"So I have been. Got back yesterday. Sorry I am back, to tell you the truth," and he glanced significantly towards the window. A fine, wetting drizzle was falling; dozens of umbrellas passed to and fro outside; the street lamps were lit, though it was barely three o'clock, and in the room that we were in the electric lights were switched on. The sky was the colour of street mud, through which the sun, a huge, blood-red disc, strove to pierce the depressing murk of London's winter atmosphere, thereby creating a lurid and dismal effect.
Jack Osborne is a man I rather like, in spite of the fact that his sole aim in life is to kill things. When he isn't shooting "hippos" and "rhinos" and bears and lions in out-of-the-way parts of the world, he is usually plastering pheasants in the home covers, or tramping the fields and moors where partridges and grouse abound.
"Had a good time?" I asked some moments later.
"Ripping," he answered, "quite ripping," and he went on to tell me the number of beasts he had slain, particulars about them and the way he had outwitted them. I managed to listen for ten minutes or so without yawning, and then suddenly he remarked:
"I met a man on board ship, on the way home, who said he knew youfeller named Gastrell. Said he met you in Geneva, and liked you like anything. Struck me as rather a rum sortwhat? Couldn't quite make him out. Who is he and what is he? What's he do?"
"I know as little about him as you do," I answered. "I know him only slightlywe were staying at the same hotel in Geneva. I heard Lord Easterton, who was in here half an hour ago, saying he had let his house in Cumberland Place to a man named GastrellHugesson Gastrell. I wonder if it is the man I met in Geneva and that you say you met on board ship. When did you land?"
"Yesterday, at Southampton. Came by the Masonic from Capetown."
"And where did Gastrell come from?"
"Capetown too. I didn't notice him until we were near the end of the voyage. He must have remained below a good deal, I think."
I paused, thinking.