Yes, Priam Farll had seen the world, but he had never seen a city so incredibly strange, so packed with curious and rare psychological interest as London.

And he regretted that he had not discovered London earlier in his life-long search after romance.
At the corner of the High Street he left the omnibus and stopped a moment to chat with his tobacconist.

His tobacconist was a stout man in a white apron, who stood for ever behind a counter and sold tobacco to the most respected residents of Putney.

All his ideas were connected either with tobacco or with Putney.

A murder in the Strand to that tobacconist was less than the breakdown of a motor bus opposite Putney Station; and a change of government less than a change of programme at the Putney Empire.