show you--soap. Here's another--match. This is
one he left the first morning--daily gazette. I leave that paper with
his breakfast every morning."

"Dear me, Watson," said Homes, staring with great curiosity at the
slips of foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, "this is
certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can understand; but why print?
Printing is a clumsy process. Why not write? What would it suggest,
Watson?"

"That he desired to conceal his handwriting."

"But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady should have a
word of his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then, again, why
such laconic messages?"

"I cannot imagine."

"It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The words are
written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not unusual
pattern. You will observe that the paper is torn away at the side here
after the printing was done, so that the 's' of 'soap' is partly gone.
Suggestive, Watson, is it not?"

"Of caution?"

"Exactly. There was evidently some mark, some thumbprint, something
which might give a clue to the person's identity. Now. Mrs. Warren,
you say that the man was of middle size, dark, and bearded. What age
would he be?"

"Youngish, sir--not over thirty."

"Well, can you give me no further indications?"

"He spoke good English, sir, and yet I thought he was a foreigner by
his accent."

"And he was well dressed?"

"Very smartly dressed, sir--quite the gentleman. Dark clothes--nothing
you would note."

"He gave no name?"

"No, sir."

"And has had no letters or callers?"

"None."

"But surely you or the girl enter his room of a morning?"

"No, sir; he looks after himself entirely."

"Dear me! that is certainly remarkable. What about his luggage?"

"He had one big brown bag with him--nothing else."

"Well, we don't seem to have much material to help us. Do you say
nothing has come out of that room--absolutely nothing?"

The landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shook out two
burnt matches and a cigarette-end upon the table.

"They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because I had
heard that you can read great things out of small ones."

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

"There is nothing here," said he. "The matches have, of course, been
used to light cigarettes. That is obvious from the shortness of the
burnt end. Half the match is consumed in lighting a pipe or cigar.
But, dear me!