“All right,” I said. “Then answer it.”
He did, the very next day.
CHAPTER II
THE DISCOVERY OF THE MAN
I was examining, through a microscope, a fine intaglio which I had picked up for a song from a man in the neighbourhood of the docks—I have picked up some of the best things I have within a three-mile walk of the other side of Tower Hill—when Pugh came in. He was carrying a newspaper in his hand. I could see at once from his manner that his mind was “big with the fate of Rome.”
“Tress,” he began—blurting out without an instant’s loss of time the errand he had come upon—“I’ve found Jane Clinch!”
“Jane Clinch?” I had to consider for a second to whom he was alluding. I had not been thinking of nothing else since yesterday. Then I remembered. “Do you mean the woman of the phonograph?”
“
