But it was difficult to discover what he was after.
It was the tobacconists' shops that attracted him.
He did not enter, only stood at the windows counting something.
He jotted down the result on a piece of paper and then sped on to the next shop.
In this way, with Andrew at his heels, he had done the whole of the W.
C.district, St.James's, Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Bond Street, and the Burlington Arcade.
On this occasion he took the small thoroughfares lying between upper Regent Street and Tottenham Court Road.

Beginning in Great Titchfield Street he went from tobacconist's to tobacconist's, sometimes smiling to himself, at other times frowning.

Andrew scrutinised the windows as he left them, but could make nothing of it.
Not for the first time he felt that there could be no murder to-night unless he saw the paper first.
Lord Randolph devoted an hour to this work.

Then he hailed a cab.
Andrew expected this.

But the statesman still held the paper loosely in his hand.
It was a temptation.
Andrew bounded forward as if to open the cab door, pounced upon the paper and disappeared with it up an alley.