When I came down to tea, you told me you had been employing
your mind for my benefit. May I ask how?"
"By all means," said Captain Wragge. "You shall have the net result
of the whole mental process. Said process ranges over the present and
future proceedings of your disconsolate friends, and of the lawyers
who are helping them to find you. Their present proceedings are, in all
probability, assuming the following form: the lawyer's clerk has given
you up at Mr. Huxtable's, and has also, by this time, given you up,
after careful inquiry, at all the hotels. His last chance is that you
may send for your box to the cloak-room--you don't send for it--and
there the clerk is to-night (thanks to Captain Wragge and Rosemary Lane)
at the end of his resources. He will forthwith communicate that fact to
his employers in London; and those employers (don't be alarmed!) will
apply for help to the detective police. Allowing for inevitable
delays, a professional spy, with all his wits about him, and with
those handbills to help him privately in identifying you, will be here
certainly not later than the day after tomorrow--possibly earlier. If
you remain in York, if you attempt to communicate with Mr.
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