When he left school he went to Oxford.  His life there was as lonely as it had been at school.  The dirty, untidy, ink-stained, and chemical-stained little boy grew up into a tall, lank, slovenly-dressed man, who kept entirely to himself, not because he cherished any dislike or disdain for his fellow-creatures, but because he seemed to be entirely absorbed in his own thoughts and isolated from the world by a barrier of dreams.

He did well at Oxford, and when he went down he passed high into the Civil Service and became a clerk in a Government office.  There he kept as much to himself as ever.  He did his work rapidly and well, for this man, who seemed so slovenly in his person, had an accurate mind, and was what was called a good clerk, although his incurable absent-mindedness once or twice caused him to forget certain matters of importance.

His fellow clerks treated him as a crank and as a joke, but none of them, try as they would, could get to know him or win his confidence.  They used to wonder what Fletcher did with his spare time, what were his pursuits, what were his hobbies, if he had any.  They suspected that Fletcher had some hobby of an engrossing kind, since in everyday life he conveyed the impression of a man who is walking in his sleep, who acts mechanically and automatically.  Somewhere else, they thought, in some other circumstances, he must surely wake up and take a living interest in somebody or in something.

Yet had they followed him home to his small room in Canterbury-mansions they would have been astonished.  For when he returned from the office after a hard day’s work he would do nothing more engrossing than slowly to turn over the leaves of a book in which there were elaborate drawings and diagrams of locomotives and other kinds of engines.  And on Sunday he would take a train to one of the large junctions and spend the whole day in watching express trains go past, and in the evening would return again to London.

One day after he had returned from the office somewhat earlier than usual, he was telephoned for.  He had no telephone in his own room, but he could use a public telephone which was attached to the building.  He went into the small box, but found on reaching the telephone that he had been cut off by the exchange.  He imagined that he had been rung up by the office, so he asked to be given their number.  As he did so his eye caught an advertisement which was hung just over the telephone.  It was an elaborate design in black and white, pointing out the merits of a particular kind of soap called the Venus:  a classical lady, holding a looking-glass in one hand and a cake of this invaluable soap in the other, was standing in a sphere surrounded by pointed rays, which was no doubt intended to represent the most brilliant of the planets.