“My dear Tony,” said Bill delightedly, “need you ask?” Antony said nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, “I perceive from the strawberry-mark on your shirtfront that you had strawberries for dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my practice for a week? I can.”
Antony smiled and went on smoking. After waiting hopefully for a minute or two, Bill said in a firm voice:
“Well then, Holmes, I feel bound to ask you if you have deduced anything. Also whom do you suspect?”
Antony began to talk.
“Do you remember,” he said, “one of Holmes’s little scores over Watson about the number of steps up to the Baker Street lodging? Poor old Watson had been up and down them a thousand times, but he had never thought of counting them, whereas Holmes had counted them as a matter of course, and knew that there were seventeen. And that was supposed to be the difference between observation and non-observation. Watson was crushed again, and Holmes appeared to him more amazing than ever. Now, it always seemed to me that in that matter Holmes was the ass, and Watson the sensible person. What on earth is the point of keeping in your head an unnecessary fact like that? If you really want to know at any time the number of steps to your lodging, you can ring up your landlady and ask her. I’ve been up and down the steps of the club a thousand times, but if you asked me to tell you at this moment how many steps there are I couldn’t do it. Could you?”
“I certainly couldn’t,” said Bill.
“But if you really wanted to know,” said Antony casually, with a sudden change of voice, “I could find out for you without even bothering to ring up the hall-porter.”
Bill was puzzled as to why they were talking about the club steps, but he felt it his duty to say that he did want to know how many they were.
“Right,” said Antony. “I’ll find out.”
He closed his eyes.
“I’m walking up St. James’ Street,” he said slowly. “Now I’ve come to the club and I’m going past the smoking-room windows—one—two—three—four. Now I’m at the steps. I turn in and begin going up them. One—two—three—four—five—six, then a broad step; six—seven—eight—nine, another broad step; nine—ten—eleven. Eleven—I’m inside. Good morning, Rogers. Fine day again.” With a little start he opened his eyes and came back again to his present surroundings. He turned to Bill with a smile. “Eleven,” he said. “Count them the next time you’re there. Eleven—and now I hope I shall forget it again.”
Bill was distinctly interested.
“That’s rather hot,” he said. “Expound.”
“Well, I can’t explain it, whether it’s something in the actual eye, or something in the brain, or what, but I have got rather an uncanny habit of recording things unconsciously. You know that game where you look at a tray full of small objects for three minutes, and then turn away and try to make a list of them. It means a devil of a lot of concentration for the ordinary person, if he wants to get his list complete, but in some odd way I manage to do it without concentration at all. I mean that my eyes seem to do it without the brain consciously taking any part. I could look at the tray, for instance, and talk to you about golf at the same time, and still get my list right.”
“I should think that’s rather a useful gift for an amateur detective. You ought to have gone into the profession before.”
“Well, it is rather useful. It’s rather surprising, you know, to a stranger. Let’s surprise Cayley with it, shall we?”
“How?”
“Well, let’s ask him—” Antony stopped and looked at Bill comically—“let’s ask him what he’s going to do with the key of the office.”
For a moment Bill did not understand.
“Key of the office?” he said vaguely. “You don’t mean—Tony! What do you mean? Good God! do you mean that Cayley—But what about Mark?”
“I don’t know where Mark is—that’s another thing I want to know—but I’m quite certain that he hasn’t got the key of the office with him. Because Cayley’s got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
Bill looked at him wonderingly.
“I say,” he said, almost pleadingly, “don’t tell me that you can see into people’s pockets and all that sort of thing—as well.”
Antony laughed and denied it cheerfully.
“Then how do you know?”
“You’re the perfect Watson, Bill. You take to it quite naturally. Properly speaking, I oughtn’t to explain till the last chapter, but I always think that that’s so unfair. So here goes. Of course, I don’t really know that he’s got it, but I do know that he had it. I know that when I came on him this afternoon, he had just locked the door and put the key in his pocket.”
“You mean you saw him at the time, but that you’ve only just remembered it—reconstructed it—in the way you were explaining just now?”
“No. I didn’t see him. But I did see something. I saw the key of the billiard-room.”
“Where?”
“Outside the billiard-room door.”
“Outside? But it was inside when we looked just now.”
“Exactly.”
“Who put it there?”
“Obviously Cayley.”
“But—”
“Let’s go back to this afternoon. I don’t remember noticing the billiard-room key at the time; I must have done so without knowing. Probably when I saw Cayley banging at the door I may have wondered subconsciously whether the key of the room next to it would fit. Something like that, I daresay. Well, when I was sitting out by myself on that seat just before you came along, I went over the whole scene in my mind, and I suddenly saw the billiard-room key there—outside. And I began to wonder if the office-key had been outside too.
