The housemaid's nose curled derisively.
"Oh, sir, quite the usual sort. Oh, a very common person. Not at all like the poor gentleman, sir."
"Young?"
"Not to say old, sir. No; I couldn't bring that against her. She wore a hat, sir, and feathers—well, more than ever growed on one ostrich, I'll be bound."
"Feathers!"
A vision of the lady of the feathers sprang up before Julian, wrapped in the wan light of the early dawn. He put several rapid questions to the housemaid. But she could only say again that Marr's companion had been a very common person, a very common sort of person indeed, and flashily dressed, not at all as she—the housemaid—would care to go out of a Sunday. Julian tipped her and left her amazed upon the dim landing. Then he and Valentine descended the stairs. The landlord was waiting in the passage in an attentive attitude against the wall. He seemed taken unawares by their appearance, but his eyes immediately sought Valentine's face, still apparently questioning it with avidity. Julian noticed this, and recollected that the man had insisted on a likeness existing between Marr and Valentine. Possibly that fact, although apparently unremembered, had remained lurking in his mind, and was accountable for his own curious deception. Or could it be that there really was some vague, fleeting resemblance between the dead man and the living which the landlord saw continuously, he only at moments? Looking again at Valentine he could not believe it. No; the landlord was deceived now, as he had been in the death-chamber above stairs.
"May we come into your room for a moment?" Julian asked the man. "I want to put to you a few questions."
"But certainly, sir, with pleasure."
He opened the side door and showed them into his sanctum beyond the glass window. It was a small, evil-looking room, crowded with fumes of stale tobacco. On the walls hung two or three French prints of more than doubtful decency. A table with a bottle and two or three glasses ranged on it occupied the middle of the floor. On a chair by the fire the Gil Bias was thrown in a crumpled attitude. One gas-burner flared, unshaded by any glass globe. Julian sat down on the Gil Bias. Valentine refused the landlord's offer of a chair, and stood looking rather contemptuously at the inartistic improprieties of the prints.
"Did you let in the gentleman who came last night?" asked Julian.