He wore a little black moustache and because his head was pressed against the brick wall behind him, his hat was pushed forward giving him a rakish look which was rather heightened by an unlighted cigar sticking up out of the corner of his mouth like a piece of field artillery.
He might have been a travelling salesman waiting for his samples on the veranda of a country hotel and he had about him a kind of sophisticated look as if he took a sort of blase pleasure in watching the world go round.

His feet rested upon the rung of his tilted chair, forming his knees into a sort of desk upon which lay a French newspaper.

The tilting of his knees, the tilting of his chair, the tilting of his hat and the rakish tilt of his cigar, gave him the appearance of great self-sufficiency, as if, away down in his soul, he knew what he was there for, and cared not a whit whether anyone else did or not.
Tom Slade paused on the lower step and stared.

Then with a slowly dawning smile supplanting his look of astonishment, he ejaculated, "M-i-s-t-e-r _C-o-n-n-e_!" The man made not the slightest change in his attitude except to smile the while he worked his cigar over to the other corner of his mouth.
Then he cocked his head slightly sideways.
"H'lo, Tommy," said he..