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sat in his sanctum, one could scarcely call it an office, although he received here, now and again, visitors of many sorts on business bent. For, since his coming to America, five years before, to find the heiress of Sir Hillary Massinger, he had read many another riddle, and now, as at first, he worked independently, but with the difference that he now undertook only such cases as especially attracted him by reason of their strangeness, or of the worth, or need, of the client.

Two letters lay before him, and as he pondered, frowning from time to time, he would take up one or the other and re-read a passage, and compress his lips and give vent to his thoughts in fragmentary sentences. For he had grown, because of much solitude, to think aloud when his thoughts