y a truism so far--as in the French Revolution. But exactly because
Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a
man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only
a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong,
undisputed first principles. Here he had no strong first principles.
Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all,
he might be anything from a tall tramp on Wimbledon Common to a tall
toast-master at the Hotel Metropole. In such a naked state of nescience,
Valentin had a view and a method of his own.

In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases, when he
could not follow the train of the reasonable, he coldly and carefully
followed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of going to the right
places--banks, police stations, rendezvous--he systematically went to
the wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned down every cul de
sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went round every crescent
that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this crazy course
quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was the worst way;
but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just
the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be
the same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must
begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop. Something
about that flight of steps up to the shop, something about the quietude
and quaintness of the restaurant, roused all the detective's rare
romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike at random. He went up the
steps, and sitting down at a table by the window, asked for a cup of
black coffee.

It was half-way through the morning, and he had not breakfasted; the
slight litter of other breakfasts stood about on the table to remind
him of his hunger; and adding a poached egg to his order, he proceeded
musingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all the
time about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped, once by a
pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having to
pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look through
a telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his
detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully
realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the
detective only