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We were walking along a lonely terrace in Brompton together. The
street was full of that bright blue twilight which comes about
half past eight in summer, and which seems for the moment to be
not so much a coming of darkness as the turning on of a new azure
illuminator, as if the earth were lit suddenly by a sapphire sun.
In the cool blue the lemon tint of the lamps had already begun to
flame, and as Rupert and I passed them, Rupert talking excitedly,
one after another the pale sparks sprang out of the dusk. Rupert
was talking excitedly because he was trying to prove to me the
nine hundred and ninety-ninth of his amateur detective theories.
He would go about London, with this mad logic in his brain, seeing
a conspiracy in a cab accident, and a special providence in a
falling fusee. His suspicions at the moment were fixed upon an
unhappy milkman who walked in front of us. So arresting were the
incidents which afterwards overtook us that I am really afraid
that I have forgotten what were the main outlines of the milkman's
crime. I think it had something to do with the fact that he had
only one small can of milk to carry, and that of that he had left
the lid loose and walked so quickly that he spilled milk on the
pavement. This showed that he was not thinking of his small
burden, and this again showed that he anticipated some other than
lacteal business at the end of his walk, and this (taken in
conjunction with something about muddy boots) showed something
else that I have entirely forgotten. I am afraid that I derided
this detailed revelation unmercifully; and I am afraid that Rupert
Grant, who, though the best of fellows, had a good deal of the
sensitiveness of the artistic temperament, slightly resented my
derision. He endeavoured to take a whiff of his cigar, with the
placidity which he associated with his profession, but the cigar,
I think, was nearly bitten through.
"My dear fellow," he said acidly, "I'll bet you half a crown that
wherever that milkman comes to a real stop I'll find out something
curious."
"My resources are equal to that risk," I said, laughing. "Done."
We walked on for about a quarter of an hour in silence in the
trail of the mysterious milkman. He walked quicker and quicker,
and we had some ado to keep up with him; and every now and then he
left a splash of milk, silver in the lamplight. Suddenly, almost
before we could note it, he disappeared down the area steps of a
house. I believe Rupert really believed that the milkman was a
fairy; for a second he seemed to accept him as having vanished.
Then calling something to me which somehow took no hold on my
mind, he darted after the mystic milkman, and disappeared himself
into the area.
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