"'Keep your tongue between your teeth, and let's have less of your cheek,' was my unuttered rebuke, and I was lost in admiration of the parrot's cleverness when Captain McDonald came into the room with Holmes, whom he introduced to me. Holmes was dressed in boating flannels, and looked more like a middle-aged tradesman out for the day than one of the smartest detectives in London. "'How do you do, Anderson?' he said. 'Is it any use getting to work, or have you already solved the mystery?' "'Well, no, not quite,' I replied, 'have a look round.' "'I have given Mr. Holmes the particulars I have given you,' explained the Captain, as Holmes went to the cabinet and repeated my performance. 'Is there anything you would like to know before I leave the room?' "'Nothing — just yet,' said my colleague. "Just two questions,' I put in; 'first, was the parrot in the cage when you were putting the brooch away?' "'Oh. yes,' answered the Captain. "Holmes smiled. "'Did you leave the room for a single moment?' I asked. "'No; I simply opened the two drawers, deposited the brooch in the secret one, locked them up, and went straight to bed.' "'Thank you,' I said, 'that is all I require;' and as he left the room I turned to see what Holmes was doing. He had done with the looks of the drawers and was engaged at the window — and looking mightily puzzled, I can tell you, when the parrot yelled:— "'What're you staring at?' "'Ah. Mademoiselle Pittacus Erithacus,' said Holmes, 'you are very inquisitive this morning.' "'And very insulting, too' I remarked. 'She called me stupid just now.' "'She is a very intelligent bird,' he returned sarcastically. "'All right, my friend,' I thought; "we shall soon see who is the stupid party. If you can come to any different conclusion to the one I have arrived at you are cleverer than I give you credit for being. "Holmes was on the floor, looking, for footmarks on the velvet pile carpet; but his microscope showed none. Then he took a good look at every inch of the apartment; he walked to the fireplace, then to the door, and finished by re-examining the two locks of the drawers. After this he took a pinch of snuff, rubbed his temples with menthol, opened his pocketknife and began trimming his nails; and came over to me. "'Settled it yet?' I enquired. "'No and don't see any chance of doing so,' he replied. 'Do you. Shut up!' (the latter to the parrot.) "'Not for certain but I must think things over again.' "'There is what Rudyard Kipling would call a gorgeous simplicity about this affair,' remarked Holmes, 'and what the captain tells me makes that simplicity colossal in its gorgeousness. Here we are told that a valuable nicknack has been stolen; we both know, I think, that the thief must be on the premises, and yet we are told distinctly that we are not to suspect anyone in it. The gentleman who guarantees all this is a brave man — a man of spotless character, and is not insured with your clients or any other insurers against burglary — else I would waste no time in telling him he was a fraud.' "'Keep your hair on,' screamed the parrot; ' keep it on, keep it on, d——— it, keep it on!' "'Confound your noise!' cried Holmes, angrily. "'Of course,' I insinuated, we can't suggest that his wife got the key out of his pocket when he was asleep and abstracted the brooch, because she didn't know of it being in the house; and even if she had known, she was not likely to go to the trouble of stealing her own property.' "' Look here, my young friend.' said Holmes '—you know he is my senior by less than six months — 'you have an ace up your sleeve, so get it played.' "'I don't think it's trumps,' I replied. "'At 'em, ma braw laddies! Doon wi' the devils' roared the parrot in the voice the Captain must have used in his excitement when urging on the men of the gallant 78th Pandoo Nuddea; and then the bird indulged in what appeared to me to be disconnected reminiscences of his life on-board ship, with imitations of a few of his profane compagnons du voyage. "'Oh, who can think with that thing screeching! .... You must remember one thing,' Holmes startled me by saying, 'and that is that his daughter was, on his own telling, very much taken up with the bauble, and expressed a wish to possess one like it. There is only one thing for it, Anderson, and Miss Kate McDonald is the thief!' And Holmes closed the knife with which he bad been trimming his nails. "I gasped! I had already decided that the Captain's daughter had purloined the brooch, but merely out of pure mischief and not with any criminal intent. I was forced to this conclusion by the Captain's assurance that his servants knew nothing of the jewel being in the house, and that it would have been the same had they known — he would stake his life on the honesty of each, and I felt he was right.' "'And do you intend to communicate your suspicions to him?' I asked. "'That, entirely depends upon his answer to a question I shall put to him first,' replied Holmes ; 'and, by George! I don't quite know how to set about asking it.'