I'll drop in here in the evening to hear what
he's like. I expect that you'll find him as mad as a hatter."
"Something like that," said Eustace, "or he wouldn't give handbills
to people like me. I have no one to bury except myself."
"No," said the doctor in the hall, "I suppose you haven't. Don't let
him measure you for a coffin, Reynolds!"
Eustace laughed.
"We never know," he said sententiously.
III
Next day was one of those gorgeous blue days of which November gives
but few, and Eustace was glad to run out to Wimbledon for a game of
golf, or rather for two. It was therefore dusk before he made his way
to the Gray's Inn Road in search of the unexpected. His attitude
towards his errand despite the doctor's laughter and the prosaic
entry in the directory, was a little confused. He could not help
reflecting that after all the doctor had not seen the man with the
little wise eyes, nor could he forget that Mr. G. J. Harding's
description of himself as a coffin merchant, to say the least of it,
approached the unusual. Yet he felt that it would be intolerable to
chop the whole business without finding out what it all meant. On the
whole he would have preferred not to have discovered the riddle at
all; but having found it, he could not rest without an answer.
No. 606, Gray's Inn Road, was not like an ordinary undertaker's shop.
The window was heavily draped with black cloth, but was otherwise
unadorned.
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