Mrs. Croombe, open-mouthed, laid aside her sewing.
"My _dear_ Jim!" she said. "How extraordinary! I wonder--you might try psycho-analysis if the vision comes again--it's quite fashionable!"
"I hope," said Mr. Croombe, "that it won't appear again. It wasn't," he confessed, "on the whole, a pleasant expression."
Meanwhile, William, asleep in bed, was dreaming of Mr. and Mrs. Croombe, handcuffed, and dressed from head to foot in red triangles.
"It's chiefly jewellery that's been taken," announced Mr. Brown from the local paper the next morning at breakfast.
"Mrs. Croombe wants us to go to dinner on Saturday," said Mrs. Brown, looking up from a letter.
"Who's Mrs. Croombe?" said Ethel, William's elder sister.
"They're new people, up Green Lane, the end house!"
"What," said William's elder brother, "is the matter with _you?_"
"You'd like to know, wouldn't you?" said William with a disrespectful contortion of his face. "_Just!_"
Then he went up to his bedroom and, putting on his dressing-gown, stood scowling into space with his head resting on his hand and his elbow on the mantelpiece in the attitude of the Great Detective thinking out a clue.
The bloodhound insisted on spoiling the picture by sitting up to beg.
That evening Mr. Croombe looked very weary when he came home.
"I went to a psycho-analyst," he said wearily, "about that--boy, you know, and he asked me questions for over an hour--all about my past life. He asked me if I'd ever had a shock connected with boys, and I remembered that squib that a boy let off just in front of me last November. He says that this hallucination may be caused by a subconscious fear. He gave me a lot of other cases of the same kind that he's treating. He says that if, when I see the boy, I try to remember that really he doesn't exist, I may get over it. I met cousin Agatha afterwards. She thinks it's a message--she wanted me to ask the Psychical Research Society to come down, but I think I'll wait till after the dinner-party anyway."
"Oh, Jim!" she said, "it's all very wonderful, isn't it?"
William, after deep consideration, had decided not to take anyone into partnership. In the play there had been a faithful and unobtrusive friend of the Great Detective, who had merely asked questions and expressed admiration, but William, reviewing his circle of friends, could not think of anyone who would be content with this _rôle_. Therefore, he kept the whole thing to himself. He decided to bring off his great _coup_ on the evening of the Croombe's dinner-party. He decided to go into the house and hide till the dinner had begun, and then go out and collect the stolen jewellery and convict the criminals. He expected vaguely to be summoned to Buckingham Palace to receive the V.C. after it. Anyway, his family would treat him a bit different--_just!_