“We will consider them presently,” said he. “Let us finish with the spectacles first. You see that the left eyeglass is a concave cylindrical lens of some sort. We can make out that much from the fragments that remain, and we can measure the curvature when we get them home, although that will be easier if we can collect some more fragments and stick them together. The right eye is plain glass; that is quite evident. Then these will have belonged to your patient, Jervis. You said that the tremulous iris was in the right eye, I think?”

“Yes,” I replied. “These will be his spectacles, without doubt.”

“They are peculiar frames,” he continued. “If they were made in this country, we might be able to discover the maker. But we must collect as many fragments of glass as we can.”

Once more we searched amongst the rubbish and succeeded, eventually, in recovering some seven or eight small fragments of the broken spectacle-glasses, which Thorndyke laid on the mantelshelf beside the little sticks.