"Now we come to my movements. I lunched in the City, and afterwards went to a certain well-known book-seller's in Holborn, who had written to tell me that he had for sale a valuable book which he knew I wanted. I have been a collector of rare books ever since I came back to England. I spent an hour or so at the book-seller's shop. I bought the book which I had gone to see--paying a very heavy price for it. I carried it away in my hand, not wrapped up, and got into an omnibus which was going my way, and rode in it as far as the end of Praed Street. There I got out. And--in spite of what I said in my advertisement in the newspapers of the following morning,--I had the book in my hand when I left the omnibus. Why I pretended to have lost it, why I inserted that advertisement in the papers, I shall tell you presently--that was all part of a game which was forced upon me. "It was, as near as I can remember, past five o'clock when I turned along Praed Street. The darkness was coming on, and there was a slight rain falling, and a tendency to fog. However, I noticed something--I am naturally very quick of observation. As I passed the end of the street which goes round the back of the Grand Junction Canal basin, the street called Iron Gate Wharf, I saw turn into it, walking very quickly, a Chinaman whom I knew to be one of the two Chinese medical students to whom Daniel Multenius had let a furnished house in Maida Vale. He had his back to me--I did not know which of the two he was. I thought nothing of the matter, and went on. In another minute I was at the pawn-shop. I opened the door, walked in, and went straight to the little parlour--I had been there just twice before when Daniel Multenius was alone, and so I knew my way. I went, I say, straight through--and in the parlour doorway ran into Stephen Purvis. "Purvis was excited--trembling, big fellow though he is, do you see? He will bear me out as to what was said--and done. Without a word, he turned and pointed to where Daniel Multenius was lying across the floor--dead. 'I haven't been here a minute!' said Purvis. 'I came in--found him, like that! There's nobody here. For God's sake, where's my diamond?'