had stooped down to tie his shoe-lace! There
were cases, too, in which, when a great and notorious crime had been
committed, and various persons had been arrested on suspicion, some were
found among them who had long been badly wanted for some other crime
altogether. Many criminals had met their deserts by venturing out of their
own particular line of crime into another; often a man who got into
trouble over something comparatively small found himself in for a
startlingly larger trouble, the result of some previous misdeed that
otherwise would have gone unpunished. The ruble note-forger Mirsky might
never have been handed over to the Russian authorities had he confined his
genius to forgery alone. It was generally supposed at the time of his
extradition that he had communicated with the Russian Embassy, with a view
to giving himself up--a foolish proceeding on his part, it would seem,
since his whereabouts, indeed even his identity as the forger, had not
been suspected. He _had_ communicated with the Russian Embassy, it is
true, but for quite a different purpose, as Martin Hewitt well understood
at the time. What that purpose was is now for the first time published.

* * * * *

The time was half-past one in the afternoon, and Hewitt sat in his inner
office examining and comparing the handwriting of two letters by the aid
of a large lens. He put down the lens and glanced at the clock on the
mantel-piece with a premonition of lunch; and as he did so his clerk
quietly entered the room with one of those printed slips which were kept
for the announcement of unknown visitors. It was filled up in a hasty and
almost illegible hand, thus:

Name of visitor: _F. Graham Dixon_.

Address: _Chancery Lane_.

Business: _Private and urgent_.

"Show Mr. Dixon in," said Martin Hewitt.

Mr. Dixon was a gaunt, worn-looking man of fifty or so, well, although
rather carelessly, dressed, and carrying in his strong, though drawn, face
and dullish eyes the look that characterizes the life-long strenuous
brain-worker. He leaned forward anxiously in the chair which Hewitt
offered him, and told his story with a great deal of very natural
agitation.

"You may possibly have heard, Mr. Hewitt--I know there are rumors--of the
new locomotive torpedo which the government is about adopting; it is, in
fact, the Dixon torpedo, my own invention, and in every respect--not
merely in my own opinion, but in that of the go