d, through the two doors, which at that
moment had both happened to be open. He knew therefore that his old
friend the waiter had not been quite true to him in suggesting that
his master was not as yet down. As Toogood cast a glance of his eye
on the man with the red nose, he told himself the old story of the
apparition under the archway.

"Mr. Stringer," said Mr. Toogood to the landlord, "I hope I'm not
intruding."

"Oh dear, no, sir," said the forlorn man. "Nobody ever intrudes
coming in here. I'm always happy to see gentlemen,--only, mostly, I'm
so bad with the gout."

"Have you got a sharp touch of it just now, Mr. Stringer?"

"Not just to-day, sir. I've been a little easier since Saturday. The
worst of this burst is over. But Lord bless you, sir, it don't leave
me,--not for a single fortnight at a time, now; it don't. And it
ain't what I drink, nor it ain't what I eat."

"Constitutional, I suppose?" said Toogood.

"Look here, sir"; and Stringer showed his visitor the chalk stones in
all his knuckles. "They say I'm a mass of chalk. I sometimes think
they'll break me up to mark the scores behind my own door with." And
Mr. Stringer laughed at his own wit.

Mr. Toogood laughed too. He laughed loud and cheerily. And then he
asked a sudden question, keeping his eye as he did so upon a little
square open window, which communicated between the landlord's private
room and the bar. Through this small aperture he could see as he
stood a portion of the hat worn by the man with the red nose. Since
he had been in the room with the landlord, the man with the red nose
had moved his head twice, on each occasion drawing himself closer
into his corner; but Mr. Toogood, by moving also, had still contrived
to keep a morsel of the hat in sight. He laughed cheerily at the
landlord's joke, and then he asked a sudden question,--looking well
at the morsel of the hat as he did so. "Mr. Stringer," said he,
"how do you pay your rent, and to whom do you pay it?" There was
immediately a jerk in the hat, and then it disappeared. Toogood,
stepping to the open door, saw that the red-nosed clerk had taken his
hat off and was very busy at his accounts.

"How do I pay my rent?" said Mr. Stringer, the landlord. "Well, sir,
since this cursed gout has been so bad, it's hard enough to pay it at
all sometimes. You ain't sent here to look for it, sir, are you?"

"Not I," said Toogood. "It was only a chance question." He felt
that he had nothing