dignified man who always dressed in black and seldom spoke unless he
had to. His one passion was the discovery of other people's secrets. He
knew more family secrets than any one else in London, and to discover a
new one he would have risked all his fortune.

Now, among the very many persons connected in some way or other with the
famous Jarndyce case, which seemed destined never to end, was Sir
Leicester Dedlock, and one day (the Chancery Court having actually made
a little progress) Mr. Tulkinghorn brought the baronet some legal papers
to read to him.

As the lawyer held one in his hand, Lady Dedlock, seeing the
handwriting, asked in an agitated voice who had written it. He answered
that it was the work of one of his copyists. A moment later, as he went
on reading, they found that Lady Dedlock had fainted away.

Her husband did not connect her faintness with the paper, but Mr.
Tulkinghorn did, and that instant he determined that Lady Dedlock had a
secret, that this secret had something to do with the copyist, and that
what this secret was, he, Tulkinghorn, would discover.

He easily found that the writing had been done by a man who called
himself "Nemo," and who lived above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop, a
neighbor to crazy little Miss Flite of the Chancery Court and the many
bird-cages.

Krook himself was an ignorant, spectacled old rascal, whose sole
occupations seemed to be to sleep and to drink gin, a bottle of which
stood always near him. His only intimate was a big, gray, evil-tempered
cat called "Lady Jane," who, when not lying in wait for Miss Flite's
birds, used to sit on his shoulder with her tail sticking straight up
like a hairy feather. People in the neighborhood called his dirty shop
the "Court of Chancery," because, like that other court, it had so many
old things in it and whatever its owner once got into it never got out
again.

In return for Mr. Tulkinghorn's money Krook told him all he knew about
his lodger. Nemo, it seemed, was surly and dissipated and did what legal
copying he could get to do in order to buy opium with which he drugged
himself daily. So far as was known, he had but one friend--Joe, a
wretched crossing sweeper, to whom, when he had it, he often gave a
coin.

Thus much the lawyer learned, but from the strange lodger himself he
learned nothing. For when Krook took him to the room Nemo occupied, they
found the latter stretched on his couch, dead (whether by accident or
design