t still a minute or two, thinking it over. Then
Harriet got up and went into the kitchen and made some nice toasted
cheese for our supper before we went to bed."

Men of the James Simpson type were among the many who daily passed
Coombe House on their way to and from their office work. Some of them no
doubt caught sight of Lord Coombe himself as he walked or drove through
the entrance gates. Their knowledge of him was founded upon rumoured
stories, repeated rather privately among themselves. He was a great
swell and there weren't many shady things he hadn't done and didn't know
the ins and outs of, but his remoteness from their own lives rendered
these accepted legends scarcely prejudicial. The perfection of his
clothes, and his unusual preservation of physical condition and good
looks, also his habit of the so-called "week-end" continental journeys,
were the points chiefly recalled by the incidental mention of his name.

If James Simpson, on his way home to Lupton Street with his friend
Crawshaw, chanced to see his lordship's car standing before his door a
few days after the bomb throwing in Sarajevo, he might incidentally have
referred to him somewhat in this wise:--

"As we passed by Coombe House the Marquis of Coombe came out and got
into his car. There were smart leather valises and travelling things in
it and a rug or so, as if he was going on some journey. He is a fine
looking man for one that's lived the life he has and reached his age. I
don't see how he's done it, myself. When I said to Crawshaw that it
looked as if he was going away for the week end, Crawshaw said that
perhaps he was taking Saturday to Monday off to run over to talk to the
Kaiser and old Franz Josef about the Sarajevo business, and he might
telephone to the Czar about it because he's intimate with them all, and
the whole lot seem to be getting mixed up in the thing and writing
letters and sending secret telegrams. It seems to be turning out, as
Crawshaw said it would, into a nice mess for Servia. Austria is making
it out that the assassination really was committed to stir up trouble,
and says it wasn't done just by a crazy anarchist, but by a secret
society working for its own ends. Crawshaw came in to supper and we
talked it all over. Harriet gave us cold beef and pickled onions and
beer, and we looked at the maps in the old geography again. We got quite
interested in finding places. Bosnia and Servia (it's often spelled
Serbia) are close