While I was mentally shaping out a course of action, my companion stopped and excitedly exclaimed: ‘I have it now, sergeant! I’ll bet ten to one he’s gone to old Nathan’s!’ ‘I’m not sure of that,’ I remarked dubiously; ‘but at all events we’ll go and see.’ Nathan was a rascally old Jew, who, though he was rigorously kept out of barracks, carried on with the soldiers a brisk business in the sale of coarse, rank, contraband tobacco. He had ‘agents’ in the different regiments to further this branch of commerce; and one of his accredited representatives in ours was private Scales. Besides, the old rascal, although it had never been brought home to him, was suspected of purchasing articles of ‘kit’ from ne’er-do-wells, and supplying ragged plain clothes to deserters in exchange for their uniforms. We lost no time in making our way to the squalid alley in the slums near the harbour where the business establishment of Mr Nathan was located; and when we reached the Jew’s dirty little huckster’s shop, we found him weighing out a small quantity of a condiment resembling toffee to a couple of grimy children. Pausing until the juvenile customers had left the shop, I asked Nathan whether that afternoon he had received a visit from Mr Scales. ‘No, sergeant; no soldier hash been here,’ replied the Jew, who then continued in an undertone: ‘Can I do bishness wit you in some goot tobacco?’ I paid no heed to the old Israelite’s statement, and decided to inspect the premises myself, without any scruples as to the legality of that course of action. Placing Williams at the door with instructions to allow no one to pass in or out, I proceeded, in spite of the expostulations of Nathan and his threats to call the police, to carefully search the little back-room behind the shop. No one was there; so I ascended a rickety staircase, and finding the door at the top locked, I kicked it open; but the foul-smelling apartment into which the door led was plunged in utter darkness. Returning to the shop, I helped myself _sans cérémonie_ to one of a bunch of candles, and lighting it, returned to the upper room, which, on examination, proved to be a storehouse for the rags and bones in which the Jew dealt largely. I opened the shutters of the dirt-incrusted diamond-paned window, and probed with my gun-barrel every heap of rags; but, to my disappointment, the fugitive was not concealed in them. Suddenly, I perceived some glittering particles on the floor, which, on stooping to examine, I found to be bright iron filings! I was now filled with a feeling of exultation. Scales had apparently been to the Jew’s, and thus relieved of his handcuffs.