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indicated.
    “Oh, I would have thought you knew one of them – you being interested in science and such like.”
    I hid my impatience from my brother.
    “I do not know, otherwise I would not have put forward the question.”
    “The elder is Professor Moriarty.”
    At once I was interested.
    “Moriarty of Queen’s University, in Belfast?” I demanded.
    “The same Professor Moriarty,” confirmed Mycroft smugly.
    I had at least heard of Moriarty for he had the chair of mathematics at Queen’s and written The Dynamics of an Asteroid which ascended to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that no man in the scientific press was capable of criticizing it.
    “And the man who loves his alcohol so much?” I pressed. “Who is he?”
    Mycroft was disapproving of my observation.
    “Dash it, Sherlock, where else may a man make free with his vices but in the shelter of his club?”
    “There is one vice that he cannot well hide,” I replied slyly. “That is his colossal male vanity. That black hair of his is no natural colour. The man dyes his hair. But, Mycroft, you have not answered my question. His name?”
    “Colonel Sebastian Moran.”
    “I’ve never heard of him.”
    “He is one of the Morans of Connacht.”
    “A Catholic family?” For Ó Mórain, to give the name its correct Irish form, which meant “great”, were a well-known Jacobite clan in Connacht.
    “Hardly so,” rebuked Mycroft. “His branch converted to the Anglican faith after the Williamite conquest. Sebastian Moran’s father was Sir Augustus Moran cb, once British Minister to Persia. Young Moran went through Eton and Oxford. The family estate was near Derrynacleigh but I believe, after the colonel inherited, he lost it in a card game. He was a rather impecunious young man. Still, he was able to buy a commission in the Indian Army and served in the 1st Bengalore Pioneers. He has spent most of his career in India. I understand that he has quite a reputation as a big game hunter. The Bengal tiger mounted in the hall, as we came in, was one of his kills. The story is that he crawled down a drain after it when he had wounded it. That takes an iron nerve.”
    I frowned.
    “Nerve, vanity and a fondness for drink and cards is sometimes an unenviable combination. They make a curious pair.”
    “I don’t follow you?”
    “I mean, a professor of mathematics and a dissolute army officer lunching together. What can they have in common?”
    I allowed my attention to occupy the problem but a moment more. Even at this young age I had come to the conclusion that until one has facts it is worthless wasting time trying to hazard guesses.
    My eye turned to the others in the dining room. Some I knew by sight and, one or two I had previously been introduced to in Mycroft’s company. Among these diners was Lord Rosse, who had erected the largest reflecting telescope in the world at his home in Birr Castle. There was also the hard-drinking Viscount Massereene and Ferrard and the equally indulgent Lord Clonmell. There was great hilarity from another table where four young men were seated, voices raised in good-natured argument. I had little difficulty recognizing the Beresford brothers of Curraghmore, the elder of them being the Marquess of Waterford.
    My eye eventually came to rest on a corner table where an elderly man with silver hair and round chubby red features was seated. He was well dressed and the waiters constantly hovered at his elbow to attend to his bidding like moths to a fly. He was obviously someone of importance.
    I asked Mycroft to identify him.
    “The Duke of Cloncury and Straffan,” he said, naming one of the premier peers of Ireland.
    I turned back to examine His Grace, whose ancestors had once controlled Ireland, with some curiosity. It was said that a word from Cloncury’s grandfather could sway the vote in any debate in the old Irish Parliament, that was before the Union with England. As I was unashamedly scrutinizing him, His Grace