He was a tall man with a small aristocratic head and a refined face, which somehow suggested an aristocrat of old France.
"Yes," answered Durnovo.
The tall man stepped ashore and held out his hand.
"I am glad we have met you," he said; "I have a letter of introduction to you from Maurice Gordon, of Loango." Victor Durnovo's dark face changed slightly; his eyes--bilious, fever-shot, unhealthy--took a new light.
"Ah!" he answered, "are you a friend of Maurice Gordon's ?" There was another question in this, an unasked one; and Victor Durnovo was watching for the answer.

But the face he watched was like a delicately carved piece of brown marble, with a courteous, impenetrable smile.
"I met him again the other day at Loango.

He is an old Etonian like myself." This conveyed nothing to Durnovo, who belonged to a different world, whose education was, like other things about him, an unknown quantity.
"My name," continued the tall man, "is Meredith--John Meredith--sometimes called Jack." They were walking up the bank towards the dusky and uninviting tent.
"And the other fellow ?" inquired Durnovo, with a backward jerk of the head.
"Oh--he is my servant." Durnovo raised his eyebrows in somewhat contemptuous amusement, and proceeded to open the letter which Meredith had handed him.
"Not many fellows," he said, "on this coast can afford to keep a European servant." Jack Meredith bowed, and ignored the irony.
"But," he said courteously, "I suppose you find these coloured chaps just as good when they have once got into your ways ?" "Oh yes," muttered Durnovo.

He was reading the letter.

"Maurice Gordon," he continued, "says you are travelling for pleasure--just looking about you.