He kept, however, a strict eye on the door of the hotel, and after a quarter of an hour saw the object of his attentions emerge with fishing-rod and basket, and cross the road directly towards him. Gimblet had not been able to see his face before, but now he had a good look as he passed close beside him. He was a tall, fair man, evidently a foreigner, but with nothing very striking about his appearance. A pointed yellow beard hid the lower part of his face, and, for the rest, his nose was short, his eyes blue and close together, and his forehead high and narrow. He looked closely at Gimblet as he went by, and for a moment the eyes of the two men met, both equally inscrutable and unflinching; then the stranger glanced aside and strode on to where a small boat lay moored. The detective turned his back while the fair man got in and pushed off into the loch. "Gentleman going fishing?" he remarked to a man who lounged hard by upon the causeway. "He's axtra fond o' the feeshin'," was the reply, "for a' that he's a foreign shentleman." Waiting till the boat had become a distant speck on the face of the waters, Gimblet made his way into the inn and entered into conversation with the landlord, on the pretext of engaging rooms for a friend. The landlord was sorry, but the house was full. "If ye wanted them in a fortnicht's time," he said, "ye could hae the hale hotel; but tae the end o' the holidays we're foll up. Folks tak' their rooms a month in advance; they come here for the fishin' on the loch, and because my hoose is the maist comfortable in the Hielands." "Indeed, I can well believe that," Gimblet assured him. "I suppose you get a lot of tourists passing through, though, Americans, for instance?" "We hardly ever hae a room tae tak' them in. No, I seldom hae an American bidin' here; they maistly gang doon the loch," said the innkeeper. "I thought," said Gimblet, "that was a foreign-looking man whom I saw a little while ago, coming out of the hotel." "We hae ae gintleman bidin' here wha belongs tae foreign pairts," the landlord admitted. "A Polish gintleman, he is, Count Pretovsky, a vary nice gintleman. I couldna just cae him a tourist. He's vary keen on the fishin' and was up here for it last year as well. He has his ain boat and is aye on the water trailin' aefter the salmon." "A great many sporting foreigners come to our island nowadays," Gimblet remarked. "Does he get many fish?" "Oh, it's a grand place for salmon," said the inn-keeper with obvious pride. "And there's troots tac. And pike, mair's the peety," he added. "Dear me," said Gimblet, "just what my friend wants. I'm sorry you can't take him in. I must tell him to write in good time next year if he wants a room."