avail, and merely a useless expense."

"Silence!" cried Confucius, impatiently. "How can the gentleman proceed,
with all this conversation going on in the rear?"

Hawkshaw and Le Coq immediately subsided, and the stranger went on.

"It was in this way that I treated the strange case of the lost tiara,"
resumed the stranger. "Mental concentration upon seemingly insignificant
details alone enabled me to bring about the desired results in that
instance. A brief outline of the case is as follows: It was late one
evening in the early spring of 1894. The London season was at its height.
Dances, fêtes of all kinds, opera, and the theatres were in full blast,
when all of a sudden society was paralyzed by a most audacious robbery. A
diamond tiara valued at £50,000 sterling had been stolen from the Duchess
of Brokedale, and under circumstances which threw society itself and every
individual in it under suspicion--even his Royal Highness the Prince
himself, for he had danced frequently with the Duchess, and was known to
be a great admirer of her tiara. It was at half-past eleven o'clock at
night that the news of the robbery first came to my ears. I had been
spending the evening alone in my library making notes for a second volume
of my memoirs, and, feeling somewhat depressed, I was on the point of
going out for my usual midnight walk on Hampstead Heath, when one of my
servants, hastily entering, informed me of the robbery. I changed my mind
in respect to my midnight walk immediately upon receipt of the news, for I
knew that before one o'clock some one would call upon me at my lodgings
with reference to this robbery. It could not be otherwise. Any mystery of
such magnitude could no more be taken to another bureau than elephants
could fly--"