Page:The Eyes of Max Carrados.pdf/15

Rh his way. Actually, it is a case involving thirty-five murders that redeems this pledge.

But in spite of every device of Carrados's perspicuity there is still the cardinal deficiency that he cannot see. Whatever remains outside the range of four super-trained senses, aided by that subtle and elusive perception (every man in odd moments has surprised his own mind in the act of throwing out faint-spun and wholly forgotten tentacles of search towards it) called in vague ignorance the "sixth sense"—all beyond these must be for ever a terra incognita to his knowledge. To remedy this he has a personal attendant called Parkinson. Carlyle ingenuously falls into a proposed test that Carrados suggests—his powers of observation against those of Parkinson. When it comes to actual specified details the visitor finds that he only has a loose and general idea of the appearance of the man who has admitted him. On the other hand, when Parkinson is called up he is able to run off a precise and categorical description of Mr Carlyle—although his period of observation had certainly not been the more favourable—from the size and material of the caller's boots, with a button missing from the left foot, to the fashion and fabric of his watch-chain. A very ordinary man of strictly limited ability, he has, in fact, trained this one faculty of detailed observation and retention to supply his master's need.

These three men—Carrados, Carlyle and Parkinson—are the only characters of any prominence who are carried over from the first book to the second. An Inspector Beedel makes an occasional and unimportant appearance in both. In the story called "The Mystery of the Poisoned Dish of Mushrooms" a Mrs Bellmark (niece to Carlyle) will be met; she is the lady whose