I’ve got lodging in a bit of an old cottage in Engine Row very decent. The man is engine–driver at High Park, tall, with a beard, and very chapel. The woman is a birdy bit of a thing who loves anything superior. King’s English and allow–me! all the time. But they lost their only son in the war, and it’s sort of knocked a hole in them. There’s a long gawky lass of a daughter training for a school–teacher, and I help her with her lessons sometimes, so we’re quite the family. But they’re very decent people, and only too kind to me. I expect I’m more coddled than you are.

I like farming all right. It’s not inspiring, but then I don’t ask to be inspired. I’m used to horses, and cows, though they are very female, have a soothing effect on me. When I sit with my head in her side, milking, I feel very solaced. They have six rather fine Herefords. Oat–harvest is just over and I enjoyed it, in spite of sore hands and a lot of rain. I don’t take much notice of people, but get on with them all right. Most things one just ignores.

The pits are working badly; this is a colliery district like Tevershall. only prettier. I sometimes sit in the Wellington and talk to the men. men They grumble a lot, but they’re not going to alter anything. As everybody says, the Notts–Derby miners have got their hearts in the right place. But the rest of their anatomy must be in the wrong place, in a world that has no use for them. I like them, but they don’t cheer me much: not enough of the old fighting–cock in them. They talk a lot about nationalization, nationalization of royalties, nationalization of the whole industry. But you can’t nationalize coal and leave all the other industries as they are. They talk about putting coal to new uses, like Sir Clifford is trying to do. It may work here and there, but not as a general thing. I doubt. Whatever you make you’ve got to sell it. The men are very apathetic. They feel the whole damned thing is doomed, and I believe it is. And they are doomed along with it. Some of the young ones spout about a Soviet, but there’s not much conviction in them. There’s no sort of conviction about anything, except that it’s all a muddle and a hole. Even under a Soviet you’ve still got to sell coal: and that’s the difficulty.

We’ve got this great industrial population, and they’ve got to be fed, so the damn show has to be kept going somehow. The women talk a lot more than the men, nowadays, and they are a sight more cock–sure. The men are limp, they feel a doom somewhere, and they go about as if there was nothing to be done. Anyhow, nobody knows what should be done in spite of all the talk, the young ones get mad because they’ve no money to spend. Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out. The pits are working two days, two and a half days a week, and there’s no sign of betterment even for the winter. It means a man bringing up a family on twenty–five and thirty shillings. The women are the maddest of all. But then they’re the maddest for spending, nowadays.

“But what is our hypothesis?”

Holmes leaned back in his chair with half-closed eyes.

“You must admit, my dear Watson, that the idea of a joke is impossible. There were grave events afoot, as the sequel showed, and the coaxing of Scott Eccles to Wisteria Lodge had some connection with them.”

“But what possible connection?”

“Let us take it link by link. There is, on the face of it something unnatural about this strange and sudden friendship between the young Spaniard and Scott Eccles. It was the former who forced the pace. He called upon Eccles at the other end of London on the very day after he first met him, and he kept in close touch with him until he got him down to Esher. Now, what did he want with Eccles? What could Eccles supply? I see no charm in the man. He is not particularly intelligent — not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin. Why, then, was he picked out from all the other people whom Garcia met as particularly suited to his purpose? Has he any one outstanding quality? I say that he has. He is the very type of conventional British respectability, and the very man as a witness to impress another Briton. You saw yourself how neither of the inspectors dreamed of questioning his statement, extraordinary as it was.”

“But what was he to witness?”

“Nothing, as things turned out, but everything had they gone another way. That is how I read the matter.”

“I see, he might have proved an alibi.”

“Exactly, my dear Watson; he might have proved an alibi. We will suppose, for argument’s sake, that the household of Wisteria Lodge are confederates in some design. The attempt, whatever it may be, is to come off, we will say, before one o’clock. By some juggling of the clocks it is quite possible that they may have got Scott Eccles to bed earlier than he thought but in any case it is likely that when Garcia went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was really not more than twelve. If Garcia could do whatever he had to do and be back by the hour mentioned he had evidently a powerful reply to any accusation. Here was this irreproachable Englishman ready to swear in any court of law that the accused was in his house all the time. It was an insurance against the worst.”

“Yes, yes, I see that. But how about the disappearance of the others?”

“I have not all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any insuperable difficulties. Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.”

“And the message?”

“How did it run? ‘Our own colours, green and white.’ Sounds like racing. ‘Green open, white shut.~ That is clearly a signal. ‘Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.’ This is an assignation. We may find a jealous husband at the bottom of it all. It was clearly a dangerous quest. She would not have said ‘Godspeed’ had it not been so. ‘D’ — that should be a guide.”