truth the name seemed vaguely familiar to him.

"A schoolboy in the country," observed Dr. Baumgartner, "is scarcely
likely to have heard of me; but if you inquire here in London you will
find that I am not unknown. I propose to carry you off to my house for
breakfast, and a little rest. That is," added the doctor, with his first
smile, "if you will trust yourself to me first and make your inquiries
later."

Pocket scouted the notion of inquiries in an impulsive outburst; but even
as he proceeded to mumble out his thanks he could not help feeling it
would have been less embarrassing to know more exactly whom he was
thanking and must needs accompany now. Dr. Baumgartner? Where was it he
had come across that name? And when and where had anybody ever seen such
a doctor as this unshaven old fellow in the cloak and hat of a conspirator
by limelight?

But the schoolboy had still to learn the lesson of naked personality as
the one human force; and he learnt it now unknown to himself. The gaunt
grey man stood up in his absurd and rusty raiment, and Pocket thought,
"How the chaps would rag him at school!" because the dreadful old hat and
cloak suggested a caricature of a master's cap and gown. But there was no
master at Pocket's school whom he would not sooner have disobeyed than
this shabby stranger with the iron-bound jaw and the wintry smile; there
was no eye on the staff that had ever made him quail as he had quailed
that morning before these penetrating eyes of steel. Baumgartner said
they must hurry, and Pocket had his asthma back in the first few yards.
Baumgartner said they could buy more cigarettes on the way, and Pocket
kept up, panting, at his side.

In the cab Baumgartner said, "Try sitting with your head between your
knees." Pocket tried it like a lamb. They had encountered a young man or
so hurrying into the Park with towels round the neck but no collar, an
early cavalcade who never looked at them, and that was about all until the
hansom had been hailed outside. During the drive, which seemed to Pocket
interminable, his extraordinary attitude prevented him from seeing
anything but his own boots, and those only dimly owing to the apron being
shut and indeed pressing uncomfortably against his head. Yet when Dr.
Baumgartner inquired whether that did not make him easier, he said it did.
It was not all imagination either; the posture did relieve him; but it was
none the less disagreeable to be driven thr