up his old box, and went off swinging it in his
left hand."

Spargo went away down Fleet Street, seeing nobody. He muttered to
himself, and he was still muttering when he got into his room at the
office. And what he muttered was the same thing, repeated over and over
again:

"Six hours--six hours--six hours! Those six hours!"

Next morning the _Watchman_ came out with four leaded columns of
up-to-date news about the Marbury Case, and right across the top of the
four ran a heavy double line of great capitals, black and staring:--

WHO SAW JOHN MARBURY BETWEEN 3.15 P.M. AND 9.15 P.M. ON THE DAY
PRECEDING HIS MURDER?

CHAPTER TEN

THE LEATHER BOX

Whether Spargo was sanguine enough to expect that his staring headline
would bring him information of the sort he wanted was a secret which he
kept to himself. That a good many thousands of human beings must have
set eyes on John Marbury between the hours which Spargo set forth in
that headline was certain; the problem was--What particular owner or
owners of a pair or of many pairs of those eyes would remember him? Why
should they remember him? Walters and his wife had reason to remember
him; Criedir had reason to remember him; so had Myerst; so had William
Webster. But between a quarter past three, when he left the London and
Universal Safe Deposit, and a quarter past nine, when he sat down by
Webster's side in the lobby of the House of Commons, nobody seemed to
have any recollection of him except Mr. Fiskie, the hatter, and he only
remembered him faintly, and because Marbury had bought a fashionable
cloth cap at his shop. At any rate, by noon of that day, nobody had
come forward with any recollection of him. He must have gone West from
seeing Myerst, because he bought his cap at Fiskie's; he must
eventually have gone South-West, because he turned up at Westminster.
But where else did he go? What did he do? To whom did he speak? No
answer came to these questions.

"That shows," observed young Mr. Ronald Breton, lazing an hour away in
Spargo's room at the _Watchman_ at that particular hour which is
neither noon nor afternoon, wherein even busy men do nothing, "that
shows how a chap can go about London as if he were merely an ant that
had strayed into another ant-heap than his own. Nobody notices."

"You'd better go and read up a little elementary entomology, Breton,"
said Spargo. "I don't know much about it myself, but I've a pretty good
idea that when an ant