“Lots, but I tell you, all the same, this man I am after now almost frightens me. No matter, what is, is, and what will be, will be. Can you tell me where I can get a butterfly net?” “What do you want that for?” “To catch butterflies; this warm weather has brought them out in flocks. I want, also, a flannel coat, such as boating people wear; one does not go butterfly-hunting in a tall hat.” “I see; come down town and I will rig you out; but, first, shall we go to the mortuary?” “Yes,” replied Freyberger. “Before meeting the murderer I should like to see the victim.” They repaired to the mortuary, and there the detective inspected the body of the unfortunate Bronson. “It is a most extraordinary case,” said the chief constable. “He was a most inoffensive creature; he had never, to any man’s knowledge, made an enemy. He had committed no fault.” “I beg your pardon, but I imagine he had.” “How?” “He had committed the fault of being alive. The man we are after is a fault-finder when the fit seizes him. A temporary lunacy. Some periodic lunatics have objections. I knew one who, perfectly sane on other points, flew into a paroxysm of rage when a musk-melon was brought within his purview. He objected to musk-melons because they were round. “He wanted them square. God Almighty, however, preferred that they should be round. Hence the trouble. “Another quarrelled with grey cats when he met them, simply because they were grey. He quarrelled with them by covering them with paraffin and setting them on fire. “The man who did this quarrelled with the thing that lies here because it was alive. He has remedied the defect.” He had indeed. It is needful only to say that the body exhibited twenty wounds, each in itself sufficient to have caused death. But the master wound was in the throat. It was evidently the first given. The rest were needless, and the result of maniacal fury on the part of the murderer. They left the place and went to a clothier’s, where Freyberger bought a mulberry-coloured blazer and a straw hat with a striped ribbon. Having purchased a butterfly net he returned to the hotel and dressed. When his toilet was complete, he looked at himself in a glass and felt satisfied. He looked, in fact, like a shopboy whose taste for entomology had devoured his taste in dress. Smug and plump, you never would have suspected this shopboy or café waiter out for a holiday, to be a detective destined to European fame. A chilly-blooded calculator, a profound thinker, with an intimate knowledge of all the most terrible abysses of crime. A man merciless and fearless as a sword. An hour later, at the boat-slip just above the bridge, Freyberger stood bargaining for a boat. It was a lovely day, soft and warm with a cloudless sky. He was not a very good oarsman, but good enough to scull a boat safely on a smooth river. After he had passed the bridge and East’s boat-slip, he rested on his oars for a minute.