“Goodness only knows what it was. Wait a bit.... I believe I didn’t tear it off anything. It was a bit of calico.... I believe I sewed it up in a cap of my landlady’s.”
“In your landlady’s cap?”
“Yes. I took it from her.”
“How did you get it?”
“You see, I remember once taking a cap for a rag, perhaps to wipe my pen on. I took it without asking, because it was a worthless rag. I tore it up, and I took the notes and sewed them up in it. I believe it was in that very rag I sewed them. An old piece of calico, washed a thousand times.”
“And you remember that for certain now?”
“I don’t know whether for certain. I think it was in the cap. But, hang it, what does it matter?”
“In that case your landlady will remember that the thing was lost?”
“No, she won’t, she didn’t miss it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an old rag not worth a farthing.”
“And where did you get the needle and thread?”