w,' he said. 'I know. I was ashore this morning.'

"'We won't discuss it here, Mr. Hank,' I said, hastily. 'If you don't
mind, I'll see you ashore, since you're busy.'

"Mr. Hank, _Signore_ Hank, was a man I would never be very intimate
with, however well I knew him. I'm not saying he was so bad, or that I
was so virtuous myself, at all. It was simply, I suppose, a matter of
temperament. To me it always seemed as though he had so many mysterious
things in his mind that he was borne down by them; that the outward and
visible world, in which I saw him and spoke to him, was only a thin mask
behind which his real existence was concealed. I may have been wrong. It
doesn't matter, for _Signore_ Hank is dead now, his long life of
ingenious peculation is over, and the good and the ill of it, we'll
hope, have balanced, anyway. But I couldn't possibly discuss Rosa with
_him_, let alone have that smooth, dissipated little bounder of a Sachs
sit by and hear it all. I had to call a halt. I was making up my mind to
leave the mud alone and not stir it up at all, when Mr. Hank, sitting
asprawl in his swivel chair at his roll-top desk, his big chin and nose
and moustache buried in his hand, and staring at me with his hard-boiled
eyes, remarked abruptly:

"'Do you know the Hotel Robinson?'

"'Certainly,' I said. 'What about it?'

"'What you want to do is to go to the Hotel Robinson and ask for Doctor
West. He's the man. He'll tell you all about it. You know Doctor West?
Tall, big black beard, pale face. Flag's letter P. You know him?'

"'I've seen him some time or other, I dare say,' I said. 'Hotel
Robinson, you say. All right and thank you.'

"'Just a minute,' sang out little Sachs as I made to go. 'I'll go with
you. I know Doctor West. I'll introduce you.' And he went on discussing
a paper he had, with Mr. Hank.

"I felt a little indignant and walked off, walked in the wrong
direction, of course, and lost myself in interminable alleyways of
passenger-cabins, hustled by stewards and stewardesses who were
polishing brass-work, rolling up carpets, washing floors and so on. All
about was that curious odour that seems inseparable from the corridors
of steamers, hospitals, workhouses and the like--an odour which is a
compound of cleanliness, antiseptic and cold enamelled iron. Such
surroundings depressed me. I felt, more acutely than ever before, the
distance between Rosa's environment and what I would have had it. I felt
dissatisfi