He struck a match to light his pipe--one of the wooden, sulphur-headed matches supplied by the _café_--and the guest at the next table turned in his chair. The match flared up and showed two faces, which he studied keenly. Both faces were alike unwashed and deeply furrowed. White, straggling beards and whiskers accentuated the redness of the eyelids, the dull yellow of the skin. They were hopeless and debased faces, with that disquieting resemblance which is perceptible in the faces of men of dissimilar features and no kinship, who have for a number of years followed a common calling, or suffered a common pain.
These two men were both half blind; they had equally unsteady hands. The clothing of both alike, and even their breath, was scented by a not unpleasant odour of sealing-wax.
It was quite obvious that not only were they at present half intoxicated, but in their soberest moments they could hardly be of a high intelligence.
The reveller at the next table, who happened to be Tony Cornish, now drew his chair nearer.
“That's me,” answered Uncle Ben, with commendable pride, “from the top of my head to me boots. Not that I've anything to say against foreigners.”
“Nor I; but it's pleasant to meet a countryman in a foreign land.” Cornish deliberately brought his chair forward. “Your bottle is empty,” he added; “I'll order another. Friend's a Frenchman, eh?”
“That he is--and doesn't understand his own language either,” answered Uncle Ben, in a voice indicating that that lack of comprehension rather intensified his friend's Frenchness than otherwise.
The proprietor of the Café de l'Europe now came out in answer to Cornish's rap on the iron table, and presently brought a small bottle of brandy.
“Yes,” said Cornish, pouring out the spirit, which his companions drank in its undiluted state from small tumblers--“yes, I'm glad to meet an Englishman. I suppose you are in the works--the Malgamite?”
“I am. And what do you know about malgamite, mister?”
“There is precious few that knows anything,” said the man, darkly, and his eye for a moment sobered into cunning.
“I have heard that it is a very dangerous trade, and if you want to get out of it I'm connected with an association in London to provide situations for elderly men who are no longer up to their work,” said Cornish, carelessly.