luntarily of the
super-detective. "I expect your time is as valuable as mine--probably
more so--and we won't waste it in preliminaries. I gather you have some
specimens of handwriting to submit to me?"

"Yes. I have two letters to show you." He drew them carefully from his
notebook. "What I want to know is, whether they were both written by the
same hand or not."

Mr. Clive unlaced his finger-tips and took the papers carefully from his
visitor; after which, rather to Anstice's amusement, he removed his
eyeglasses and proceeded to study the letters without their aid.

For several minutes he pored over them in silence, the letters spread
out on the table before him; and Anstice, watching, could make nothing
of the inscrutable expression on his face. Presently he rose, went to a
little cabinet at the end of the room, and took from it a small
magnifying glass, with whose aid he made a further study of the two
documents; after which he resumed his eyeglasses and turned to Anstice
with a smile.

"Your little problem is quite simple, Dr. Anstice," he said amiably. "As
soon as I looked at these letters I guessed them to be the work of one
hand. With the help of my glass I know my guess to be correct."

For a moment Anstice could not tell whether he were relieved or
disappointed by this confirmation of his own suspicions; but the expert
did not wait for his comments.

"If you will look through the glass you will see that the similarities
in many of the letters are so striking that there is really no possible
question as to their being written by one hand." He pushed the papers
and glass across to Anstice, who obediently bent over the table and
studied the letters as they lay before him. "For instance"--Clive moved
to Anstice's side and, leaning over his shoulder, pointed with a slim
finger--"that 'I' in India is identical with the one with which this
letter opens; and that 's' with its curly tail could not possibly have
been traced by any hand save that which wrote this one. There are other
points of resemblance--the spaces between the words, for instance--which
prove conclusively, to my mind at least, that the letters are the work
of one person; but I expect you have already formed an opinion of your
own on the subject."

"Yes," said Anstice. "To be frank, I have. I was quite sure in my own
mind that they were written by one person; but I wanted an expert
opinion. And now the only thing to be discovered is--who is that