The cold light of dawn flooded the hallway momentarily; then the door
closed again and I went upstairs to my study, watching Nayland Smith
as he strode across the common in the early morning mist. He was
making for the Nine Elms, but I lost sight of him before he reached
them.

I sat there for some time, watching for the first glow of sunrise. A
policeman tramped past the house, and, a while later, a belated
reveler in evening clothes. That sense of unreality assailed me again.
Out there in the gray mists a man who was vested with powers which
rendered him a law unto himself, who had the British Government behind
him in all that he might choose to do, who had been summoned from
Rangoon to London on singular and dangerous business, was employing
himself with a plate of cold turbot, a jug of milk, and a trowel!

Away to the right, and just barely visible, a tramcar stopped by the
common; then proceeded on its way, coming in a westerly direction. Its
lights twinkled yellowly through the grayness, but I was less
concerned with the approaching car than with the solitary traveler who
had descended from it.

As the car went rocking by below me, I strained my eyes in an endeavor
more clearly to discern the figure, which, leaving the highroad, had
struck out across the common. It was that of a woman, who seemingly
carried a bulky bag or parcel.

One must be a gross materialist to doubt that there are latent powers
in man which man, in modern times, neglects, or knows not how to
develop. I became suddenly conscious of a burning curiosity respecting
this lonely traveler who traveled at an hour so strange. With no