Mr. Collop needed no further invitation. Proceeding was his passion—I might almost say, his vice.
"Got to be done express?" he asked. "Right-o! Now I'll tell ye my way. I divide it," he continued, roaring powerfully, "into three heads." Then, much more loudly, "Head number one."
"Pray, pray, Mr. Collop," agonised the Home Secretary, with outstretched hands. "A little lower, please! We must not be overheard!"
"I'll tell you my express method—since ye want it express," said Mr. Collop, speaking now no louder than your ordinary street orator, railways guard or the cabinet minister at election. "First, to establish what I call negative evidence. This term," he added sententiously, "I will make clear in a moment. Two"—he ticked them off on his podgy fingers—"what I call the search, comparable to the experiment conducted by men of science; with no hypothetic bless you, none at all! Just random like. Now then, in the midst of that we shall find a clue. What then? Then number three. The hypothetic is formed, modified, readjusted, co-ordinated, and leads infallibly to the inevitable conclusion."
He coughed and spat in the fire. It was perhaps the thirty-seventh time in the last ten years that he had recited that piece. It had been written out for him by his nephew, who, he was proud to say, attended lectures at Manchester University, and he had it typewritten on a now rather dirty sheet of paper which he carried about with him all over England.
"So what do we do now?" he continued heartily. "Why, we begin by establishing our negative evidence. Chrm! Chrm! And how do we do that? Why, we make sure that it is not in this room."
"But how can one make sure of that?" said the Home Secretary, puzzled.
"Why, plain and straightforward, sir. I 'ave brought down my men and my apparatus. We'll want the floor taken up. But that won't take long."
"What?" said the Home Secretary, in alarm.
"The floor, sir. The floor," said Mr. Collop magisterially. "And I say again, it won't take long. My men will prise it up before you can say 'Sir Garnet'! And afore we do that another set of 'em will cut the furniture open to see if it's not in the cracks. Then I have got two with the new white light."