"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.