on his
inscrutable forehead.

"Pray remember," he said coldly, "that it was through such an
apparently trivial question that I found out Why Paul Ferroll Killed
His Wife, and What Happened to Jones!"

I became dumb at once. He paused for a moment, and then suddenly
changing back to his usual pitiless, analytical style, he said: "When I
say these are trifles, they are so in comparison to an affair that is
now before me. A crime has been committed,--and, singularly enough,
against myself. You start," he said. "You wonder who would have dared
to attempt it. So did I; nevertheless, it has been done. I have been
ROBBED!"

"YOU robbed! You, Hemlock Jones, the Terror of Peculators!" I gasped
in amazement, arising and gripping the table as I faced him.

"Yes! Listen. I would confess it to no other. But YOU who have
followed my career, who know my methods; you, for whom I have partly
lifted the veil that conceals my plans from ordinary humanity,--you,
who have for years rapturously accepted my confidences, passionately
admired my inductions and inferences, placed yourself at my beck and
call, become my slave, groveled at my feet, given up your practice
except those few unremunerative and rapidly decreasing patients to
whom, in moments of abstraction over MY problems, you have administered
strychnine for quinine and arsenic for Epsom salts; you, who have
sacrificed anything and everybody to me,--YOU I make my confidant!"

I arose and embraced him warmly, yet he was already so engrossed in
thought that at the same moment he mechanically placed his hand upon
his watch chain as if to consult the time. "Sit down," he said. "Have
a cigar?"

"I have given up cigar smoking," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

I hesitated, and perhaps colored. I had really given it up because,
with my diminished practice, it was too expensive. I could afford only
a pipe. "I prefer a pipe," I said laughingly. "But tell me of this
robbery. What have you lost?"

He arose, and planting himself before the fire with his hands under his
coattails, looked down upon me reflectively for a moment. "Do you
remember the cigar case presented to me by the Turkish Ambassador for
discovering the missing favorite of the Grand Vizier in the fifth
chorus girl at the Hilarity Theatre? It was that one. I mean the cigar
case. It was incrusted with diamonds."

"And the largest one had been supplanted by paste," I said.

"Ah," he said, with a reflective