identified forever. Just consider how few, if any, of your friends
correspond exactly in any two personal peculiarities." Hewitt's dogma
received its illustration unexpectedly close at home.

The old house wherein my chambers and Hewitt's office were situated
contained, besides my own, two or three more bachelors' dens, in addition
to the offices on the ground and first and second floors. At the very top
of all, at the back, a fat, middle-aged man, named Foggatt, occupied a set
of four rooms. It was only after a long residence, by an accidental remark
of the housekeeper's, that I learned the man's name, which was not painted
on his door or displayed, with all the others, on the wall of the
ground-floor porch.

Mr. Foggatt appeared to have few friends, but lived in something as nearly
approaching luxury as an old bachelor living in chambers can live. An
ascending case of champagne was a common phenomenon of the staircase, and
I have more than once seen a picture, destined for the top floor, of a
sort that went far to awaken green covetousness in the heart of a poor
journalist.

The man himself was not altogether prepossessing. Fat as he was, he had a
way of carrying his head forward on his extended neck and gazing widely
about with a pair of the roundest and most prominent eyes I remember to
have ever seen, except in a fish. On the whole, his appearance was rather
vulgar, rather arrogant, and rather suspicious, without any very
pronounced quality of any sort. But certainly he was not pretty. In the
end, however, he was found shot dead in his sitting-room.

It was in this way: Hewitt and I had dined together at my club, and late
in the evening had returned to my rooms to smoke and discuss whatever came
uppermost. I had made a bargain that day with two speculative odd lots at
a book sale, each of which contained a hidden prize. We sat talking and
turning over these books while time went unperceived, when suddenly we
were startled by a loud report. Clearly it was in the building. We
listened for a moment, but heard nothing else, and then Hewitt expressed
his opinion that the report was that of a gunshot. Gunshots in residential
chambers are not common things, wherefore I got up and went to the
landing, looking up the stairs and down.

At the top of the next flight I saw Mrs. Clayton, the housekeeper. She
appeared to be frightened, and told me that the report came from Mr.
Foggatt's room. She thought he might have had an