She came up to the car, and once again over the head of the puppy their eyes met. “I’ve been looking,” she said steadily, “for the real thing. I don’t _think_ I’ve found it—I _know_ I have.” “My dear!” he stammered hoarsely. “Oh! my dear dream girl.” “Take me back to the cliff, Desmond,” she whispered. “Take me back to our cliff.” And an outraged puppy, bouncing off the running-board on to a stray fir-cone, viewed the proceedings of the next five minutes with silent displeasure. _XI_ _A Glass of Whisky_ “IT’S as easy as shelling peas to be a detective in fiction,” grunted the Barrister. “He’s merely the author of the yarn disguised as a character, and he knows the solution before he starts.” “But the reader doesn’t, if the story is told well,” objected the Doctor. “And that’s all that matters.” “Oh! I grant you that,” said the Barrister, lighting a cigar. “I’m not inveighing against the detective story—I love ’em. All I’m saying is that in life a detective’s job is a very different matter to—well, take the illustrious example—to that of Sherlock Holmes. He’s got to make the crime fit to the clues, not the clues fit into the crime. It’s not so terribly difficult to reconstruct the murder of the Prime Minister from a piece of charred paper discovered in the railway refreshment-room at Bath—in fiction; it’s altogether a different matter in reality.” The Soldier thoughtfully filled his pipe. “And yet there have been many cases when the reconstruction has been made on some clue almost equally ‘flimsy,’” he murmured. “A few,” conceded the Barrister. “But nine out of ten are built up with laborious care. The structure does not rest on any one fact—but on a whole lot of apparently unimportant and trivial ones. Of course it’s more spectacular to bring a man to the gallows because half a brick was found lying on the front door-step, but in practice it doesn’t happen.” “It does—sometimes,” remarked a quiet, sandy-haired man who was helping himself to a whisky-and-soda. “It does sometimes, you man of law. Your remarks coupled with my present occupation remind me of just such a case.” “Your present occupation appears to be drinking whisky,” said the Doctor, curiously. “Precisely,” returned the other. “Almost as prosaic a thing as our legal luminary’s half-brick.” He settled himself comfortably in a chair, and the others leaned forward expectantly. “And yet on that very ordinary pastime hinged an extremely interesting case: one in which I was lucky enough to play a principal part.” “The night is yet young, old man,” said the Barrister. “It’s up to you to prove your words, and duly confound me.” The sandy-haired man took a sip of his drink: then he put the glass on the table beside him and began.