Introduction to Robert Tanith

            He was the first person to enter the hotel lobby for a while that evening, and the only one to come in out of the rain since it had begun. The woman at the desk barely glanced at him as he shuffled in, bent over to conceal something in his trench coat. He carried the item cradled in his arms over to one of the leather chairs of the lobby and set it down carefully. He stepped away from a thin leather briefcase with an almost hallowed reverence before whipping off his trench coat. The woman behind the desk gave an angry gasp of alarm as he scattered water over the spotless chairs and polished floor. She got up huffily, intending to question the man as he shook out his wide-brimmed hat over the carpet. Her heels clicked sharply over the fake marble floor finally drawing his attention to her.

            He straitened, looking down upon the pouting, upset woman. She raised her hand to him and opened her cheery colored lips wide but nothing came out.

            “I am expected,” he said, his voice bearing the somewhat unsettling steel of unquestionable authority. It almost seemed too powerful a voice for such a thin and wiry man, but it suited the hard, god-like appearance of his face. Long and angular, it tapered to a sharp chin from his smooth white brow. His narrow Greco-Roman nose framed by hollowed, colorless cheeks. He might have been attractive looking with his tapered eyebrows and high cheek bones if he wore any other expression than disrupted indifference. That bitter frown at having to recognize a second existence next to his own plans and intentions.

            “I believe they are waiting in the lounge.” He said. He was not an exceptionally tall man, nor she an exceptionally short woman, but she seemed to cower in his shadow all the same.

            “Yes, of course, sir,” she simpered meekly, giving something like a weak curtsy. He stared at her unwaveringly and she felt like she had somehow done something wrong and it burrowed under her skin and bit at her unbearably. She tried to think of what more that she could do as his glair penetrated her deepest reassesses. “May I take your coat for you?” She blurted to try and save herself the gnawing his eyes built in her. It was what he was waiting for. She felt the clouds lift as he held out his crumpled felt hat and then the long coat.
            “Thank you, sir,” she said with every sincerity; she could feel a bead of sweat trickling down the small of her back. He picked up the briefcase and nodded towards the lounge. She scuttled ahead of him, the clicking of her heels sounding like a crab trapped in a glass bowl. She bowed and smiled and gave him every gesture of nicety she could think too. It wasn’t until he had swept past her, almost ghost-like into the lounge, that she breathed easy again.

            It was late in the evening and there were only three occupants of the room. Three rich men all sitting at a small round table in front of the fireplace talking with each other and sipping drinks or smoking cigars.
            “So how do you know this man again?” The thin one asked, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar. He was a banker and familiar with things like stocks and bonds and joint proprietors and other such intricate fazes that he liked to drop like bombs into the conversations of those he wanted to impress.

            “Work, he said. He’s said it twice,” said a bulbous of a man, sipping from a tiny scotch gripped between his sausage fingers. He was in the oil industry and the steel industry and would talk about his hundred-thousand pound deals as though it were a daily occurrence and of no consequence. “I swear, you don’t ask questions for any reason but to hear your own voice.” He pooh-poohed gesturing with the glass, his fat pinky sticking out.

            “Come now, old boy, don’t be a shoddy blanket to him, nothing wrong with checking.” Laughed the middle sized one, as he stroked his walrus tusks of a mustache. He was a former military general such as the kind that spent much of their time in tidy rooms only talking about war, true enough he had been a part of the Great War, but it hadn’t beaten the old since of war as a grand game for strong men to play. “He was a great fellow, he was. Haven’t seen him in a year or so, but a great man - great man!”

            The tree sat talking about other great men and what made a great man, all completely oblivious to the onlooker at the door. The man was standing in the shadow of the door with his face set and still. He waited, clutching his briefcase under his arm with a vice grip that comes of being anxious over something. His eyes darted to the clock on the mantle; he was a few minutes early.

            “So when is this friend of yours supposed to be arriving?” The oil man asked idly.

            “Oh, ten, he said.” The major looked up at the clock, “And knowing him he’ll arrive as soon as the clock’s struck.” He grinned broadly and took a sip of his burden. They sat in silence for a while, the banker still chewing on his cigar, the oil man with his thumb slipped into the tiny pocket of his dinner jacket, and the major smiling at nothing in particular, all the while the fourth guest waited to make up his own mind.

            It had been easily four or five years since he had seen the major and those were under completely different circumstances. The old military man would probably forget the nature of this meeting the way he had forgotten the laps of time and if something wasn’t addressed right it could mean a great deal of trouble for the man at the door. He glance up at the clock when it started its slow chime. “Oh, there it is,” the major gestured to the general vicinity of the clock, “You wait, he’ll be here any moment.” Smoothing over his white suit, the man at the door waited for the last chime to sound, his decision made. They all watched the clock, when the last note of the chime began to fade the other two men looked at the major who frowned, “That’s surprising, usually he would just be walking into the door –“

            “I already have,” came the low, and in many ways, melodious voice. The three men jumped and turned to the dark corner of the room. The onlooker stepped into the circle of firelight with a natural ease as though they were in his realm oppose to him being in there’s.

            “Tanith, my lad!” The major threw his arms wide as though he had every intention of embracing the man. To Tanith’s relief the major was content with shaking his hand vigorously. “My lad, you’ve grown so much, so dapper and smart looking! My goodness, what would the misses say – I know what she’d say; she’d invite you to stay for dinner and use the best china! Come sit with us, I’ll get you a drink, brandy? Bourbon? Scotch?” Tanith let the major usurer him into a chair but declined the drinks. Seeing how truly overjoyed his old employer was to see him had eased much of the anxiety from before so Tanith sat leaning back in the chair with his legs crossed at the knee and something like a content expression on his face.

            The other two men looked on the attractive, white-suited gentleman with curiosity, begrudged awe, and something not far from envy. “So Mr . . . what was it?” the banker asked, leaning forward in his chair.

            “Tanith, Tanith, my lad, and a fine name it is too!” The major beamed as though he were partially responsible for the name.

            “Proffesser Tanith, actually.” He corrected, putting his briefcase by his side.

            “Of course, of course, Professor,” the major pulled up another chair to the table and sat, with a hand on the professor’s shoulder with the look of a proud father shining from his broad grin. “You’ve accomplished quite a bit since I last saw you.”

            “Indeed.”