A LADY IN THE CASE When I arrived at Thorndyke's chambers on the following morning, I found my friend already hard at work.

Breakfast was laid at one end of the table, while at the other stood a microscope of the pattern used for examining plate-cultures of micro-organisms, on the wide stage of which was one of the cards bearing six thumb-prints in blood.

A condenser threw a bright spot of light on the card, which Thorndyke had been examining when I knocked, as I gathered from the position of the chair, which he now pushed back against the wall.
"I see you have commenced work on our problem," I remarked as, in response to a double ring of the electric bell, Polton entered with the materials for our repast.
"Yes," answered Thorndyke.

"I have opened the campaign, supported, as usual, by my trusty chief-of-staff; eh! Polton ?" The little man, whose intellectual, refined countenance and dignified bearing seemed oddly out of character with the tea-tray that he carried, smiled proudly, and, with a glance of affectionate admiration at my friend, replied-- "Yes, sir.

We haven't been letting the grass grow under our feet.
There's a beautiful negative washing upstairs and a bromide enlargement too, which will be mounted and dried by the time you have finished your breakfast." "A wonderful man that, Jervis," my friend observed as his assistant retired.