Being asked what in particular had
made him think the gentleman a foreigner, cabby could not exactly say;
he believed, however, it was his coat and his eyes. Of his face he saw
little or nothing, it was so muffled up; yet his tongue was English
enough.
Inquiry was then pushed on to the hotel named by the cabman. A gentleman
in a fur coat had certainly arrived there the evening before, but no one
had seen anything of him after his arrival. He had taken dinner in his
private sitting-room, and had then paid his bill, because, he said, he
must be gone early in the morning. About half an hour after dinner, when
a waiter cleared the things away, he had gone to his room, and next
morning he had left the hotel soon after dawn. Boots, half asleep, had
seen him walk away, bag in hand, wrapped in his greatcoat,--walk away,
it would seem, and dissolve into the mist of the morning, for from that
point no further trace could be got of him. No such figure as his had
been seen on any of the roads leading from the hotel, either by the
early milkman, or by the belated coffee-stall keeper, or night cabman.
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