He had simply chosen his extraordinary way of receiving me as the best means of getting a real line on me without much loss of time.

He did not compliment me on having seen through his disguise, or apologize for his own failure to keep up the deception.

He sat opposite and studied me as he might the morning newspaper, and I returned the compliment.
"You see," he said suddenly, as if a previous conversation had been interrupted, "since the war, governments have lost their grip, so I resigned from the army.

You look to me like a kind of God-send.