Finally it came. He was sitting in the smoking-room of the club having tea, and listening rather wearily to Surbiton's account of the last comic song at the Gaiety, when the waiter came in with the evening papers. He took up the St. James's, and was listlessly turning over its pages, when this strange heading caught his eye:
SUICIDE OF A CHEIROMANTIST
He turned pale with excitement, and began to read. The paragraph ran as follows:--
Yesterday morning, at seven o'clock, the body of Mr. Septimus R.
Podgers, the eminent cheiromantist, was washed on shore at
Greenwich, just in front of the Ship Hotel. The unfortunate
gentleman had been missing for some days, and considerable anxiety
for his safety had been felt in cheiromantic circles. It is supposed
that he committed suicide under the influence of a temporary mental
derangement, caused by overwork, and a verdict to that effect was
returned this afternoon by the coroner's jury. Mr Podgers had just
completed an elaborate treatise on the subject of the Human Hand,
that will shortly be published when it will no doubt attract much
attention. The deceased was sixty-five years of age, and does not
seem to have left any relations.
