y to
his inquiry, that Miss Chubb was at home, and showed them into a
melancholy little sitting-room to await her appearance.

"I shall be 'almost' blind here, Parkinson," remarked Carrados,
walking about the room. "It saves explanation."

"Very good, sir," replied Parkinson.

Five minutes later, an interval suggesting that Miss Chubb also found
it rather early in the afternoon, Carrados was arranging to take rooms
for his attendant and himself for the short time that he would be in
London, seeing an oculist.

"One bedroom, mine, must face north," he stipulated. "It has to do
with the light."

Miss Chubb replied that she quite understood. Some gentlemen, she
added, had their requirements, others their fancies. She endeavoured
to suit all. The bedroom she had in view from the first _did_ face
north. She would not have known, only the last gentleman, curiously
enough, had made the same request.

"A sufferer like myself?" inquired Carrados affably.

Miss Chubb did not think so. In his case she regarded it merely as a
fancy. He had said that he could not sleep on any other side. She had
had to turn out of her own room to accommodate him, but if one kept an
apartment-house one had to be adaptable; and Mr. Ghoosh was certainly
very liberal in his ideas.

"Ghoosh? An Indian gentleman, I presume?" hazarded Carrados.

It appeared that Mr. Ghoosh was an Indian. Miss Chubb confided that at
first she had been rather perturbed at the idea of taking in "a black
man," as she confessed to regarding him. She reiterated, however, that
Mr. Ghoosh proved to be "quite the gentleman." Five minutes of
affability put Carrados in full possession of Mr. Ghoosh's manner of
life and movements--the dates of his arrival and departure, his
solitariness and his daily habits.

"This would be the best bedroom," said Miss Chubb.

It was a fair-sized room on the first floor. The window looked out on
to the roof of an outbuilding; beyond, the deep cutting of the railway
line. Opposite stood the dead wall that Mr. Carlyle had spoken of.

Carrados "looked" round the room with the discriminating glance that
sometimes proved so embarrassing to those who knew him.

"I have to take a little daily exercise," he remarked, walking to the
window and running his hand up the woodwork. "You will not mind my
fixing a 'developer' here, Miss Chubb--a few small screws?"

Miss Chubb thought not. Then she was sure not. Finally she ridiculed
the idea of mind