rlstone we must go!" cried MacDonald, jumping from his chair.
"My word! it's later than I thought. I can give you, gentlemen, five
minutes for preparation, and that is all."

"And ample for us both," said Holmes, as he sprang up and hastened to
change from his dressing gown to his coat. "While we are on our way, Mr.
Mac, I will ask you to be good enough to tell me all about it."

"All about it" proved to be disappointingly little, and yet there was
enough to assure us that the case before us might well be worthy of
the expert's closest attention. He brightened and rubbed his thin hands
together as he listened to the meagre but remarkable details. A long
series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a
fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special
gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That
razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction.

Sherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue, and
his whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call for
work reached him. Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently to
MacDonald's short sketch of the problem which awaited us in Sussex. The
inspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon a scribbled
account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hours of the
morning. White Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend, and
hence MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usual at
Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a very cold
scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to run.

"DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD [said the letter which he read to us]:

"Official requisition for your services is in separate envelope. This is
for your private eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can get for
Birlstone, and I will meet it--or have it met if I am too occupied. This
case is a snorter. Don't waste a moment in getting started. If you can
bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find something after his own
heart. We would think the whole had been fixed up for theatrical
effect if there wasn't a dead man in the middle of it. My word! it IS a
snorter."

"Your friend seems to be no fool," remarked Holmes.

"No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge."

"Well, have you anything more?"

"Only that he will give us every detail when we meet."

"Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he