marks of two teeth, with a hiatus between, which you will see if you
look closely," said the stranger, handing the small bit of tobacco to
Sir Walter, "make that point evident beyond peradventure. The
Captain lost an eye-tooth in one of his later raids; it was knocked
out by a marine-spike which had been hurled at him by one of the crew
of the treasure-ship he and his followers had attacked. The adjacent
teeth were broken, but not removed. The cigar end bears the marks of
those two jagged molars, with the hiatus, which, as I have indicated,
is due to the destruction of the eye-tooth between them. It is not
likely that there was another man in the pirate's crew with teeth
exactly like the commander's, therefore I say there can be no doubt
that the cigar end was that of the Captain himself."

"Very interesting indeed," observed Blackstone, removing his wig and
fanning himself with it; "but I must confess, Mr. Chairman, that in
any properly constituted law court this evidence would long since
have been ruled out as irrelevant and absurd. The idea of two or
three hundred dignified spirits like ourselves, gathered together to
devise a means for the recovery of our property and the rescue of our
wives, yielding the floor to the delivering of a lecture by an entire
stranger on 'Cigar Ends He Has Met,' strikes me as ridiculous in the
extreme. Of what earthly interest is it to us to know that this or
that cigar was smoked by Captain Kidd?"

"Merely that it will help us on, your honor, to discover the
whereabouts of the said Kidd," interposed the stranger. "It is by
trifles, seeming trifles, that the greatest detective work is done.
My friends Le Coq, Hawkshaw, and Old Sleuth will bear me out in this,
I think, however much in other respects our methods may have
differed. They left no stone unturned in the pursuit of a criminal;