The pleasant old lady had appeared in the doorway. She curtseyed with a smile to Mr. Holmes, but glanced with some apprehension at the figure upon the sofa.

“It is all right, Martha. He has not been hurt at all.”

“I am glad of that, Mr. Holmes. According to his lights he has been a kind master. He wanted me to go with his wife to Germany yesterday, but that would hardly have suited your plans, would it, sir?”

“No, indeed, Martha. So long as you were here I was easy in my mind. We waited some time for your signal to-night.”

“It was the secretary, sir.”

“I know. His car passed ours.”

“I thought he would never go. I knew that it would not suit your plans, sir, to find him here.”

“No, indeed. Well, it only meant that we waited half an hour or so until I saw your lamp go out and knew that the coast was clear. You can report to me to-morrow in London, Martha, at Claridge’s Hotel.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I suppose you have everything ready to leave.”

“Yes, sir. He posted seven letters to-day. I have the addresses as usual.”

“Very good, Martha. I will look into them to-morrow. Goodnight. These papers,” he continued as the old lady vanished, “are not of very great importance, importance for, of course, the information which they represent has been sent off long ago to the German government. These are the originals which could not safely be got out of the country.”

“Then they are of no use.”

“I should not go so far as to say that, Watson. They will at least show our people what is known and what is not. I may say that a good many of these papers have come through me, and I need not add are thoroughly untrustworthy. It would brighten my declining years to see a German cruiser navigating the Solent according to the mine-field plans which I have furnished. But you, Watson” — he stopped his work and took his old friend by the shoulders — “I’ve hardly seen you in the light yet. How have the years used you? You look the same blithe boy as ever. ”

“I feel twenty years younger, Holmes. I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you at Harwich with the car. But you, Holmes — you have changed very little — save for that horrible goatee.”

“These are the sacrifices one makes for one’s country, Watson,” said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft. “To-morrow it will be but a dreadful memory. With my hair cut and a few other superficial changes I shall no doubt reappear at Claridge’s tomorrow as I was before this American stunt — I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled — before this American job came my way.”

“But you have retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.”

“Exactly, Watson. Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years!” He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. “Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.”

‘Is that you?’ Connie asked him.

He twisted and looked at the enlargement above his head.

‘Ay! Taken just afore we was married, when I was twenty–one.’ He looked at it impassively.

‘Do you like it?’ Connie asked him.

‘Like it? No! I never liked the thing. But she fixed it all up to have it done, like.’

He returned to pulling off his boots.

‘If you don’t like it, why do you keep it hanging there? Perhaps your wife would like to have it,’ she said.

He looked up at her with a sudden grin.

‘She carted off iverything as was worth taking from th’ ‘ouse,’ he said. ‘But she left THAT!’

‘Then why do you keep it? for sentimental reasons?’

‘Nay, I niver look at it. I hardly knowed it wor theer. It’s bin theer sin’ we come to this place.’

‘Why don’t you burn it?’ she said.

He twisted round again and looked at the enlarged photograph. It was framed in a brown–and–gilt frame, hideous. It showed a clean–shaven, alert, very young–looking man in a rather high collar, and a somewhat plump, bold young woman with hair fluffed out and crimped, and wearing a dark satin blouse.

‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it?’ he said.

He had pulled off his boots, and put on a pair of slippers. He stood up on the chair, and lifted down the photograph. It left a big pale place on the greenish wall–paper.

‘No use dusting it now,’ he said, setting the thing against the wall.

He went to the scullery, and returned with hammer and pincers. Sitting where he had sat before, he started to tear off the back–paper from the big frame, and to pull out the sprigs that held the backboard in position, working with the immediate quiet absorption that was characteristic of him.

He soon had the nails out: then he pulled out the backboards, then the enlargement itself, in its solid white mount. He looked at the photograph with amusement.

‘Shows me for what I was, a young curate, and her for what she was, a bully,’ he said. ‘The prig and the bully!’

‘Let me look!’ said Connie.

He did look indeed very clean–shaven and very clean altogether, one of the clean young men of twenty years ago. But even in the photograph his eyes were alert and dauntless. And the woman was not altogether a bully, though her jowl was heavy. There was a touch of appeal in her.

‘One never should keep these things,’ said Connie. ‘That one shouldn’t! One should never have them made!’

He broke the cardboard photograph and mount over his knee, and when it was small enough, put it on the fire.

‘It’ll spoil the fire though,’ he said.

The glass and the backboard he carefully took upstairs.

The frame he knocked asunder with a few blows of the hammer, making the stucco fly. Then he took the pieces into the scullery.

‘We’ll burn that tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There’s too much plaster–moulding on it.’