Red Széll

But for all that, the Turkish bath has served a purpose.

What is that?

You say that you have had it because you need a change.

Let me suggest that you take one.

How would Lausanne do, my dear Watson?

First-class tickets and all expenses paid on a princely scale.

Splendid, but why?

Holmes leaned back in his armchair and took his notebook from his pocket.

One of the most dangerous classes in the world, said he, is the drifting and friendless woman.

She is the most harmless and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter of crime in others.

She is helpless.

She is migratory.

She has sufficient means to take her from country to country and from hotel to hotel.

She is lost as often as not in a maze of obscure pensions and boarding houses.

She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes.

When she is gobbled up, she is hardly missed.

I much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax.

I was relieved at this sudden descent from the general to the particular.

Holmes consulted his notes.

Lady Frances, he continued, is the sole survivor of the direct family of the late Earl of Rufton.