Seated in a low arm-chair in a little room at the front of the house—a poor, shabby apartment, furnished with no better taste than a Margate lodging house, I perceived that Valentine Imroth wore a green shade low over his eyes, but not so low as to impair his vision; while the chair he had placed for me and the lamp set upon the table would permit him to follow every passing thought of mine with the eyes of a human artist upon whom nothing is lost. Careless in his attitude, he smoked an immense cigar with evident satisfaction, and had by his side a black bottle, which, as I knew by its shape, should contain Hollands gin. In many ways a changed man from the Jew I had met upon the heights at Santa Maria, the ferocious aspect of him was but little abated; and as though to emphasise it, he had laid a great stick by the side of his chair while one of the ugliest boar hounds I have ever seen blinked at his feet, and lifted a savage head silently at my coming. These things I observed instantly, and drew my own conclusions from them, “He is not armed,” I said, “but somewhere near by his friends are concealed—the dog would hold me if he gave the word, and half a score of ruffians would do the rest.” A place of peril surely—and yet I had known that it must be so when I set out to meet him. I put my hat upon the floor and drew the chair a little back from the table to which it had been drawn up. “I am here,” I said shortly, “in answer to your letter. The conditions upon which we meet are faithfully observed between us. My servant is waiting for me at your door, and my launch is out in the river. Let us get to business at once. That, I hope, is your wish.” He thrust the shade back upon his forehead, and showed me a pair of red-limned eyes, watery and blinking as the dog’s at his feet. The long thin hand which held the cigar seemed to be silver-backed like a brush, with nails as black as ebony. An immense diamond glittered upon his little finger. Like all his fellows, he had not conquered the love of personal display even at his age, which could not have been less than eighty years. “It is my hope,” he repeated, not without dignity—which, however, he lost instantly in the manner of a broker of Houndsditch selling shabby furniture—“to see the great Dr. Fabos of London, to have him in my house; that is an honour for an humble old man. What have I done to deserve it?—how has this pleasure come into a poor old life?” He tittered like some old witch making a peat fire by a roadside. But it was the laughter of a vanity not to be hushed, and I passed it by with a gesture. “The pleasure came into your house at your own invitation,” I rejoined. “It will go again very shortly by the same road. Please give me your attention. I am here neither for mutual expressions of self-admiration nor the desire of your amiable company. In a word, I have come to ask you for the story of Joan Fordibras.”