particulars given me.

"I consider you, Brett," he said, addressing me, "the most remarkable
journalist alive. Not because you're particularly clever, you know,
because, between ourselves, I hope you'll admit you're not; but because
you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and have
never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business secrets you
may have become acquainted with. I'm afraid you're not so enterprising a
journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you shall write
something--if you think it worth while."

This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing good-nature
that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger who thought of him
only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets and crimes. Indeed,
the man had always as little of the aspect of the conventional detective
as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less observant in
manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of the
eye--which might, after all, only be the twinkle of good humor.

I _did_ think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt's
investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.

* * * * *

At the head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an
ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty
ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word
"Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters,
"Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in the
ground-floor offices had barely hung up their hats, a short, well-dressed
young man, wearing spectacles, hastening to open the dusty door, ran into
the arms of another man who suddenly issued from it.

"I beg pardon," the first said. "Is this Hewitt's Detective Agency
Office?"

"Yes, I believe you will find it so," the other replied. He was a
stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round
countenance. "You'd better speak to the clerk."

In the little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with inky
fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The printed slip
having been filled with the visitor's name and present business, and
conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with an invitation to
the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat the stoutish man
himself, who had only just advised an appeal to th