"You see, I'm obsessed--that's the new word, you know--by this detective business.

I want to find out everything about everybody.

But there's no harm in me; it's a kind of monomania; and if you don't want me to be inquisitive, just say so." There was something so inoffensive in this young man's eccentricity, that Derrick found it impossible to be affronted; he leant back, filled his pipe, and smoked in silence for a minute or two; then, driven by the ardour of his desire, by that longing to talk round about, if not directly of, his heart's idol, which obsesses--as Reggie would say--every lover, he said, half-ashamed of his impulse, "Have you been staying long in these parts; do you happen to know a place about here called Thexford Hall ?" Reggie surveyed him through half-closed eyes for a moment or two; then he said: "Now, I wonder why you asked that.

If you were a friend of the people there, or had business with them, you would have gone straight to the house; instead of which, you come away from them, and ask the first person you meet if he knows it.

You will excuse me if I say that I scent a mystery, Mr.Green.By the way, let me introduce myself--it's evident that you have little of the detective in you, or you would have asked me long ago.