Part 1 - Chapter 2 - Page 2

conceal from you, Mr. Holmes, that we think
in the C.I.D. that you have a wee bit of a bee in your bonnet
over this professor. I made some inquiries myself about the
matter. He seems to be a verly respectable, learned, and
talented sort of man."

"I'm glad you've got so far as to recognize the talent."

"Man, you can't but recognize it! After I heard your view I made
it my business to see him. I had a chat with him on eclipses.
How the talk got that way I canna think; but he had out a
reflector lantern and a globe, and made it all clear in a minute.
He lent me a book; but I don't mind saying that it was a bit
above my head, though I had a good Aberdeen upbringing. He'd
have made a grand meenister with his thin face and gray hair and
solemn-like way of talking. When he put his hand on my shoulder
as we were parting, it was like a father's blessing before you go
out into the cold, cruel world."

Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. "Great!" he said. "Great!
Tell me, Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching interview
was, I suppose, in the professor's study?"

"That's so."

"A fine room, is it not?"

"Very fine -- very handsome indeed, Mr. Holmes."

"You sat in front of his writing desk?"

"Just so."

"Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?"

"Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on my
face."

"It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the
professor's head?"

"I don't miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from you.
Yes, I saw the picture--a young woman with her head on her hands,
peeping at you sideways."

"That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze."

The inspector endeavoured to look interested.

"Jean Baptiste Greuze," Holmes continued, joining his finger tips
and leaning well back in his chair, "was a French artist who
flourished between the years 1750 and 1800. I allude, of course
to his working career. Modern criticism has more than indorsed
the high opinion formed of him by his contemporaries."

The inspector's eyes grew abstracted. "Hadn't we better--" he
said.

"We are doing so," Holmes interrupted. "All that I am saying has
a very direct and vital bearing upon what you have called the
Birlstone Mystery. In fact, it may in a sense be called the very
centre of it."

MacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me. "Your
thoughts move a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You leave out
a link or two, and I can't get over the gap. What in the whole
wide world can be the connection between this dead painting man
and the affair at Birlstone?"

"All knowledge comes useful to the detective," remarked Holmes.
"Even the