Chapter Twenty Eight
The Mulatto
The room in which Van Roon received us was dark as a catacomb. The walls were wood-panelled, and the ceiling was oaken-beamed. A small book shelf and tumble-down cabinet stood upon either side of the table, and the celebrated American author and traveller lay propped up in a long split-cane chair. He wore smoke glasses, and had a clean-shaven, olive face, with a profusion of jet-black hair. He was garbed in a dirty red dressing-gown, and a perfect fog of cigar smoke hung in the room.
He did not rise to greet us, but merely extended his right hand, between two fingers whereof he held Bernard’s card.
“You will excuse the seeming discourtesy of an invalid, gentlemen?” he said; “but I am suffering from having expended undue temerity in the interior of China
