you two
gentlemen happen to have a pinch of snuff about him?' Finding that
neither had, he did quite as well without it, and read on.

'Have you heard these read?' he then demanded of the honest man.

'No,' said Riderhood.

'Then you had better hear them.' And so read them aloud, in an official
manner.

'Are these notes correct, now, as to the information you bring here and
the evidence you mean to give?' he asked, when he had finished reading.

'They are. They are as correct,' returned Mr Riderhood, 'as I am. I
can't say more than that for 'em.'

'I'll take this man myself, sir,' said Mr Inspector to Lightwood. Then
to Riderhood, 'Is he at home? Where is he? What's he doing? You have
made it your business to know all about him, no doubt.'

Riderhood said what he did know, and promised to find out in a few
minutes what he didn't know.

'Stop,' said Mr Inspector; 'not till I tell you: We mustn't look like
business. Would you two gentlemen object to making a pretence of taking
a glass of something in my company at the Fellowships? Well-conducted
house, and highly respectable landlady.'

They replied that they would be happy to substitute a reality for the
pretence, which, in the main, appeared to be as one with Mr Inspector's
meaning.

'Very good,' said he, taking his hat from its peg, and putting a pair of
handcuffs in his pocket as if they were his gloves. 'Reserve!' Reserve
saluted. 'You know where to find me?' Reserve again saluted. 'Riderhood,
when you have found out concerning his coming home, come round to the
window of Cosy, tap twice at it, and wait for me. Now, gentlemen.'

As the three went out together, and Riderhood slouched off from under
the trembling lamp his separate way, Lightwood asked the officer what he
thought of this?

Mr Inspector replied, with due generality and reticence, that it was
always more likely that a man had done a bad thing than that he hadn't.
That he himself had several times 'reckoned up' Gaffer, but had never
been able to bring him to a satisfactory criminal total. That if this
story was true, it was only in part true. That the two men, very shy
characters, would have been jointly and pretty equally 'in it;' but that
this man had 'spotted' the other, to save himself and get the money.

'And I think,' added Mr Inspector, in conclusion, 'that if all goes
well with him, he's in a tolerable way of getting it. But as this is the
Fellowships, gentlemen, where the lights a