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umbrella over there, whatever it's doing here; what will you deduce from it?"

"I should deduce that it had been raining recently," put in Gordon with great seriousness.

"As a matter of fact," said Reeves, turning the umbrella this way and that, "an umbrella's a very difficult thing to get any clues out of."

"I'm glad of that," said Carmichael, "because———"

"—only this one," continued Reeves, ignoring him, "happens to be rather interesting. Anybody could see that it's pretty new, yet the ferrule at the end of it is nearly worn through, which shows it's been used a lot. Inference; that it's used by somebody who doesn't keep his umbrella for days like this, but uses it as a walking-stick. Therefore it belongs to old Brotherhood; he's the only man I know in this club who always carries one."

"You see," said Carmichael, "that's the sort of thing that happens in real life. As I was just going to say, I brought in that umbrella myself. I took it by mistake from a complete stranger in the Tube."

Mordaunt Reeves laughed a little sourly. "Well," he said, "the principle holds, anyhow. Everything tells a story, if you are careful not to theorize beyond your data."

"I'm afraid," said Gordon, "I must be one of Nature's Watsons. I prefer to leave things where they lie, and let people tell me the story."

"There you are wrong," protested Reeves.