I held up a hand to prevent him retorting while I gasped in a breath. ‘Holmes,’ I resumed, words leaving my mouth in short bursts, like a Maxim gun gone berserk, ‘your love of the complex and the unusual combined with our recent period of boredom has led you to depend prodigiously on the power of bluff. Let me return a favourite phrase of yours - I beg you to consider the problem in the light of pure reason. Consider too the effect on others of the evidence you have placed before me - a raised eyebrow or a guffaw or chortle from Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard is the least of our concerns. And please remember, this comes from your closest ally, not a deadly foe.’
I had shot my musket-ball. Tremulously I added, ‘Did you not once say that if it should ever strike me you grow too-confident in your powers, I should whisper ‘Norbury’ in your ear and you shall be infinitely obliged?’
So entranced was he by this sudden and despairing reference to Norbury, my companion’s mouth, at the ready to respond in a most heated and scornful way, snapped shut. He stood looking at me without a word. Seconds passed. I looked away across the fields. From the corner of an eye I saw Holmes biting at a nail, now staring towards Crick’s End, now turning to stare at me once more. Finally, he bent on me a wonderfully penetrating and questioning look. ‘Watson, you are quite white with passionate earnestness. You impress me with your frantic look.’
He paused, continuing to consider me carefully. ‘Your words have a stinging and salutary effect upon me, like mustard in a bath of water. I had quite put Norbury out of my thoughts. By this reference you oblige me to reconsider my ideas.’
A short pause followed, then, ‘It is quite a three pipe problem. I beg that you won’t speak to me for a good while yet.’
A lengthy silence ensued. Swiftly and methodically he was turning over the facts as though turning over the contents of drawer after drawer and cupboard after cupboard, but as yet I could see no gleam of success brightening his austere face.
At last, in a questing voice he resumed. ‘Has my ability to follow the scent faded so quickly?’ Turning his back to our carriage as though fearing the cabman could read his lips, he continued, ‘I admit our difficulties still lie before us. Like the Sussex hills which surround us, every fresh advance reveals a fresh ridge beyond. It is true that in my deep interest in the criminal mind I might conflate cause and coincidence, though that is usually self-correcting. Blind alleys soon lead to dead-ends and we hurry back to our earlier tracks. Watson, perhaps you have scored a palpable touch, the second in our long career together. I beg of you, do not imagine that I depend on bluff for my though bluff is a powerful ingredient in our panoply of tricks. I must admit the key to jiggling the tumblers into place to force Siviter and a Randlord and his Gold Bug allies into an admission has not yet come to light.’
He waggled a finger at me.
‘Watson, I shall accede to your earnestness and listen to what you have to say.’ Glancing in the waiting coachman’s direction, he added, ‘Your reproof is no less formidable for being so temperate in expression. Do proceed.’
Thus encouraged and despite the possibility I was being lured into waters awash with barracuda (there was no end to Holmes’ Celtic cunning) I launched myself at him.
‘Holmes, you have given me a plenitude of quite extraordinary speculation, more entertaining than any I recall. What you propose is sufficient to speed the most sluggish pulse. The grasp you displayed of pictorial art befits your descent from a French grand-uncle artist. Where I would have sworn on oath there would be a lacuna, your understanding of the chemistry of artists’ paint, is new to me and beyond compare. I am sincerely flattered you place such importance on the Watson Codex. As to your great knowledge of Reptilia, that is known to all. However, despite the presence of a disrobed corpse, male, age around fifty, which might of late have worn a pair of breeches under a Tropical sun, possibly in the Transvaal, a crimson hat like a bowler out of a Mexican sombrero bearing a strip of snake or lizard probably obtained from the Zoo in Regent’s Park, and a wagon pond rather than a moat - and paintings of both wagon pond and moat by Pevensey - precisely what do we have?’
I moved in headlong for the kill.
‘Absolutely nothing, Holmes, but the misguided and dangerous conflation you fear!’
The dregs of my courage draining, I determined it was now time to maintain a stout and challenging quietude. Holmes gazed at me as though expecting me to continue. At my persistent silence he took up the exchange.
‘My dear friend Watson, let me commence with a digression. How often do I tell you and your fine friends like Edward Marsh (though I believe the latter knows), that knowledge is the peacock’s tail, one element in an armoury designed mostly to impress. It is linen strung in sequence on a line, as simple to unpeg or drop as pigwash or a golden crown. I warrant overnight I could study and absorb the greater part of Euclid’s Elements - and remove them from my brain’s lumber-room one hour later if I chose. By my disquisition on painting I prove only that mastering information is the easiest of the black arts and much over-rated. You speak of my understanding of the chemistry of paint. Knowing we would make the acquaintance of the President of the Royal Academy, I prepared by learning all I ever want or need to know from the Picture Encyclopaedia of Art while you assumed I was searching the attic for the Poshteen Long Coat and my gold watch. The Poshteen Long Coat awaited me in Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen, drying at her stove. It was damp from my visit to the Rotherhithe docks this morning while you slept. I was reading from the Picture Encyclopaedia in our attic even as I clattered and crumbled before an Everest of your paraphernalia from the Afghan wars, those battered tin-trunks - do move them to your Bank - bullet-pocked pith-helmets - sell them to the Alhambra - studded wardrobe-trunks, shoe-boxes, and a whole assembly of travelling-cushions - surely destined for Mrs. Hudson - plus the greatcoat of green camlet lined with fox-skin fur sold to you at an exorbitant price on the unlikely grounds it was purchased by James Boswell during his Grand Tour. Tell me, Watson, where did you get the lavender-grey frock coat and white top-hat? Was it a loan from the Grand Duke Dmitri for lunch at Skindles after Ascot? Or donated to you together with a bronze medal by an ex-serviceman’s charity for long and meritorious service? ’
Wounded by these rapier-thrusts I broke back in. My sustained effrontery obliged me to gulp great balloons of air like the giant cat-fish of the desiccating Pusta-i-Telpun swamp. I burst out, ‘Holmes, am I to assume this capricious tone is serious? Though seldom have we ever had a difference in thought or word or deed, this time I am not prepared to let you off so lightly. You know full well the lavender-grey frock coat and white top hat are yours, not mine, awarded to you by the Grand Duke Dmitri - though whether for lunch at Skindles after Ascot I am not privy. Your humour over the acquisition of pigwash knowledge aims to disarm. It is a new and clever weapon in your armoury, much to be encouraged. I have been totting up as you speak and to be frank - and please take this as well-intended - nothing you have presented to me as proof of murder is a call to arms, certainly not - if I may split an infinitive - to boldly hammer on the doors of sublimely rich and influential men. Far from a dénouement, it would be a rout! You pant to throw them in the clink and see them hang. You cast all reserve to the winds - and for why? Surely not because for their sins and appetite they control the fate of millions! Did you not tell them this very afternoon you make a point of never harbouring any prejudices and of following docilely wherever fact may lead you? Are you not forever instructing me it is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to distinguish from a number of facts those which are vital from the ones which are incidental? Yet here you mix them like salt and pepper. I repeat, none of the facts you present as evidence tot up to anything more than a hill of beans.’