In a long, grey street of dismally respectable appearance they found what they were looking for, a bed-sitting room furnished, advertised on a card in the window.

The door was opened by the landlady, a tall woman of narrow build, with a West-Country accent, and a rather hungry sweetness running through her hardness.

They stood talking with her in a passage, whose oilcloth of variegated pattern emitted a faint odour.

The staircase could be seen climbing steeply up past walls covered with a shining paper cut by narrow red lines into small yellow squares.

An almanack, of so floral a design that nobody would surely want to steal it, hung on the wall; below it was an umbrella stand without umbrellas.