Mr. Garrideb forced a laugh. “I’ve read of your tricks, Mr. Holmes, but I never thought I would be the subject of them. Where do you read that?”

“The shoulder cut of your coat, the toes of your boots - could anyone doubt it?”

“Well, well, I had no idea I was so obvious a Britisher. But business brought me over here some time ago, and so, as you say, my outfit is nearly all London. However, I guess your time is of value, and we did not meet to talk about the cut of my socks. What about getting down to that paper you hold in your hand?”

Holmes had in some way ruffled our visitor, whose chubby face had assumed a far less amiable expression.

“Patience! Patience, Mr. Garrideb!” said my friend in a soothing voice. “Dr. Watson would tell you that these little digressions of mine sometimes prove in the end to have some bearing on the matter. But why did Mr. Nathan Garrideb not come with you?”

“Why did he ever drag you into it at all?” asked our visitor with a sudden outflame of anger. “What in thunder had you to do with it? Here was a bit of professional business between two gentlemen, and one of them must needs call in a detective! I saw him this morning, and he told me this fool-trick he had played me, and that’s why I am here. But I feel bad about it, all the same.”

“There was no reflection upon you, Mr. Garrideb. It was simply zeal upon his part to gain your end - an end which is, I understand, equally vital for both of you. He knew that I had means of getting information, and, therefore, it was very natural that he should apply to me.”

Our visitor’s angry face gradually cleared.

“Well, that puts it different,” said he. “When I went to see him this morning and he told me he had sent to a detective, I just asked for your address and came right away. I don’t want police butting into a private matter. But if you are content just to help us find the man, there can be no harm in that.”

“Well, that is just how it stands,” said Holmes. “And now, sir, since you are here, we had best have a clear account from your own lips. My friend here knows nothing of the details.”

Mr. Garrideb surveyed me with not too friendly a gaze.

“Need he know?” he asked.

“We usually work together.”

“Well, there’s no reason it should be kept a secret. I’ll give you the facts as short as I can make them. If you came from Kansas I would not need to explain to you who Alexander Hamilton Garrideb was. He made his money in real estate, and afterwards in the wheat pit at Chicago, but he spent it in buying up as much land as would make one of your counties, lying along the Arkansas River, west of Fort Dodge. It’s grazing-land and lumber-land and arable-land and mineralized-land, and just every sort of land that brings dollars to the man that owns it.

“He had no kith nor kin - or, if he had, I never heard of it. But he took a kind of pride in the queerness of his name. That was what brought us together. I was in the law at Topeka, and one day I had a visit from the old man, and he was tickled to death to meet another man with his own name. It was his pet fad, and he was dead set to find out if there were any more Garridebs in the world. ‘Find me another!’ said he. I told him I was a busy man and could not spend my life hiking round the world in search of Garridebs. ‘None the less,’ said he, ‘that is just what you will do if things pan out as I planned them.’ I thought he was joking, but there was a powerful lot of meaning in the words, as I was soon to discover.