Shillington, or I could have shown you just how to trace the personality of the handsome young man about town under that of this snuffy, dirty, ill-kempt, unwashed, and badly clothed, stooping figure of an out-at-elbows servant." He threw a bundle of newspaper cuttings down on the table. I gazed at them still puzzled, but nevertheless convinced that he was right. When I looked up again, I only saw a corner of his shabby checked ulster disappearing through the swing doors. X THE MYSTERY OF THE MONTMARTRE HAT §1 "It was during a foggy, rainy night in November a couple of years ago," the Old Man in the Corner said to me that day, "that the inhabitants of Wicklow Lane, Southwark, were startled by a terrible row proceeding from one of the houses down the street. There was a lot of shouting and banging, then a couple of pistol-shots, after that nothing more. It was then just after midnight. The dwellers in Wicklow Lane are all of them poor, they are all of them worried with the cares of large families, small accommodation, and irregular work, all of which we must take it make for indifference to other people's worries, and above all, to other people's quarrels. Rows were not an unknown occurrence in Wicklow Lane, not always perhaps at dead of night and not necessarily accompanied by pistol-shots, but nevertheless sufficiently frequent not to arouse more than passing interest. Half-a-dozen tousled heads--no more--were thrust out of the windows to ascertain what this particular row was about; but as everything was quiet again, as no police was in sight to whom one might give directions, and as the mixture of rain and fog was particularly unpleasant, the tousled heads after a few minutes disappeared again, and once more peace reigned in Wicklow Lane. "Of course the next morning the event of the night was mentioned and mildly discussed, both by the men whilst going to their work and by the ladies whilst scrubbing their doorsteps. Every one agreed that the pistol-shots were fired soon after midnight, but no one seemed to be very clear in which particular house the row had occurred. Two or three of the people who lived in No. 11 and No. 15 respectively would have it that it occurred 'next door,' but as the house next door to them both could only be the one between them, namely No. 13, and as No. 13 had been empty for months, this testimony was at first strongly discounted.