"Fix me up?"
"Yes, sir."
He took from his pocket a small box of paints, and two or three sets of wigs and whiskers and mustaches.
"I always travel with them, sir. I can make myself into another man in five minutes or so, and as for a change of clothes, any handy cheap-clothes shop will serve my turn. Put on these sandy whiskers and mustaches--always hide your mouth, sir--and this sandy wig, and let me touch you up a bit, and your own mother wouldn't know you."
I doubted whether she would when I looked at myself in the glass after carrying out Fowler's instructions, and in less than a quarter of an hour we were riding in a four-wheeled cab to Brixton. We alighted within a couple of hundred yards of Miss Ida White's lodgings, and Fowler took me boldly into the house, requesting me on the way thither to try and discover the men working under him who were keeping watch upon the lady's-maid's movements. To his gratification, I failed to discover them.
"Then you didn't see me give the office to them?" he asked.
"No," I replied.
"I did, though, under your very nose. That is a guarantee to you, sir, that the thing is being neatly done. Miss White is in the house. If she were not, my men wouldn't be in the street. Did you hear the snapping of a lock down-stairs?"
"No."
We were sitting at the window of Fowler's room, which was situated on the second floor. It was the front room, and we could therefore see into the street.