“I cannot explain it, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “I have not shut an eye since the tragedy, thinking, thinking, thinking, night and day, what the true meaning of it can be. Arthur was the most single-minded, chivalrous, patriotic man upon earth. He would have cut his right hand off before he would sell a State secret confided to his keeping. It is absurd, impossible, preposterous to anyone who knew him.”

“But the facts, Miss Westbury?”

“Yes, yes I admit I cannot explain them.”

“Was he in any want of money?”

“No; his needs were very simple and his salary ample. He had saved a few hundreds, and we were to marry at the New Year.”

“No signs of any mental excitement? Come, Miss Westbury, be absolutely frank with us.”

The quick eye of my companion had noted some change in her manner. She coloured and hesitated.

“Yes,” she said at last, “I had a feeling that there was something on his mind.”

“For long?”

“Only for the last week or so. He was thoughtful and worried. Once I pressed him about it. He admitted that there was something, and that it was concerned with his official life. ‘It is too serious for me to speak about, even to to you,’ said he. I could get nothing more.”

Holmes looked grave.

“Go on, Miss Westbury. Even if it seems to tell against him, go on. We cannot say what it may lead to.”

“Indeed, I have nothing more to tell. Once or twice it seemed to me that he was on the point of telling me something. He spoke one evening of the importance of the secret, and I have some recollection that he said that no doubt foreign spies would pay a great deal to have it.”

My friend’s face grew graver still.

“Anything else?”

“He said that we were slack about such matters — that it would be easy for a traitor to get the plans.”

“Was it only recently that he made such remarks?”

“Yes, quite recently.”

“Now tell us of that last evening.”

“We were to go to the theatre. The fog was so thick that a cab was useless. We walked, and our way took us close to the office. Suddenly he darted away into the fog.”

“Without a word?”

“He gave an exclamation; that was all. I waited but he never returned. Then I walked home. Next morning, after the office opened, they came to inquire. About twelve o’clock we heard the terrible news. Oh, Mr. Holmes, if you could only, only save his honour! It was so much to him.”

Holmes shook his head sadly.

“Come, Watson,” said he, “our ways lie elsewhere. Our next station must be the office from which the papers were taken.

“It was black enough before against this young man, but our inquiries make it blacker,” he remarked as the cab lumbered off. “His coming marriage gives a motive for the crime. He naturally wanted money. The idea was in his head, since he spoke about it. He nearly made the girl an accomplice in the treason by telling her his plans. It is all very bad.”

‘I don’t think we’re altogether so spiteful,’ protested Clifford.

‘My dear Clifford, think of the way we talk each other over, all of us. I’m rather worse than anybody else, myself. Because I infinitely prefer the spontaneous spite to the concocted sugaries; now they ARE poison; when I begin saying what a fine fellow Clifford is, etc., etc., then poor Clifford is to be pitied. For God’s sake, all of you, say spiteful things about me, then I shall know I mean something to you. Don’t say sugaries, or I’m done.’

‘Oh, but I do think we honestly like one another,’ said Hammond.

‘I tell you we must...we say such spiteful things to one another, about one another, behind our backs! I’m the worst.’

‘And I do think you confuse the mental life with the critical activity. I agree with you, Socrates gave the critical activity a grand start, but he did more than that,’ said Charlie May, rather magisterially. The cronies had such a curious pomposity under their assumed modesty. It was all so EX CATHEDRA, and it all pretended to be so humble.

Dukes refused to be drawn about Socrates.

‘That’s quite true, criticism and knowledge are not the same thing,’ said Hammond.

‘They aren’t, of course,’ chimed in Berry, a brown, shy young man, who had called to see Dukes, and was staying the night.

They all looked at him as if the ass had spoken.

‘I wasn’t talking about knowledge...I was talking about the mental life,’ laughed Dukes. ‘Real knowledge comes out of the whole corpus of the consciousness; out of your belly and your penis as much as out of your brain and mind. The mind can only analyse and rationalize. Set the mind and the reason to cock it over the rest, and all they can do is to criticize, and make a deadness. I say ALL they can do. It is vastly important. My God, the world needs criticizing today...criticizing to death. Therefore let’s live the mental life, and glory in our spite, and strip the rotten old show. But, mind you, it’s like this: while you LIVE your life, you are in some way an Organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You’ve severed the connexion between, the apple and the tree: the organic connexion. And if you’ve got nothing in your life BUT the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple...you’ve fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it’s a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.’

Clifford made big eyes: it was all stuff to him. Connie secretly laughed to herself.

‘Well then we’re all plucked apples,’ said Hammond, rather acidly and petulantly.

‘So let’s make cider of ourselves,’ said Charlie.

‘But what do you think of Bolshevism?’ put in the brown Berry, as if everything had led up to it.

‘Bravo!’ roared Charlie. ‘What do you think of Bolshevism?’