To return to the detective-office. Our errand at once received attention from the person in charge, who sent a messenger after the chief. He also informed us that several of their best men had gone up to Blankville that afternoon to confer with the authorities there. The public welfare demanded, as well as the interest of private individuals, that the guilty should be ferreted out, if possible. The apparent impunity with which the crime had been committed was startling, making every one feel it a personal matter to aid in discouraging any more such practices; besides, the police knew that their efforts would be well rewarded. While we sat talking with the official, I noticed the only other inmate of the room, who made a peculiar impression upon me for which I could not account. He was a large man, of middle age, with a florid face and sandy hair. He was quietly dressed in the ordinary manner of the season, and with nothing to mark him from a thousand other men of similar appearance, unless it was the expression of his small, blue-gray eyes, whose glance, when I happened to encounter it, seemed not to be looking at me but into me. However, he turned it away, and occupied himself with looking through the window at the passers-by. He appeared to be a stranger, awaiting, like ourselves, the coming of the chief. Desiring to secure the services of the particular detective whom Mr. Moreland had recommended, I asked the subordinate in attendance, if he could inform me where Mr. Burton was to be found. "Burton? I don't know of any one of that name, I think--if I may except my stage experience with Mr. Toodles," he added, with a smile, called up by some passing vision of his last visit to the theater. "Then there is no Mr. Burton belongs to your force?" "Not that I am acquainted with. He may be one of us, for all that. We don't pretend to know our own brothers here. You can ask Mr. Browne when he comes in." All this time the stranger by the window sat motionless, absorbed in looking upon the throng of persons and vehicles in the street beneath; and now I, having nothing else to do, regarded him. I felt a magnetism emanate from him, as from a manufactory of vital forces; I felt, instinctively, that he was possessed of an iron will and indomitable courage; I was speculating, according to my dreamy habit, upon his characteristics, when the chief appeared, and we, that is, James and myself, laid our case before him--at the same time I mentioned that Mr. Moreland had desired me to ask for Mr. Burton to be detailed to aid our investigations.