These thoughts passed through my mind so rapidly that by the time Mrs. Hornby had run her pocket to earth I had quite recovered from the momentary shock.

“Ah! here it is,” she exclaimed triumphantly, producing an obese Morocco purse.  “I put it in here for safety, knowing how liable one is to get one’s pocket picked in these crowded London streets.”  She opened the bulky receptacle and drew it out after the manner of a concertina, exhibiting multitudinous partitions, all stuffed with pieces of paper, coils of tape and sewing silk, buttons, samples of dress materials and miscellaneous rubbish, mingled indiscriminately with gold, silver, and copper coins.

“Now just run your eye through that, Dr. Jervis,” she said, handing me a folded paper, “and give me your advice on my answers.”

I opened the paper and read:  “The Committee of the Society for the Protection of Paralysed Idiots, in submitting this—­”

“Oh! that isn’t it; I have given you the wrong paper.  How silly of me!  That is the appeal of—­you remember, Juliet, dear, that troublesome person—­I had, really, to be quite rude, you know, Dr. Jervis; I had to tell him that charity begins at home, although, thank Heaven! none of us are paralysed, but we must consider our own, mustn’t we?  And then—­”

“Do you think this is the one, dear?” interposed Juliet, in whose pale cheek the ghost of a dimple had appeared.  “It looks cleaner than most of the others.”

She selected a folded paper from the purse which Mrs. Hornby was holding with both hands extended to its utmost, as though she were about to produce a burst of music, and, opening it, glanced at its contents.

“Yes, this is your evidence,” she said, and passed the paper to me.

I took the document from her hand and, in spite of the conclusion at which I had arrived, examined it with eager curiosity.  And at the very first glance I felt my head swim and my heart throb violently.  For the paper was headed:  “Evidence respecting the Thumbograph,” and in every one of the five small “e’s” that occurred in that sentence I could see plainly by the strong out-door light a small break or interval in the summit of the loop.

I was thunderstruck.

One coincidence was quite possible and even probable; but the two together, and the second one of so remarkable a character, were beyond all reasonable limits of probability.  The identification did not seem to admit of a doubt, and yet—­

“Our legal adviser appears to be somewhat preoccupied,” remarked Juliet, with something of her old gaiety of manner; and, in fact, though I held the paper in my hand, my gaze was fixed unmeaningly on an adjacent lamp-post.  As she spoke, I pulled myself together, and, scanning the paper hastily, was fortunate enough to find in the first paragraph matter requiring comment.

“I observe, Mrs. Hornby,” I said, “that in answer to the first question, ‘Whence did you obtain the “Thumbograph"?’ you say, ’I do not remember clearly; I think I must have bought it at a railway bookstall.’  Now I understood that it was brought home and given to you by Walter himself.”