Three times had our bearded friend from the Langham called for news — the third time within an hour of this fresh development. His clothes were getting looser on his great body. He seemed to be wilting away in his anxiety. “If you will only give me something to do!” was his constant wail. At last Holmes could oblige him.

“He has begun to pawn the jewels. We should get him now.”

“But does this mean that any harm has befallen the Lady Frances?”

Holmes shook his head very gravely.

“Supposing that they have held her prisoner up to now, it is clear that they cannot let her loose without their own destruction. We must prepare for the worst.”

“What can I do?”

“These people do not know you by sight?”

“No.”

“It is possible that he will go to some other pawnbroker in the future. In that case, we must begin again. On the other hand, he has had a fair price and no questions asked, so if he is in need of ready-money he will probably come back to Bovington’s. I will give you a note to them, and they will let you wait in the shop. If the fellow comes you will follow him home. But no indiscretion and, above all, no no violence. I put you on your honour that you will take no step without my knowledge and consent.”

For two days the Hon. Philip Green (he was, I may mention the son of the famous admiral of that name who commanded the Sea of Azof fleet in the Crimean War) brought us no news. On the evening of the third he rushed into our sitting-room, pale, trembling, with every muscle of his powerful frame quivering with excitement.

“We have him! We have him!” he cried.

He was incoherent in his agitation. Holmes soothed him with a few words and thrust him into an armchair.

“Come, now, give us the order of events,” said he.

“She came only an hour ago. It was the wife, this time, but the pendant she brought was the fellow of the other. She is a tall, pale woman, with ferret eyes.”

“That is the lady,” said Holmes.

“She left the office and I followed her. She walked up the Kennington Road, and I kept behind her. Presently she went into a shop. Mr. Holmes, it was an undertaker’s.”

My companion started. “Well?” he asked in that vibrant voice which told of the fiery soul behind the cold gray face.

“She was talking to the woman behind the counter. I entered as well. ‘It is late,’ I heard her say, or words to that effect. The woman was excusing herself. ‘It should be there before now,’ she answered. ‘It took longer, being out of the ordinary.’ They both stopped and looked at me, so I asked some question and then left the shop.”

“You did excellently well. What happened next?”

“The woman came out, but I had hid myself in a doorway. Her suspicions had been aroused, I think, for she looked round her. Then she called a cab and got in. I was lucky enough to get another and so to follow her. She got down at last at No. 36 Poultney Square, Brixton. I drove past, left my cab at the corner of the square, and watched the house.”

‘And what will come after it?’ asked Clifford.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea, but something, I suppose,’ said the elderly lady.

‘Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunized women, and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the bridge to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?’ said Clifford.

‘Oh, don’t bother! let’s get on with today,’ said Olive. ‘Only hurry up with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off.’

‘There might even be real men, in the next phase,’ said Tommy. ‘Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldn’t that be a change, an enormous change from us? WE’RE not men, and the women aren’t women. We’re only cerebrating make–shifts, mechanical and intellectual experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of our little lot of clever–jacks, all at the intelligence–age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles.’

‘Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up,’ said Olive.

‘Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having,’ said Winterslow.

‘Spirits!’ said Jack, drinking his whisky and soda.

‘Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!’ said Dukes.

‘But it’ll come, in time, when we’ve shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then we’ll get a democracy of touch, instead of a democracy of pocket.’

Something echoed inside Connie: ‘Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body!’ She didn’t at all know what it meant, but it comforted her, as meaningless things may do.

Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual rattle of it!

Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold of her lower body, she couldn’t escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious painfulness, yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about herself Even Tommy Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right. Only she began to be afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as false teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall church, and which she saw with such grim painfulness from the park. The bristling of the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with a grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be buried there, added to the ghastly host under the tombstones and the monuments, in these filthy Midlands.

She needed help, and she knew it: so she wrote a little CRI DU COEUR to her sister, Hilda. ‘I’m not well lately, and I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’