North Eastern Railway fell to thinking out the next one.

The Lost Luggage Office was on Queen Street, which was half under the bridge made by Station Road. Before it, came a part of the mighty South End goods yard, which lapped up to Queen Street like a railway flood, and before that came the

Institute, from which came a beer smell that decided me to put off my enquiry for a moment. I turned into the Institute, where I passed by the reading room – where the fire looked restless and the sole occupant slept – and walked through the long billiard hall towards the bar at the far end, reaching into my coat pocket as I did so.

'How do, love?' said the barmaid, reading the warrant card in my hand: 'Be it remembered that we the undersigned, two of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and for the City of York have this day, upon the application of the

North Eastern Railway, appointed James Harrison Stringer to be a Detective with and upon the railway stations and the

Works of the North Eastern Company.'

'That's smashing' she said, when she'd left off reading.

Only railwaymen could get a look-in at the Institute, and I was a railwayman of sorts, though not the right sort.

I put the card back in my pocketbook, and ordered a pint of John Smith's. Outside, the raindrops hitting the tops of the windows had a long way to fall. There was electric light in a green shade over each of the tables, darkness in between, and only one game in progress. The blokes playing looked a proper pair of vagabonds.

A copy of the

Yorkshire Evening Press lay on the bar, and the barmaid passed it over to me. It was open at an inside page, from which one article had been neatly snipped. The barmaid saw me staring down at this hole, and she pointed to the glass cabinet, where the article had been pinned. It was headed 'The Twinkling Wanderer', and gave the news that the planet Mercury would be visible from York between 7.16 and 8.57 that evening, just as if it had been timetabled by