THE LESSON
The first time I met him, to my knowledge, was on an evil-smelling, one-funnelled steamboat that in those days plied between London Bridge and Antwerp. He was walking the deck arm-in-arm with a showily dressed but decidedly attractive young woman; both of them talking and laughing loudly. It struck me as odd, finding him a fellow-traveller by such a route. The passage occupied eighteen hours, and the first-class return fare was one pound twelve and six, including three meals each way; drinks, as the contract was careful to explain, being extra. I was earning thirty shillings a week at the time as clerk with a firm of agents in Fenchurch Street. Our business was the purchasing of articles on commission for customers in India, and I had learned to be a judge of values. The beaver-lined coat he was wearing—for the evening, although it was late summer, was chilly—must have cost him a couple of hundred pounds, while his carelessly displayed jewellery
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