"H'm—well, I'd better leave it alone then, hadn't I, seeing that I undertook this voyage not for love, but for money? What's her name, by the way?"
Holmes stared. "Her name," he began—— "Oh—er—I see; her other name? By Jove! it's an odd one. Lilith."
"An old one too; the oldest she-name on record, bar none."
"What? How does that come in?"
"Tradition hath it that Lilith was Adam's first wife. That makes it the oldest she-name on record, doesn't it?"
"Of course. What a rum chap you are, Stanninghame! Now, I wonder how many fellows could have told one that?"
"Well, I am a 'know-a-little-of-everything,' they tell me," said Laurence, without a shade of self-complacency. "But, I say, what do these two want bothering around? Not another subscription already?"
Two individuals, armed with mysterious pencil and paper, were moving from group to group, with a word to each. The hawk-like profile of the one bespoke his nationality if not his tribe, even as the pug-nosed, squab-faced figure-head of the other spoke to his.
"It's the 'sweep,'" said Holmes, with kindling interest. "They're going to draw it in the smoke-room. Come along and see it. It'll be something to do."
"But I don't want something to do. I want to do nothing, as I told you just now, and—— Hallo! By George, he's gone!"