perplexing case) in which the criminal has not escaped. Mind! I don't
charge the police with neglecting their work. No doubt they do their
best, and take the greatest pains in following the routine to which they
have been trained. It is their misfortune, not their fault, that there
is no man of superior intelligence among them--I mean no man who is
capable, in great emergencies, of placing himself above conventional
methods, and following a new way of his own. There have been such men in
the police--men naturally endowed with that faculty of mental analysis
which can decompose a mystery, resolve it into its component parts,
and find the clue at the bottom, no matter how remote from ordinary
observation it may be. But those men have died, or have retired. One
of them would have been invaluable to you in the case you have just
mentioned to me. As things are, unless you are wrong in believing in the
young lady's innocence, the person who has stolen that bank-note will
be no easy person to find. In my opinion, there is only one man now in
London who is likely to be of the slightest assistance to you--and he is
not in the police."

"Who is he?" asked Mr. Troy.

"An old rogue, who was once in your branch of the legal profession,"
the friend answered. "You may, perhaps, remember the name: they call him
'Old Sharon.'"

"What! The scoundrel who was struck off the Roll of Attorneys, years
since? Is he still alive?"

"Alive and prospering. He lives in a court or lane running out of Long
Acre, and he offers advice to persons interested in recovering missing
objects of any sort. Whether you have lost your wife, or lost your