st it, our Little Man got
hold of those instructions.

The Sherlock Holmes of fiction is a gaunt figure, with a hatchet face,
spare of flesh. Our Little Man is a chubby lad, standing about four foot
ten in his stockinged feet, rubicund and corpulent, and he wears a
mackintosh with a very mackintoshy smell in all weathers. He never did a
day's work, and he never means to try, but he is a genius at getting it
out of others. Some say he is of Swiss origin, some say he is American,
and some say that surely he must be Chinese; he was never certain
himself until Czecho-Slovak was invented, and he plumped for that. He
has the degree of Master of Arts; what arts I don't know; probably the
black ones. His inner knowledge of the human species seems to give him
plenty to laugh at. He notices everything, forgets nothing, and there is
never a weakness in a man but he is on to it. He made up his mind that
those secret instructions were passing and set about to find how they
passed and what they were. He was too lazy to begin at the beginning, so
he began at the end. He called in person, as a commercial traveller, at
the suspected office of destination, and in the short time available
ascertained that the door-keeper who turned him out was a patriotic and
fervent admirer of the wine of the country.

Our Little Man had no vulgar idea of getting the secret out of him by
making him drunk. If there was a secret it wouldn't be in the
door-keeper. But he and that door-keeper got to drinking together and
the door-keeper did all the paying; the drinking and the paying went on
by progressive degrees till the door-keeper had no money and only a
still almighty thirst left. The Little Man left him with his thirst for
a few days, until it became intolerable, and the door-keeper insisted
that something simply must be done about it. The Little Man regretted
that he could not give the necessary money to finance further orgies,
but he would gladly advance it. Four nights got the door-keeper well in
his debt, and our Little Man then began to talk about repayment. The
door-keeper said he had no money; the Little Man said he must get it.
Off whom? His employer.

How was the door-keeper to get his employer's money off him? By selling
him a safe. Our Little Man then divulged that he was in reality a
commercial traveller in safes; if the door-keeper would get his employer
to buy one of his safes the Little Man would forgive him his debt by way
of commiss