"I'll tell you my express method--since ye want it express," said Mr. Collop, speaking now no louder than your ordinary street orator, railways guard or the cabinet minister at election. "First, to establish what I call negative evidence. This term," he added sententiously, "I will make clear in a moment. Two"--he ticked them off on his podgy fingers--"what I call the search, comparable to the experiment conducted by men of science; with no hypothetic bless you, none at all! Just random like. Now then, in the midst of that we shall find a clue. What then? Then number three. The hypothetic is formed, modified, readjusted, co-ordinated, and leads infallibly to the inevitable conclusion." He coughed and spat in the fire. It was perhaps the thirty-seventh time in the last ten years that he had recited that piece. It had been written out for him by his nephew, who, he was proud to say, attended lectures at Manchester University, and he had it typewritten on a now rather dirty sheet of paper which he carried about with him all over England. "So what do we do now?" he continued heartily. "Why, we begin by establishing our negative evidence. Chrm! Chrm! And how do we do that? Why, we make sure that it is not in this room." "But how can one make sure of that?" said the Home Secretary, puzzled. "Why, plain and straightforward, sir. I 'ave brought down my men and my apparatus. We'll want the floor taken up. But that won't take long." "What?" said the Home Secretary, in alarm. "The floor, sir. The floor," said Mr. Collop magisterially. "And I say again, it won't take long. My men will prise it up before you can say 'Sir Garnet'! And afore we do that another set of 'em will cut the furniture open to see if it's not in the cracks. Then I have got two with the new white light." "What?" said the Home Secretary again. "Why, this new dazzle I told you on," said Mr. Collop proudly. "But my dear sir, my dear sir, when you say your men, what do you mean?" "My men, Mr. Dee Boe Hun? Why, them men I ordered to come and 'elp me with this job. They're at the Lion now, waiting." And without asking his host's leave, he sat down squarely at the little table by the telephone and rang up the Lion. When he had given his message, he waited, head in air, hands clasped behind his back, a monument of Induction and Deduction. "Do I understand you to say," groaned Mr. de Bohun miserably, "that you mean to pull up the floor to-night?" "That's it," nodded Mr. Collop. "That's right. And open the furniture. Only just enough to see it's not in any of the cracks. Then," he added, looking critically at the fine Empire looking-glass upon the wall, "we must have things down, of course. You never know what may lie concealed lurking behind." "Really, Mr. Collop, really," groaned the Home Secretary, clasping and unclasping his hands, "I should think that ..."