Mr. Cranmer, who is incorrigibly a man of peace, began suggesting he was rather partial to boarding-houses and wouldn’t mind a bit, but Mr. Partridge waved him aside and strode menacingly down the passage after the hotel-keeper, who went through the outer office into a small room at the back, which Mr. Partridge saw was already occupied by a female of the Buxom Brighton Barmaid type, with whom the landlord began a colloquy, in a whisper sufficiently audible to allow Mr. Partridge to catch a sentence here and there. “Well, chance it,” murmured the female. “But supposing----” the flaccid one--obviously a hen-pecked one--started feebly to object. “_His_ look-out,” replied the female. “Anyway, you’ve took a room for him at Mrs. Brown’s, it’s his look-out.” “I don’t like it,” said the flaccid one, “honest I don’t,” and then he shuffled out. “I find,” he said shiftily, “that I _can_ manage the fourth room, but I assure you the boarding-establishment is a clean, comfortable house.” “No thanks,” said Mr. Partridge. “Show us the four rooms, please.” Leading the way, the specimen unlocked in turn three rooms on the second floor, in which the others were deposited, and then he took Mr. Partridge up to the third and opened a door at the end of a passage. “This will be yours, sir,” he said, his eyes on his fingers, and a moment later Mr. Partridge was alone, and receiving a sharp, vivid yet vague impression of malaise. He had had such impressions just once or twice before--immediate, apparently causeless aversions for certain persons, places, things, rooms--yes, rooms. He experienced again this irritating, irrational distaste when that little worm closed the door of Number 39. It wasn’t violently obtrusive, but it was certainly there. He looked round the room. It was furnished with the conventional Royal Hotel properties--a chest of drawers with a couple of knobs missing, a wardrobe slightly down at one heel, one picture at a rakish angle, depicting Mr. Marcus Stone’s reactions to Sacred and Profane Love, a row of pegs with one missing. Mr. Partridge, being an essayist of the lightest sort, was observant of detail, and he noted that a new panel had been inserted beneath one of them. Then there was a loutish wash-stand with a mirror, into which he gazed. Yes, certainly he wanted a holiday--one could almost tell a man’s age from his eyebrows, his were growing wispy and errant--and then he stepped back abruptly, for it seemed to him for a moment that the image he saw reflected had changed--as if someone had peeped over his shoulder and--absurd of course! It must be because the room was so dark. He began fussing with the blind, which refused to go right up. Well, curse the thing! He started and looked back quickly over his shoulder--it was only the Boots with his bag. “This is a damnably dark room, Boots,” he said testily. “See if you can get the blind up a little.”