There are many threads and many knots in a net; these can not be thrown
together haphazard, lest the big fish slip through. At the bottom of
the net is a small steel ring, and here the many threads and the many
knots finally meet. Forbes and Haggerty (who, by the way, thinks I'm a
huge joke as a novelist) and the young man named Webb recounted this
tale to me by threads and knots. The ring was of Kitty Killigrew, for
Kitty Killigrew, by Kitty Killigrew, to paraphrase a famous line.
At one of the quieter hotels--much patronized by touring
Englishmen--there was registered James Thornden and man. Every
afternoon Mr. Thornden and his man rode about town in a rented touring
car. The man would bundle his master's knees in a rug and take the
seat at the chauffeur's side, and from there direct the journey.
Generally they drove through the park, up and down Riverside, and back
to the hotel in time for tea. Mr. Thornden drank tea for breakfast
along with his bacon and eggs, and at luncheon with his lamb or mutton
chops, and at five o'clock with especially baked muffins and
apple-tarts.
Mr. Thornden never gave orders personally; his man always attended to
that. The master would, early each morning, outline the day's work,
and the man would see to it that these instructions were fulfilled to
the letter. He was an excellent servant, by the way, light of foot,
low of voice, serious of face, with a pair of eyes which I may liken to
nothing so well as to a set of acetylene blow-pipes--bored right
through you.
The master was middle-aged, about the same height and weight as his
valet. He wore a full dark beard, something after the style of the
early eighties of last century. His was also a serious countenance,
tanned, dignified too; but his eyes were no match for his valet's; too
dreamy, introspective. Screwed in his left eye was a monocle down from
which flowed a broad ribbon. In public he always wore it; no one about
the hotel had as yet seen him without it, and he had been a guest there
for more than a fortnight.
He drank nothing in the way of liquor, though his man occasionally
wandered into the bar and ordered a stout or an ale. After dinner the
valet's time appeared to be his own; for he went out nearly every
night. He seemed very much interested in shop-windows, especially
those which were filled with curios. Mr. Thornden frequently went to
the theater, but invariably alone.
Thus, they attracted little or no attention among the clerks and bell
boys and waiters who had, in the course of the year, waited upon the
wants of a royal duke and a grand duke, to say nothing of a maharajah,
who was still at the hotel. An ordinary touring Englishman was, then,
nothing more than that.