‘Yes! In a way, he loved me.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘What is there to tell? He had risen from the ranks. He loved the army. And he had never married. He was twenty years older than me. He was a very intelligent man: and alone in the army, as such a man is: a passionate man in his way: and a very clever officer. I lived under his spell while I was with him. I sort of let him run my life. And I never regret it.’

‘And did you mind very much when he died?’

‘I was as near death myself. But when I came to, I knew another part of me was finished. But then I had always known it would finish in death. All things do, as far as that goes.’

She sat and ruminated. The thunder crashed outside. It was like being in a little ark in the Flood.

‘You seem to have such a lot BEHIND you,’ she said.

‘Do I? It seems to me I’ve died once or twice already. Yet here I am, pegging on, and in for more trouble.’

She was thinking hard, yet listening to the storm.

‘And weren’t you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel was dead?’

‘No! They were a mingy lot.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They’re the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their boot–laces aren’t correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That’s what finishes me up. Kow–tow, kow–tow, arse–licking till their tongues are tough: yet they’re always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each—’

Connie laughed. The rain was rushing down.

‘He hated them!’

‘No,’ said he. ‘He didn’t bother. He just disliked them. There’s a difference. Because, as he said, the Tommies are getting just as priggish and half–balled and narrow–gutted. It’s the fate of mankind, to go that way.’

‘The common people too, the working people?’

‘All the lot. Their spunk is gone dead. Motor–cars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them. I tell you, every generation breeds a more rabbity generation, with india rubber tubing for guts and tin legs and tin faces. Tin people! It’s all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping the mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They’re all alike. The world is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine–fucking!—It’s all alike. Pay ‘em money to cut off the world’s cock. Pay money, money, money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave ‘em all little twiddling machines.’

“No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life in one.”

“Well, I think we must wait for a little more material. After all, you have nothing to complain of. You have received your rent, and he is not a troublesome lodger, though he is certainly an unusual one. He pays you well, and if he chooses to lie concealed it is no direct business of yours. We have no excuse for an intrusion upon his privacy until we have some reason to think that there is a guilty reason for it. I’ve taken up the matter, and I won’t lose sight of it. Report to me if anything fresh occurs, and rely upon my assistance if it should be needed.

“There are certainly some points of interest in this case, Watson,” he remarked when the landlady had left us. “It may, of course, be trivial — individual eccentricity; or it may be very much deeper than appears on the surface. The first thing that strikes one is the obvious possibility that the person now in the rooms may be entirely different from the one who engaged them.”

“Why should you think so?”

“Well, apart from this cigarette-end, was it not suggestive that the only time the lodger went out was immediately after his taking the rooms? He came back — or someone came back — when all witnesses were out of the way. We have no proof that the person who came back was the person who went out. Then, again, the man who took the rooms spoke English well. This other, however, prints ‘match’ when it should have been ‘matches.’ I can imagine that the word was taken out of a dictionary, which would give the noun but not the plural. The laconic style may be to conceal the absence of knowledge of English. Yes, Watson, there are good reasons to suspect that there has been a substitution of lodgers.”

“But for what possible end?”

“Ah! there lies our problem. There is one rather obvious line of investigation.” He took down the great book in which, day by day, he filed the agony columns of the various London journals. “Dear me!” said he, turning over the pages, “what a chorus of groans, cries, and bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! But surely the most valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to a student of the unusual! This person is alone and cannot be approached by letter without a breach of that absolute secrecy which is desired. How is any news or any message to reach him from without? Obviously by advertisement through a newspaper. There seems no other way, and fortunately we need concern ourselves with the one paper only. Here are the Daily Gazette extracts of the last fortnight. ‘Lady with a black boa at Prince’s Skating Club’ — that we may pass. ‘Surely Jimmy will not break his mother’s heart’ — that appears to be irrelevant. ‘If the lady who fainted in the Brixton bus’ — she does not interest me. ‘Every day my heart longs —’ Bleat, Watson — unmitigated bleat! Ah, this is a little more possible. Listen to this: ‘Be patient. Will find some sure means of communication. Meanwhile, this column. G.’ That is two days after Mrs. Warren’s lodger arrived. It sounds plausible, does it not? The mysterious one could understand English, even if he could not print it. Let us see if we can pick up the trace again. Yes, here we are — three days later. ‘Am making successful arrangements. Patience and prudence. The clouds will pass. G.’ Nothing for a week after that. Then comes something much more definite: ‘The path is clearing. If I find chance signal message remember code agreed — one A, two B, and so on. You will hear soon. G.’ That was in yesterday’s paper, and there is nothing in to-day’s. It’s all very appropriate to Mrs. Warren’s lodger. If we wait a little, Watson, I don’t doubt that the affair will grow more intelligible.”