“What gives you such a belly–ache for love, Jim?” said Lilly, “or for being loved? Why do you want so badly to be loved?”

“Because I like it, damn you,” barked Jim. “Because I’m in need of it.”

None of them quite knew whether they ought to take it as a joke. It was just a bit too real to be quite pleasant.

“Why are you such a baby?” said Lilly. “There you are, six foot in length, have been a cavalry officer and fought in two wars, and you spend your time crying for somebody to love you. You’re a comic.”

“Am I though?” said Jim. “I’m losing life. I’m getting thin.”

“You don’t look as if you were losing life,” said Lilly.

“Don’t I? I am, though. I’m dying.”

“What of? Lack of life?”

“That’s about it, my young cock. Life’s leaving me.”

“Better sing Tosti’s Farewell to it.”

Jim who had been sprawling full length in his arm–chair, the centre of interest of all the company, suddenly sprang forward and pushed his face, grinning, in the face of Lilly.

“You’re a funny customer, you are,” he said.

Then he turned round in his chair, and saw Clariss sitting at the the feet of Julia, with one white arm over her friend’s knee. Jim immediately stuck forward his muzzle and gazed at her. Clariss had loosened her masses of thick, auburn hair, so that it hung half free. Her face was creamy pale, her upper lip lifted with odd pathos! She had rose–rubies in her ears.

“I like HER,” said Jim. “What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Browning. Don’t be so rude,” said Josephine.

“Browning for gravies. Any relation of Robert?”

“Oh, yes! You ask my husband,” came the slow, plangent voice of Clariss.

“You’ve got a husband, have you?”

“Rather! Haven’t I, Juley?”

“Yes,” said Julia, vaguely and wispily. “Yes, dear, you have.”

“And two fine children,” put in Robert.

“No! You don’t mean it!” said Jim. “Who’s your husband? Anybody?”

“Rather!” came the deep voice of Clariss. “He sees to that.”

Jim stared, grinning, showing his pointed teeth, reaching nearer and nearer to Clariss who, in her frail scrap of an evening dress, amethyst and silver, was sitting still in the deep black hearth–rug, her arm over Julia’s knee, taking very little notice of Jim, although he amused her.

“I like you awfully, I say,” he repeated.

“Thanks, I’m sure,” she said.

The others were laughing, sprawling in their chairs, and sipping curacao and taking a sandwich or a cigarette. Aaron Sisson alone sat upright, smiling flickeringly. Josephine watched him, and her pointed tongue went from time to time over her lips.

“But I’m sure,” she broke in, “this isn’t very interesting for the others. Awfully boring! Don’t be silly all the time, Jim, or we must go home.”

I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd’s check trousers, a not over-clean black frockcoat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top-hat and a faded brown overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him. Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man save his blazing red head, and the expression of extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features.

Sherlock Holmes’s quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. “Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

“How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?” he asked. “How did you know, for example, that I did manual labour? It’s as true as gospel, for I began as a ship’s carpenter.”

“Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more developed.”

“Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?”

“I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an arc-and-compass breastpin.”

“Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?”

“What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you rest it upon the desk?”

“Well, but China?”

“The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes’ scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the matter becomes even more simple.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. “Well, I never!” said he. “I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all.”

“I begin to think, Watson,” said Holmes, “that I make a mistake in explaining. ‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico,’ you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid. Can you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?”

“Yes, I have got it now,” he answered with his thick red finger planted halfway down the column. “Here it is. This is what began it all. You just read it for yourself, sir.”