I was in the doorway of a low-ceilinged oval room furnished and decorated in gray, white and silver. Two men and a woman were there.
The older man—he was somewhere in his fifties—got up from a deep gray chair and bowed ceremoniously at me. He was a plump man of medium height, completely bald, dark-skinned and pale-eyed. He wore a wax-pointed gray mustache and a straggly gray imperial.
“ Mr. Kavalov?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.” His was the whining voice.
I told him who I was. He shook my hand and then introduced me to the others.
The woman was his daughter. She was probably thirty. She had her father’s narrow, full-lipped mouth, but her eyes were dark, her nose was short and straight, and her skin was almost colorless. Her face had Asia in it. It was pretty, passive, unintelligent.
The man with the baritone voice was her husband. His name was Ringgo. He was six or seven years older than his wife, neither tall nor heavy, but well setup. His left arm was in splints and a sling. The knuckles of his right hand were darkly bruised. He had a lean, bony, quick-witted face, bright dark eyes with plenty of lines around them, and a good-natured hard mouth.
He gave me his bruised hand, wriggled his bandaged arm at me, grinned, and said:
“I’m sorry you missed this, but the future injuries are yours.”