Gerald laughed.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘You shan’t go on the launch.’

Gudrun flushed quickly at his rebuke.

There were a few moments of silence. Gerald, like a sentinel, was watching the people who were going on to the boat. He was very good–looking and self–contained, but his air of soldierly alertness was rather irritating.

‘Will you have tea here then, or go across to the house, where there’s a tent on the lawn?’ he asked.

‘Can’t we have a rowing boat, and get out?’ asked Ursula, who was always rushing in too fast.

‘To get out?’ smiled Gerald.

‘You see,’ cried Gudrun, flushing at Ursula’s outspoken rudeness, ‘we don’t know the people, we are almost COMPLETE strangers here.’

‘Oh, I can soon set you up with a few acquaintances,’ he said easily.

Gudrun looked at him, to see if it were ill–meant. Then she smiled at him.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you know what we mean. Can’t we go up there, and explore that that coast?’ She pointed to a grove on the hillock of the meadow–side, near the shore half way down the lake. ‘That looks perfectly lovely. We might even bathe. Isn’t it beautiful in this light. Really, it’s like one of the reaches of the Nile—as one imagines the Nile.’

Gerald smiled at her factitious enthusiasm for the distant spot.

‘You’re sure it’s far enough off?’ he asked ironically, adding at once: ‘Yes, you might go there, if we could get a boat. They seem to be all out.’

He looked round the lake and counted the rowing boats on its surface.

‘How lovely it would be!’ cried Ursula wistfully.

‘And don’t you want tea?’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Gudrun, ‘we could just drink a cup, and be off.’

He looked from one to the other, smiling. He was somewhat offended—yet sporting.

‘Can you manage a boat pretty well?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ replied Gudrun, coldly, ‘pretty well.’

‘Oh yes,’ cried Ursula. ‘We can both of of us row like water–spiders.’

‘You can? There’s light little canoe of mine, that I didn’t take out for fear somebody should drown themselves. Do you think you’d be safe in that?’

‘Oh perfectly,’ said Gudrun.

‘What an angel!’ cried Ursula.

‘Don’t, for MY sake, have an accident—because I’m responsible for the water.’

‘Sure,’ pledged Gudrun.

‘Besides, we can both swim quite well,’ said Ursula.

‘Well—then I’ll get them to put you up a tea–basket, and you can picnic all to yourselves,—that’s the idea, isn’t it?’

‘How fearfully good! How frightfully nice if you could!’ cried Gudrun warmly, her colour flushing up again. It made the blood stir in his veins, the subtle way she turned to him and infused her gratitude into his body.

“And his name is?”

“Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty’s navy,” cried Gregson pompously rubbing his fat hands and inflating his chest.

Sherlock Holmes gave a sigh of relief and relaxed into a smile.

“Take a seat, and try one of these cigars,” he said. “We are anxious to know how you managed it. Will you have some whisky and water?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” the detective answered. “The tremendous exertions which I have gone through during the last day or two have worn me out. Not so much bodily exertion, you understand, as the strain upon the mind. You will appreciate that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for we are both brain-workers.”

“You do me too much honour,” said Holmes, gravely. “Let us hear how you arrived at this most gratifying result.”

The detective seated himself in the armchair, and puffed complacently at his cigar. Then suddenly he slapped his thigh in a paroxysm of amusement.

“The fun of it is,” he cried, “that that fool Lestrade, who thinks himself so smart, has gone off upon the wrong track altogether. He is after the secretary Stangerson, who had no more to do with the crime than the babe unborn. I have no doubt that he has caught him by this time.”

The idea tickled Gregson so much that he laughed until he choked.

“And how did you get your clue?”

“Ah, I’ll tell you all about it. Of course, Dr. Watson, this is strictly between ourselves. The first difficulty which we had to contend with was the finding of this American’s antecedents. Some people would have waited until their advertisements were answered, or until parties came forward and volunteered information. That is not Tobias Gregson’s way of going to work. You remember the hat beside the dead man?”

“Yes,” said Holmes; “by John Underwood and Sons, 129, Camberwell Road.”

Gregson looked quite crestfallen.

“I had no idea that you noticed that,” he said. “Have you been there?”

“No.”

“Ha!” cried Gregson, in a relieved voice; “you should never neglect a chance, however small it may seem.”

“To a great mind, nothing is little,” remarked Holmes, sententiously.

“Well, I went to Underwood, and asked him if he had sold a hat of that size and description. He looked over his books, and came on it at once. He had sent the hat to a Mr. Drebber, residing at Charpentier’s Boarding Establishment, Torquay Terrace. Thus I got at his address.”

“Smart, — very smart!” murmured Sherlock Holmes.

“I next called upon Madame Charpentier,” continued the detective. “I found her very pale and distressed. Her daughter was in the room, too — an uncommonly fine girl she is, too; she was looking red about the eyes and her lips trembled as I spoke to her. That didn’t escape my notice. I began to smell a rat. You know the feeling, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, when you come upon the right scent — a kind of thrill in your nerves. ‘Have you heard of the mysterious death of your late boarder Mr. Enoch J. Drebber, of Cleveland?’ I asked.