That the portrait represented not the real but the disguised Captain Shannon, I was equally confident. I thought it more than possible that the man I had to find would be the exact opposite of the man who was there portrayed, and of the informer’s description. For instance, as the pictured Captain Shannon was evidently dark, and was said to be dark by the informer, the real Captain Shannon would probably be fair, as the more dissimilar was the real Captain Shannon from the Captain Shannon for whom the police were searching, the less likely would they be to find him. Then, again, it had been particularly stated by the informer that James Mullen was slightly lame, and to this the police attached the greatest importance. The fact that the man they wanted had an infirmity so easily recognised and so difficult to conceal was considered to narrow down the field of their investigations to the smallest compass and to render the fugitive’s ultimate capture nothing less than a certainty. For myself, I was not at all sure that this supposed lameness was not part and parcel of Captain Shannon’s disguise. A sound man could easily simulate lameness, but a lame man could not so simulate soundness of limb, and I could not help thinking that if Captain Shannon were, as had been asserted, lame, he would have taken care to conceal the fact from his confederates. If the police could be induced to believe that the man they wanted was lame, they would not, in all probability, be inconveniently suspicious about the movements of a stranger evidently of sound and equal limb, who might otherwise be called on to give an account of himself. Being curious to know what course they were pursuing, I made it my business within the next few days to scrape an acquaintance with one of the ticket-collectors at Euston. After propitiating him in the usual way by a judicious application of “palm-oil,” I ventured to put the question whether he had at any time noticed a short, dark, lame man on the platform where the Irish mail started. A broad grin came over the fellow’s face in reply. “What, are they on that lay still!” he said, derisively. “I knew you was after something, but I shouldn’t have took you for a detective.” I assured him that I was _not_ a detective, and asked him to explain, whereupon he told me that immediately after the publication of the portrait of Captain Shannon, instructions had been sent to all railway stations that a keen look-out was to be kept for a short, dark, lame man, whether clean-shaven or bearded, and that if a person in any way resembling James Mullen (whose portrait was placed in the hands of every ticket-collector), was noticed, the police should instantly be communicated with.