"Seven years, with option of renewal."
"And you mean to say you know nothing about him?"
"I won't say 'nothin',' but I know comparatively little about him. Houston and Prince, the house agents, assure me they've made inquiries, and that he is a rich young man whose uncle amassed a large fortune in TasmaniaI didn't know fortunes were to be made in Tasmania, did you? The uncle died six months ago, Houston and Prince tell me, and Hugesson Gastrell has inherited everything he left. They say that they have ascertained that Gastrell's parents died when he was quite a child, and that this uncle who has died has been his guardian ever since."
"That sounds right enough. What more do you want to know?"
"It somehow seems to me very strange that I should have come to know this man, Gastrell, without introduction of any kindeven have become intimate with him. On the day after he had come to my house by accident, he called to fetch a pair of gloves which, in his confusion on the previous evenin', he had left in the hall. He asked if he might see me, and then he again apologized for the mistake he had made the night before. We stayed talkin' for, I suppose, fully half an hourhe's an excellent talker, and exceedingly well-informedand incidentally he mentioned that he was lookin' for a house. From his description of what he wanted it at once struck me that my Cumberland Place house would be the very thing for himI simply can't afford to live there now, as you know, and for months I have been tryin' to let it. I told him about it, and he asked if he might see it, andwell, the thing's done; he has it now, as I say, on a seven years' lease."
"Then why worry?"
"I am not worryin'I never worrythe most foolish thing any man can do is to worry. All I say isI should like to know somethin' more about the feller. He may be quite all rightI have not the least reason for supposin' he isn'tbut my wife has taken a strong dislike to him. She says she mistrusts him. She has said so from the beginnin'. After he had asked to see me that mornin', the mornin' he called for his gloves, and we had talked about the house, I invited him to lunch and introduced him to my wife. Since then he has dined with us several times, andwell, my wife is most insistent about itshe declares she is sure he isn't what he seems to be, and she wanted me not to let him the house."
"Women have wonderful intuition in reading characters."
"I know they have, and that's why I feelwell, why I feel just the least bit uneasy. What has made me feel so to-day is that I have just heard from Sir Harry Dawson, who is on the Riviera, and he says that he doesn't know Hugesson Gastrell, has never heard of him. There, read his letter."
Seated in my club on a dull December afternoon, that was part of a conversation I overheard, which greatly interested me. It interested me because only a short time before I had, while staying in Geneva, become acquainted at the hotel with a man named Gastrell, and I wondered if he could be the same. From the remarks I had just heard I suspected that he must be, for the young man in Geneva had also been an individual of considerable personality, and a good conversationalist.