It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned
towards us. With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a
sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for
good or for evil. But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with
their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and
the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature's plainest
danger-signals. He took no heed of any of us, but his eyes were fixed
upon Holmes's face with an expression in which hatred and amazement were
equally blended. "You fiend!" he kept on muttering. "You clever, clever
fiend!"

"Ah, Colonel!" said Holmes, arranging his rumpled collar. "'Journeys end
in lovers' meetings,' as the old play says. I don't think I have had the
pleasure of seeing you since you favoured me with those attentions as I
lay on the ledge above the Reichenbach Fall."

The colonel still stared at my friend like a man in a trance. "You
cunning, cunning fiend!" was all that he could say.

"I have not introduced you yet," said Holmes. "This, gentlemen, is
Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty's Indian Army, and the best
heavy-game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced. I believe
I am correct Colonel, in saying that your bag of tigers still remains
unrivalled?"

The fierce old man said nothing, but still glared at my companion. With
his savage eyes and bristling moustache he was wonderfully like a tiger
himself.

"I wonder that my very simple stratagem could deceive so old a SHIKARI,"