About six months before we made his acquaintance he had been compelled to leave his pleasant suite of apartments in New Bond Street, and had, since that time, been the tenant of a shabby bed-room in a shabby little out-of-the-way street.  When in town he took his meals at his club, and to that address all letters and papers for him were sent.  But of late even the purlieus of his club had become dangerous ground.  Round the palatial portal duns seemed to hover and flit mysteriously, so that the task of reaching the secure haven of the smoking-room was one of danger and difficulty; while the return voyage to the shabby little bed-room in the shabby little street could be accomplished in safety only by frequent tacking and much skilful pilotage, to avoid running foul of various rocks and quicksands by the way.

But now, after a six weeks’ absence in Scotland, Captain Ducie felt that for a day or two at least he was tolerably safe.  He felt like an old fox venturing into the open after the noise of the hunt has died away in the distance, who knows that for a little while he is safe from molestation.  How delightful town looked, he thought, after the dull life he had been leading at Stapleton.  He had managed to screw another fifty pounds out of Barnstake, and this very evening, the first of his return, he would go to Tom Dawson’s rooms and there refresh himself with a little quiet faro or chicken-hazard:  very quiet it must of necessity be, unless he saw that it was going to turn out one of his lucky evenings, in which case he would try to “put up” the table and finish with a fortunate coup.  But there was one little task that he had set himself to do before going out for the evening, and he proceeded to consider it over while discussing his cup of strong green tea and his strip of dry toast.

To aid him in considering the matter he brought out of an inner pocket the stolen manuscript of M. Platzoff.

While in Scotland, when shut up in his own room of a night, he had often exhumed the Ms., and had set himself seriously to the task of deciphering it, only to acknowledge at the end of a terrible half-hour that he was ignominiously beaten.  Whereupon he would console himself by saying that such a task was “not in his line,” that his brains were not of that pettifogging order which would allow of his sitting down with the patience requisite to master the secret of the figures.  To-night, for the twentieth time, he brought out the Ms. He again read the prefatory note carefully over, although he could almost have said it by heart, and once more his puzzled eyes ran over the complicated array of figures, till at last, with an impatient “Pish!” he flung the Ms. to the other side of the table, and poured out for himself another cup of tea.

“I must send it to Bexell,” he said to himself.  “If anyone can make it out, he can.  And yet I don’t like making another man as wise as myself in such a matter.  However, there is no help for it in the present case.  If I keep the Ms. by me till doomsday I shall never succeed in making out the meaning of those confounded figures.”