"you see, watson," he explained in the early hours of the morning as we sat over a glass of whisky and soda in baker street, "it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of the league, and the copying of the encyclopædia, must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of hours every day. it was a curious way of managing it, but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better.