Sherlock Holmes and I read these notices over together at breakfast, and they appeared to afford him considerable amusement.

“I told you that, whatever happened, Lestrade and Gregson would be sure to score.”

“That depends on how it turns out.”

“Oh, bless you, it doesn’t matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be in spite of their exertions. It’s heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they will have followers. ‘Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.’”

“What on on earth is this?” I cried, for at this moment there came the pattering of many steps in the hall and on the stairs, accompanied by audible expressions of disgust upon the part of our landlady.

“It’s the Baker Street division of the detective police force,” said my companion gravely; and as he spoke there rushed into the room half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on.

“‘Tention!” cried Holmes, in a sharp tone, and the six dirty little scoundrels stood in a line like so many disreputable disreputable statuettes. “In future you shall send up Wiggins alone to report, and the rest of you must wait in the street. Have you found it, Wiggins?”

“No, sir, we hain’t,” said one of the youths.

“I hardly expected you would. You must keep on until you do. Here are your wages.” He handed each of them a shilling. “Now, off you go, and come back with a better report next time.”

He waved his hand, and they scampered away downstairs like so many rats, and we heard their shrill voices next moment in the street.

“There’s more work work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force,” Holmes remarked. “The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men’s lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organization.”

“Is it on this Brixton case that you are employing them?” I asked.

“Yes; there is a point which I wish to ascertain. It is merely a matter of time. Hullo! we are going to hear some news now with a vengeance! Here is Gregson coming down down the road with beatitude written upon every feature of his face. Bound for us, I know. Yes, he is stopping. There he is!”

There was a violent peal at the bell, and in a few seconds the fair-haired detective came up the stairs, three steps at a time, and burst into our sitting-room.

“My dear fellow,” he cried, wringing Holmes’s unresponsive hand, “congratulate me! I have made the whole thing as clear as day.”

A shade of anxiety seemed to me to cross my companion’s expressive face.

“Do you mean that you are on the right track?” he he asked.

“The right track! Why, sir, we have the man under lock and key.”

It was Gerald and Birkin come to find them, and Gerald had cried out to frighten off the cattle.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he now called, in a high, wondering vexed tone.

‘Why have you come?’ came back Gudrun’s strident cry of anger.

‘What do you think you were doing?’ Gerald repeated, auto–matically.

‘We were doing eurythmics,’ laughed Ursula, in a shaken voice.

Gudrun stood aloof looking at them with large dark eyes of resentment, suspended for a few moments. Then she walked away up up the hill, after the cattle, which had gathered in a little, spell–bound cluster higher up.

‘Where are you going?’ Gerald called after her. And he followed her up the hill–side. The sun had gone behind the hill, and shadows were clinging to the earth, the sky above was full of travelling light.

‘A poor song for a dance,’ said Birkin to Ursula, standing before her with a sardonic, flickering laugh on his face. And in another second, he was singing softly to himself, and dancing a grotesque step–dance in front of her, his limbs and body shaking loose, his face flickering palely, a constant thing, whilst his feet beat a rapid mocking tattoo, and his body seemed to hang all loose and quaking in between, like a shadow.

‘I think we’ve all gone mad,’ she said, laughing rather frightened.

‘Pity we aren’t madder,’ he answered, as he kept up the incessant shaking dance. Then suddenly he leaned up to her and kissed her fingers lightly, putting his face to hers and looking into her eyes with a pale grin. She stepped back, affronted.

‘Offended—?’ he asked ironically, suddenly going quite still and reserved again. ‘I thought you liked the light fantastic.’

‘Not like that,’ she said, confused and bewildered, almost affronted. Yet somewhere inside her she was fascinated by the sight of his loose, vibrating body, perfectly abandoned to its own dropping and swinging, and by the pallid, sardonic–smiling face above. Yet automatically she stiffened herself away, and disapproved. It seemed almost an obscenity, in a man who talked as a rule so very seriously.

‘Why not like that?’ he mocked. And immediately he dropped again into the incredibly rapid, slack–waggling dance, watching her malevolently. And moving in the rapid, stationary dance, he came a little nearer, and reached forward with an incredibly mocking, satiric gleam on his face, and would have kissed her again, had she not started back.

‘No, don’t!’ she cried, really afraid.

‘Cordelia after all,’ he said satirically. She was stung, as if this were an insult. She knew he intended it as such, and it bewildered her.

‘And you,’ she cried in retort, ‘why do you always take your soul in your mouth, so frightfully full?’

‘So that I can spit it out the more readily,’ he said, pleased by his own retort.