I hastened to reassure the stationer's clerk.
"I don't think Mr.Sheldon ever saw Mr.Grewter in his life," I said.
After this the clerk condescended to retire into the unknown antres behind the shop, to deliver my message.

I began to think that George Sheldon's card was not the best possible letter of introduction.
The clerk returned presently, followed by a tall, white-bearded man, with a bent figure, and a pair of penetrating gray eyes--a very promising specimen of the octogenarian.
He asked me my business in a sharp suspicious way, that obliged me to state the nature of my errand without circumlocution.

As I got farther away from the Rev.John Haygarth, intestate, I was less fettered by the necessity of secrecy.

I informed my octogenarian that I was prosecuting a legal investigation connected with a late inhabitant of that street, and that I had taken the liberty to apply to him, in the hope that he might be able to afford me some information.
He looked at me all the time I spoke as if he thought I was going to entreat pecuniary relief--and I daresay I have something the air of a begging-letter writer.

But when he found that I only wanted information, his hard gray eyes softened ever so little, and he asked me to walk into his parlour.
His parlour was scarcely less gruesome than his shop.