The constable, D 21, who had stood in Adam and Eve Mews, presumably while Mr.Knopf's house was being robbed, had seen no one turn out from the _cul-de-sac_ into the main passage of the mews.
"The stables, which immediately faced the back entrance of the Phillimore Terrace houses, were all private ones belonging to residents in the neighbourhood.

The coachmen, their families, and all the grooms who slept in the stablings were rigidly watched and questioned.

One and all had seen nothing, heard nothing, until Robertson's shrieks had roused them from their sleep.
"As for the letter from Brighton, it was absolutely commonplace, and written upon note-paper which the detective, with Machiavellian cunning, traced to a stationer's shop in West Street.

But the trade at that particular shop was a very brisk one; scores of people had bought note-paper there, similar to that on which the supposed doctor had written his tricky letter.

The handwriting was cramped, perhaps a disguised one; in any case, except under very exceptional circumstances, it could afford no clue to the identity of the thief.