“Circumstances attending the acquirement of the specimen numbered ‘twenty-five’ in the Anthropological Series (A.  Osteology.  B. Reduced dry preparations).

“The months that followed the events connected with the acquirement of the specimens 23 and 24 brought me nothing but aching suspense and hope deferred.  The pursuit of the common criminal I had abandoned since I had got scent of my real quarry.  The concussor lay idle in its basket; the cellar steps were greased no more.  I had but a passive role to play until the hour should strike to usher in the final scene—­if that should ever be.  Though the term of my long exile in East London was drawing nigh, its approach was unseen by me.  I could but wait; and what is harder than waiting?

“I had made cautious inquiries among the alien population.  But no one knew Piragoff—­or, at least, admitted any knowledge of him; and as to the police, when they had made a few arrests and then released the prisoners, they appeared to let the matter drop.  The newspapers were, of course, more active.  One of them described circumstantially how ’the three anarchists who escaped from the house in Saul Street’ had been seen together in an East End restaurant; and several others followed from day to day the supposed whereabouts of a mysterious person known as ‘Paul the Plumber,’ whom the police declared to be a picturesque myth.  But for me there was one salient fact:  of those three ruffians one was still at large, and no one seemed to have any knowledge of him.

“It was some four months later that I again caught up the scent.  A certain Friday evening early in February found me listlessly tidying up the shop; for the Jewish Sabbath had begun and customers were few.  But about eight o’clock a man strode in jauntily, hung up his hat and seated himself in the operating chair; and at that moment a second man entered and sat down to wait.  I glanced at this latter, and in an instant my gorge rose at him.  I cannot tell why.  To the scientific mind, intuitions are abhorrent.  They are mostly wrong and wholly unreasonable.  But as I looked at that man a wave of instinctive dislike and suspicion swept over me.  He was, indeed, an ill-looking fellow enough.  A broad, lozenge-shaped Tartar face, with great cheekbones and massive jaws; a low forehead surmounted by a dense brush of up-standing grayish-brown hair; beetling brows and eyes deep-set, fierce and furtive; combined to make a sufficiently unprepossessing countenance.  Nor was his manner more pleasing.  He scowled forbiddingly at me, he scrutinized the other customer, craning sideways to survey him in the mirror, he looked about the shop and he stared inquisitively at the parlor door.  Every movement was expressive of watchful, uneasy suspicion.