set the matter aside
until night should bring an explanation.

It was a quarter past nine when I started from home and made my way
across the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker Street. Two
hansoms were standing at the door, and as I entered the passage I
heard the sound of voices from above. On entering his room I found
Holmes in animated conversation with two men, one of whom I recognized
as Peter Jones, the official police agent, while the other was a long
thin sad-faced man, with a very shiny hat and oppressively respectable
frock-coat.

"Ha! our party is complete," said Holmes, buttoning up his pea-jacket,
and taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack. "Watson, I think you
know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you to Mr.
Merryweather, who is to be our companion in to-night's adventure."

"We're hunting in couples again, doctor, you see," said Jones, in his
consequential way. "Our friend here is a wonderful man for starting a
chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him to do the running
down."

"I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase,"
observed Mr. Merryweather, gloomily.

"You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir," said the
police agent, loftily. "He has his own little methods, which are, if
he won't mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical and
fantastic, but he has the makings of a detective in him. It is not too
much to say that once or twice, as in that business of the Sholto
murder and the Agra treasure, he has been more nearly correct than the
official force."

"Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right," said the stranger,
with deference, "Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the
first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my
rubber."

"I think you will find," said Sherlock Holmes, "that you will play for
a higher stake to-night than you have ever done yet, and that the play
will be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather, the stake will be
some L30,000; and for you, Jones, it will be the man upon whom you
wish to lay your hands."

"John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He's a young
man, Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his profession, and I
would rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London.
He's a remarkable man, is young John Clay. His grandfather was a royal
duke, and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as
cunning as his finger