en--to you now it must seem impossibly
queer,--and after an interval I forced myself back to my own affair.

How was I to ask? What was I to ask for? I puzzled for a long time
over that--at first I was a little tired and indolent--and then
presently I had a flow of ideas.

My solution was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story.
I happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making
use of the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa,
which had been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a
young lady, traveling with a young gentleman--no doubt a youthful
married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday.
I went over the story many times, and gave my imaginary uncle and
his hotel plausible names. At any rate this yarn would serve as
a complete justification for all the questions I might wish to ask.

I settled that, but I still sat for a time, wanting the energy to
begin. Then I turned toward the big hotel. Its gorgeous magnificence
seemed to my inexpert judgment to indicate the very place a rich
young man of good family would select.

Huge draught-proof doors were swung round for me by an ironically
polite under-porter in a magnificent green uniform, who looked at
my clothes as he listened to my question and then with a German
accent referred me to a gorgeous head porter, who directed me to
a princely young man behind a counter of brass and polish, like a
bank--like several banks. This young man, while he answered me, kept
his eye on my collar and tie--and I knew that they were abominable.

"I want to find a lady and gentleman who came to Shaphambury on
Tuesday," I said.

"Friends of yours?" he asked with a terrible fineness of irony.

I made out at last that here at any rate the young people had not
been. They might have lunched there, but they had had no room. But
I went out--door opened again for me obsequiously--in a state of
social discomfiture, and did not attack any other establishment
that afternoon.

My resolution had come to a sort of ebb. More people were promenading,
and their Sunday smartness abashed me. I forgot my purpose in an
acute sense of myself. I felt that the bulge of my pocket caused
by the revolver was conspicuous, and I was ashamed. I went along
the sea front away from the town, and presently lay down among
pebbles and sea poppies. This mood of reaction prevailed with me
all that afternoon. In the evening, about sundown, I