The Valley of Fear | Page 8

which Holmes had handed him. "Posted in
Camberwell--that doesn't help us much. Name, you say, is assumed. Not much to go on,
certainly. Didn't you say that you have sent him money?"
"Twice."
"And how?"
"In notes to Camberwell post office."
"Did you ever trouble to see who called for them?"
"No."
The inspector looked surprised and a little shocked. "Why not?"
"Because I always keep faith. I had promised when he first wrote that I would not try to
trace him."
"You think there is someone behind him?"
"I know there is."
"This professor that I've heard you mention?"
"Exactly!"
Inspector MacDonald smiled, and his eyelid quivered as he glanced towards me. "I won't
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 very 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 trivial fact
that in the year 1865 a picture by Greuze entitled La Jeune Fille a l'Agneau fetched one
million two hundred thousand francs--more than forty thousand pounds--at the Portalis
sale may start a train of reflection in your mind."
It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.
"I may remind you," Holmes continued, "that the professor's salary can be ascertained in
several trustworthy books of reference. It is seven hundred a year."
"Then how could he buy--"
"Quite so! How could he?"
"Ay, that's remarkable," said the inspector thoughtfully. "Talk away, Mr. Holmes. I'm just
loving it. It's fine!"
Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration--the characteristic of the
real artist. "What about Birlstone?" he asked.
"We've time yet," said the inspector, glancing at his watch. "I've a cab at the door, and it
won't take us twenty minutes to Victoria. But about this picture: I thought you told me
once, Mr. Holmes, that you had never met Professor Moriarty."
"No, I never have."
"Then how do you know about his rooms?"
"Ah, that's another matter. I have been three times in his rooms, twice waiting for him
under different pretexts and leaving before he came. Once--well, I can hardly tell