very mysterious; all the more so because Jaffery had never been a
man of mystery, like Adrian. I went away wondering. If it had occurred
to me at the time that I was destined to play Boswell to Jaffery's
Johnson, perhaps I might have gone straight to him and demanded a
solution of my difficulties. As it was, in my unawakened condition, I
did nothing of the kind. I spent an hour or two looking up something in
the British Museum, stopped at the bootmaker's to give an order
concerning Susan's riding-boots (_vide_ diary) and drove home to dinner,
to a comfortable chat with Barbara, during which I gave her an account
of the day's doings, and eventually to the peaceful slumber of the
contented and inoffensive man.

A fortnight or so passed before I saw Jaffery again. Happening to be in
Westminster in the forenoon--I had come up to town on business--I
mounted to his cheerless eyrie in Victoria Street, and rang the bell. A
dingy servitor in a dress suit, on transient duty, admitted me, and I
found Jaffery collarless and minus jacket and waistcoat, smoking a pipe
in front of the fire. It wasn't even a good coal fire. Some austere
former tenant had installed an electric radiator in the once
comfort-giving grate. But Jaffery did not seem to mind. The remains of
breakfast were on the table which the dingy servitor began to clear.
Jaffery rose from the depths of his easy chair like an agile mammoth.

"Hullo, hullo, hullo!"

His usual greeting. We shook hands and commended the weather. When the
alien attendant had departed, he began to curse London. It was a hole
for sick dogs, not for sound men. He loathed its abominable suffocation.

"Then why the deuce do you stay in it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I can't do anything else."

This gave me an opening to satisfy my curiosity.

"I understood you could have gone to Persia."

He frowned and tugged his red beard. "How did you know that?"

"Arbuthnot--" I began.

"Arbuthnot?" he boomed angrily. "What the blazes does he mean by telling
you about my affairs? I'll punch his damned head!"

"Don't," said I. "Your hands are so big and he's so small. You might
hurt him."

"I'd like to hurt him. Why can't he keep his infernal tongue quiet?"

He proceeded to wither up the soul of Arbuthnot with awful anathema.
Then in his infantile way he shouted: "I didn't want any of you to know
anything about it."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I didn't."

"But I suppose you wanted to go to