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"No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us."

"Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another."

"She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town."

"Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance.

We have established a most important fact by these questions, Watson," he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together.

"We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel.

That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them.

Now, this is a most suggestive fact."

"What does it suggest?"

"It suggests-halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?"

As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself.

His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands.

So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning.

"Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried.

"They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful.

By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble.

I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they've got a bit over the mark this time."

"Still looking for your boot?"

"Yes, sir, and mean to find it."

"But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?"

"So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one."

"What! you don't mean to say ?"

"That's just what I do mean to say.

I only had three pairs in the world-the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing.

Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have sneaked one of the black.

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