This speech was one of the crucial blows of Connie’s life. It killed something in her. She had not been so very keen on Michaelis; till he started it, she did not want him. It was as if she never positively wanted him. But once he had started her, it seemed only natural for her to come to her own crisis with him. Almost she had loved him for it...almost that night she loved him, and wanted to marry him.

Perhaps instinctively he knew it, and that was why he had to bring down the whole show with a smash; the house of cards. Her whole sexual feeling for him, or for any man, collapsed that night. Her life fell apart from his as completely as if he had never existed.

And she went through the days drearily. There was nothing now but this empty treadmill of what Clifford called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same house with one another.

Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living. All the many busy and important little things that make up the grand sum–total of nothingness!

‘Why don’t men and women really like one another nowadays?’ Connie asked Tommy Dukes, who was more or less her oracle.

‘Oh, but they do! do I don’t think since the human species was invented, there has ever been a time when men and women have liked one another as much as they do today. Genuine liking! Take myself. I really like women better than men; they are braver, one can be more frank with them.’

Connie pondered this.

‘Ah, yes, but you never have anything to do with them!’ she said.

‘I? What am I doing but talking perfectly sincerely to a woman at this moment?’

‘Yes, talking...’

‘And what more could I do if you were a man, than talk perfectly sincerely to you?’

‘Nothing perhaps. But a woman...’

‘A woman wants you to like her and talk to her, and at the same time love her and desire her; and it seems to me the two things are mutually exclusive.’

‘But they shouldn’t be!’

‘No doubt water ought not to be so wet as it is; it overdoes it in wetness. But there it is! I like women and talk to them, and therefore I don’t love them and desire them. The two things don’t happen at the same time in me.’

‘I think they ought to.’

‘All right. The fact that things ought to be something else than what they are, is not my department.

Connie considered this. ‘It isn’t true,’ she said. ‘Men can love women and talk to them. I don’t see how they can love them WITHOUT talking, and being friendly and intimate. How can they?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. What’s the use of my generalizing? I only know my own case. I like women, but I don’t desire them. I like talking to them; but talking to them, though it makes me intimate in one direction, sets me poles apart from them as far as kissing is concerned. So there you are! But don’t take me as a general example, probably I’m just a special case: one of the men who like women, but don’t love women, and even hate them if they force me into a pretence of love, or an entangled appearance.

“I have it,” I cried, and plunged among the litter of papers upon the sofa. “Yes, yes, here he is, sure enough! Cadogan 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 the Tuesday morning. It was lying wide of the metals upon the left hand of the track as one goes eastward, at a point close to the station, where the line emerges from the tunnel in which it runs. The head was badly crushed — an injury which might well have been caused by a fall from the train. The body could only have come on the line in that way. Had it been carried down from any neighbouring street, it must have passed the station barriers, where a collector is always standing. This point seems absolutely certain.”

“Very good. The case is definite enough. The man, dead or alive, either fell or was precipitated from a train. So much is clear to me. Continue.”

“The trains which traverse the lines of rail beside which the body was found are those which run from west to east, some being purely Metropolitan, and some from Willesden and outlying junctions. It can be stated for certain that this young man when he met his death, was travelling in this direction at some late hour of the night, but at what point he entered the train it is impossible to state.”

“His ticket, of course, would show that.”

“There was no ticket in his pockets.”

“No ticket! Dear me, Watson, this is really very singular. According to my experience it is not possible to reach the platform of a Metropolitan train without exhibiting one’s ticket. Presumably, then, the young man had one. Was it taken from him in order to conceal the station from which he came? It is possible. Or did he drop it in the carriage? That also is possible. But the point is of curious interest. I understand that there was no sign of robbery?”