"As for me," added the man in the corner, with that strange mixture of
nervousness and self-complacency which had set Miss Polly Burton
wondering, "well, you see, _I_ had made up my mind long ago where the
hitch lay in this particular case, and I was not so surprised as some of
the others.
"Perhaps you remember the wonderful development of the case, which so
completely mystified the police--and in fact everybody except myself.
Torriani and a waiter at his hotel in the Commercial Road both deposed
that at about 3.30 p.m. on December the 10th a shabbily dressed
individual lolled into the coffee-room and ordered some tea. He was
pleasant enough and talkative, told the waiter that his name was William
Kershaw, that very soon all London would be talking about him, as he was
about, through an unexpected stroke of good fortune, to become a very
rich man, and so on, and so on, nonsense without end.
"When he had finished his tea he lolled out again, but no sooner had he
disappeared down a turning of the road than the waiter discovered an old
umbrella, left behind accidentally by the shabby, talkative individual.
As is the custom in his highly respectable restaurant, Signor Torriani
put the umbrella carefully away in his office, on the chance of his
customer calling to claim it when he had discovered his loss.
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