The stranger with the gold spectacles pushed away his newspapers and rose to go. Jean helped him on with his fur-lined overcoat, and as he did so, a quick whisper passed between the two. Then Jean left him. The stranger put on his hat, and coming down a pace or two till he stood close by the end of my table, he proceeded to leisurely button up his coat. I happened to look up, and our eyes met. The stranger smiled, and said in a soft, pleasant voice, in which there was the faintest perceptible trace of a foreign accent: ‘Pardon, but I think I heard monsieur say just now that he was a stranger in London. Is that not so?’
‘Quite a stranger,’ I replied. ‘I only arrived here three hours ago, and was never in London before.’
I was glad to have some one to speak to, were it only this pleasant-voiced foreigner; it seemed in some measure to take off the edge of my loneliness.
‘Again pardon,’ said the other; ‘but monsieur would naturally find the fog outside rather bewildering? Ah, your English climate! He would be puzzled, for instance, to find his way from this house to Charing Cross, or even to the nearest bridge; is it not so?’
‘Faith, you’re right there,’ I answered with a laugh. ‘I have not the slightest idea of the locality of this house, nor even on which side the river it is situated. But daylight will solve my difficulties in that respect.’
‘Ah, that daylight is a great tell-tale,’ answered the stranger with the ghost of a shrug. ‘Bon soir, monsieur; I hope you will sleep well, and have pleasant dreams.’
Again the same inscrutable smile flitted across his face. Raising his hat slightly, he pushed open the swing-doors, and passed out into the fog and darkness.
It was growing late by this time. Besides myself, there were only two customers now left in the place, who seemed still as intent on their game of dominoes as they had been when I went in. Summoning Jean, I asked to be shown to my room.
I think the bedroom into which I was presently inducted was the very smallest in which it was ever my lot to sleep, while the bed itself was so short, that a tall lanky fellow such as I was might well wonder how his length of limb was to be packed away in so small a compass. On turning down the bedclothes, the sheets and pillow-cases, to my countrified eyes, accustomed to the snowiest of linen, looked far too dingy to be at all inviting. It seemed to me that they had not been changed for a considerable period; but be that as it may, I had no inclination to trust myself into too close contact with their dubious purity. I was tired enough to sleep anywhere, and had there been anything in the shape of an easy-chair in the room, I would have made that my couch for the night. What I did was to take off my collar, boots, and coat, lie down on the bed, turn up the counterpane over me on both sides, and lay my coat over that. Thousands in London that night had a far worse bed than mine. Leaving the end of candle which Jean had given me to burn itself out, three minutes later I was in a sound dreamless sleep.