seemed to make me a willing tool where my
chosen _role_ was that of an embittered exile, or at least a
condescending ally. However, I faced the commissions manfully, after
leaving the office.

At Lancaster's I inquired for his gun, was received coolly, and had to
pay a heavy bill, which it seemed to have incurred, before it was handed
over. Having ordered the gun and No. 4's to be sent to my chambers, I
bought the Raven mixture with that peculiar sense of injury which the
prospect of smuggling in another's behalf always entails; and wondered
where in the world Carey and Neilson's was, a firm which Davies spoke of
as though it were as well known as the Bank of England or the Stores,
instead of specializing in 'rigging-screws', whatever they might be.
They sounded important, though, and it would be only polite to unearth
them. I connected them with the 'few repairs,' and awoke new misgivings.
At the Stores I asked for a No. 3 Rippingille stove, and was confronted
with a formidable and hideous piece of ironmongery, which burned
petroleum in two capacious tanks, horribly prophetic of a smell of warm
oil. I paid for this miserably, convinced of its grim efficiency, but
speculating as to the domestic conditions which caused it to be sent for
as an afterthought by telegram. I also asked about rigging-screws in the
yachting department, but learnt that they were not kept in stock; that
Carey and Neilson's would certainly have them, and that their shop was
in the Minories, in the far east, meaning a journey nearly as long as to
Flensburg, and twice as tiresome. They would be shut by the time I got
there, so after this exhausting round of duty I went home in a cab,
omitted dressing for dinner (an epoch in itself), ordered a chop up from
the basement kitchen, and spent the rest of the evening packing and
writing, with the methodical gloom of a man setting his affairs in order
for the last time.

The last of those airless nights passed. The astonished Withers saw
me breakfasting at eight, and at 9.30 I was vacantly examining
rigging-screws with what wits were left me after a sulphurous ride in
the Underground to Aldgate. I laid great stress on the 3/8's, and the
galvanism, and took them on trust, ignorant as to their functions.
For the eleven-shilling oilskins I was referred to a villainous den
in a back street, which the shopman said they always recommended, and
where a dirty and bejewelled Hebrew chaffered with me (beginning at