There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimylooking shop near Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities, was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an oldfashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank. There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished. And at that two people, who stood outside the window, were looking, one of them a tall, thin clergyman, the other a blackbearded young man of dusky complexion and unobtrusive costume .