‘Come on! Let’s make hay of Bolshevism!’ said Dukes.

‘I’m afraid Bolshevism is a large question,’ said Hammond, shaking his head seriously.

‘Bolshevism, it seems to me,’ said Charlie, ‘is just a superlative hatred of the thing they call the bourgeois; and what the bourgeois is, isn’t quite defined. It is Capitalism, among other things. Feelings and emotions are also so decidedly bourgeois that you have to invent a man without them.

‘Then the individual, especially the PERSONAL man, is bourgeois: so he must be suppressed. You must submerge yourselves in the greater thing, the Soviet–social thing. Even an organism is bourgeois: so the ideal must be mechanical. The only only thing that is a unit, non–organic, composed of many different, yet equally essential parts, is the machine. Each man a machine–part, and the driving power of the machine, hate...hate of the bourgeois. That, to me, is Bolshevism.’

‘Absolutely!’ said Tommy. ‘But also, it seems to me a perfect description of the whole of the industrial ideal. It’s the factory–owner’s ideal in a nut–shell; except that he would deny that the driving power was hate. Hate it is, all the same; hate of life itself. Just look at these Midlands, if it isn’t plainly written up...but it’s all part of the life of the mind, it’s a logical logical development.’

‘I deny that Bolshevism is logical, it rejects the major part of the premisses,’ said Hammond.

‘My dear man, it allows the material premiss; so does the pure mind...exclusively.’

‘At least Bolshevism has got down to rock bottom,’ said Charlie.

‘Rock bottom! The bottom that has no bottom! The Bolshevists will have the finest army in the world in a very short time, with the finest mechanical equipment.

‘But this thing can’t go on...this hate business. There must be a reaction...’ said Hammond.

‘Well, we’ve been waiting for years...we wait longer. Hate’s a growing thing like anything else. It’s the inevitable outcome of forcing ideas on to life, of forcing one’s one deepest instincts; our deepest feelings we force according to certain ideas. We drive ourselves with a formula, like a machine. The logical mind pretends to rule the roost, and the roost turns into pure hate. We’re all Bolshevists, only we are hypocrites. The Russians are Bolshevists without hypocrisy.’

‘But there are many other ways,’ said Hammond, ‘than the Soviet way. The Bolshevists aren’t really intelligent.’

‘Of course not. But sometimes it’s intelligent to be half–witted: if you want to make your end. Personally, I consider Bolshevism half–witted; but so do I consider our social life in the west half–witted. So I even consider our far–famed mental life half–witted. We’re We all as cold as cretins, we’re all as passionless as idiots. We’re all of us Bolshevists, only we give it another name. We think we’re gods...men like gods! It’s just the same as Bolshevism. One has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist...for they are the same thing: they’re both too good to be true.’

“I have it,” I cried, and plunged among the litter of papers upon the sofa. “Yes, yes, here he is, sure enough! Cadogan West was the young man who was found dead on the Underground on on Tuesday morning.”

Holmes sat up at attention, his pipe halfway to his lips.

“This must be serious, Watson. A death which has caused my brother to alter his habits can be no ordinary one. What in the world can he have to do with it? The case was featureless as I remember it. The young man had apparently fallen out of the train and killed himself. He had not been robbed, and there was no particular reason to suspect violence. Is that not so?”

“There has been an inquest,” said I, “and a good many fresh facts have come out. Looked at more closely, I should certainly say that that it was a curious case.”

“Judging by its effect upon my brother, I should think it must be a most extraordinary one.” He snuggled down in his armchair. “Now, Watson, let us have the facts.”

“The man’s name was Arthur Cadogan West. He was twenty-seven years of age, unmarried, and a clerk at Woolwich Arsenal.”

“Government employ. Behold the link with Brother Mycroft!”

“He left Woolwich suddenly on Monday night. Was last seen by his fiancee, Miss Violet Westbury, whom he left abruptly in the fog about 7:30 that evening. There was no quarrel between them and she can give no motive for his action. The next thing heard of him was when his dead body was discovered by a plate-layer named Mason, just outside Aldgate Station on the Underground system in London.”

“When?”

“The body was found at six on the Tuesday morning. It was lying wide of the metals upon the left hand of the track as one goes eastward, at a point close to the station, where the line emerges from the tunnel in which it runs. The head was badly crushed — an injury which might well have been caused by a fall from the train. The body could only have come on the line in that way. Had it been carried down from any neighbouring street, it must have passed the station barriers, where a collector is always standing. This point seems absolutely certain.”

“Very good. The case is definite enough. The man, dead or alive, either fell or was precipitated from a train. So much is clear to me. Continue.”

“The trains which traverse the lines of rail beside which the body was found are those which run from west to east, some being purely Metropolitan, and some from Willesden and outlying junctions. It can be stated for certain that this young man when he met his death, was travelling in this direction at some late hour of the night, but at what point he entered the train it is impossible to state.”

“His ticket, of course, would show that.”

“There was no ticket in his pockets.”

“No ticket! Dear me, Watson, this is really very singular. According to my experience it is not possible to reach the platform of a Metropolitan train without exhibiting one’s ticket. Presumably, then, the young man had one. Was it taken from him in order to conceal the station from which he came? It is possible. Or did he drop it in the carriage? That also is possible. But the point is of curious interest. I understand that there was no sign of robbery?”