"Not with strangers," said the young man pleasantly.
"I just wondered. I had never met the perfect poker face until now, and I should be sorry if it was being wasted on some nonconformist abstainer. Ah, well. Here is my address. If by any chance I have fled from there the Spotlight will find me. I am truly sorry I couldn't sell you the idea of being an Ashby. You would have made an excellent master of Latchetts, I feel. Someone who was at home with horses, and used to an outdoor life."
The young man, who had made a gesture of farewell and was in the act of turning away, paused. "Horses?" he said.
"Yes," Loding said, vaguely surprised. "It's a stud, you know. Very well thought of, I understand."
"Oh." He paused a moment longer, and then turned away.
Loding watched him as he went down the street. "I missed something," he was thinking. "There was some bait he would have risen to, and I missed it. Why should he have nibbled at the word horse? He must be sick of them."
Ah, well; perhaps he would come to see what his double looked like.
4
The boy lay on his bed in the dark, fully dressed, and stared at the ceiling.
There were no street lamps outside to illuminate this back room under the slates; but the faint haze of light that hangs over London at night, emanation from a million arcs and gas-lights and paraffin lamps, shone ghost-like on the ceiling so that its cracks and stains showed like a world map.