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d so I believe did Catherine. He stood there, his old top hat in his right hand, and stared at me. Then he said, in good English, with just the trace of a foreign accent:
"Mr. Hugh Beckwith?" I admitted that I was. Then he looked at Catherine and Mrs. Fraser. "Can I speak to you alone?"
"What about? What is your name?"
"It does not matter what is my name. I wish to speak to you on a little private business if you will ask these ladies to be so kind as to leave us."
I was reluctant to do anything of the sort; I was not willing to allow him to speak to me, having an instinctive feeling that he had nothing to say which I wished to hear, and that he was the sort of person with whom it would be wiser for me to have nothing to do. While I was searching about for a form of speech in which to say so, Catherine took the words out of my mouth, and answered for herself.
"Come, mother, let us leave this gentleman and Hugh alone together. You will remember, Hugh, that you have an appointment with me in a few minutes; you must not allow this gentleman to keep you long."
As she followed her mother out of the room she favoured me with a glance whose significance I did not altogether understand. When the door was closed the visitor, his great head hanging a little forward, stood and looked at me as if he proposed to do nothing but stare. I was the first to speak curtly enough. Somehow he reminded me of a picture I had seen somewhere of an evil-faced Jew who dealt in second-hand clothing.
"Well, sir, what is it you wish to say to me?"
"You have something of mine."
He spoke in a thick, husky voice, as if there were something in his throat that impeded his utterance.
"I have something of yours? What do you mean? I have never seen you in my life before this moment."
"Yet you have something of mine."
"Pray what have I got which belongs to you?"
"You have a suit of my clothes."
"The Lord forbid!" The words were out of my lips before I had
