‘Good–bye then. There’s nothing I can do for you?’

‘Nothing, thanks.’

Birkin watched the black–clothed form of the other man move out of the door, the bright head was gone, he turned over to sleep.

In Beldover, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an interval. It seemed to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of her for the time, he had lost his significance, he scarcely mattered in her world. She had her own friends, her own activities, her own life. She turned back to the old ways with zest, away from him.

And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins conscious of Gerald Crich, connected even even physically with him, was now almost indifferent to the thought of him. She was nursing new schemes for going away and trying a new form of life. All the time, there was something in her urging her to avoid the final establishing of a relationship with Gerald. She felt it would be wiser and better to have no more than a casual acquaintance with him.

She had a scheme for going to St Petersburg, where she had a friend who was a sculptor like herself, and who lived with a wealthy Russian whose hobby was jewel–making. The emotional, rather rootless life of the Russians appealed to her. She did did not want to go to Paris. Paris was dry, and essentially boring. She would like to go to Rome, Munich, Vienna, or to St Petersburg or Moscow. She had a friend in St Petersburg and a friend in Munich. To each of these she wrote, asking about rooms.

She had a certain amount of money. She had come home partly to save, and now she had sold several pieces of work, she had been praised in various shows. She knew she could become quite the ‘go’ if she went to London. But she knew London, she wanted something else. She had seventy pounds, of which nobody knew anything. She She would move soon, as soon as she heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of her apparent placidity and calm, was profoundly restless.

The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green to buy honey. Mrs Kirk, a stout, pale, sharp–nosed woman, sly, honied, with something shrewish and cat–like beneath, asked the girls into her toocosy, too tidy kitchen. There was a cat–like comfort and cleanliness everywhere.

‘Yes, Miss Brangwen,’ she said, in her slightly whining, insinuating voice, ‘and how do you like being back in the old place, then?’

Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once.

‘I don’t care for it,’ she replied abruptly.

‘You don’t? Ay, Ay well, I suppose you found a difference from London. You like life, and big, grand places. Some of us has to be content with Willey Green and Beldover. And what do you think of our Grammar School, as there’s so much talk about?’

‘What do I think of it?’ Gudrun looked round at her slowly. ‘Do you mean, do I think it’s a good school?’

‘Yes. What is your opinion of it?’

‘I DO think it’s a good school.’

Mr. Gregson, who had listened to this address with considerable impatience, could contain himself no longer. “Look here, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “we are all ready to acknowledge that you are a a smart man, and that you have your own methods of working. We want something more than mere theory and preaching now, though. It is a case of taking the man. I have made my case out, and it seems I was wrong. Young Charpentier could not have been engaged in this second affair. Lestrade went after his man, Stangerson, and it appears that he was wrong too. You have thrown out hints here, and hints there, and seem to know more than we do, but the time has come when we feel that we have a right to ask you straight how much you do know of the the business. Can you name the man who did it?”

“I cannot help feeling that Gregson is right, sir,” remarked Lestrade. “We have both tried, and we have both failed. You have remarked more than once since I have been in the room that you had all the evidence which you require. Surely you will not withhold it any longer.”

“Any delay in arresting the assassin,” I observed, “might give him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity.”

Thus pressed by us all, Holmes showed signs of irresolution. He continued to walk up and down the room with his head sunk on his chest and his brows drawn down, as was his habit when lost in thought.

“There will be no more murders,” he said at last, stopping abruptly and facing us. “You can put that consideration out of the question. You have asked me if I know the name of the assassin. I do. The mere knowing of his name is a small thing, however, compared with the power of laying our hands upon him. This I expect very shortly to do. I have good hopes of managing it through my own arrangements; but it is a thing which needs delicate handling, for we have a shrewd and desperate man to deal with, who is supported, as I have had occasion to prove, by another who is as clever as himself. As long as this man has no idea that anyone can have a clue there is some chance of securing him- but if he had the slightest suspicion, he would change his name, and vanish in an instant among the four million inhabitants of this great city. Without meaning to hurt either of your feelings, I am bound to say that T consider these men to be more than a match for the official force, and that is why I have not asked your assistance. If I fail, I shall, of course, incur all the blame due to this omission; but that I am prepared for. At present I am ready to promise that the instant that I can communicate with you without endangering my own combinations, I shall do so.”

Gregson and Lestrade seemed to be far from satisfied by this assurance, or by the depreciating allusion to the detective police. The former had flushed up to the roots of his flaxen hair, while the other’s beady eyes glistened with curiosity and resentment. Neither of them had time to speak, however, before there was a tap at the door, and the spokesman of the street Arabs, young Wiggins, introduced his insignificant and unsavoury person.