‘I was sure of it from the first.’ The two sat down together in the bow-window of the club. ‘To anyone who wishes to study mankind this is the spot,’ said Mycroft. ‘Look at the magnificent types! Look at these two men who are coming towards us, for example.’

‘The billiard-marker and the other?’

‘Precisely. What do you make of the other?’

The two men had stopped opposite the window. Some chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only signs of billiards which I could see in one of them. The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat pushed back and several packages under his arm.

‘An old soldier, I perceive,’ said Sherlock.

‘And very recently discharged,’ remarked the brother.

‘Served in India, I see.’

‘And a non-commissioned officer.’

‘Royal Artillery, I fancy,’ said Sherlock.

‘And a widower.’

‘But with a child.’

‘Children, my dear boy, children.’

‘Come,’ said I, laughing, ‘this is a little too much.’

‘Surely,’ answered Holmes, ‘it is not hard to say that a man with that bearing, expression of authority, and sun-baked skin is a soldier, is more than a private, and is not long from India.’

‘That he has not left the service long is shown by his still wearing his “ammunition boots”, as they are called,’ observed Mycroft.

‘He has not the cavalry stride, yet he wore his hat on one side, as is shown by the lighter skin on that side of his brow. His weight is against his being a sapper. He is in the artillery.’

‘Then, of course, his complete mourning shows that he has lost someone very dear. The fact that he is doing his own shopping looks as though it were his wife. He has been buying things for children, you perceive. There is a rattle, which shows that one of them is very young. The wife probably died in child- bed. The fact that he has a picture-book under his arm shows that there is another child to be thought of.’

I began to understand what my friend meant when he said that his brother possessed even keener faculties than he did himself. He glanced across at me, and smiled. Mycroft took snuff from a tortoiseshell box and brushed away the wandering grains from his coat with a large, red silk handkerchief.

‘By the way, Sherlock,’ said he, ‘I have had something quite after your own heart—a most singular problem—submitted to my judgment. I really had not the energy to follow it up, save in a very incomplete fashion, but it gave me a basis for some very pleasing speculations. If you would care to hear the facts—’

‘My dear Mycroft, I should be delighted.’

The brother scribbled a note upon a leaf of his pocket-book, and, ringing the bell, he handed it to the waiter.