"I don't know you, sir," Lanyard continued slowly, puzzled to account for a feeling of familiarity with this person, whom he could have sworn he had never met before. "But you won't let your friends here outdo you in civility, I trust?"
"If you mean you want me to unmask, I won't," the other returned brusquely, in fair French but with a decided transatlantic intonation.
"American, eh?"
"Native-born, if it interests you."
"Have I ever met you before?"
"You have not."
"My dear Count," Lanyard said, turning to De Morbihan, "do me the favour to introduce this gentleman."
"Your dear Count will do nothing like that, Mr. Lanyard. If you need a name to call me by, Smith's good enough."
The incisive force of his enunciation assorted consistently with the general habit of the man. Lanyard recognized a nature no more pliable than his own. Idle to waste time bickering with this one.…
"It doesn't matter," he said shortly; and drawing back a chair, sat down. "If it did, I should insist—or else decline the honour of receiving the addresses of this cosmopolitan committee. Truly, messieurs, you flatter me. Here we have Mr. Wertheimer, representing the swell-mobsmen across Channel; Monsieur le Comte standing for the gratin of Paris; Popinot, spokesman for our friends the Apaches; and the well-known Mr. Goodenough Smith, ambassador of the gun-men of New York—no doubt.
