"Indeed I will," I replied, "but you are not going away, are you?"
He gave a curious, short, dry chuckle:
"I am going out of England for the benefit of my health," he said coolly.
I hadn't shaken hands with him, because the very next moment he had turned his back on me as if he thought better of it. The next morning I read in the papers a curious account of some extensive robberies committed in the neighbourhood of Hatton Garden. The burglar had managed to escape, but the police were said to hold an important clue. A curious feature about those robberies was the way in which a knotted cord had been used to effect an entrance through a skylight. The newspaper reporters gave a very full description of this cord: it was photographed and reproduced in the illustrated papers. The knots in it were of a wonderful and intricate pattern.
They set me thinking—and wondering!
I have often been to that blameless teashop in Fleet Street since.
But the Old Man in the Corner is never there now, and the police have never been able to trace the large consignment of diamonds stolen from that shop in Hatton Garden and which has been valued at £80,000.
I wonder if I shall ever see my eccentric friend again.
Somehow I think that I shall. And if I do, shall I see him sitting in his accustomed corner, with his spectacles on his nose, and his long, thin fingers working away at a bit of string—fashioning knots—many knots—complicated knots—like those in the cord by the aid of which an entrance was effected into that shop in Hatton Garden and diamonds worth £80,000 were stolen?
I wonder!!