Under these
circumstances, it is my duty to be considerate
toward you, and not to bear too hardly on your small failings. I
decline, therefore, altogether to take offense at the tone of
your letter; I give you the full benefit of the natural
generosity of my nature; I sponge the very existence of your
surly communication out of my memory--in short, Chief Inspector
Theakstone, I forgive you, and proceed to business.
My first duty is to draw up a full statement of the instructions
I have received from Sergeant Bulmer. Here they are at your
service, according to my version of them.
At Number Thirteen Rutherford Street, Soho, there is a
stationer's shop. It is kept by one Mr. Yatman. He is a married
man, but has no family. Besides Mr. and Mrs. Yatman, the other
inmates in the house are a lodger, a young single man named Jay,
who occupies the front room on the second floor--a shopman, who
sleeps in one of the attics, and a servant-of-all-work, whose bed
is in the back kitchen. Once a week a charwoman comes to help
this servant. These are all the persons who, on ordinary
occasions, have means of access to the interior of the house,
placed, as a matter of course, at their disposal. Mr. Yatman has
been in business for many years, carrying on his affairs
prosperously enough to realize a handsome independence for a
person in his position.
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