Then the slit between his teeth. Well, that couldn't be altered; but he could keep his mouth shut. Now if I was to tell you everything I did in the first two days I was in Liverpool, it would fill a book, and that's what you don't want; what you _do_ want is for me to come to the point, and that I'll do in a jiffy. I went down to the docks, and took up my lodgings near there; I didn't stop in any particular place, but shifted from one eating-house to another, and mixed with the customers, and talked to the waiters; no ship sailed out of the Mersey without my being on it at the last minute, with my eyes wide open; I communicated with the captains and the ship-agents; I watched every new arrival at the eating-houses, and drank with them, and did a hundred other things--and at the end of the fourth day I was as far off as ever; I hadn't picked up a link. Now, that nettled me; it did--it nettled me. I had set my heart on catching this Bullpit; he was worth catching, he was such a sly cunning customer; I looked upon it as a match between us, and I wanted to win, and here was I four days in Liverpool, with never a link in my hands for my pains. On the fifth day I met--quite by accident--a professional friend, who had come down to Liverpool to say good-bye to a relative of his who was going to America. The ship was to sail that afternoon; it was called The Prairie Bird. We had a bit of dinner together in the coffee-room, where other men were dining. Over dinner I told my friend what had brought _me_ to Liverpool; I spoke in a low tone, so as not to be overheard, and I was not sorry when the man who was eating at the next table to ours went away in the middle of my story; he was a little too close to us. Well, we finished dinner; my friend insisted on paying the reckoning, and I moved a step or two towards the next table, where the man who went away in the middle of my story had been dining. The waiter was clearing the table, when I saw something that set me on fire. Now, what do you think it was? You can't guess. I should think you couldn't, if you tried for a week. What do you say to a piece of bread? You laugh! Well, but that piece of bread was enough for me. It wasn't a link. It was the chain itself. In what way? I'll tell you. You see, that piece of bread was partly eaten, and the man who had been dining had put it down after taking his last bite at it. The marks of his teeth were in it, but the only mark I saw was a little ridge in the centre of the bite--just such a ridge as would be left by a man who had a slit between two of his upper teeth, as Anthony Bullpit had. Would that little mark have been enough for you?