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'As God is my witness,' I whispered, 'the lady was struck down by a supernatural fire. I see no other answer.'

'This agency stands foursquare upon the ground,' Holmes rebuked me. 'I will have no truck with the forces of Satan. Human nature is dark enough, without a vast panoply of demons as well. All problems can be reduced to a set of mathematical relationships, and all mathematical relationships can be solved. The supernatural is not amenable to logic: therefore it does not exist.' He sipped at his coffee. 'I have been corresponding with a young man named Russell upon the subject, a philosopher at Cambridge. He believes that he is on the verge of codifying all of mathematics into a simple set of axioms. I have told him that he is taking the first step towards summing up all human endeavour as an equation. Once that is done, everything can be predicted.'

I could not help but shudder at the idea.

'What a sterile outlook,' I exclaimed.

'Not at all,' Holmes replied easily. 'Would you not like to be able to predict exactly which horse will win the Grand National next year?'

'Not,' I said tartly, 'if everybody else in the country could do likewise.'

Holmes suppressed a smile. I realized that he had been baiting me.

'Alas, ratiocinative logic has some way to go yet. For instance, your summary, whilst admirable in many respects, fails to address the important questions. For instance, why were the documents stolen?'

I braced myself for a roasting.

'For their intrinsic value. A collector might pay highly for them.'

'Unlikely.' Holmes leaned back and stared at the ceiling. 'If we take as our premise that one of the people on our list committed the theft, then we can rule out the possibility that they wished to add the volume to their own collections.'

'Why so?'

'Because their names are not known to any of the bookshop merchants or auctioneers whom I have questioned.'

'One of them could be a secret bibliophile. The list is not exclusive, surely?

Or they could be working on behalf of another person.'

'Remember the type of documents that went missing. Alternative zoology and phantasmagorical anthropology. Now we know from what the librarian, Mr Ambrose, told us that there are items in the library worth many times more to a serious collector. The unexpurgated Malleus Maleficarum for instance - the infamous Witches Hammer of the Catholic Church - or Aristophanes's lost first play The Banqueters. I myself saw a folio that appeared to be Shakespeare's reputedly lost play Love's Labours Wonne. I know men who would sell entire countries to get their hands on that one item alone. No, I think we can rule out collectors.'

'Then perhaps they were stolen for the information they contained,' I said.

'Perhaps, but why steal them? Why not copy the information down?'

Ah.

'Indeed!'

Holmes suddenly slapped his palms down onto the table, rattling the crockery and knocking the jam spoon out of its saucer so that it splattered the tablecloth and my shirt.

'I would venture,' he continued, oblivious to my scowl, 'that the books were removed not for the information they contained, but to prevent anybody else from reading them.'

'Really Holmes!' I was remonstrating with him over the jam, but he took it to mean I disagreed with his theory, and pursed his lips together in annoyance.

'It is perfectly plain. We know that the Doctor was recently consulting books on Indian legends. Suddenly, the documents are stolen. The perpetrator of the crime was obviously attempting to prevent the Doctor reading them.'

I wiped at my shirt with a napkin.

'It's a bit shaky, Holmes,' I said.

'Not at all. It is the only theory which fits the facts.'

I was not convinced.

'Does that mean that we can remove the Doctor from our list of suspects?' I asked.

'Yes...' Holmes was uncertain. 'He is obviously mixed up in it somehow, and yet . . .'His expression was troubled. 'I am loath to believe that he is the villain.'

The napkin was merely helping to