ut the war
... I know I can't argue with Letchford. But I will not pretend to a
superiority I do not feel.'

I went to bed feeling that in Jimson I had struck a pretty sound
fellow. As I lit the candles on my dressing-table I observed that the
stack of silver which I had taken out of my pockets when I washed
before supper was top-heavy. It had two big coins at the top and
sixpences and shillings beneath. Now it is one of my oddities that ever
since I was a small boy I have arranged my loose coins symmetrically,
with the smallest uppermost. That made me observant and led me to
notice a second point. The English classics on the top of the chest of
drawers were not in the order I had left them. Izaak Walton had got to
the left of Sir Thomas Browne, and the poet Burns was wedged
disconsolately between two volumes of Hazlitt. Moreover a receipted
bill which I had stuck in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ to mark my place had
been moved. Someone had been going through my belongings.

A moment's reflection convinced me that it couldn't have been Mrs
Jimson. She had no servant and did the housework herself, but my things
had been untouched when I left the room before supper, for she had come
to tidy up before I had gone downstairs. Someone had been here while we
were at supper, and had examined elaborately everything I possessed.
Happily I had little luggage, and no papers save the new books and a
bill or two in the name of Cornelius Brand. The inquisitor, whoever he
was, had found nothing ... The incident gave me a good deal of comfort.
It had been hard to believe that any mystery could exist in this public
place, where people lived brazenly in the open, and wore their hearts
on their sleeves and proclaimed their opinions from the rooftops. Yet
mystery there must be, or an inoffensive stranger with a kit-bag would
not have received these strange attentions. I made a practice after
that of sleeping with my watch below my pillow, for inside the case was
Mary Lamington's label. Now began a period of pleasant idle
receptiveness. Once a week it was my custom to go up to London for the
day to receive letters and instructions, if any should come. I had
moved from my chambers in Park Lane, which I leased under my proper
name, to a small flat in Westminster taken in the name of Cornelius
Brand. The letters addressed to Park Lane were forwarded to Sir Walter,
who sent them round under cover to my new address. For the rest I used
to spend my m