“I was confined to the house by a severe chill for three days last week. I thought, however, that I had cast off every trace of it.”
“So you have. You look remarkably robust.”
“How, then, did you know of it?”
“My dear fellow, you know my methods.”
“You deduced it, then?”
“Certainly.”
“And from what?”
“From your slippers.”
I glanced down at the new patent leathers which I was wearing. “How on earth—” I began, but Holmes answered my question before it was asked.
“Your slippers are new,” he said. “You could not have had them more than a few weeks. The soles which you are at this moment presenting to me are slightly scorched. For a moment I thought they might have got wet and been burned in the drying. But near the instep there is a small circular wafer of paper with the shopman’s hieroglyphics upon it. Damp would of course have removed this. You had, then, been sitting with your feet outstretched to the fire, which a man would hardly do even in so wet a June as this if he were in his full health.”