“Thanks, Petrie,” said Smith—­“If you would put the milk in a jug—­”

I was past wondering, so I simply went and fetched a jug, into which he poured the milk.  Then, with the trowel in his pocket, the plate of cold turbot in one hand and the milk jug in the other, he made for the door.  He had it open when another idea evidently occurred to him.

“I’ll trouble you for the pistol, Petrie.”

I handed him the pistol without a word.

“Don’t assume that I want to mystify you,” he added, “but the presence of any one else might jeopardize my plan.  I don’t expect to be long.”

The cold light of dawn flooded the hallway momentarily; then the door closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland Smith as he strode across the common in the early morning mist.  He was making for the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he reached them.

I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of sunrise.  A policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a belated reveler in evening clothes.  That sense of unreality assailed me again.  Out there in the gray mists a man who was vested with powers which rendered him a law unto himself, who had the British Government behind him in all that he might choose to do, who had been summoned from Rangoon to London on singular and dangerous business, was employing himself with a plate of cold turbot, a jug of milk, and a trowel!

Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the common; then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction.  Its lights twinkled yellowly through the grayness, but I was less concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary traveler who had descended from it.

As the car went rocking by below me, I strained my eyes in an endeavor more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the highroad, had struck out across the common.  It was that of a woman, who seemingly carried a bulky bag or parcel.

One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent powers in man which man, in modern times, neglects, or knows not how to develop.  I became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity respecting this lonely traveler who traveled at an hour so strange.  With no definite plan in mind, I went downstairs, took a cap from the rack, and walked briskly out of the house and across the common in a direction which I thought would enable me to head off the woman.

I had slightly miscalculated the distance, as Fate would have it, and with a patch of gorse effectually screening my approach, I came upon her, kneeling on the damp grass and unfastening the bundle which had attracted my attention.  I stopped and watched her.

She was dressed in bedraggled fashion in rusty black, wore a common black straw hat and a thick veil; but it seemed to me that the dexterous hands at work untying the bundle were slim and white; and I perceived a pair of hideous cotton gloves lying on the turf beside her.  As she threw open the wrappings and lifted out something that looked like a small shrimping net, I stepped around the bush, crossed silently the intervening patch of grass, and stood beside her.