about Gastrell.

So Lady Easterton had taken an instinctive dislike to this young man,
Hugesson Gastrell, and openly told her husband that she mistrusted him.
Now, that was curious, I reflected, for I had spoken to him several
times while in Geneva, and though his personality had appealed to
me, yet--

Well, there was something about him that puzzled me, something--I cannot
define what it was, for it was more like a feeling or sensation which
came over me while I was with him--a feeling that he was not what he
appeared to be, and that I saw, so to speak, only his outer surface.

"Hullo, Michael!"

The greeting cut my train of thought, and, screwing myself round in the
big arm-chair, I looked up.

"Why, Jack!" I exclaimed, "I had no idea you were in England. I thought
you were bagging rhinoceroses and things in Nigeria or somewhere."

"So I have been. Got back yesterday. Sorry I am back, to tell you the
truth," and he glanced significantly towards the window. A fine, wetting
drizzle was falling; dozens of umbrellas passed to and fro outside; the
street lamps were lit, though it was barely three o'clock, and in the
room that we were in the electric lights were switched on. The sky was
the colour of street mud, through which the sun, a huge, blood-red disc,
strove to pierce the depressing murk of London's winter atmosphere,
thereby creating a lurid and dismal effect.