Thus, it was that the Friday evening saw Anthony still at Considine Manor, and the stage set for what happened subsequently. When I reached the drawing-room that night I had a fit of the blues. The game had ended in a draw and once again, I had not reached double figures. Prescott had got another 50 odd and, in the opinion of most, had saved our side from a beating. Conversation was desultory as it had been at dinner.
As usual most of them were listening attentively to Anthony Bathurst. He was well launched on a theme that I had heard him discuss many a time before in his rooms at Oxford. “The Detective in Modern Fiction.” It was a favorite topic of his and like everything that aroused his interest, he knew it thoroughly—backwards, forwards, and inside out.
I caught his words as I entered the room.
“Oh—I admit it quite cheerfully—I look forward tremendously to a really good thriller. I’m intrigued utterly by a title like ‘The Stain on the Linoleum.’ But, there you are, really good detective stories are rare.”
“You think so?” interjected Major Hornby, “what about those French Johnnies, Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey?”
“Like the immortal Holmes,” replied Anthony, “I have the greatest contempt for Lecoq. Poe’s ‘Dupin’ wasn’t so bad, but the majority——”
“You admire Holmes?”
“Yes, Mr. Arkwright, I do! That is to say—the pre-war Holmes!”
“You don’t admit that his key is always made to fit his lock?”
“Of course,” replied Anthony, “that must be so! But he deduces—he reasons—and thereby constructs. The others, so many of them, depend for success on amazing coincidences and things of that nature.”