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, fetes 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 pounds 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--"

"They used to," said Adam. "I once had a whole aviary full of winged
elephants. They flew from flower to flower, and thrusting their
probabilities deep into--"

"Their what?" queried Johnson, with a frown.

"Probabilities--isn't that the word? Their trunks," said Adam.