"Question No. 2 first, as to where I got it. When the late Donald Lindsay was seized with that most unfortunate stroke I assisted in undressing him; afterwards I folded up his clothes and put them away, and, in the ordinary course of my duty, I examined the pockets. In a small and ingeniously placed pocket inside his waistcoat--which the commonplace searcher would have overlooked--I found this key, secreted. That set me thinking. You will observe that on the tiny ring to which it is attached there is a number. When I learnt certain facts I caused inquiries to be made of a firm which I happen to know manufactures keys like this, asking how long it would take them to make Mr. Joseph Oldfield a duplicate key to his fiat in Bloomsbury Mansions, quoting this number. They replied to the effect that they could let him have another key in four-and-twenty hours; so that's how I know that this is the key to the flat in Bloomsbury Mansions." "You've a roundabout way of your own of finding out things." "Roundabout ways are sometimes the shortest, and the safest. Now, my dear Nash, you and I are going together to Bloomsbury Mansions; you will be the bearer of the key; you will show the key to the porter who we shall probably find there; you will tell him that you are Mr. Oldfield's solicitor--which you are; let us keep to the strict and literal truth; he will say 'Walk in!' and, when we have walked in, I think that the rest you can leave to me." Herbert Nash did not like Mr. Morgan's little plan; he disliked it very much, and said so with considerable force of language, which the gentleman to whom it was addressed did not at all resent. He simply smiled, and persuaded Mr. Nash; having means of persuasion at his command which that person seemed most unwillingly to feel that he was not in a position to resist; the result being that, as we have heard, the pair did gain access to the flat in Bloomsbury Mansions; the porter, as Mr. Morgan had prophesied, looking on as they went in. When they had entered they found themselves in a fair-sized hall. "I wonder," said Nash, as if struck by the silence of the place, "how he managed for servants." "The flat people provided service, I expect; they cater, and do everything for tenants if they're wanted to." "Do you mean to say that he lived here all alone?"