He was a tiny slim-waisted man, but his chest was stupendous. He might have packed all the rest of himself into it, and still have found room for a superior conceit or two. It stood for Valombroso in Valombroso’s own opinion. The frill, or comb, which strutted from it, through the unbuttoned upper half of its owner’s neat frock coat, proclaimed him cock of the walk in his own exclusive department. In further emphasis of Valombroso’s supremacy, Valombroso’s silk hat was put at an angle on his head like an acute accent on Valombroso, and Valombroso’s moustachios, waxed into stinglike points, were accents also, acute and grave, on Valombroso’s speech, which was copious and confident. In the course, indeed, of our acquaintance, Valombroso was to convince us, in flourishing rhetoric, that in foresight, in acumen, in penetration, as also in the conquering simplicity of his system, there was no detective--save one perhaps--in all the world who could approach Valombroso. The possible exception was the English amateur, Mr Holmes, no less. Valombroso had the greatest admiration for this certainly unique man. “He knows very well,” he said, “that it is not the criminal who want to mystify, but the public who want to be mystified. So he keep the clue, which is the obvious one, in his own hand, and send all the newspapers astray on many false scents. Then the time come when they are lost, every Jack’s son of them, and he bring them back, very gradual and gentle, to the path which shall end to the view of Mr Holmes holding his prisoner in the handcuffs. But there he was from the first, though they knew it not. He did not want them to know, for where then would have shown his cleverness? We all scorn the obvious, do we not? It is so unexciting. There is no reputation to be gained by seizing on it--not in England. Mr Holmes adapt himself to a demand--he is very clever. But your police, they make the demand by their stupidity. ‘Look,’ they say, ‘there is a man stealing a handkerchief from a lady’s pocket! let us watch him and watch him to make sure that he does not want only to blow his nose and return it.’ But presently he steals another handkerchief, and then another, and so they say, ‘Three handkerchiefs are more than the allowance to one nose; he must be a thief; let us arrest him’; and by that time there are three ladies who are without the means to blow their noses. So again, if a murder is committed and the murderer suspect--do they arrest him and put him by the heels while they bring the charge home? Not at all; they watch that he commit himself, and they tell the newspapers in the meantime all of what they are thinking and doing so cleverly, as if that murderer was the only one out of all the country that not read the newspapers. But the public applaud, and that is enough. It is not my way. I do not walk twenty kilometres to get across the street. I say, ‘Show me my man and I go for him.’ Frankness, frankness always--that is my method.