Mr. Alfred Murdoch was younger than Michael had expected. He could scarcely have been more than forty, and Michael had formed a preconception of an elderly chemist reduced by misfortune and misdeeds to the status of one of those individuals who with a discreet manner somewhere between a family doctor and a grocer place themselves at the service of the public in an atmosphere of antiseptics. Mr. Murdoch was not at all like this. He was a squat swarthy man with one very dark eye that stared fixedly regardless of the expression of its fellow. Michael could not make up his mind whether this eye were blind or not. He rather hoped it was, but in any case its fierce blankness was very disconcerting. Conversation between Michael and Mr. Murdoch was not very lively, and Mrs. Murdoch’s adjutant inquisitiveness made Michael the more monosyllabic whenever her husband did commit himself to a direct inquiry. “I looked for you in the Horseshoe the other evening,” said Michael finally, at a loss how in any other way to give Mr. Murdoch an impression that he took the faintest interest in his existence. “In the Horseshoe?” repeated Mr. Murdoch, in surprise. “I never go to the Horseshoe only when a friend asks me in to have one.” Michael saw Mrs. Murdoch frowning at him, and, perceiving that there was a reason why her husband must not suppose she had been to the Horseshoe on the evening of his arrival, he said he had gathered somehow, he did not exactly know where or why or when, that Mr. Murdoch was often to be found in the Horseshoe. He wished this awkward and unpleasant man would leave him and cock his rolling eye anywhere else but in his room. “Bit of a reader, aren’t you?” inquired the chemist. Michael admitted he read a good deal. “Ever read Jibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?” continued the chemist. “Some of it.” Mr. Murdoch said in that case it was just as well he hadn’t bought some volumes he’d seen on a barrow in the Caledonian Road. “Four-and-six, with two books out in the middle,” he proclaimed. Michael could merely nod his comment, though he racked his brains to think of some remark that would betray a vestige of cordiality. Mr. Murdoch got up to retire to the kitchen. He evidently did not find his tenant sympathetic. Outside on the landing Michael heard him say to his wife: “Stuck up la-di-da sort of a ——, isn’t he?” Presently the wife came up again. “How did you like my old man?” “Oh, very much.” “Did you notice his eye?” Michael said he had noticed something. “His brother Fred did that for him.” She spoke proudly, as if Fred’s act had been a humane achievement. “When they were boys,” she explained. “It gives him a funny look. I remember when I first met him it gave me the creeps, but I don’t notice it really now. Would you believe he couldn’t see an elephant with it?” “I wondered if it were blind,” said Michael.