Sergeant Hemingway, who had a genius for making his fellows confide in him, produced in triumph the chatelaine of No. 11 Gadsby Row, a corpulent lady with a slight beard, who remembered having seen Mr Hyde once when she had popped into Mr Brown's to buy a paper. She hadn't happened to look at him particular, for she was passing the time of day with Mr Brown, like anyone might, when in he walked, and without a word to no one went straight through the shop into the back parlour. Well, that had struck her as being a funny thing to do, and she had said to Mr Brown, not thinking: “Who's that?” And she remembered as well as if it had been yesterday him saying: “Oh, that's only Mr Hyde, that is!” It was a bit hard to say what he'd looked like, because he'd had his hat on, and a pair of them dark spectacles, but he was dressed very gentlemanly, that she would say.
It was not very helpful, but it was the best Sergeant Hemingway could do. No one else in the Row seemed ever to have noticed Hyde, and no shop in the vicinity had been patronised by him.
A watch was set on No. 17 Gadsby Row, and an inquiry made into Mr Brown's past history. It did not surprise either Hannasyde or the Sergeant to discover that Mr Brown was known to the police, and had done time for fraud seven years previously, but it did surprise them to find that since the date of his release from prison he seemed to have kept out of trouble. Mr Brown, searchingly interrogated by the sceptical Sergeant, assumed an air of outraged virtue, and said bitterly that he supposed the police had never heard of a man turning over a new leaf, and running straight.
The plain-clothes detectives on the look-out for a middle-aged gentleman in dark spectacles found their task peculiarly dull, and although several middle-aged men visited the shop none of them wore spectacles, and none of them stayed longer than the time it took them to purchase their morning papers, or their packets of cigarettes. The shop was not patronised by men who dressed "very gentlemanly", a circumstance which made Mr Peel, the younger of the two detectives, take a good deal of interest in one of its customers, a young man whose attire was very gentlemanly indeed, and who came strolling down the street one early afternoon, and went into Mr Brown's shop.
Mr Brown, who was serving a navvy with a couple of ounces of shag, took a fleeting glance at the newcomer but paid no further heed to him until his first customer had pocketed his change, and was about to leave the shop. Then he leaned his hands on the counter, and asked what he might have the pleasure of doing for the foppish young gentleman.
Mr Randall Matthews watched the navvy go out, and produced a shilling from his pocket. “Twenty Players, please,” he said.
Mr Brown pushed a packet across the counter, and picked up the shilling.
Randall opened the packet, and drew out one of the cigarettes and lit it. Over the flame of his lighter his eyes sought Mr Brown's. “Hyde in?” he asked softly.
The guarded look descended like a curtain over Mr Brown's face. “No,” he replied. “Nor I don't know when he will be.”
Randall put his lighter away, and drew out an elegant notecase, and in a leisurely fashion extracted a Bank note that rustled agreeably. “That is a pity,” he remarked. “It is important that I should see him.”