y wish to verify my details in one way,
which can very readily be done, and then I make my bow and return to
London, leaving my results entirely at your service. I owe you too much
to act otherwise; for in all my experience I cannot recall any more
singular and interesting study."

"This is clean beyond me, Mr. Holmes. We saw you when we returned from
Tunbridge Wells last night, and you were in general agreement with our
results. What has happened since then to give you a completely new idea
of the case?"

"Well, since you ask me, I spent, as I told you that I would, some
hours last night at the Manor House."

"Well, what happened?"

"Ah, I can only give you a very general answer to that for the moment.
By the way, I have been reading a short but clear and interesting
account of the old building, purchasable at the modest sum of one penny
from the local tobacconist."

Here Holmes drew a small tract, embellished with a rude engraving of
the ancient Manor House, from his waistcoat pocket.

"It immensely adds to the zest of an investigation, my dear Mr. Mac,
when one is in conscious sympathy with the historical atmosphere of
one's surroundings. Don't look so impatient; for I assure you that even
so bald an account as this raises some sort of picture of the past in
one's mind. Permit me to give you a sample. 'Erected in the fifth year
of the reign of James I, and standing upon the site of a much older
building, the Manor House of Birlstone presents one of the finest
surviving examples of the moated Jacobean residence--'"

"You are making fools of us, Mr. Holmes!"

"Tut, tut, Mr. Mac!--the first sign of temper I have detected in you.
Well, I won't read it verbatim, since you feel so strongly upon the
subject. But when I tell you that there is some account of the taking
of the place by a parliamentary colonel in 1644, of the concealment of
Charles for several days in the course of the Civil War, and finally of
a visit there by the second George, you will admit that there are
various associations of interest connected with this ancient house."

"I don't doubt it, Mr. Holmes; but that is no business of ours."

"Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the
essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique
uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest. You will excuse
these remarks from one who, though a mere connoisseur of crime, is
still rather older and perhaps mo