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the bird, looking extremely disagreeable, was perched in a glass case on a tall-boy on the landing. She rested her paper on the seat of a chair which stood near the tall-boy, and wrote triumphantly:
    Either the right or the wrong goose. The Blue Carbuncle .
    She glanced at the next flight of stairs with its stout posts and spiralled banisters, and decided to ascend. The flight was short, and soon turned to disclose another which led up to the landing, so that, by the time she heard the footsteps of people below her, she was hidden from these people and they from her.
    She hoped that they would not mount behind her. She preferred to explore on her own. Very soon it was clear that they did not propose to join her, for a man’s voice said:
    ‘All right. Let’s park in here. We can stick down some rot or other on our papers. There are only a limited number of things to choose from. I’ll tell you what they are, and then we can cook our papers so that they don’t look quite the same. I want you to get quite clear the fact that –’
    ‘I don’t see any point in going over it all again. It won’t work, and, anyway – ’ was the last that Laura heard. She had no instinctive desire to loiter for the sake of overhearing other people’s conversation, and she certainly shrank from overhearing this one. The man’s voice was that of Toby Dance and the other was that of his wife.
    ‘Talking about the divorce,’ thought Laura glumly. She liked the couple. She went into the first room she came to, and discovered that it was full of lumber and old clothes. It looked, she thought, a happy hunting ground, for she could not believe that most of the Sherlock Holmes objects would be placed in as obvious a position as the goose from The Blue Carbuncle .
    As she was ferreting about, two more of the seekers came in, the stage couple, Ethel and Charles Mildren. Laura greeted them cheerfully and asked whether they had had any luck. Charles thought he had managed to identify two of the objects, but Ethel shook her head and said she had not a clue, had forgotten everything about the stories except the racehorse one and the one with the governess in it, and proposed to stick to Charlie for a bit and then to find a quiet spot somewhere and put her feet up and wait until the gong sounded.
    ‘Sir Bohun won’t like it,’ said Charles Mildren. He had retained his Sherlock Holmes costume and, for Laura’s benefit, put on a waggish act with his magnifying glass. He did not seem too steady on his feet, and Laura wondered whether his wife’s faithful attendance on him was occasioned less by ennui on her own account than by a certain amount of anxiety on his.
    Laura grinned politely at his antics, but was not sorry when his wife, remarking that it would take all night to go through that junk, took him away. She heard the sound of a stumble on the stairs, followed by a cheery but slightly thick, ‘Whoa, there! Git up them stairs!’ The running buffet had been patronized by several people during the dancing, but Mildren, she thought, must be unaccustomed to drink or very tired or a remarkably quick performer to have reached, so early in the proceedings, a stage where his wife felt it imperative to keep an eye on him.
    Suddenly Laura realized that she was staring straight at a pair of Victorian stove-pipe trousers. They were untenanted, and were slung over a coat-hanger dependent from a cupboard door. Laura examined them, and then wrote on her list:
    The knees of Vincent Spaulding’s trousers. The Red-Headed League .
    She thought for a moment and then said aloud:
    ‘Well, I know what I should have done if the job had been left to me! ’
    Feeling like an adult and extraordinarily intelligent Alice, she opened the cupboard door and looked inside. On the shelf facing her was a glass jar containing an object which was interesting, but, to the ordinary eye, without charm. Laura wrote:
    Victor Hatherley’s Thumb. The Engineer’s Thumb .
    She felt