"What would Sherlock Holmes do?" I asked; and Peters gave a sort of mournful sound and scratched his head.
"I wish I knew," he said.
II
Gideon was helpful in a way, but nobody could make much of it. Gideon said that it was conscience money, and was often known to happen, especially with the Income Tax; because people, driven to desperation by it, often pay too little, and then, when things brighten up with them afterwards, it begins to weigh on their minds, if they are fairly decent at heart, and they remember that they have swindled the King and been dishonest; and so they send the money secretly, but, of course, feel too ashamed to say who they are.
I asked James if he had sent the money, and he swore he hadn't; but he did it in such an excitable sort of way that I was positive he had. Peters wouldn't believe or disbelieve. He went quietly on, keeping an open mind and detecting the crime; and when the truth came to light, Peters was still detecting.
But in the meantime happened the mystery of the pencil-sharpener, and the two great mysteries were cleared up simultaneously, which Peters says is a common thing. You couldn't say that one cleared up the other, but still, it did so happen that both came out in the same minute.
There was a boy whose name was Pratt, and his father was on the Stock Exchange of London. This father used to go out to his lunch, and at these times he saw many curious things sold by wandering London men who are too poor to keep shops, but yet have the wish to sell things. These men stand by the pavement and display most queer and uncommon curiosities, such as walking spiders and such like; and once from one of these men Pratt's father bought quite a new sort of pencil-sharpener of the rarest kind. It was shaped like a stirrup, and cut pencils well without breaking off the lead.
After a good week of this pencil-sharpener, Pratt found it had been stolen out of his desk, and he told Peters about it, and Peters took up the case. I asked him if he was hopeful, and he said that there was always hope; but he also said, rather bitterly, that it was curious what a frightful lot of hard cases he had had since coming to Merivale. He said it was enough to tax anybody's reputation, and that each case seemed more difficult than the last.
I reminded him of one or two rather goodish things he had done in a small way, but he said that as yet he had not really brought off a brilliant stroke.
A week went by, and then Peters came to me in a state of frightful excitement.