“My dear Caroline,” I said. “There’s no doubt at all about what the man’s profession has been. He’s a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his.”

Caroline dissented. She said that if the man was a hairdresser, he would have wavy hair⁠—not straight. All hairdressers did.

I cited several hairdressers personally known to me who had straight hair, but Caroline refused to be convinced.

“I can’t make him out at all,” she said in an aggrieved voice. “I borrowed some garden tools the other day, and he was most polite, but I couldn’t get anything out of him. I asked him point blank at last whether he was a Frenchman, and he said he wasn’t⁠—and, somehow, I didn’t like to ask him any more.”

I began to be more interested in our mysterious neighbour. A man who is capable of shutting up Caroline and sending her, like the Queen of Sheba, empty away must be something of a personality.