On it was a neatly executed drawing of what looked like one of a set of chessmen, with the dimensions written on the margin.
"It looks like a pawn--one of the Staunton pattern," I said.
"Just what I thought; but it isn't.

I've got to make twenty-four of them, and what the Doctor is going to do with them fairly beats me." "Perhaps he has invented some new game," I suggested facetiously.

"He is always inventing new games and playing them mostly in courts of law, and then the other players generally lose.

But this is a puzzler, and no mistake.

Twenty-four of these to be turned up in the best-seasoned boxwood! What can they be for?
Something to do with the experiments he is carrying on upstairs at this very moment, I expect." He shook his head, and, having carefully returned the drawing to his pocket-book, said, in a solemn tone--"Sir, there are times when the Doctor makes me fairly dance with curiosity.