of continual change of lodgings. There
are inland tracts of London where, in the very heart of artificial
civilization, humanity has almost become nomadic once more. But in that
restless interior there was no ragged tramp so restless as the elegant
officer in the loose white clothes. He had shot a great many things in
his time, to judge from his conversation, from partridges to elephants,
but his slangier acquaintances were of opinion that "the moon" had been
not unfrequently amid the victims of his victorious rifle. The phrase is
a fine one, and suggests a mystic, elvish, nocturnal hunting.

He carried from house to house and from parish to parish a kit which
consisted practically of five articles. Two odd-looking, large-bladed
spears, tied together, the weapons, I suppose, of some savage tribe, a
green umbrella, a huge and tattered copy of the Pickwick Papers, a big
game rifle, and a large sealed jar of some unholy Oriental wine. These
always went into every new lodging, even for one night; and they went in
quite undisguised, tied up in wisps of string or straw, to the delight
of the poetic gutter boys in the little grey streets.

I had forgotten to mention that he always carried also his old
regimental sword. But this raised another odd question about him. Slim
and active as he was, he was no longer very young. His hair, indeed, was
quite grey, though his rather wild almost Italian moustache retained its
blackness, and his face was careworn under its almost Italian gaiety.
To find a middle-aged man who has left the Army at the primitive rank
of lieutenant is unusual and not necessarily encouraging. With the
more cautious and solid this fact, like his endless flitting, did the
mysterious gentleman no good.

Lastly, he was a man who told the kind of adventures which win a man
admiration, but not respect. They came out of queer places, where a good
man would scarcely find himself, out of opium dens and gambling hells;
they had the heat of the thieves' kitchens or smelled of a strange
smoke from cannibal incantations. These are the kind of stories which
discredit a person almost equally whether they are believed or no. If
Keith's tales were false he was a liar; if they were true he had had, at
any rate, every opportunity of being a scamp.

He had just left the room in which I sat with Basil Grant and his
brother Rupert, the voluble amateur detective. And as I say was
invariably the case, we were all talking about him.