ble that Mr. Thaddeus Sholto could have been in any
way concerned in the matter. He and the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernstone,
were both released yesterday evening. It is believed, however, that
the police have a clue as to the real culprits, and that it is being
prosecuted by Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard, with all his
well-known energy and sagacity. Further arrests may be expected at any
moment."

"That is satisfactory so far as it goes," thought I. "Friend Sholto is
safe, at any rate. I wonder what the fresh clue may be; though it
seems to be a stereotyped form whenever the police have made a blunder."

I tossed the paper down upon the table, but at that moment my eye
caught an advertisement in the agony column. It ran in this way:

"Lost.--Whereas Mordecai Smith, boatman, and his son, Jim, left Smith's
Wharf at or about three o'clock last Tuesday morning in the steam
launch Aurora, black with two red stripes, funnel black with a white
band, the sum of five pounds will be paid to any one who can give
information to Mrs. Smith, at Smith's Wharf, or at 221b Baker Street,
as to the whereabouts of the said Mordecai Smith and the launch Aurora."

This was clearly Holmes's doing. The Baker Street address was enough
to prove that. It struck me as rather ingenious, because it might be
read by the fugitives without their seeing in it more than the natural
anxiety of a wife for her missing husband.

It was a long day. Every time that a knock came to the door, or a
sharp step passed in the street, I imagined that it was either Holmes
returning or an answer to his advertisement. I tried to read, but my
thoughts would wander off to our strange quest and to the ill-assorted
and villainous pair whom we were pursuing. Could there be, I wondered,
some radical flaw in my companion's reasoning. Might he be suffering
from some huge self-deception? Was it not possible that his nimble and
speculative mind had built up this wild theory upon faulty premises? I
had never known him to be wrong; and yet the keenest reasoner may
occasionally be deceived. He was likely, I thought, to fall into error
through the over-refinement of his logic,--his preference for a subtle
and bizarre explanation when a plainer and more commonplace one lay
ready to his hand. Yet, on the other hand, I had myself seen the
evidence, and I had heard the reasons for his deductions. When I
looked back on the long chain of curious circumstances, many of