public-house at the corner of Meek
Street and Pineapple Court, which locality,--as all men well versed
with London are aware,--lies within one minute's walk of the top of
Gray's Inn Lane. Gager, during his conference with his colleague
Bunfit, had been dressed in plain black clothes; but in spite of his
plain clothes he looked every inch a policeman. There was a stiffness
about his limbs, and, at the same time, a sharpness in his eyes,
which, in the conjunction with the locality in which he was placed,
declared his profession beyond the possibility of mistake. Nor, in
that locality, would he have desired to be taken for anything else.
But as he entered the "Rising Sun" in Meek Street, there was nothing
of the policeman about him. He might probably have been taken for a
betting man, with whom the world had latterly gone well enough to
enable him to maintain that sleek, easy, greasy appearance which
seems to be the beau-ideal of a betting man's personal ambition.
"Well, Mr. Howard," said the lady at the bar, "a sight of you is good
for sore eyes."

"Six penn'orth of brandy,--warm, if you please, my dear," said the
pseudo-Howard, as he strolled easily into an inner room, with which
he seemed to be quite familiar. He seated himself in an old-fashioned
wooden arm-chair, gazed up at the gas lamp, and stirred his liquor
slowly. Occasionally he raised the glass to his lips, but he did not
seem to be at all intent upon his drinking. When he entered the room,
there had been a gentleman and a lady there, whose festive moments
seemed to be disturbed by some slight disagreement; but Howard, as he
gazed at the lamp, paid no attention to them whatever. They soon left
the room, their quarrel and their drink finished together, and others
dropped in and out. Mr. Howard's "warm" must almost have become
cold, so long did he sit there, gazing at the gas lamps rather than
attending to his brandy and water. Not a word did he speak to any one
for more than an hour, and not a sign did he show of impatience. At
last he was alone;--but had not been so for above a minute when in
stepped a jaunty little man, certainly not more than five feet high,
about three or four and twenty years of age, dressed with great care,
with his trousers sticking to his legs, with a French chimney-pot hat
on his head, very much peaked fore and aft and closely turned up at
the sides. He had a bright-coloured silk handkerchief round his neck,
and a white shirt, of which