“A very strange-looking boy?” said Mrs. Greyes interrogatively to the grocer as soon as his customer had left.

“A foreigner, I believe,” said Mr. Scarrick, with a shortness that was entirely out of keeping with his usually communicative manner.

“I wish for a pound and a half of the best coffee you have,” said an authoritative voice a moment or two later. The speaker was a tall, authoritative-looking man of rather outlandish aspect, remarkable among other things for a full black beard, worn in a style more in vogue in early Assyria than in a London suburb of the present day.

“Has a dark-faced boy been here buying pomegranates?” he asked suddenly, as the coffee was being weighed out to him.

The two ladies almost jumped on hearing the grocer reply with an unblushing negative.