The other
mansions belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far
aloof from romance. But Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all
accounts a curious man to whom curious adventures might befall.
I concentrated my attention, therefore, upon him and his
household.
"A singular set of people, Watson--the man himself the most
singular of them all. I managed to see him on a plausible
pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark, deepset, brooding eyes
that he was perfectly aware of my true business. He is a man of
fifty, strong, active, with iron-gray hair, great bunched black
eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of an emperor--a fierce,
masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his parchment face.
He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics, for he
is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord. His friend and
secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate
brown, wily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness of
speech. You see, Watson, we have come already upon two sets of
foreigners--one at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable--so our
gaps are beginning to close.
"These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of
the household; but there is one other person who for our
immediate purpose may be even more important.
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