ect that my poor friend had pursued with such unswerving
pertinacity.

I extract the entry entire with the exception of one or two passages
near the end, the reasons for the omission of which will be obvious to
the reader.

"Circumstances attending the acquirement of the specimen numbered
'twenty-five' in the Anthropological Series (A. Osteology. B. Reduced
dry preparations).

"The months that followed the events connected with the acquirement of
the specimens 23 and 24 brought me nothing but aching suspense and hope
deferred. The pursuit of the common criminal I had abandoned since I had
got scent of my real quarry. The concussor lay idle in its basket; the
cellar steps were greased no more. I had but a passive role to play
until the hour should strike to usher in the final scene--if that should
ever be. Though the term of my long exile in East London was drawing
nigh, its approach was unseen by me. I could but wait; and what is
harder than waiting?

"I had made cautious inquiries among the alien population. But no one
knew Piragoff--or, at least, admitted any knowledge of him; and as to
the police, when they had made a few arrests and then released the
prisoners, they appeared to let the matter drop. The newspapers were, of
course, more active. One of them described circumstantially how 'the
three anarchists who escaped from the house in Saul Street' had been
seen together in an East End restaurant; and several others followed
from day to day the supposed whereabouts of a mysterious person known as
'Paul the Plumber,' whom the police declared to be a picturesque myth.
But for me there was one salient fact: of those three ruffians one was
still at large, and no one seemed to have any knowledge of him.

"It was some four months later that I again caught up the scent. A
certain Friday evening early in February found me listlessly tidying up
the shop; for the Jewish Sabbath had begun and customers were few. But
about eight o'clock a man strode in jauntily, hung up his hat and seated
himself in the operating chair; and at that moment a second man entered
and sat down to wait. I glanced at this latter, and in an instant my
gorge rose at him. I cannot tell why. To the scientific mind, intuitions
are abhorrent. They are mostly wrong and wholly unreasonable. But as I
looked at that man a wave of instinctive dislike and suspicion swept
over me. He was, indeed, an ill-looking fellow enough. A broad,
lozenge-shaped Tartar f