ask the British Museum people who was in the habit of consulting alchemical manuscripts: I can't very well tell them not to mention Dunning, can I? It would set them talking at once. Let’s hope it won't occur to him.”
However, Mr. Karswell was an astute man.
This much is in the way of prologue.
On an evening rather later in the same
week, Mr. Edward Dunning was returning from the British Museum, where he had
been engaged in Research, to the comfortable
house in a suburb where he lived alone,
tended by two excellent women who had been
long with him. There is nothing to be added
by way of description of him to what we
have heard already. Let us follow him as he
takes his sober course homewards.
A train took him to within a mile or two
of his house, and an electric tram a stage
further. The line ended at a point some three
hundred yards from his front door. He had
had enough of reading when he got into
