“Well, you got back soon, I see,” said Harlowe briskly.

“Yes,” said his client, without looking up, and with this notable distinction between himself and all other previous clients, that he seemed absolutely less interested than the lawyer.  “Yes, I’m here; and, upon my soul, I don’t exactly know why.”

“You told me of certain papers you had discovered,” said the lawyer suggestively.

“Oh, yes,” returned Thatcher with a slight yawn.  “I’ve got here some papers somewhere;”—­he began to feel in his coat pocket languidly;—­“but, by the way, this is a rather dreary and God-forsaken sort of place!  Let’s go up to Welker’s, and you can look at them over a bottle of champagne.”

“After I’ve looked at them, I’ve something to show you, myself,” said Harlowe; “and as for the champagne, we’ll have that in the other room, by and by.  At present I want to have my head clear, and yours too,—­if you’ll oblige me by becoming sufficiently interested in your own affairs to talk to me about them.”

Thatcher was gazing abstractedly at the fire.  He started.  “I dare say,” he began, “I’m not very interesting; yet it’s possible that my affairs have taken up a little too much of my time.  However,—­” he stopped, took from his pocket an envelope, and threw it on the desk,—­“there are some papers.  I don’t know what value they may be; that is for you to determine.  I don’t know that I’ve any legal right to their possession,—­that is for you to say, too.  They came to me in a queer way.  On the overland journey here I lost my bag, containing my few traps and some letters and papers ‘of no value,’ as the advertisements say, ‘to any but the owner.’  Well, the bag was lost, but the stage driver declares that it was stolen by a fellow-passenger,—­a man by the name of Giles, or Stiles, or Piles—­”

“Wiles,” said Harlowe earnestly.

“Yes,” continued Thatcher, suppressing a yawn; “yes, I guess you’re right,—­Wiles.  Well, the stage driver, finally believing this, goes to work and quietly and unostentatiously steals—­I say, have you got a cigar?”

“I’ll get you one.”

Harlowe disappeared in the adjoining room.  Thatcher dragged Harlowe’s heavy, revolving desk chair, which never before had been removed from its sacred position, to the fire, and began to poke the coals abstractedly.

Harlowe reappeared with cigars and matches.  Thatcher lit one mechanically, and said, between the pulls: 

“Do you—­ever—­talk—­to yourself?”

“No!—­why?”

“I thought I heard your voice just now in the other room.  Anyhow, this is an awful spooky place.  If I stayed here alone half an hour, I’d fancy that the Lord Chancellor up there would step down in his robes, out of his frame, to keep me company.”

“Nonsense!  When I’m busy, I often sit here and write until after midnight.  It’s so quiet!”

“D—­mnably so!”

“Well, to go back to the papers.  Somebody stole your bag, or you lost it.  You stole—­”