“We shall know who he is now, at any rate,” said he, as we followed the couch to the casualty-room.  Thorndyke nodded unsympathetically.  The medical instinct in him was for the moment stronger than the legal.

The house-surgeon leaned over the couch, and made a rapid examination as he listened to our account of the accident.  Then he straightened himself up and looked at Thorndyke.

“Internal haemorrhage, I expect,” said he.  “At any rate, he’s dead, poor beggar!—­as dead as Nebuchadnezzar.  Ah! here comes a bobby; it’s his affair now.”

A sergeant came into the room, breathing quickly, and looked in surprise from the corpse to the inspector.  But the latter, without loss of time, proceeded to turn out the dead man’s pockets, commencing with the bulky object that had first attracted his attention; which proved to be a brown-paper parcel tied up with red tape.

“Pork-pie, begad!” he exclaimed with a crestfallen air as he cut the tape and opened the package.  “You had better go through his other pockets, sergeant.”

The small heap of odds and ends that resulted from this process tended, with a single exception, to throw little light on the man’s identity; the exception being a letter, sealed, but not stamped, addressed in an exceedingly illiterate hand to Mr. Adolf Schoenberg, 213, Greek Street, Soho.

“He was going to leave it by hand, I expect,” observed the inspector, with a wistful glance at the sealed envelope.  “I think I’ll take it round myself, and you had better come with me, sergeant.”

He slipped the letter into his pocket, and, leaving the sergeant to take possession of the other effects, made his way out of the building.

“I suppose, Doctor,” said he, as we crossed into Berners Street, “you are not coming our way!  Don’t want to see Mr. Schoenberg, h’m?”

Thorndyke reflected for a moment.  “Well, it isn’t very far, and we may as well see the end of the incident.  Yes; let us go together.”

No. 213, Greek Street, was one of those houses that irresistibly suggest to the observer the idea of a church organ, either jamb of the doorway being adorned with a row of brass bell-handles corresponding to the stop-knobs.

These the sergeant examined with the air of an expert musician, and having, as it were, gauged the capacity of the instrument, selected the middle knob on the right-hand side and pulled it briskly; whereupon a first-floor window was thrown up and a head protruded.  But it afforded us a momentary glimpse only, for, having caught the sergeant’s upturned eye, it retired with surprising precipitancy, and before we had time to speculate on the apparition, the street-door was opened and a man emerged.  He was about to close the door after him when the inspector interposed.

“Does Mr. Adolf Schoenberg live here?”

The new-comer, a very typical Jew of the red-haired type, surveyed us thoughtfully through his gold-rimmed spectacles as he repeated the name.