"You first, Small," remarked the wary, Jones as they left the
room. "I'll take particular care that you don't club me with your
wooden leg, whatever you may have done to the gentleman at
the Andaman Isles."

  "Well, and there is the end of our little drama," I remarked
after we had sat some time smoking in silence. "I fear that it
may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of
studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to
accept me as a husband in prospective."

  He gave a most dismal groan.

  "I feared as much," said he. "I really cannot congratulate
you."

  I was a little hurt.

  "Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?" I
asked.

  "Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young
ladies I ever met and might have been most useful in such work
as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way
witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from ali
the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing,
and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason
which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest
I bias my judgment."

  "I trust," said I, laughing, "that my judgment may survive
the ordeal. But you look weary."

  "Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a
rag for a week."

  "Strange," said I, "how terms of what in another man I
should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy
and vigour."

  "Yes," he answered, "there are in me the makings of a very
fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry, sort of a fellow. I often
think of those lines of old Goethe:

     "Schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf,

   Denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.

By the way, apropos of this Norwood business, you see that they
had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be
none other than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the
undivided honour of having caught one fish in his great haul."

  "The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have
done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones
gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"

  "For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the
cocaine-bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up for it.
.