"

"I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very absorbing."

"Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the city first, and
we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal
of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than
Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. Come
along!"

We traveled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk
took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we
had listened to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel
place, where four lines of dingy, two-storied brick houses looked out
into a small railed-in inclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few
clumps of faded laurel bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden
and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with
JABEZ WILSON in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place
where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes
stopped in front of it with his head on one side, and looked it all
over, with his eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he
walked slowly up the street, and then down again to the corner, still
looking keenly at the houses. Finally he returned to the pawnbroker's
and, having thumped vigorously upon the pavement with his stick two or
three times, he went up to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened
by a bright-looking, clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step
in.

"Thank you," said Holmes, "I only wished to ask you how you would go
from here to the Strand."

"Third right, fourth left," answered the assistant, promptly, closing
the door.

"Smart fellow, that," observed Holmes as we walked away. "He is, in my
judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not
sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known something of him
before."

"Evidently," said I, "Mr. Wilson's assistant counts for a good deal in
this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your
way merely in order that you might see him."

"Not him."

"What then?"

"The knees of his trousers."

"And what did you see?"

"What I expected to see."

"Why did you beat the pavement?"

"My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are
spies in an enemy's country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square.
Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it."

The road in which we foun