And then I heard a crackling and rustling as of stiff paper--he was never more than a dozen yards from me all the time,--and in another minute there was a spurt up of bluish flame, and I saw that the man had turned on the light of an electric pocket-torch and was shining it on a map which he had unfolded and shaken out, and was holding in his right hand.
At this point I profited by a lesson which had been dinned into my ears a good many times since boyhood.

Andrew Dunlop, Maisie's father, was one of those men who are uncommonly fond of lecturing young folk in season and out of season.

He would get a lot of us, boys and girls, together in his parlour at such times as he was not behind the counter and give us admonitions on what he called the practical things of life.

And one of his favourite precepts--especially addressed to us boys--was "Cultivate your powers of observation." This advice fitted in very well with the affairs of the career I had mapped out for myself--a solicitor should naturally be an observant man, and I had made steady effort to do as Andrew Dunlop counselled.

Therefore it was with a keenly observant eye that I, all unseen, watched the man with his electric torch and his map, and it did not escape my notice that the hand which held the map was short of the two middle fingers.