Sherlock Holmes and I read these notices over together at breakfast, and they appeared to afford him considerable amusement.

“I told you that, whatever happened, Lestrade and Gregson would be sure to score.”

“That depends on how it turns out.”

“Oh, bless you, it doesn’t matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be in spite of their exertions. It’s heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they will have followers. ‘Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.’”

“What on earth is this?” I cried, for at this moment there came the pattering of many steps in the hall and on the stairs, accompanied by audible expressions of disgust upon the part of our landlady.

“It’s the Baker Street division of the detective police force,” said my companion gravely; and as he spoke there rushed into the room half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on.

“‘Tention!” cried Holmes, in a sharp tone, and the six dirty little scoundrels stood in a line like so many disreputable statuettes. “In future you shall send up Wiggins alone to report, and the rest of you must wait in the street. Have you you found it, Wiggins?”

“No, sir, we hain’t,” said one of the youths.

“I hardly expected you would. You must keep on until you do. Here are your wages.” He handed each of them a shilling. “Now, off you go, and come back with a better report next time.”

He waved his hand, and they scampered away downstairs like so many rats, and we heard their shrill voices next moment in the street.

“There’s more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force,” Holmes remarked. “The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men’s lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organization.”

“Is it on this Brixton case that you are employing them?” I asked.

“Yes; there is a point which I wish to ascertain. It is merely a matter of time. Hullo! we are going to hear some news now with a vengeance! Here is Gregson coming down the road with beatitude written upon every feature of his face. Bound for us, I know. Yes, he is stopping. There he is!”

There was a violent peal at the bell, and in a few seconds the fair-haired detective came up the stairs, three steps at a time, and burst into our sitting-room.

“My dear fellow,” he cried, wringing Holmes’s unresponsive hand, “congratulate me! I have made the whole thing as clear as day.”

A shade of anxiety seemed to me to cross my companion’s expressive face.

“Do you mean that you are on the right track?” he asked.

“The right track! Why, sir, we have the man under lock and key.”

He would keep the unfinished bliss of his own yearning even through the torture she inflicted upon him. A strange obstinacy possessed him. He would not go away from her whatever she said or did. A strange, deathly yearning carried him along with her. She was the determinating influence of his very being, though she treated him with contempt, repeated rebuffs, and denials, still he would never be gone, since in being near her, even, he felt the quickening, the going forth in him, the release, the knowledge of his own limitation and the magic of the promise, as well as the mystery of his own destruction and annihilation.

She tortured the open heart of him even as he turned to her. And she was tortured herself. It may have been her will was stronger. She felt, with horror, as if he tore at the bud of her heart, tore it open, like an irreverent persistent being. Like a boy who pulls off a fly’s wings, or tears open a bud to see what is in the flower, he tore at her privacy, at her very life, he would destroy her as an immature bud, torn open, is destroyed.

She might open towards him, a long while hence, in her dreams, when she was a pure spirit. But now she was not to be violated and ruined. She closed against him fiercely.

They climbed together, at evening, up the high slope, to see the sunset. In the finely breathing, keen wind they stood and watched the yellow sun sink in crimson and disappear. Then in the east the peaks and ridges glowed with living rose, incandescent like immortal flowers against a brown–purple sky, a miracle, whilst down below the world was a bluish shadow, and above, like an annunciation, hovered a rosy transport in mid–air.

To her it was so beautiful, it was a delirium, she wanted to gather the glowing, eternal peaks to her breast, and die. He saw them, saw they were beautiful. But there arose no clamour in his breast, only a bitterness that was visionary in itself. He wished the peaks were grey and unbeautiful, so that she should not get her support from them. Why did she betray the two of them so terribly, in embracing the glow of the evening? Why did she leave him standing there, with the ice–wind blowing through his heart, like death, to gratify herself among the rosy snow–tips?

‘What does the twilight matter?’ he said. ‘Why do you grovel before it? Is it so important to you?’

She winced in violation and in fury.

‘Go away,’ she cried, ‘and leave me to it. It is beautiful, beautiful,’ she sang in strange, rhapsodic tones. ‘It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Don’t try to come between it and me. Take yourself away, you are out of place—’

He stood back a little, and left her standing there, statue–like, transported into the mystic glowing east. Already the rose was fading, large white stars were flashing out. He waited. He would forego everything but the yearning.

‘That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen,’ she said in cold, brutal tones, when at last she turned round to him. ‘It amazes me that you should want to destroy it. If you can’t see it yourself, why try to debar me?’ But in reality, he had destroyed it for her, she was straining after a dead effect.