“But the boots and the bath?”

“Equally childish. You are in the habit of doing up your boots in a certain way. I see them on this occasion fastened with an elaborate double bow, which is not your usual method of tying them. You have, therefore, had them off. Who has tied them? A bootmaker — or the boy at the bath. It is unlikely that it is the bootmaker, since your boots are nearly new. Well, what remains? The bath. Absurd, is it not? But, for all that, the Turkish bath has served a purpose.”

“What is that?”

“You say that you have had it because you need a change. Let me suggest that you take one. How would Lausanne do, my dear Watson — first-class tickets and all expenses paid on a princely scale?”

“Splendid! But why?”

Holmes leaned back in his armchair and took his notebook from his pocket.

“One of the most dangerous classes in the world,” said he, “is the drifting and friendless woman. She is the most harmless and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter of crime in others. She is helpless. She is migratory. She has sufficient means to take her from country to country and from hotel to hotel. She is lost, as often often as not, in a maze of obscure pensions and boarding-houses. She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed. I much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax.”

I was relieved at this sudden descent from the general to the particular. Holmes consulted his notes.

“Lady Frances,” he continued, “is the sole survivor of the direct family of the late Earl of Rufton. The estates went, as you may remember, in the male line. She was left with limited means, but with some very remarkable old Spanish jewellery of silver and curiously cut diamonds to which she was fondly attached — too attached, for she refused to leave them with her banker and always carried them about with her. A rather pathetic figure, the Lady Frances, a beautiful woman, still in fresh middle age, and yet, by a strange chance, the last derelict of what only twenty years ago was a goodly fleet.”

“What has happened to her, then?”

“Ah, what has happened to the Lady Frances? Is she alive or dead? There is our problem. She is a lady of precise habits, and for four years it has been her invariable custom to write every second week to Miss Dobney, her old governess, who has long retired and lives in Camberwell. It is this Miss Dobney who has consulted me. Nearly five weeks have passed without a word. The last letter was from the Hotel National at Lausanne. Lady Frances seems to have left there and given no address. The family are anxious, and as they are exceedingly wealthy no sum will be spared if we can clear the matter up.”

“Is Miss Dobney the only source of information? Surely she had other correspondents?”

“There is one correspondent who is a sure draw, Watson. That is the bank. Single ladies must live, and their passbooks are compressed diaries. She banks at Silvester’s. I have glanced over her account. The last check but one paid her bill at Lausanne but it was a large one and probably left her with cash in hand. Only one check has been drawn since.”

He stroked her tail with his hand, long and subtly taking in the curves and the globe–fullness.

‘Tha’s got such a nice tail on thee,’ he said, in the throaty caressive dialect. ‘Tha’s got the nicest arse of anybody. It’s the nicest, nicest woman’s arse as is! An’ ivery bit of it is woman, woman sure as nuts. Tha’rt not one o’ them button–arsed lasses as should be lads, are ter! Tha’s got a real soft sloping bottom on thee, as a man loves in ‘is guts. It’s a bottom as could hold the world up, it is!’

All the while he spoke he exquisitely stroked the rounded tail, till it seemed as if a slippery sort of fire came from it into his hands. And his finger–tips touched the two secret openings to her body, time after time, with a soft little brush of fire.

‘An’ if tha shits an’ if tha pisses, I’m glad. I don’t want a woman as couldna shit nor piss.’

Connie could not help a sudden snort of astonished laughter, but he went on unmoved.

‘Tha’rt real, tha art! Tha’art real, even a bit of a bitch. Here tha shits an’ here tha pisses: an’ I lay my hand on ‘em both an’ like thee for it. I like thee for it. Tha’s got a proper, woman’s arse, proud of itself. It’s none ashamed of itself this isna.’

He laid his hand close and firm over her secret places, in a kind of close greeting.

‘I like it,’ he said. ‘I like it! An’ if I only lived ten minutes, an’ stroked thy arse an’ got to know it, I should reckon I’d lived ONElife, see ter! Industrial system or not! Here’s one o’ my lifetimes.’

She turned round and climbed into his lap, clinging to him. ‘Kiss me!’ she whispered.

And she knew the thought of their separation was latent in both their minds, and at last she was sad.

She sat on his thighs, her head against his breast, and her ivory–gleaming legs loosely apart, the fire glowing unequally upon them. Sitting with his head dropped, he looked at the folds of her body in the fire–glow, and at the fleece of soft brown hair that hung down to a point between her open thighs. He reached to the table behind, and took up her bunch of flowers, still so wet that drops of rain fell on to her.

‘Flowers stops out of doors all weathers,’ he said. ‘They have no houses.’

‘Not even a hut!’ she murmured.

With quiet fingers he threaded a few forget–me–not flowers in the fine brown fleece of the mound of Venus.

‘There!’ he said. ‘There’s forget–me–nots in the right place!’

She looked down at the milky odd little flowers among the brown maiden–hair at the lower tip of her body.

‘Doesn’t it look pretty!’ she said.

‘Pretty as life,’ he replied.

And he stuck a pink campion–bud among the hair.

‘There! That’s me where you won’t forget me! That’s Moses in the bull–rushes.’