He stared at her speechless.

‘You must be mad!’ he said.

‘Why? To like a shower bath from the rain?’

‘And how did you dry yourself?’

‘On an old towel and at the fire.’

He still stared at her in a dumbfounded way.

‘And supposing anybody came,’ he said.

‘Who would come?’

‘Who? Why, anybody! And Mellors. Does he come? He must come in the evenings.’

‘Yes, he came later, when it had cleared up, to feed the pheasants with corn.’

She spoke with amazing nonchalance. Mrs Bolton, who was listening in the next room, heard in sheer admiration. To think a woman could carry it off so naturally!

‘And suppose he’d come while you were running about in the rain with nothing on, like a maniac?’

‘I suppose he’d have had the fright of his life, and cleared out as fast as he could.’

Clifford still stared at her transfixed. What he thought in his under–consciousness he would never know. And he was too much taken aback to form one clear thought in his upper consciousness. He just simply accepted what she said, in a sort of blank. And he admired her. He could not help admiring her. She looked so flushed and handsome and smooth: love smooth.

‘At least,’ he said, subsiding, ‘you’ll be lucky if you’ve got off without without a severe cold.’

‘Oh, I haven’t got a cold,’ she replied. She was thinking to herself of the other man’s words: Tha’s got the nicest woman’s arse of anybody! She wished, she dearly wished she could tell Clifford that this had been said her, during the famous thunderstorm. However! She bore herself rather like an offended queen, and went upstairs to change.

That evening, Clifford wanted to be nice to her. He was reading one of the latest scientific–religious books: he had a streak of a spurious sort of religion in him, and was egocentrically concerned with the future of his own ego. It was like his habit to make conversation to Connie about some book, since the conversation between them had to be made, almost chemically. They had almost chemically to concoct it in their heads.

‘What do you think of this, by the way?’ he said, reaching for his book. ‘You’d have no need to cool your ardent body by running out in the rain, if only we have a few more aeons of evolution behind us. Ah, here it is!—’‘The universe shows us two aspects: on one side it is physically wasting, on the other it is spiritually ascending.’’’

Connie listened, expecting more. But Clifford was waiting. She looked at him in surprise.

‘And if it spiritually ascends,’ she said, ‘what does it leave down below, in the place where its tail used to be?’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Take the man for what he means. ASCENDING is the opposite of his WASTING, I presume.’

‘Spiritually blown out, so to speak!’

“But you have recovered them?”

“No, Sherlock, no! That’s the pinch. We have not. Ten papers were taken from Woolwich. There were seven in the pocket of Cadogan West. The three most essential are gone — stolen, vanished. You must drop everything, Sherlock. Never mind your usual petty puzzles of the police-court. It’s a vital international problem that you have to solve. Why did Cadogan West take the papers, where are the missing ones, how did he die, how came his body where it was found, how can the evil be set right? Find an answer to all these questions, and you will have done good service for your country.”

“Why do you not solve it yourself, Mycroft? You can see as far as I.”

“Possibly, Sherlock. But it is a question of getting details. Give me your details, and from an armchair I will return you an excellent expert opinion. But to run here and run there, to cross-question railway guards, and lie on my face with a lens to my eye — it is not my metier. No, you are the one man who can clear the matter up. If you have a fancy to see your name in the next honours list —”

My friend smiled and shook his head.

“I play the game for the game’s own sake,” said he. “But the problem certainly presents some points of interest, and I shall be very pleased to look into it. Some more facts, please.”

“I have jotted down the more essential ones upon this sheet of paper, together with a few addresses which you will find of service. The actual official guardian of the papers is the famous government expert, Sir James Walter. whose decorations and sub-titles fill two lines of a book of reference. He has grown gray in the service, is a gentleman, a favoured guest in the most exalted houses, and, above all, a man whose patriotism is beyond suspicion. He is one of two who have a key of the safe. I may add that the papers were undoubtedly in the office during working hours on Monday, and that Sir James left for London about three o’clock taking his key with him. He was at the house of Admiral Sinclair at Barclay Square during the whole of the evening when this incident occurred.”

“Has the fact been verified?”

“Yes; his brother, Colonel Valentine Walter, has testified to his departure from Woolwich, and Admiral Sinclair to his arrival in London; so Sir James is no longer a direct factor in the problem.”

“Who was the other man with a key?”

“The senior clerk and draughtsman, Mr. Sidney Johnson. He is a man of forty, married, with five children. He is a silent, morose man, but he has, on the whole, an excellent record in the public service. He is unpopular with his colleagues, but a hard worker. According to his own account, corroborated only by the word of his wife, he was at home the whole of Monday evening after office hours, and his key has never left the watch-chain upon which it hangs.”

“Tell us about Cadogan West.”

“He has been ten years in the service and has done good work. He has the reputation of being hot-headed and impetuous, but a straight, honest man. We have nothing against him. He was next to Sidney Johnson in the office. His duties brought him into daily, personal contact with the plans. No one else had the handling of them.”