They saw that they had got me puzzled, and that put them more than ever at their ease.

I kept looking at their faces, but they conveyed nothing to me.

It was not that they looked different; they were different.

I clung desperately to the words of Peter Pienaar.
Then something awoke me.
The old man laid down his hand to light a cigar.

He didn't pick it up at once, but sat back for a moment in his chair, with his fingers tapping on his knees.
It was the movement I remembered when I had stood before him in the moorland farm, with the pistols of his servants behind me.
A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand to one that I might have had my eyes on my cards at the time and missed it.