toward Waterloo Road.

I had been on the point of inquiring if she had sustained any injury,
but I checked the words and stood looking after her in blank
wonderment. Then my ideas were diverted into a new channel. I
perceived, as she passed under an adjacent lamp, that her basket
contained provisions such as a woman of her appearance would scarcely
be expected to purchase. I noted a bottle of wine, a chicken, and a
large melon.

The nationality of the assailant from the first had marked the affair
for no ordinary one, and now a hazy notion of what lay behind all
this began to come to me.

Keeping well in the shadows on the opposite side of the way, I
followed the woman with the basket. The lane was quite deserted;
for, the disturbance over, those few residents who had raised their
windows had promptly lowered them again. She came out into
Waterloo Road, crossed over, and stood waiting by a stopping-place
for electric cars. I saw her arranging a cloth over her basket in
such a way as effectually to conceal the contents. A strong mental
excitement possessed me. The detective fever claims us all at one
time or another, I think, and I had good reason for pursuing any
inquiry that promised to lead to the elucidation of the slipper
mystery. A theory, covering all the facts of the assault incident,
now presented itself, and I stood back in the shadow, watchful; in
a degree, exultant.

A Greenwich-bound car was hailed by the woman with the basket. I
could not be mistaken, I felt sure, in my belief that she cast