small
failings. I decline, therefore, altogether to take offense at the tone
of your letter; I give you the full benefit of the natural generosity of
my nature; I sponge the very existence of your surly communication out
of my memory--in short, Chief Inspector Theakstone, I forgive you, and
proceed to business.

My first duty is to draw up a full statement of the instructions I have
received from Sergeant Bulmer. Here they are at your service, according
to my version of them.

At number Thirteen Rutherford Street, Soho, there is a stationer's shop.
It is kept by one Mr. Yatman. He is a married man, but has no family.
Besides Mr. and Mrs. Yatman, the other inmates in the house are a
lodger, a young single man named Jay, who occupies the front room on
the second floor--a shopman, who sleeps in one of the attics, and a
servant-of-all-work, whose bed is in the back kitchen. Once a week a
charwoman comes to help this servant. These are all the persons who, on
ordinary occasions, have means of access to the interior of the house,
placed, as a matter of course, at their disposal.

Mr. Yatman has been in business for many years, carrying on his affairs
prosperously enough to realize a handsome independence for a person in
his position. Unfortunately for himself, he endeavoured to increase the
amount of his property by speculating.

He ventured boldly in his investments; luck went against him; and rather
less than two years ago he found himself a poor man again. All that was
saved out of the wreck of his property was the sum of two hundred
pounds.

Although Mr. Yatman did his best to meet his altered circumstances, by
giving up many of the luxuries and comforts to which he and his wife had
been accustomed, he found it impossible to retrench so far as to allow
of putting by any money from the income produced by his shop. The
business has been declining of late years, the cheap advertising
stationers having done it injury with the public. Consequently, up to
the last week, the only surplus property possessed by Mr. Yatman
consisted of the two hundred pounds which had been recovered from the
wreck of his fortune. This sum was placed as a deposit in a joint-stock
bank of the highest possible character.

Eight days ago Mr. Yatman and his lodger, Mr. Jay, held a conversation
on the subject of the commercial difficulties which are hampering trade
in all directions at the present time. Mr. Jay (who lives by supplying
the newspap