"I'll saw the horn off and bring it up to the hotel myself, with the
ox-gall," said Mr. Felton. "You shall have them in half an hour."
He was as good as his word, for in half an hour Thorndyke was seated at
a small table by the window of our private sitting-room in the Black
Bull Hotel. The table was covered with newspaper, and on it lay the long
grey horn and Thorndyke's travelling-case, now open and displaying a
small microscope and its accessories. The butcher was seated solidly in
an armchair waiting, with a half-suspicious eye on Thorndyke for the
report; and I was endeavouring by cheerful talk to keep Mr. Stopford
from sinking into utter despondency, though I, too, kept a furtive
watch on my colleague's rather mysterious proceedings.
I saw him unwind the bandage and apply the horn to his ear, bending it
slightly to and fro. I watched him, as he scanned the surface closely
through a lens, and observed him as he scraped some substance from the
pointed end on to a glass slide, and, having applied a drop of some
reagent, began to tease out the scraping with a pair of mounted needles.
Presently he placed the slide under the microscope, and, having observed
it attentively for a minute or two, turned round sharply.
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