“Why,” said I, glancing up at my companion, “that was surely the bell.  Who could come to-night?  Some friend of yours, perhaps?”

“Except yourself I have none,” he answered.  “I do not encourage visitors.”

“A client, then?”

“If so, it is a serious case.  Nothing less would bring a man out on such a day and at such an hour.  But I take it that it is more likely to be some crony of the landlady’s.”

Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door.  He stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit.

“Come in!” said he.

The man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty at the outside, well-groomed and trimly clad, with something of refinement and delicacy in his bearing.  The streaming umbrella which he held in his hand, and his long shining waterproof told of the fierce weather through which he had come.  He looked about him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I could see that his face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a man who is weighed down with some great anxiety.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, raising his golden pince-nez to his eyes.  “I trust that I am not intruding.  I fear that I have brought some traces of the storm and rain into your snug chamber.”

“Give me your coat and umbrella,” said Holmes.  “They may rest here on the hook and will be dry presently.  You have come up from the south-west, I see.”

“Yes, from Horsham.”

“That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps is quite distinctive.”

“I have come for advice.”

“That is easily got.”

“And help.”

“That is not always so easy.”

“I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes.  I heard from Major Prendergast how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal.”

“Ah, of course.  He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards.”

“He said that you could solve anything.”

“He said too much.”

“That you are never beaten.”

“I have been beaten four times—­three times by men, and once by a woman.”

“But what is that compared with the number of your successes?”

“It is true that I have been generally successful.”

“Then you may be so with me.”

“I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me with some details as to your case.”

“It is no ordinary one.”

“None of those which come to me are.  I am the last court of appeal.”

“And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of events than those which have happened in my own family.”

“You fill me with interest,” said Holmes.  “Pray give us the essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question you as to those details which seem to me to be most important.”