With these incitements it would have been unreasonable to expect Tracey
to do otherwise than linger around for the good health of his sense of
inquisitiveness, which would else have been severely sprained.

Will Bigelow was dozing behind the desk, lulled by the sound of Hi
Nutt's voice in the barroom, as he explained to all and sundry just how
he had inadvertently permitted Watty the tailor to best him at checkers
that morning. Otherwise the office was deserted. Tracey wakened Will by
stamping heavily across the floor, and Will mechanically pushed down
his spectacles and dipped a pen in ink, slewing the register round for
the guest's signature. He says he knew at a glance that The Mysterious
Stranger was no travelling man, but this is a moot point, Tracey's
memory being minutely accurate and at variance with Will's assertion.

The Mysterious Stranger was a young man, rather severely clothed in a
dark suit which excited no interest in Bigelow's understanding,
although I, when I saw him later, had no difficulty in realising that
it had never been made by a tailor whose place of business was more
than five doors removed from Fifth Avenue. He was tallish, but not
really tall, and carried himself with a slight stoop which took way
from his real height. Tracey says he had a way of looking at you as if
he was smiling inside at some joke he'd heard a long time ago; and I
don't know but that's a fairly apt description of his ordinary
expression. He had a way, too, of nodding jerkily at you--just once--to
show he recognised you or understood what you were driving at; at other
times he carried his head a trifle to one side and slightly forward. He
was a man you wouldn't forget, somehow, though what there was about him
that was remarkable nobody seemed to know.

He nodded that jerky way in answer to Will Bigelow's "G'devenin'," and