urderer, whom everybody was talking about, and whom the French police
were just then engaged in hunting down for extradition.

"No; I brought none with me on purpose," Mr. Ingledew replied, as
innocently as ever. "I didn't feel quite sure about the ways, or the
customs, or the taboos of England. So I had just this one suit of
clothes made, after an English pattern of the present fashion, which I
was lucky enough to secure from a collector at home; and I thought I'd
buy everything else I wanted when I got to London. I brought nothing at
all in the way of luggage with me."

"Not even brush and comb?" Philip interposed, horrified.

"Oh, yes, naturally, just the few things one always takes in a
vade-mecum," Bertram Ingledew answered, with a gracefully deprecatory
wave of the hand, which Philip thought pretty enough, but extremely
foreign. "Beyond that, nothing. I felt it would be best, you see, to set
oneself up in things of the country in the country itself. One's surer
then of getting exactly what's worn in the society one mixes in."

For the first and only time, as he said those words, the stranger struck
a chord that was familiar to Philip. "Oh, of course," the Civil Servant
answered, with brisk acquiescence, "if you want to be really up to
date in your dress, you must go to first-rate houses in London for
everything. Nobody anywhere can cut like a good London tailor."

Bertram Ingledew bowed his head. It was the acquiescent bow of the utter
outsider who gives no opinion at all on the subject under discussion,
because he does not possess any. As he probably came, in spite of his
disclaimer, from America or the colonies, which are belated places,
toiling in vain far in the rear of Bond Street, Philip thought this an
exceedingly proper display of bashfulness, especially in a man who had
only landed in England yesterday. But Bertram went on half-musingly.
"And you had told me," he said, "I'm sure not meaning to mislead
me, there were no formalities or taboos of any kind on entering into
lodgings. However, I found, as soon as I'd arranged to take the rooms
and pay four guineas a week for them, which was a guinea more than she
asked me, Miss Blake would hardly let me come in at all unless I could
at once produce my luggage." He looked comically puzzled. "I thought
at first," he continued, gazing earnestly at Philip, "the good lady was
afraid I wouldn't pay her what I'd agreed, and would go away and leave
her in the lurch