With reference to your advertisement today in the personal column of The Times, I am disposed to believe that the eyeglasses and chain in question may be those I lost on the L. B. & S. C. Electric Railway while visiting London last Monday. I left Victoria by the 5.45 train, and did not notice my loss till I arrived at Balham. This indication and the optician’s specification of the glasses, which I enclose, should suffice at once as an identification and a guarantee of my bona fides. If the glasses should prove to be mine, I should be greatly obliged to you if you would kindly forward them to me by registered post, as the chain was a present from my daughter, and is one of my dearest possessions.
Thanking you in advance for this kindness, and regretting the trouble to which I shall be putting you, I am,
Yours very truly,
Thos. Crimplesham
Lord Peter Wimsey,
110, Piccadilly, W.
(Encl.)
“Dear me,” said Parker, “this is what you might call unexpected.”
“Either it is some extraordinary misunderstanding,” said Lord Peter, “or Mr. Crimplesham is a very bold and cunning villain. Or possibly, of course, they are the wrong glasses. We may as well get a ruling on that point at once. I suppose the glasses are at the Yard. I wish you’d just ring ’em up and ask ’em to send round an optician’s description of them at once—and you might ask at the same time whether it’s a very common prescription.”
“Right you are,” said Parker, and took the receiver off its hook.
“And now,” said his friend, when the message was delivered, “just come into the library for a minute.”
On the library table, Lord Peter had spread out a series of bromide prints, some dry, some damp, and some but half-washed.
“These little ones are the originals of the photos we’ve been taking,” said Lord Peter, “and these big ones are enlargements all made to precisely the same scale. This one here is the footmark on the linoleum; we’ll put that by itself at present. Now these finger-prints can be divided into five lots. I’ve numbered ’em on the prints—see?—and made a list: