The Man with the Clubfoot
Others were more detailed:

Dr. Semlin, Brooklyn, N.Y.
The Halewright Mfg. Co., Ltd.

There were also half a dozen private cards:

Dr. Semlin, 333 E. 73rd St., New York.
Rivington Park House.

In the packet of cards was a solitary one, larger than the rest, an expensive affair on thick, highly glazed millboard, bearing in gothic characters the name:

Otto von Steinhardt.

On this card was written in pencil, above the name:

"Hotel Sixt, Vos in't Tuintje," and in brackets, thus: "(Mme. Anna Schratt.)"

In another pocket of the portfolio was an American passport surmounted by a flaming eagle and sealed with a vast red seal, sending greetings to all and sundry on behalf of Henry Semlin, a United States citizen, travelling to Europe. Details in the body of the document set forth that Henry Semlin was born at Brooklyn on 31st March, 1886, that his hair was Black, nose Aquiline, chin Firm, and that of special marks he had None. The description was good enough to show me that it was undoubtedly the body of Henry Semlin that lay at my feet.

The passport had been issued at Washington three months earlier. The only _visa_ it bore was that of the American Embassy in London, dated two days previously. With it was a British permit, issued to Henry Semlin, Manufacturer, granting him authority to leave the United Kingdom for the purpose of travelling to Rotterdam, further a bill for luncheon served on board the Dutch Royal mail steamer _Koningin Regentes_ on yesterday's date.

In the long and anguishing weeks that followed on that anxious night in the Hotel of the Vos in't Tuintje, I have often wondered to what malicious promptings, to what insane impulse, I owed the idea that suddenly germinated in my brain as I sat fingering the dead man's letter-case in that squalid room. The impulse sprang into my brain like a flash and like a flash I acted on it, though I can hardly believe I meant to pursue it to its logical conclusion until I stood once more outside the door of my room.


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