“By Jove!” he cried. “You don’t mean that Baynes has got him?”

“Apparently,” said I as I read the following report:

“Great excitement was caused in Esher and the neighbouring district when it was learned late last night that an

arrest had been effected in connection with the Oxshott

murder. It will be remembered that Mr. Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on Oxshott Common, his body

showing signs of extreme violence, and that on the same

night his servant and his cook fled, which appeared to show

their participation in the crime. It was suggested, but never

proved, that the deceased gentleman may have had valuables in the house, and that their abstraction was the motive

of the crime. Every effort was made by Inspector Baynes,

who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding place of

the fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they

had not gone far but were lurking in some retreat which had

been already prepared. It was certain from the first, however, that they would eventually be detected, as the cook,

from the evidence of one or two tradespeople who have

caught a glimpse of him through the window, was a man of

most remarkable appearance — Reference being a huge and hideous

mulatto, with yellowish features of a pronounced negroid

type. This man has been seen since the crime, for he was

detected and pursued by Constable Walters on the same

evening, when he had the audacity to revisit Wisteria Lodge.

Inspector Baynes, considering that such a visit must have

some purpose in view and was likely, therefore, to be

repeated, abandoned the house but left an ambuscade in the

shrubbery. The man walked into the trap and was captured

last night after a struggle in which Constable Downing was

badly bitten by the savage. We understand that when the

prisoner is brought before the magistrates a remand will be

applied for by the police, and that great developments are

hoped from his capture.”

“Really we must see Baynes at once,” cried Holmes, picking up his hat. “We will just catch him before he starts.” We hurried down the village street and found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just leaving his lodgings.

“You’ve seen the paper, Mr. Holmes?” he asked, holding one out to us.

“Yes, Baynes, I’ve seen it. Pray don’t think it a liberty if I give you a word of friendly warning.”

“Of warning, Mr. Holmes?”

“I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not convinced that you are on the right lines. I don’t want you to commit yourself too far unless you are sure.”

“You’re very kind, Mr. Holmes.”

“I assure you I speak for your good.”

It seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an instant over one of Mr. Baynes’s tiny eyes.

“We agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes. That’s what I am doing.”

Connie had a sitting–room on the third floor, the top floor of the central portion of the house. Clifford’s rooms were on the ground floor, of course. Michaelis was flattered by being asked up to Lady Chatterley’s own parlour. He followed blindly after the servant...he never noticed things, or had contact with Isis surroundings. In her room he did glance vaguely round at the fine German reproductions of Renoir and C‚zanne.

‘It’s very pleasant up here,’ he said, with his queer smile, as if it hurt him to smile, showing his teeth. ‘You are wise to get up to the top.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ she said.

Her room was the only gay, modern one in the house, the only spot in Wragby where her personality was at all revealed. Clifford had never seen it, and she asked very few people up.

Now she and Michaelis sit on opposite sides of the fire and talked. She asked him about himself, his mother and father, his brothers...other people were always something of a wonder to her, and when her sympathy was awakened she was quite devoid of class feeling. Michaelis talked frankly about himself, quite frankly, without affectation, simply revealing his bitter, indifferent, stray–dog’s soul, then showing a gleam of revengeful pride in his success.

‘But why are you such a lonely bird?’ Connie asked him; and again he looked at her, with his full, searching, hazel look.

‘Some birds ARE that way,’ he replied. Then, with a touch of familiar irony: ‘but, look here, what about yourself? Aren’t you by way of being a lonely bird yourself?’ Connie, a little startled, thought about it for a few moments, and then she said: ‘Only in a way! Not altogether, like you!’

‘Am I altogether a lonely bird?’ he asked, with his queer grin of a smile, as if he had toothache; it was so wry, and his eyes were so perfectly unchangingly melancholy, or stoical, or disillusioned or afraid.

‘Why?’ she said, a little breathless, as she looked at him. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

She felt a terrible appeal coming to her from him, that made her almost lose her balance.

‘Oh, you’re quite right!’ he said, turning his head away, and looking sideways, downwards, with that strange immobility of an old race that is hardly here in our present day. It was that that really made Connie lose her power to see him detached from herself.

He looked up at her with the full glance that saw everything, registered everything. At the same time, the infant crying in the night was crying out of his breast to her, in a way that affected her very womb.

‘It’s awfully nice of you to think of me,’ he said laconically.

‘Why shouldn’t I think of you?’ she exclaimed, with hardly breath to utter it.

He gave the wry, quick hiss of a laugh.

‘Oh, in that way!...May I hold your hand for a minute?’ he asked suddenly, fixing his eyes on her with almost hypnotic power, and sending out an appeal that affected her direct in the womb.