"So they do by this light, but I think that by daylight we shall find
them to be a dark, reddish-brown. You can see the colour now if you look
at the smaller fragments of the one that is crushed."

He handed me his lens, and, when I had verified his statement, he
produced from his pocket a small tin box with a closely-fitting lid in
which he deposited the paper, having first folded it up into a small
parcel.

"We will put the pencil in too," said he; and, as he returned the box to
his pocket he added: "you had better get one of these little boxes from
Polton. If is often useful to have a safe receptacle for small and
fragile articles."

He folded up and replaced the dead man's clothes as we had found them.
Then, observing a pair of shoes standing by the wall, he picked them up
and looked them over thoughtfully, paying special attention to the backs
of the soles and the fronts of the heels.

"I suppose we may take it," said he, "that these are the shoes that poor
Jeffrey wore on the night of his death. At any rate there seem to be no
others. He seems to have been a fairly clean walker. The streets were
shockingly dirty that day, as I remember most distinctly. Do you see any
slippers? I haven't noticed any."

He opened and peeped into a cupboard in which an overcoat surmounted by
a felt hat hung from a peg like an attenuated suicide; he looked in all
the corners and into the sitting-room, but no slippers were to be seen.

"Our friend seems to have had surprisingly little regard for comfort,"
Thorndyke remarked. "Think of spending the winter evenings in damp boots
by a gas fire!"

"Perhaps the opium-pipe compensated," said I; "or he may have gone to
bed early."

"But he did not. The night porter used to see the light in his rooms at
one o'clock in the morning. In the sitting-room, too, you remember. But
he seems to have been in the habit of reading in bed--or perhaps
smoking--for here is a candlestick with the remains of a whole dynasty
of candles in it. As there is gas in the room, he couldn't have wanted
the candle to undress by. He used stearine candles, too; not the common
paraffin variety. I wonder why he went to that expense."

"Perhaps the smell of the paraffin candle spoiled the aroma of the
opium," I suggested; to which Thorndyke made no reply but continued his
inspection of the room, pulling out the drawer of the washstand--which
contained a single, worn-out nail-brush--and even picking up and
exam