"D'you know?" His words always came slowly. "Deuce take it! I thought I was going to like the fellow. I'd heard so much about him, too. Why, old chap, I was anxious; positively keen, to know him. And then--Why, when I stood face to face with him, I couldn't think of anything but that I had known him, or did know him, or something. First glance and I saw he was one of those poseurs. One of those rummy fellows who affect poses because they're always consciously trying to imitate the people about them. That's it, you know. They can't be themselves because of some queer kink they funk expressing. So they fake other people and quite naturally they overdo it."
He would usually get worked up about this time; and then he would go on a lot more quickly:
"I've seen them the world over. There was one chap--but--well--I thought this--this fellow who calls himself Andreyvitch, was just going to be one of them--poseurs, you know. He looked harmless enough to be sure. Of course there were his eyes--and the way he walks--but then--I couldn't help feeling he wasn't quite--quite cricket. That came over me confoundedly strongly at the very first minute. And when he smiled--I say, man, d'you ever see such damnably wicked teeth?"
And the man to whom he spoke always had to admit that he had never seen such teeth.
Later on Manners never worked himself up as much.
"That fellow who calls himself Andreyvitch--I've met him before. Don't know where; and at that I've a pretty fair head for names and places. But I know him. He may have looked differently, and it probably was in some of those out-of-the-way holes; but I know him. I don't say he was the Russian Andreyvitch when I knew him--but--Well, old chap, we'll see."
They stopped asking Andreyvitch and Manners around together after a while. But that never kept Manners from speaking of the Russian.
"No fear, old chap, of my insulting him; I couldn't, you know!"
"Rather a filthy sort of beggar, that Russian; makes the gooseflesh come over me. Happened before. Deuce take the thing!--If I could only think when!"
And then after Manners had dropped out of sight for a fortnight or more, he suddenly made his appearance at the club.
They were all of them unspeakably shocked by his looks. He never carried much weight, but in those two weeks he had gotten down to little else than skin and bones. His color was ghastly. His cheekbones were appallingly prominent and his eyes looked as if they were sunken back into his skull.