It is my business to know what other people don't know. It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. I can't make bricks without clay. I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for? It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation. I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule. I confess that I have been blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all. My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. It rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession,—or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world. The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

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