said Laidlaw.

"Hardly anything," Professor Ebor answered. "Nothing, in fact, but what
you see."

"Nothing but this hand-bag?" laughed the other, thinking he was joking.

"And a small portmanteau in the van," was the quiet reply. "I have no
other luggage."

"You have no other luggage?" repeated Laidlaw, turning sharply to see if
he were in earnest.

"Why should I need more?" the professor added simply.

Something in the man's face, or voice, or manner--the doctor hardly knew
which--suddenly struck him as strange. There was a change in him, a
change so profound--so little on the surface, that is--that at first he
had not become aware of it. For a moment it was as though an utterly
alien personality stood before him in that noisy, bustling throng. Here,
in all the homely, friendly turmoil of a Charing Cross crowd, a curious
feeling of cold passed over his heart, touching his life with icy
finger, so that he actually trembled and felt afraid.

He looked up quickly at his friend, his mind working with startled and
unwelcome thoughts.

"Only this?" he repeated, indicating the bag. "But where's all the stuff
you went away with? And--have you brought nothing home--no treasures?"

"This is all I have," the other said briefly. The pale smile that went
with the words caused the doctor a second indescribable sensation of
uneasiness. Something was very wrong, something was very queer; he
wondered now that he had not noticed it sooner.

"The rest follows, of course, by slow freight," he added tactfully, and
as naturally as possible. "But come, sir, you must be tired and in want
of food after your long journey. I'll get a taxi at once, and we can see
about the other luggage afterwards."

It seemed to him he hardly knew quite what he was saying; the change in
his friend had come upon him so suddenly and now grew upon him more and
more distressingly. Yet he could not make out exactly in what it
consisted. A terrible suspicion began to take shape in his mind,
troubling him dreadfully.

"I am neither very tired, nor in need of food, thank you," the professor
said quietly. "And this is all I have. There is no luggage to follow. I
have brought home nothing--nothing but what you see."

His words conveyed finality. They got into a taxi, tipped the porter,
who had been staring in amazement at the venerable figure of the
scientist, and were conveyed slowly and noisily to the house in the
north of London where the laboratory wa