seize the coat, then, and be in the act of throwing it out, when it would occur

to him that it would swim and not sink. He has little time, for he has heard

the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he

has already heard from his Lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up

the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret hoard,

where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all the coins

upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure of the

coat’s sinking. He throws it out, and would have done the same with the

other garments had not he heard the rush of steps below, and only just had time

to close the window when the police appeared.”


“It certainly sounds feasible.”


“Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a better.

Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the station, but it could

not be shown that there had ever before been anything against him. He had for

years been known as a professional beggar, but his life appeared to have been a

very quiet and innocent one. There the matter stands at present, and the

questions which have to be solved—what Neville St. Clair was doing in the

opium den, what happened to him when there, where is he now, and what Hugh

Boone had to do with his disappearance—are all as far from a solution as

ever. I confess that I cannot recall any case within my experience which looked

at the first glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties.”


While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of events, we had

been whirling through the outskirts of the great town until the last straggling

houses had been left behind, and we rattled along with a country hedge upon

either side of us. Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered

villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.