Barnaby had no further encounter with Sebastian Mailer until the following spring, when he returned to Rome after seeing his book launched with much éclat in London. His Pensione Gallico could not take him for the first days, so he stayed at a small hotel not far from it in Old Rome.

On his second morning he went down to the foyer to ask about his mail, but finding a crowd of incoming tourists milling round the desk, sat down to wait on a chair just inside the entrance.

He opened his paper but did not read it, finding his attention sufficiently occupied by the tourists who had evidently arrived en masse: particularly by two persons who kept a little apart from their companions but seemed to be of the same party nevertheless.

They were a remarkable pair, both very tall and heavily built with high shoulders and a surprisingly light gait. He supposed them to be husband and wife but they were oddly alike, having perhaps developed a marital resemblance. Their faces were large, the wife’s being emphasized by a rounded jaw and the husband’s by a short chin-beard that left his mouth exposed. They both had full, prominent eyes. He was very attentive to her, holding her arm and occasionally her big hand in his own enormous one and looking into her face. He was dressed in blue cotton shirt, jacket and shorts. Her clothes, Barnaby thought, were probably very “good” though they sat but lumpishly on her ungainly person.