This servant, kneeling, had unstrapped and opened
the new bags. Thorpe looked to see him quit the room,
this task accomplished, and was conscious of something
like dismay at the discovery that he intended to unpack
them as well. Pangbourn began gravely to unwrap one
paper parcel after another and to assort their contents
in little heaps on the sofa beside him. He did it deftly,
imperturbably, as if all the gentlemen he had ever seen
carried their belongings in packages done up by tradesmen.

Thorpe's impulse to bid him desist framed itself in words
on the tip of his tongue--but he did not utter these words.
After circling idly, hands in pockets, about the man
and the bags for a little time, he invented something
which it seemed better for him to say.

"I don't know what you'll be able to make of those things,"
he remarked, casually. "My man has been buying them
today--and I don't know what he mayn't have forgotten.
My whole outfit of that sort of thing went astray or was
stolen at some station or other--the first part of the
week--I think it must have been Leeds."

"Yes, sir," said Pangbourn, without emotion.
"They're very careless, sir."

He went on impassively, shaking out the black garments
and spreading them on the bed, laying out a shirt and tie
beside them, and arranging the razors, strop, and brushes
on the dressing-table. He seemed to foresee everything--for