"Yes," he answered. "You see, it's a queer trade this of the Doctor's,
and there are some queer secrets in it. Now, for instance, what do you
make of this?"

He produced from his pocket a leather case, whence he took a piece of
paper which he handed to me. On it was a neatly executed drawing of what
looked like one of a set of chessmen, with the dimensions written on the
margin.

"It looks like a pawn--one of the Staunton pattern," I said.

"Just what I thought; but it isn't. I've got to make twenty-four of
them, and what the Doctor is going to do with them fairly beats me."

"Perhaps he has invented some new game," I suggested facetiously. "He
is always inventing new games and playing them mostly in courts of law,
and then the other players generally lose. But this is a puzzler, and no
mistake. Twenty-four of these to be turned up in the best-seasoned
boxwood! What can they be for? Something to do with the experiments he
is carrying on upstairs at this very moment, I expect." He shook his
head, and, having carefully returned the drawing to his pocket-book,
said, in a solemn tone--"Sir, there are times when the Doctor makes me
fairly dance with curiosity. And this is one of them."

Although not afflicted with a curiosity so acute as that of Polton, I
found myself speculating at intervals on the nature of my colleague's
experiments and the purpose of the singular little objects which he had
ordered to be made; but I was unacquainted with any of the cases on
which he was engaged, excepting that of Reuben Hornby, and with the
latter I was quite unable to connect a set of twenty-four boxwood
chessmen. Moreover, on this day, I was to accompany Juliet on her second
visit to Holloway, and that circumstance gave me abundant mental
occupation of another kind.

At lunch, Thorndyke was animated and talkative but not communicative. He
"had some work in the laboratory that he must do himself," he said, but
gave no hint as to its nature; and as soon as our meal was finished, he
returned to his labours, leaving me to pace up and down the walk,
listening with ridiculous eagerness for the sound of the hansom that was
to transport me to the regions of the blest, and--incidentally--to
Holloway Prison.

When I returned to the Temple, the sitting-room was empty and hideously
neat, as the result of Polton's spring-cleaning efforts. My colleague
was evidently still at work in the laboratory, and, from the
circumstance that the tea-t