"Sore ribs," was the diagnosis of Doctor Jack Shaftoe. "Oh, I’ve had what you’ve got, sir, a time or two. Bloody torture, ain’t it? An arm or a leg heals in a trice, but ribs take forever." This seemed to be a sort of patter while he waited for the Visitor’s fit to subside. When the other had finally stifled himself with a handkerchief to the lips, Jack went on: "It is easy enough for me to stand up before anyone you like, put my hand on a Bible, and testify that the coins I took out of the Pyx— your coins—were sound, and the ones I put into it— my fakes—were debased. But you quite correctly ask, who the hell is going to take my word for it? No one in his right mind. So. Yes. Indeed. You, sir, require hard evidence, in the form of the hard currency that I stole. Where is it, you’d like to know? Well, I already told you before that I gave all of that swag to the late Marquis of Ravenscar. I hoped that’d satisfy you. But as you have been so tiresome on this topic, I have, since the Marquis’s death, made certain inquiries among those of my friends you’ve not yet murdered, thrown into prison, or chased out of the country. And they tell me, sir, that those Sinthias from the Pyx were taken out of Ravenscar’s house after he died by that friend of his, that Daniel Waterhouse, and that this Waterhouse cove placed ’em for safekeeping in a vault or something below the ground out in Clerkenwell—I see by your face that you know the place I mean!" For the greasy wig had begun to bob up and down as the Visitor nodded.