another shop at the Museum end,
commercial activities had ceased there. The door of a block of
residential chambers almost immediately opposite to the shop which was
my objective, threw out a beam of light across the pavement; not more
than two or three people were visible upon either side of the street.

I turned the knob of the door and entered the shop.

The same dark and immobile individual whom I had seen before, and
whose nationality defied conjecture, came out from the curtained
doorway at the back to greet me.

"Good evening, sir," he said monotonously, with a slight inclination
of the head; "is there anything which you desire to inspect?"

"I merely wish to take a look round," I replied. "I have no particular
item in view."

The shopman inclined his head again, swept a yellow hand
comprehensively about, as if to include the entire stock, and seated
himself on a chair behind the counter.

I lighted a cigarette with such an air of nonchalance as I could
summon to the operation, and began casually to inspect the varied
articles of _virtu_ loading the shelves and tables about me. I am
bound to confess that I retain no one definite impression of this
tour. Vases I handled, statuettes, Egyptian scarabs, bead necklaces,
illuminated missals, portfolios of old prints, jade ornaments,
bronzes, fragments of rare lace, early printed books, Assyrian
tablets, daggers, Roman rings, and a hundred other curiosities,
leisurely, and I trust with apparent interest, yet without forming
the slightest impression respecting any one of them.

Probably I employed myself in this way for half an hour or more, and
whilst my hands busied themselves among the stock of J. Salaman, my
mind was occupied entirely elsewhere. Furtively I was studying the
shopman himself, a human presentment of a Chinese idol; I was
listening and watching: especially I was watching the curtained
doorway at the back of the shop.

"We close at about this time, sir," the man interrupted me, speaking
in the emotionless, monotonous voice which I had noted before.

I replaced upon the glass counter a little Sekhet boat, carved in wood
and highly coloured, and glanced up with a start. Truly my methods
were amateurish; I had learnt nothing; I was unlikely to learn
anything. I wondered how Nayland Smith would have conducted such an
inquiry, and I racked my brains for some means of penetrating into the
recesses of the establishment. Indeed I had been seeking such