A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford
Street end.
"Well, Watson, it's as well we have not to turn out to-night,"
said Holmes, laying aside his lens and rolling up the palimpsest.
"I've done enough for one sitting. It is trying work for the eyes.
So far as I can make out, it is nothing more exciting than an
Abbey's accounts dating from the second half of the fifteenth
century. Halloa! halloa! halloa! What's this?"
Amid the droning of the wind there had come the stamping of
a horse's hoofs, and the long grind of a wheel as it rasped
against the curb. The cab which I had seen had pulled up at our
door.
"What can he want?" I ejaculated, as a man stepped out of it.
"Want? He wants us. And we, my poor Watson, want over-
coats and cravats and goloshes, and every aid that man ever
invented to fight the weather. Wait a bit, though! There's the cab
off again! There's hope yet. He'd have kept it if he had wanted
us to come. Run down, my dear fellow, and open the door, for
all virtuous folk have been long in bed."
When the light of the hall lamp fell upon our midnight visitor,
I had no difficulty in recognizing him.
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