The uncared-for clothes, the aggressive, grizzled
beard, and the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer bespoke the
professional cadger, the man who would undergo hours of humiliating tale-
spinning and rebuff rather than adventure on half a day's decent work.
For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a
strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating
inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterer's
while to listen to.
"It's a strange world," he said.
As the statement met with no response he altered it to the form of a
question.
"I daresay you've found it to be a strange world, mister?"
"As far as I am concerned," said Crosby, "the strangeness has worn off in
the course of thirty-six years."
"Ah," said the greybeard, "I could tell you things that you'd hardly
believe. Marvellous things that have really happened to me."
"Nowadays there is no demand for marvellous things that have really
happened," said Crosby discouragingly; "the professional writers of
fiction turn these things out so much better. For instance, my
neighbours tell me wonderful, incredible things that their Aberdeens and
chows and borzois have done; I never listen to them. On the other hand,
I have read 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' three times."
The greybeard moved uneasily in his seat; then he opened up new country.
"I take it that you are a professing Christian," he observed.
"I am a prominent and I think I may say an influential member of the
Mussulman community of Eastern Persia," said Crosby, making an excursion
himself into the realms of fiction.
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