To find Barkers Inn was much the same to an ordinary person as looking for aneedle in the proverbial haystack. Dick Latimer, however, knew its exactwhereabouts, because he lived there, and on this foggy November night he wasmaking for it unerringly with the homing instinct of a bee. Leaving FleetStreet behind him, somewhere about eleven-thirty, he turned into Chancery Lane,and then struck off to the right down a by-road which narrowed to an alley, andfinally ended in a cul-de-sac. Here the young man hurried through the rustyiron gates of a granite archway, and found himself in an oblong courtyard pavedwith cobble-stones and surrounded by tumble-down houses with steep roofs ofdiscolored tiles. A few steps took him across this to a crooked little door,which he entered to mount a crooked little staircase, and in one minute he wason the first-floor landing, where a tiny gas-jet pricked the gloom with abluish spot of light. Hastily using his latchkey, he admitted himself through adoor on the left into a stuffy dark passage, technically called the entrancehall. Eventually entering the sitting-room, he hurled himsel