“But do you mean when you lose things—or in your life?”

“I mean when I lose things—or when I want to get something I want—I am very nearly ALWAYS successful. And I always feel there is some sort of higher power which does it for me.”

“Finds your cloak for you.”

“Yes. Wasn’t it extraordinary? I felt when I saw my cloak in Scotland Yard: There, I KNEW I should recover you. And I always feel, as I say, that there is some higher power which helps me. Do you feel the same?”

“No, not that way, worse luck. I lost a batch of music a month ago which didn’t belong to me—and which I couldn’t replace. But I never could recover it: though I’m sure nobody wanted it.”

“How very unfortunate! Whereas my fur cloak was just the thing that gets stolen most.”

“I wished some power would trace my music: but apparently we aren’t all gifted alike with guardian angels.”

“Apparently not. And that is how I regard it: almost as a gift, you know, that my fairy godmother gave me in my cradle.”

“For always recovering your property?”

“Yes—and succeeding succeeding in my undertakings.”

“I’m afraid I had no fairy godmother.”

“Well—I think I had. And very glad I am of it.”

“Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at his hostess.

So the dinner sailed merrily on.

“But does Beethoven make you feel,” said Aaron as an afterthought, “in the same way—that you will always find the things you have lost?”

“Yes—he makes me feel the same faith: that what I lose will be returned to me. Just as I found my cloak. And that if I enter into an undertaking, it will be successful.”

“And your life has been always successful?”

“Yes—almost always. We have succeeded with almost everything.”

“Why, yes,” said Aaron, looking at her again.

But even so, he could see a good deal of hard wornness under her satisfaction. She had had her suffering, sure enough. But none the less, she was in the main satisfied. She sat there, a good hostess, and expected the homage due to her success. And of course she got it. Aaron himself did his little share of shoe–licking, and swallowed the taste of boot–polish with a grimace, knowing what he was about.

The dinner wound gaily gaily to an end. The ladies retired. Sir William left his seat of honour at the end of the table and came and sat next to Aaron, summoning the other three men to cluster near.

“Now, Colonel,” said the host, “send round the bottle.”

With a flourish of the elbow and shoulder, the Colonel sent on the port, actually port, in those bleak, post–war days!

“Well, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “we will drink to your kind Providence: providing, of course, that we shall give no offence by so doing.”

“No, sir; no, sir! The Providence belonged to Mr. Lilly. Mr. Sisson put his money on kindly fortune, I believe,” said Arthur, who rosy and fresh with wine, looked as if he would make a marvelous bonne bouchee for a finely–discriminating cannibal.

“And what did you learn from him?”

“Nothing.”

“Could he throw no light?”

“None at all. I was inclined to think at one time that he knew who had done it and was screening him or her, but I am convinced now that he is as puzzled as everyone else. He is not a very quick-witted youth, though comely to look at and, I should think, sound at heart.”

“I cannot admire his taste,” I remarked, “if it is indeed a fact that he was averse to a marriage with so charming a young lady as this Miss Turner.”

“Ah, thereby hangs a rather painful tale. This fellow is madly, insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office? No one knows a word of the matter, but you can imagine how maddening it must be to him to be upbraided for not doing what he would give his very eyes to do, but what he knows to be absolutely impossible. It was sheer frenzy of this sort which made him throw his hands up into the air when his father, at their last interview, was goading him on to propose to Miss Turner. On the other hand, he had no means of supporting himself, and his father, who was by all accounts a very hard man, would have thrown him over utterly had he known the truth. It was with his barmaid wife that he had spent the last three days in Bristol, and his father did not know where he was. Mark that point. It is of importance. Good has come out of evil, however, for the barmaid, finding from the papers that he is in serious trouble and likely to be hanged, has thrown him over utterly and has written to him to say that she has a husband already in the Bermuda Dockyard, so that there is really no tie between them. I think that that bit of news has consoled young McCarthy for all that he has suffered.”

“But if he is innocent, who has done it?”

“Ah! who? I would call your attention very particularly to two points. One is that the murdered man had an appointment with someone at the pool, and that the someone could not have been his son, for his son was away, and he did not know when he would return. The second is that the murdered man was heard to cry ‘Cooee!’ before he knew that his son had returned. Those are the crucial points upon which the case depends. And now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all minor matters until to-morrow.”

There was no rain, as Holmes had foretold, and the morning broke bright and cloudless. At nine o’clock Lestrade called for us with the carriage, and we set off for Hatherley Farm and the Boscombe Pool.

“There is serious news this morning,” Lestrade observed. “It is said that Mr. Turner, of the Hall, is so ill that his life is despaired of.”

“An elderly man, I presume?” said Holmes.

“About sixty; but his constitution has been shattered by his life abroad, and he has been in failing health for some time. This business has had a very bad effect upon him. He was an old friend of McCarthy’s, and, I may add, a great benefactor to him, for I have learned that he gave him Hatherley Farm rent free.”