He took in enough of his No. 19, when the chambermaid switched the lights up, to know that it faced out the wrong side, offered no space for his baggage, and was so furnished as to confuse thought, distract contemplation and impede the movements of the body. The lace-veiled window was pallid against the dark; pushing it open a little he let in some cold air and heard the rustle of a palm tree. Unwinding his muffler and throwing off his great-coat, he waited only to take out his sponge bag and dressing-gown and sweep his towels along with him; then made off down the corridor, calling back to the chambermaid in three languages that he was going to have a bath. He was an independent man with a bump of locality on which he had grown with years increasingly reliant, and he brought himself without difficulty to the door of a hospitable-looking bathroom.

Mrs Pinkerton and her sister-in-law never sat for more than a minute or two in the drawing-room where other ladies forgathered. They withdrew early to their own rooms where they would embroider, eat little pastries and drink coffee. No one else had ever been invited to join them there; such an invitation was hardly to be expected, though the Pinkertons had consented to be present once or twice at Mrs Lee-Mittison’s coffee parties. They felt, perhaps, a little lonely these evenings; the comfortable feeling of enclosedness would fall away when there was nobody to be enclosed against. In the high room among marble-topped furniture they sat listening with well-bred attentiveness to one another’s breathing. Through the thin walls every footstep, every shutting of a door should have been audible in the velvety silence of the corridor. Yet the ladies had this evening no inkling of what was to occur; no premonition seems to have troubled them.