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"At the same time," he remarked after a pause, during which he

had sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire,

"you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of

these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself

in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense,

at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the King

of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the

problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the

incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are

outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I

fear that you may have bordered on the trivial."

"The end may have been so," I answered, "but the methods I hold

to have been novel and of interest."