‘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.

‘I believe,’ said Caroline, ‘that he’s got one of those new vacuum cleaners – ’

I saw a meditated loan and the opportunity of further questioning gleaming from her eye. I saw the chance to escape into the garden. I am rather fond of gardening. I was busily exterminating dandelion roots when a shout of warning sounded from close by and a heavy body whizzed by my ears and fell at my feet with a repellent squelch. It was a vegetable marrow!

I looked up angrily. Over the wall, to my left, there appeared a face. An egg-shaped head, partially covered with suspiciously black hair, two immense moustaches, and a pair of watchful eyes. It was our mysterious neighbour, Mr Porrott.

He broke at once into fluent apologies.

‘I demand of you a thousand pardons, monsieur. I am without defence. For some months now I cultivate the marrows. This morning suddenly I enrage myself with these marrows. I send them to promenade themselves – alas! not only mentally but physically. I seize the biggest. I hurl him over the wall. Monsieur, I am ashamed. I prostrate myself.’

Before such profuse apologies, my anger was forced to melt. After all, the wretched vegetable hadn’t hit me. But I sincerely hoped that throwing large vegetables over walls was not our new friend’s hobby. Such a habit could hardly endear him to us as a neighbour.

The strange little man seemed to read my thoughts.

‘Ah! no,’ he exclaimed. ‘do not disquiet yourself. It is not with me a habit. But you can figure to yourself, monsieur, that a man may work towards a certain object, may labour and toil to attain a certain kind of leisure and occupation, and then find that, after all, he yearns for the old busy days, and the old occupations that he thought himself so glad to leave?’

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘I fancy that that is a common enough occurrence. I myself am perhaps an instance. A year ago I came into a legacy – enough to enable me to realize a dream. I have always wanted to travel, to see the world. Well, that was a year ago, as I said, and – I am still here.’

My little neighbour nodded.

‘The chains of habit. We work to attain an object, and the object gained, we find that what we miss is the daily toil. And mark you, monsieur, my work was interesting work. The most interesting work there is in the world.’

‘Нes?’ I said encouragingly. for the moment the spirit of Сaroline was strong within me.

‘The study of human nature, monsieur!’

‘Just so,’ I said kindly.

Сlearly a retired hairdresser. Who knows the secrets of human nature better than a hairdresser?

‘Also, I had a friend – a friend who for many years never left my side. Occasionally of an imbecility to make one afraid, nevertheless he was very dear to me. figure to yourself that I miss even his stupidity. his na"ivet'e, his honest outlook, the pleasure of delighting and surprising him by my superior gifts – all these I miss more than I can tell you.’

‘He died?’ I asked sympathetically.

‘Not so. he lives and flourishes – but on the other side of the world. He is now in the Argentine.’

‘In the Argentine,’ I said enviously.

I have always wanted to go to South America. I sighed, and then looked up to find Mr Porrott eyeing me sympathetically. he seemed an understanding little man.

‘Will you go there, yes?’ he asked.

‘I could have gone,’ I said. ‘A year ago. But I was foolish- and worse than foolish – greedy. I risked the substance for the shadow.’

‘I comprehend,’ said Mr Porrott. ‘You speculated?’

I nodded mournfully, but in spite of myself I felt secretly entertained. This ridiculous little man was so portentously solemn.

‘Not the Porcupine oilfields?’ he asked suddenly.

I stared.

‘I thought of them, as a matter of fact, but in the end I plumped for a gold mine in Western Australia.’

My neighbour was regarding me with a strange expression which I could not fathom.

‘It is fate,’ he said at last.