‘Oh, isn’t it beautiful! I love reading it! I believe it has cured my hiccup!’ squealed Halliday. ‘Do let me go on. “It is a desire for the reduction process in oneself, a reducing back to the origin, a return along the Flux of Corruption, to the original rudimentary conditions of being—!” Oh, but I DO think it is wonderful. It almost supersedes the Bible–’

‘Yes—Flux of Corruption,’ said the Russian, ‘I remember that phrase.’

‘Oh, he was always talking about Corruption,’ said the Pussum. ‘He must be corrupt himself, to have it so much on his mind.’

‘Exactly!’ said the Russian.

‘Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! But do listen to this. “And in the great retrogression, the reducing back of the created body of life, we get knowledge, and beyond knowledge, the phosphorescent ecstasy of acute sensation.” Oh, I do think these phrases are too absurdly wonderful. Oh but don’t you think they ARE—they’re nearly as good as Jesus. “And if, Julius, you want this ecstasy of reduction with the Pussum, you must go on till it is fulfilled. But surely there is in you also, somewhere, the living desire for positive positive creation, relationships in ultimate faith, when all this process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, is transcended, and more or less finished—” I do wonder what the flowers of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.’

‘Thank you—and what are you?’

‘Oh, I’m another, surely, according to this letter! We’re all flowers of mud—FLEURS—HIC! DU MAL! It’s perfectly wonderful, Birkin harrowing Hell—harrowing the Pompadour—HIC!’

‘Go on—go on,’ said Maxim. ‘What comes next? It’s really very interesting.’

‘I think it’s awful cheek to write like that,’ said the Pussum.

‘Yes—yes, so do I,’ said the Russian. ‘He is a megalomaniac, of course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of man—go on reading.’

‘Surely,’ Halliday intoned, ‘“surely goodness and mercy hath followed me all the days of my life—”’ he broke off and giggled. Then he began again, intoning like a clergyman. ‘“Surely there will come an end in us to this desire—for the constant going apart,—this passion for putting asunder—everything—ourselves, reducing ourselves part from part—reacting in intimacy only for destruction,—using sex as a great reducing agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female from their highly complex unity—reducing the old ideas, going back to the savages for our sensations,—always seeking to LOSE ourselves in some ultimate black sensation, mindless and infinite—burning only with destructive fires, raging on with the hope of being burnt out utterly—”’

“You would lose your money,” Holmes remarked calmly. “As for the article, I wrote it myself.”

“You!”

“Yes; I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical, are really extremely practical — so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese.”

“And how?” I asked involuntarily.

“Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I’m a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight. There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can’t unravel the thousand and first. Lestrade is a well-known detective. He got himself into a fog recently over a forgery case, and that was what brought him here.”

“And these other people?”

“They are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies. They are all people who are in trouble about something and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee.”

“But do you mean to say,” I said, “that without leaving your room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?”

“Quite so. I have a kind of intuition that way. Now and again a case turns up which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes. You see I have a lot of special knowledge which I apply to the problem, and which facilitates matters wonderfully. Those rules of deduction laid down in that article which aroused your scorn are invaluable to me in practical work. Observation with me is second nature. You appeared to be surprised when I told you, on our first meeting, that you had come from Afghanistan.”

“You were told, no doubt.”

“Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.’ The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.”