in his pocket-book that we found it."

"Preserve it carefully, then, Miss Morstan, for it may prove to be of
use to us. I begin to suspect that this matter may turn out to be much
deeper and more subtle than I at first supposed. I must reconsider my
ideas." He leaned back in the cab, and I could see by his drawn brow
and his vacant eye that he was thinking intently. Miss Morstan and I
chatted in an undertone about our present expedition and its possible
outcome, but our companion maintained his impenetrable reserve until
the end of our journey.

It was a September evening, and not yet seven o'clock, but the day had
been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city.
Mud-colored clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the
Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw
a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare
from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and
threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare.
There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless
procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of
light,--sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind,
they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom
once more. I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy
evening, with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined
to make me nervous and depressed. I could see from Miss Morstan's
manner that she was suffering from the same feeling. Holmes alone
could rise superior to petty influences. He held his open note-book
upon his knee, and from time to time he jotted down figures and
memoranda in the light of his pocket-lantern.

At the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the
side-entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and
four-wheelers were rattling up, discharging their cargoes of
shirt-fronted men and beshawled, bediamonded women. We had hardly
reached the third pillar, which was our rendezvous, before a small,
dark, brisk man in the dress of a coachman accosted us.

"Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?" he asked.

"I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends," said she.

He bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes upon us.
"You will excuse me, miss," he said with a certain dogged manner, "but
I was to ask you to give me your word that ne