“Well, I’m very much obliged,” I said.
Mr. Billson smoked in silence.
“Have you been back long?” I asked, for something to say. Outstanding as were his other merits, he was not good at keeping a conversation alive.
“Back?” said Mr. Billson.
“Back in London. Ukridge told me that you had gone to sea again.”
“Say, mister,” exclaimed Mr. Billson, for the first time seeming to show real interest in my remarks, “you seen ’im lately?”
“Ukridge? Oh, yes, I see him nearly every day.”
“I been tryin’ to find ’im.”
“I can give you his address,” I said. And I wrote it down on the back of an envelope. Then, having shaken his hand, I thanked him once more for his courteous assistance and borrowed my fare back to Civilisation on the Underground, and we parted with mutual expressions of good will.
The next step in the march of events was what I shall call the Episode of the Inexplicable Female. It occurred two days later. Returning shortly after lunch to my rooms in Ebury Street, I was met in the hall by Mrs. Bowles, my landlord’s wife. I greeted her a trifle nervously, for, like her husband, she always exercised a rather oppressive effect on me. She lacked Bowles’s ambassadorial dignity, but made up for it by a manner so peculiarly sepulchral that strong men quailed before her pale gaze. Scotch by birth, she had an eye that looked as if it was for ever searching for astral bodies wrapped in winding-sheets—this, I believe, being a favourite indoor sport among certain sets in North Britain.