He smiled, thinly. “You did not hear the clatter of a brougham several minutes ago? It slowed as it passed us-obviously as the driver identified our door, then it sped up and went past, up into the Marylebone Road. There is a crush of carriages and taxicabs letting off passengers at the railway station and at the waxworks, and it is in that crush that anyone wishing to alight without being observed will go. The walk from there to here is but four minutes…”

He glanced at his pocket watch, and as he did so I heard a tread on the stairs outside.

“Come in, Lestrade,” he called. “The door is ajar, and your sausages are just coming out from under the grill.”

A man I took to be Lestrade opened the door, then closed it carefully behind him. “I should not,” he said. “But truth to tell, I have not had a chance to break my fast this morning. And I could certainly do justice to a few of those sausages.” He was the small man I had observed on several occasions previously, whose demeanor was that of a traveler in rubber novelties or patent nostrums.

My friend waited until our landlady had left the room before he said, “Obviously, I take it this is a matter of national importance.”

“My stars,” said Lestrade, and he paled. “Surely the word cannot be out already. Tell me it is not.” He began to pile his plate high with sausages, kipper fillets, kedgeree, and toast, but his hands shook, a little.

“Of course not,” said my friend. “I know the squeak of your brougham wheels, though, after all this time: an oscillating G sharp above high C. And if Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard cannot publicly be seen to come into the parlor of London’s only consulting detective, yet comes anyway, and without having had his breakfast, then I know that this is not a routine case. Ergo, it involves those above us and is a matter of national importance.”