use, when a sudden resolve took possession of me concerning the two
packets I had in my trousers pockets! I did not know what turn affairs
were going to take, and I thought I should like to put those two little
parcels in a place of safety.

I had noticed a small dismal post office at the end of the street not
fifty yards off. I would go and post them, registered to my lawyers,
in whom I had the greatest confidence.

To the taking of this resolve and the carrying of it out, instead of
returning to the downstairs room, I always attribute, in the light of
subsequent events, the saving of my life. I left the door "on the jar"
and ran quickly to the post office. There I demanded their largest
sized registered envelope, and they fortunately had a big one.

Into this I crammed the two packets--which I noticed were both directed
to me in a very neat lady's hand--and then, as an afterthought, the
handkerchief which I had found in the bed. Finally I put the key of
the safe in too. With my back to the ever curious clerk, I directed it
to myself--

c/o Messrs. BLACKETT & SNOWDON,
Solicitors,
Lincoln's Inn,
London.

Then, slapping it down before the astonished official, I demanded a
receipt for it.

This obtained, I hastened back to 190; the door was still as I had left
it, but in a few moments the doctor returned, and at his heels a
policeman.

"The inspector will be here directly," announced Dr. Redfern. "We had
better wait outside until he arrives."

We walked up and down for nearly a quarter of an hour while the doctor
smoked a cigarette, and meanwhile the policeman, a person of gigantic
stature and a bucolic expression of countenance, eyed me suspiciously.

Presently the inspector arrived, and the doctor and I returned with him
to the sitting-room downstairs. There the police official insisted
upon my giving a full account of the whole matter, while he stood
critically by with a notebook in his hand. I told him the whole truth
from the time of my seeing the old lady at the door, to the time of my
calling in the doctor, but I suppressed all mention of the two packets
and the secret safe. These being confidential matters between me and
the old lady, I did not feel at liberty to disclose them.

I saw very plainly from the looks the inspector gave me that he did not
believe me; he even had doubts, it was very evident, whether I was
staying at the Hotel Magnifique at all, as I had informe