on't know--I might--he was certainly not striking enough to be
specially remembered."

"Exactly," he said, while he leant forward excitedly, for all the world
like a Jack-in-the-box let loose. "Precisely; and you are a
journalist--call yourself one, at least--and it should be part of your
business to notice and describe people. I don't mean only the wonderful
personage with the clear Saxon features, the fine blue eyes, the noble
brow and classic face, but the ordinary person--the person who
represents ninety out of every hundred of his own kind--the average
Englishman, say, of the middle classes, who is neither very tall nor
very short, who wears a moustache which is neither fair nor dark, but
which masks his mouth, and a top hat which hides the shape of his head
and brow, a man, in fact, who dresses like hundreds of his
fellow-creatures, moves like them, speaks like them, has no peculiarity.

"Try to describe _him_, to recognize him, say a week hence, among his
other eighty-nine doubles; worse still, to swear his life away, if he
happened to be implicated in some crime, wherein _your_ recognition of
him would place the halter round his neck.

"Try that, I say, and having utterly failed you will more readily
understand how one of the greatest scoundrels unhung is still at large,
and why the mystery on the Underground Railway was never cleared up.

"I think it was the only time in my life that I was seriously tempted to
give the police the benefit of my own views upon the matter. You see,
though I admire the brute for his cleverness, I did not see that his
being unpunished could possibly benefit any one.

"In these days of tubes and motor traction of all kinds, the
old-fashioned 'best, cheapest, and quickest route to City and West End'
is often deserted, and the good old Metropolitan Railway carriages
cannot at any time be said to be overcrowded. Anyway, when that
particular train steamed into Aldgate at about 4 p.m. on March 18th
last, the first-class carriages were all but empty.

"The guard marched up and down the platform looking into all the
carriages to see if anyone had left a halfpenny evening paper behind for
him, and opening the door of one of the first-class compartments, he
noticed a lady sitting in the further corner, with her head turned away
towards the window, evidently oblivious of the fact that on this line
Aldgate is the terminal station.

"'Where are you for, lady?' he said.

"The lady did no