| Sometime later the two are eating breakfast when the narrator’s friend perceives that they will shortly be joined by a client. He is proved right when Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard enters, who proceeds to sit down and help himself to some sausages. The narrator’s friend states that clearly this must be a case of national importance, frightening Lestrade into believing that the matter was public knowledge. |
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| However, he reassures him that he only deduced so because Lestrade came despite not being able to be publicly seen getting the advice of London’s only “consulting detective”, and in addition without eating breakfast. Lestrade, somewhat cautiously, asks whether it would be best for the narrator to leave the room; however, the detective assures him that it is better he stay. |
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| The detective then again confounds Lestrade by asking when they should leave for Shoreditch (because of the yellow mud on the inspector’s pants), and accepts the case. The narrator and the detective travel to the East End of London, though in a separate cab from Lestrade. On the ride there, the narrator asks his friend about his job as a “consulting detective”. The detective responds that he does not take cases: rather, people bring him their insoluble problems, he listens, and sometimes solves them. Most of his clients are in fact police and detectives who are incapable of solving their crimes |
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