Old Ugly-Face by Talbot Mundy

A dark procession entered, ushered by freezing wind that whirled the smoke and made the ponies restless. It was led by a hooded man with a lantern. He had been instructed. He knew what to do. He hung the lantern from a peg on one of the low roof beams and stood still beneath it with folded arms, about fifteen feet away from Andrew. The wavering shadows made him look like one of Torquemada's men. Two more, who also looked like phantom Dominicans, followed and stood behind him, facing the row of ponies.

Andrew stood up, expecting the magician Lung-gom-pa. But the magician lingered unexplainably among armed brigands in the dark near the door; there was no doubt who he was, but he was only just visible--a looming, lurking, massive presence, furtive and secretive; a bell tinkled faintly when he moved. The man who came forward to meet Andrew was no Tibetan. His beard and the way he carried his head reminded Andrew of the portrait of Sir Richard Burton, in his copy of the famous forbidden pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. But he also more than vaguely resembled Lenin of Russia. His eyes were larger and darker than Lenin's, but he had similar high cheek bones, some of Lenin's gestures, some of Lenin's rhinoceros-hided arrogance that couldn't imagine itself mistaken. He had Lenin's way of sticking his fist in his right-hand pocket. But on the whole he looked more like Sir Richard Burton, perhaps because of the Afghan turban, which suited him and made him look scholarly. He wore a long, well-fitting fur-lined overcoat. He wasn't nearly as tall as Andrew. He halted some paces away, so as not to have to look up.