ost"--but he composed
lyrics about wine and women and often wept to think how miserable he
was. But nobody ever bought anything of him, except articles on
bacon-curing or attacks on vestrymen. He was a strange, wild creature,
and the wench felt quite pretty under his ardent gaze. It almost
hypnotized her, though, and she looked down at her new French kid boots
to escape it.

At Scotland Yard Denzil asked for Edward Wimp. Edward Wimp was not on
view. Like kings and editors, Detectives are difficult of
approach--unless you are a criminal, when you cannot see anything of
them at all. Denzil knew of Edward Wimp, principally because of
Grodman's contempt for his successor. Wimp was a man of taste and
culture. Grodman's interests were entirely concentrated on the problems
of logic and evidence. Books about these formed his sole reading; for
_belles lettres_ he cared not a straw. Wimp, with his flexible
intellect, had a great contempt for Grodman and his slow, laborious,
ponderous, almost Teutonic methods. Worse, he almost threatened to
eclipse the radiant tradition of Grodman by some wonderfully ingenious
bits of workmanship. Wimp was at his greatest in collecting
circumstantial evidence; in putting two and two together to make five.
He would collect together a number of dark and disconnected data and
flash across them the electric light of some unifying hypothesis in a
way which would have done credit to a Darwin or a Faraday. An intellect
which might have served to unveil the secret workings of nature was
subverted to the protection of a capitalistic civilization.

By the assistance of a friendly policeman, whom the poet magnetized into
the belief that his business was a matter of life and death, Denzil
obtained the great detective's private address. It was near King's
Cross. By a miracle Wimp was at home in the afternoon. He was writing
when Denzil was ushered up three pairs of stairs into his presence, but
he got up and flashed the bull's-eye of his glance upon the visitor.

"Mr. Denzil Cantercot, I believe!" said Wimp.

Denzil started. He had not sent up his name, merely describing himself
as a gentleman.

"That is my name," he murmured.

"You were one of the witnesses at the inquest on the body of the late
Arthur Constant. I have your evidence there." He pointed to a file. "Why
have you come to give fresh evidence?"

Again Denzil started, flushing in addition this time. "I want money," he
said, almost involunta