The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans | Page 4

next?" said he. "Brother Mycroft is coming round."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Why not? It is as if you met a tram-car coming down a country lane.
Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the
Diogenes Club, Whitehall--that is his cycle. Once, and only once, he
has been here. What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?"
"Does he not explain?"

Holmes handed me his brother's telegram.
Must see you over Cadogen West. Coming at once.
Mycroft.
"Cadogen West? I have heard the name."
"It recalls nothing to my mind. But that Mycroft should break out in
this erratic fashion! A planet might as well leave its orbit. By the way,
do you know what Mycroft is?"
I had some vague recollection of an explanation at the time of the
Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.
"You told me that he had some small office under the British
government."
Holmes chuckled.
"I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet
when one talks of high matters of state. You are right in thinking that
he under the British government. You would also be right in a sense if
you said that occasionally he IS the British government."
"My dear Holmes!"
"I thought I might surprise you. Mycroft draws four hundred and fifty
pounds a year, remains a subordinate, has no ambitions of any kind,
will receive neither honour nor title, but remains the most indispensable
man in the country."
"But how?"
"Well, his position is unique. He has made it for himself. There has
never been anything like it before, nor will be again. He has the tidiest
and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of
any man living. The same great powers which I have turned to the
detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The

conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central
exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance. All other
men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose
that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy,
India, Canada and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate
advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can
focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other.
They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has
made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is
pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant. Again and again his
word has decided the national policy. He lives in it. He thinks of
nothing else save when, as an intellectual exercise, he unbends if I call
upon him and ask him to advise me on one of my little problems. But
Jupiter is descending to-day. What on earth can it mean? Who is
Cadogan West, and what is he to Mycroft?"
"I have it," I cried, and plunged among the litter of papers upon the sofa.
"Yes, yes, here he is, sure enough! Cadogen West was the young man
who was found dead on the Underground on Tuesday morning."
Holmes sat up at attention, his pipe halfway to his lips.
"This must be serious, Watson. A death which has caused my brother to
alter his habits can be no ordinary one. What in the world can he have
to do with it? The case was featureless as I remember it. The young
man had apparently fallen out of the train and killed himself. He had
not been robbed, and there was no particular reason to suspect violence.
Is that not so?"
"There has been an inquest," said I, "and a good many fresh facts have
come out. Looked at more closely, I should certainly say that it was a
curious case."
"Judging by its effect upon my brother, I should think it must be a most
extraordinary one." He snuggled down in his armchair. "Now, Watson,
let us have the facts."
"The man's name was Arthur Cadogan West. He was twenty-seven

years of age, unmarried, and a clerk at Woolwich Arsenal."
"Government employ. Behold the link with Brother Mycroft!"
"He left Woolwich suddenly on Monday night. Was last seen by his
fiancee, Miss Violet Westbury, whom he left abruptly in the fog about
7:30 that evening. There was no quarrel between them and she can give
no motive for his action. The next thing heard of him was when his
dead body was discovered by a plate-layer named Mason, just outside
Aldgate Station on the Underground system in London."
"When?"
"The body was found at six on Tuesday morning. It was lying wide of
the metals upon the left hand of the track as one goes eastward, at a