A clever face, a very clever face, clean shaven, with sharply cut features, dark hair, touched with gray at the temples, and cut short in the military fashion, keen eyes of a bluish tint, with a shrewd twinkle in their depths, and a thin-lipped, resolute mouth--perhaps a trifle too resolute for so young a man (he was not more than thirty); but then, Mr. Fanks, although young in years, was old in experience, and every line on his features was a record of something learned at the cost of something lost, and on that account never forgotten. A smart, alert figure, too, had Mr. Fanks, well-clothed in a rough gray tweed suit, slender, sinewy hands with a ring--signet ring--on the little finger of the left one, and well-formed feet, neatly shod in boots of tanned leather. A gentleman! Yes, decidedly the London detective was a gentleman--that could be seen by his whole appearance; and as to his dress, well, he wore his clothes like a man who went to a good tailor and valued him accordingly. Quoth Mr. Fanks, after some minutes of deep thought, during which he removed his keen eyes from gazing fire-wards, and looked doubtfully at a pill-box which he held in his left hand: "This is the only clue I can possibly obtain. The chemist who made up these pills has kindly put his name and address--in print--on the box. If, then, I go to this chemist, I will be able to find out the name of the dead man--after that the circumstances of his life, and then--well, after all, I may be wrong, and these country bumpkins right. It may be a case of suicide--I suppose, under the circumstances, they could hardly bring in any other verdict, and yet it is so strange. Why should he have poisoned himself with morphia, when he could have done so with an overdose of these pills? Easier death, I dare say. Morphia is a narcotic, and arsenic an irritant. Humph! it's a strange case altogether--very strange. I don't know exactly what to make of it." He relapsed into silence, slipped the pill-box into his pocket, and taking the cup from the table began to sip his coffee slowly. Coffee--black coffee, hot and strong, as Mr. Fanks was now taking it--clears the brain, and renders it intensely sharp and wakeful; so after a few minutes the detective put down the cup, and thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, stretched out his long legs, and began to think aloud once more, as was his fashion when alone.