“Certainly not. Get along with you.” And Joan sped her lover on his way with the taste of her kiss fresh on his mouth. It seemed a profanation to eat anything after that; but all the same, while Joan ate her egg and then took her turn in watching over Sir Vernon, Ellery, seated alone in the grill room at Hatchett’s was making a very solid and satisfactory meal. Somehow, love seemed to give one an appetite, he reflected, as he lighted a cigar. Then he set forth upon his quest, walking slowly down Piccadilly towards the Circus. He had no fixed plan of action. As he put it to himself, he was following the route Walter Brooklyn had taken and just keeping his eyes open, in the hope that something might turn up. Nothing did turn up till he reached Piccadilly Circus. There, as he knew, Walter Brooklyn had hung about for a few minutes, but had spoken to no one. The quest certainly did not seem to be hopeful. Piccadilly Circus was crowded with people, some hurrying this way or that in pursuit of some definite object, others standing or strolling about as if they had nothing to do and nowhere in particular to go. The flower-women who sit on the island in the middle of the Circus in the daytime had already left their posts, and would presumably have done so on Tuesday before Walter Brooklyn took that disastrous walk. But before long Ellery picked out two persons who remained at fixed spots while the rest of the crowd changed from minute to minute. The one was a policeman regulating the traffic and the queues at the point where the buses stopped by the island: the other was a night-watchman in his little hut, keeping guard over a piece of the roadway which was under repair. These were the most likely of all the crowd to have been there on Tuesday night, and with them he determined to begin his inquiries. The policeman was quickly disposed of. He had not been on duty on Tuesday; but a little persuasion in tangible form soon secured the name of the constable who had, and the news that he had only been kept away that night by a misadventure, and would be on duty again the following night. Ellery made a note of the name, and said to himself that he must see the other policeman later. For the present he strolled over towards the watchman, whom he found reading a tattered book in his little cabin, by the light partly of the lamps and sky signs, and partly, though it was a warm summer evening, of a blazing fire in a pail. He was a little, old man with a pair of steel spectacles, which had carved a deep rut in his nose, and he seemed to be reading with extraordinarily concentrated attention. Ellery managed to see what the book was. It was _Sartor Resartus_. The man was clearly a “scholar,” and probably a homely philosopher of the working-class.