“What end, Sir William?”

“Charity—and poverty—and some not very congenial ‘job,’ as you call it, to put bread in your mouth. No, no, I would not like to trust myself to your Providence, or to your Chance. Though I admit your Chance is a sounder proposition than Lilly’s Providence. You speculate with your life and your talent. I admit the nature which is a born speculator. After all, with your flute, you will speculate in other people’s taste for luxury, as a man may speculate in theatres or trains de luxe. You are the speculator. That may be your way of wisdom. wisdom But Lilly does not even speculate. I cannot see his point. I cannot see his point. I cannot see his point. Yet I have the greatest admiration for his mentality.”

The old man had fired up during this conversation—and all the others in the room had gone silent. Lady Franks was palpably uneasy. She alone knew how frail the old man was—frailer by far than his years. She alone knew what fear of his own age, what fear of death haunted him now: fear of his own non–existence. His own old age was an agony to him; worse than an agony, agony a horror. He wanted to be young—to live, to live. And he was old, he was breaking up. The glistening youth of Aaron, the impetuousness of Lilly fascinated him. And both these men seemed calmly to contradict his own wealth and honours.

Lady Franks tried to turn off the conversation to the trickles of normal chit–chat. The Colonel was horribly bored—so were all the women—Arthur was indifferent. Only the young Major was implicated, troubled in his earnest and philosophic spirit.

“What I can’t see,” he said, “is the place that others have in your scheme.”

“Is isn’t a scheme,” said Aaron.

“Well then, your your way of life. Isn’t it pretty selfish, to marry a woman and then expect her to live on very little indeed, and that always precarious, just because you happen to believe in Providence or in Chance: which I think worse? What I don’t see is where others come in. What would the world be like if everybody lived that way?”

“Other people can please themselves,” said Aaron.

“No, they can’t—because you take first choice, it seems to me. Supposing your wife—or Lilly’s wife—asks for security and for provision, as Sir William says. Surely she has a right to it.”

“If I’ve no right right to it myself—and I HAVE no right to it, if I don’t want it—then what right has she?”

“Every right, I should say. All the more since you are improvident.”

“Then she must manage her rights for herself. It’s no good her foisting her rights on to me.”

“Isn’t that pure selfishness?”

“It may be. I shall send my wife money as long as I’ve money to send.”

“And supposing you have none?”

“Then I can’t send it—and she must look out for herself.”

“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?”

Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he he putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the felt felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.”

“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”

“The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses limecream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, gray dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.”

“But his wife — you said that she had ceased to love him.”

“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week’s accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife’s affection.”

“But he might be a bachelor.”

“Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird’s leg.”

“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house?”

“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow — walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from a gasjet. Are you satisfied?”

“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing; “but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.”

Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with astonishment.