toward the bar-parlour; and at the signal the one-eyed man turned with
great deliberation and pulled a catch which released the door of that
apartment, close at our elbows. We stepped quickly within, and presently
the one-eyed man came rolling in by the other door.

"Well, good art'noon, Mr. Plummer, sir," he said, with a long
intonation and a wheeze. "Good art'noon, sir. You've bin a stranger
lately."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Moon," Plummer answered, briskly. "We've come for
a little information, my friend and I, which I'm sure you'll give us if
you can."

"All the years I've been knowed to the police," answered Mr. Moon,
slower and wheezier as he went on, "I've allus give 'em all the
information I could, an' that's a fact. Ain't it, Mr. Plummer?"

"Yes, of course, and we don't forget it. What we want now----"

"Allus tell 'em what--ever I knows," rumbled Mr. Moon, turning to me,
"allus; an' glad to do it, too. 'Cause why? Ain't they the police? Very
well then, I tells 'em. Allus tells 'em!"

Plummer waited patiently while Mr. Moon stared solemnly at me after this
speech. Then, when the patch slowly turned in my direction and the eye
in his, he resumed, "We want to know if you know anything about No. 8
Norbury Row?"

"Number eight," Mr. Moon mused, gazing abstractedly out of the window;
"num--ber eight. Ground-floor, Stevens, packing-case maker; first-floor,
Hutt, agent in fancy-goods; second-floor, dunno. Name o' Richardson,
bookbinder, on the door, but that's bin there five or six year now, and
it ain't the same tenant. Richardson's dead, an' this one don't bind no
books as I can see. I don't even remember seein' him _very_ often.
Tallish, darkish sort o' gent he is, and don't seem to have many
visitors. Well, then there's the top-floor--but I s'pose it's the same
tenant. Richardson used to have it for his workshop. That's all."

"Have you got a window we can watch it from?"

Mr. Moon turned ponderously round and without a word led the way to the
first floor, puffing enormously on the stairs.

"You _can_ see it from the club-room," he said at length, "but this 'ere
little place is better."

He pushed open a door, and we entered a small sitting-room. "That's the
place," he said, pointing. "There's a new packing-case a-standing
outside now."

Norbury Row presented an appearance common enough in parts of the city a
little way removed from the centre. A street of houses that once had
sheltered well-to-do re