‘Oh, isn’t it beautiful! I love reading it! I believe it has cured my hiccup!’ squealed Halliday. ‘Do let me go on. “It is a desire for the reduction process in oneself, a reducing back to the origin, a return along the Flux of Corruption, to the original rudimentary conditions of being—!” Oh, but I DO think it is wonderful. It almost supersedes the Bible–’

‘Yes—Flux of Corruption,’ said the Russian, ‘I remember that phrase.’

‘Oh, he was always talking about Corruption,’ said the Pussum. ‘He must be corrupt himself, to have it so much on his mind.’

‘Exactly!’ said the Russian.

‘Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! But do listen to this. “And in the great retrogression, the reducing back of the created body of life, we get knowledge, and beyond knowledge, the phosphorescent ecstasy of acute sensation.” Oh, I do think these phrases are too absurdly wonderful. Oh but don’t you think they ARE—they’re nearly as good as Jesus. “And if, Julius, you want this ecstasy of reduction with the Pussum, you must go on till it is fulfilled. But surely surely there is in you also, somewhere, the living desire for positive creation, relationships in ultimate faith, when all this process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, is transcended, and more or less finished—” I do wonder what the flowers of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.’

‘Thank you—and what are you?’

‘Oh, I’m another, surely, according to this letter! We’re all flowers of mud—FLEURS—HIC! DU MAL! It’s perfectly wonderful, Birkin harrowing Hell—harrowing the Pompadour—HIC!’

‘Go on—go on,’ said Maxim. ‘What comes next? It’s really very interesting.’

‘I think it’s awful cheek to write like that,’ said the Pussum.

‘Yes—yes, so do I,’ said the Russian. ‘He is a megalomaniac, of course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of man—go on reading.’

‘Surely,’ Halliday intoned, ‘“surely goodness and mercy hath followed me all the days of my life—”’ he broke off and giggled. Then he began again, intoning like a clergyman. ‘“Surely there will come an end in us to this desire—for the constant going apart,—this passion for putting asunder—everything—ourselves, reducing ourselves part from part—reacting in intimacy only for destruction,—using sex as a great reducing agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female from their highly complex unity—reducing the old ideas, going back to the savages for our sensations,—always seeking to LOSE ourselves in some ultimate black sensation, mindless and infinite—burning only with destructive fires, raging on with the hope of being burnt out utterly—”’

“And his name is?”

“Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty’s navy,” cried Gregson pompously rubbing his fat hands and inflating his chest.

Sherlock Holmes gave a sigh of relief and relaxed into a smile.

“Take a seat, and try one of these cigars,” he said. “We are anxious to know how you managed it. Will you have some whisky and water?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” the detective answered. “The tremendous exertions which I have gone through during the last day or two have worn me out. Not so much bodily exertion, you understand, as the strain upon the mind. You will appreciate that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for we are both brain-workers.”

“You do me too much honour,” said Holmes, gravely. “Let us hear how you arrived at this most gratifying result.”

The detective seated himself in the armchair, and puffed complacently at his cigar. Then suddenly he slapped his thigh in a paroxysm of amusement.

“The fun of it is,” he cried, “that that fool Lestrade, who thinks himself so smart, has gone off upon the wrong track altogether. He is after the secretary Stangerson, who had no more to do with the crime than the babe unborn. I have no doubt that he has caught him by this time.”

The idea tickled Gregson so much that he laughed until he choked.

“And how did you get your clue?”

“Ah, I’ll tell you all about it. Of course, Dr. Watson, this is strictly between ourselves. The first difficulty which we had to contend with was the finding of this American’s antecedents. Some people would have waited until their advertisements were answered, or until parties came forward and volunteered information. That is not Tobias Gregson’s way of going to work. You remember the hat beside the dead man?”

“Yes,” said Holmes; “by John Underwood and Sons, 129, Camberwell Road.”

Gregson looked quite crestfallen.

“I had no idea that you noticed that,” he said. “Have you been there?”

“No.”

“Ha!” cried Gregson, in a relieved voice; “you should never neglect a chance, however small it may seem.”

“To a great mind, nothing is little,” remarked Holmes, sententiously.

“Well, I went to Underwood, and asked him if he had sold a hat of that size and description. He looked over his books, and came on it at once. He had sent the hat to a Mr. Drebber, residing at Charpentier’s Boarding Establishment, Torquay Terrace. Thus I got at his address.”

“Smart, — very smart!” murmured Sherlock Holmes.

“I next called upon Madame Charpentier,” continued the detective. “I found her very pale and distressed. Her daughter was in the room, too — an uncommonly fine girl she is, too; she was looking red about the eyes and her lips trembled as I spoke to her. That didn’t escape my notice. I began to smell a rat. You know the feeling, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, when you come upon the right scent — a kind of thrill in your nerves. ‘Have you heard of the mysterious death of your late boarder Mr. Enoch J. Drebber, of Cleveland?’ I asked.