reet. Like it, it is decorated with the
brass plates of physicians and the red lamps of surgeons, but, just as
the medical men in Harley Street, in keeping with that thoroughfare,
are broad, open, and with nothing to conceal, so those of Sowell Street,
like their hiding-place, shrink from observation, and their lives are as
sombre, secret, and dark as the street itself.

Within two turns of it Ford dismissed the taxicab. Giving the soiled
person a half-smoked cigarette, he told him to walk through Sowell
Street, and when he reached the place where he had picked up the paper,
to drop the cigarette as near that spot as possible. He then was to turn
into Weymouth Street and wait until Ford joined him. At a distance of
fifty feet Ford followed the man, and saw him, when in the middle of
the block, without apparent hesitation, drop the cigarette. The house in
front of which it fell was marked, like many others, by the brass
plate of a doctor. As Ford passed it he hit the cigarette with his
walking-stick, and drove it into an area. When he overtook the man, Ford
handed him another cigarette. "To make sure," he said, "C4 go back
and drop this in the place you found the paper." For a moment the man
hesitated.

"I might as well tell you," Ford continued, "that I knocked that last
cigarette so far from where you dropped it that you won't be able to use
it as a guide. So, if you don't really know where you found the paper,
you'll save my time by saying so." Instead of being confused by the
test, the man was amused by it. He laughed appreciatively admitted.
"You've caught me out fair, governor," "I want the 'arf-crown, and I
dropped the cigarette as near the place as I could. But I can't do it
again. It was this way," he explained. "I wasn't taking notice of the
houses. I was walking along looking into the gutter for stumps. I see
this paper wrapped about something round. 'It's a copper,' I thinks,
'jucked out of a winder to a organ-grinder.' I snatches it, and runs.
I didn't take no time to look at the houses. But it wasn't so far from
where I showed you; about the middle house in the street and on the left
'and side."

Ford had never considered the man as a serious element in the problem.
He believed him to know as little of the matter as he professed to know.
But it was essential he should keep that little to himself.

"No one will pay you for talking," Ford pointed out, "and I'll pay you
to keep quiet. So, if you say nothin