"What is it that's been found, exactly?" asked Felpham.
Drillford opened a locked drawer, lifted aside a sheet of cardboard, and revealed a fine gold watch and chain and a diamond ring. These lay on two or three sheets of much crumpled paper of a peculiar quality.
"There you are!" said Drillford. "Those belonged to Mr. Ashton; there's his name on the watch, and a mark of his inside the ring. They were found early this morning, hidden, in the very place in which Hyde confessed that he spent most of the night after Ashton's murder—a shed belonging to one Fisher, a greengrocer, up the Harrow Road.
"Who found them?" demanded Felpham.
"Fisher himself," answered Drillford. "He was pottering about in his shed before going to Covent Garden. He wanted some empty boxes, and in pulling things about he found—these! Couldn't have made a more important find, I think.
"Were these things loose?" asked Viner.
"Wrapped loosely in the paper they're lying on," replied Drillford.
Viner took the paper out of the drawer, examined it and lifted it to his nose.
"I wonder, if Hyde really did put those things there," he said, "how Hyde came to be carrying about with him these sheets of paper which had certainly been used before for the wrappings of chemicals or drugs?"
Felpham pricked his ears.