anyone else. But the possibility did not realize itself in practice.
There was the personal equation. Thorndyke's brain was not an ordinary
brain. Facts of which his mind instantly perceived the relation remained
to other people unconnected and without meaning. His powers of
observation and rapid inference were almost incredible, as I had noticed
again and again, and always with undiminished wonder. He seemed to take
in everything at a single glance and in an instant to appreciate the
meaning of everything that he had seen.

Here was a case in point. I had myself seen all that he had seen, and,
indeed, much more; for I had looked on the very people and witnessed
their actions, whereas he had never set eyes on any of them. I had
examined the little handful of rubbish that he had gathered up so
carefully, and would have flung it back under the grate without a qualm.
Not a glimmer of light had I perceived in the cloud of mystery, nor even
a hint of the direction in which to seek enlightenment. And yet
Thorndyke had, in some incomprehensible manner, contrived to piece
together facts that I had probably not even observed, and that so
completely that he had already, in these few days, narrowed down the
field of inquiry to quite a small area.

From these reflections I returned to the objects on the table. The
spectacles, as things of which I had some expert knowledge, were not so
profound a mystery to me. A pair of spectacles might easily afford good
evidence for identification; that I perceived clearly enough. Not a
ready-made pair, picked up casually at a shop, but a pair constructed by
a skilled optician to remedy a particular defect of vision and to fit a
particular face. And such were the spectacles before me. The build of
the frames was peculiar; the existence of a cylindrical lens--which I
could easily make out from the remaining fragments--showed that one
glass had been cut to a prescribed shape and almost certainly ground to
a particular formula, and also that the distance between centres must
have been carefully secured. Hence these spectacles had an individual
character. But it was manifestly impossible to inquire of all the
spectacle-makers in Europe--for the glasses were not necessarily made in
England. As confirmation the spectacles might be valuable; as a
starting-point they were of no use at all.

From the spectacles I turned to the pieces of reed. These were what had
given Thorndyke his start. Would they gi