Giant's Bread by Agatha Christie

The room was full of cigarette smoke. It eddied and drifted about, forming a thin blue haze. Through it came the sound of three voices occupied with the betterment of the human race and the encouragement of art -- especially art that defied all known conventions.

Sebastian Levinne, leaning back against the ornate marble mantelpiece of his mother's town house, spoke didactically, gesticulating with the long yellow hand that held his cigarette. The tendency to lisp was still there, but very faint. His yellow Mongolian face, his surprised-looking ears, were much the same as they had been at eleven years old. At twenty-two he was the same Sebastian, sure of himself, perceptive, with the same love of beauty and the same unemotional and unerring sense of values.