joy nor despair; neither hope nor fear; neither boredom nor
satisfaction. He seemed to perceive no soul in that crowded room; he
might have been walking in a jungle. I never came across such a perfect
expression before and I never shall again. It was insolence and
not insolence; it was modesty and not modesty. His hair was fair,
extraordinarily ordered in a wave, running from the left temple to the
right; his face was a light brick-red, perfectly uniform in tint up to
the roots of the hair itself; his yellow moustache was as stiff as a
toothbrush and I verily believe that he had his black smoking jacket
thickened a little over the shoulder-blades so as to give himself the
air of the slightest possible stoop. It would be like him to do that;
that was the sort of thing he thought about. Martingales, Chiffney bits,
boots; where you got the best soap, the best brandy, the name of the
chap who rode a plater down the Khyber cliffs; the spreading power of
number three shot before a charge of number four powder... by heavens, I
hardly ever heard him talk of anything else. Not in all the years that
I knew him did I hear him talk of anything but these subjects. Oh, yes,
once he told me that I could buy my special shade of blue ties cheaper
from a firm in Burlington Arcade than from my own people in New York.
And I have bought my ties from that firm ever since. Otherwise I should
not remember the name of the Burlington Arcade. I wonder what it looks
like. I have never seen it. I imagine it to be two immense rows of
pillars, like those of the Forum at Rome, with Edward Ashburnham
striding down between them. But it probably isn't--the least like that.
Once also he advised me to buy Caledonian Deferred, since they were due
to rise. And I did buy them and they did rise. But of how he got the
knowledge I haven't the faintest idea. It seemed to drop out of the blue
sky.

And that was absolutely all that I knew of him until a month ago--that
and the profusion of his cases, all of pigskin and stamped with his
initials, E. F. A. There were gun cases, and collar cases, and shirt
cases, and letter cases and cases each containing four bottles of
medicine; and hat cases and helmet cases. It must have needed a whole
herd of the Gadarene swine to make up his outfit. And, if I ever
penetrated into his private room it would be to see him standing, with
his coat and waistcoat off and the immensely long line of his perfectly
elegant trousers from wa