Eustace shook his head, and rose and fetched the fat red book which makes London an English city.  Together they found the Gray’s Inn Road, and ran their eyes down to No. 606.

“‘Harding, G. J., Coffin Merchant and Undertaker.’  Not much information there,” muttered the doctor.

“Coffin merchant’s a bit unusual, isn’t it?” queried Eustace.

“I suppose he manufactures coffins wholesale for the trade.  Still, I didn’t know they called themselves that.  Anyhow, it seems, as though that handbill is a genuine piece of downright foolishness.  The idiot ought to be stopped advertising in that way.”

“I’ll go and see him myself tomorrow,” said Eustace bluntly.

“Well, he’s given you an invitation,” said the doctor, “so it’s only polite of you to go.  I’ll drop in here in the evening to hear what he’s like.  I expect that you’ll find him as mad as a hatter.”

“Something like that,” said Eustace, “or he wouldn’t give handbills to people like me.  I have no one to bury except myself.”

“No,” said the doctor in the hall, “I suppose you haven’t.  Don’t let him measure you for a coffin, Reynolds!”

Eustace laughed.

“We never know,” he said sententiously.

III

Next day was one of those gorgeous blue days of which November gives but few, and Eustace was glad to run out to Wimbledon for a game of golf, or rather for two.  It was therefore dusk before he made his way to the Gray’s Inn Road in search of the unexpected.  His attitude towards his errand despite the doctor’s laughter and the prosaic entry in the directory, was a little confused.  He could not help reflecting that after all the doctor had not seen the man with the little wise eyes, nor could he forget that Mr. G. J. Harding’s description of himself as a coffin merchant, to say the least of it, approached the unusual.  Yet he felt that it would be intolerable to chop the whole business without finding out what it all meant.  On the whole he would have preferred not to have discovered the riddle at all; but having found it, he could not rest without an answer.

No. 606, Gray’s Inn Road, was not like an ordinary undertaker’s shop.  The window was heavily draped with black cloth, but was otherwise unadorned.  There were no letters from grateful mourners, no little model coffins, no photographs of marble memorials.  Even more surprising was the absence of any name over the shop-door, so that the uninformed stranger could not possibly tell what trade was carried on within, or who was responsible for the management of the business.  This uncommercial modesty did not tend to remove Eustace’s doubts as to the sanity of Mr. G. J. Harding; but he opened the shop-door which started a large bell swinging noisily, and stepped over the threshold.  The shop was hardly more expressive inside than out.  A broad counter ran across it, cutting it in two, and in the partial gloom overhead a naked gas-burner whistled