“How did you come by it?” I asked.

“I found it in the chair you are now occupying,” Holmes replied. “It was left there by someone who called earlier, while I was out, a respectable, middle-aged gentleman, I am informed. His card is on the table.”

I took it up and read the following: “Godfrey Townsend. 34C, Gloucester Terrace.” It was an expensive-looking card, made of stiff cream board, gilded at the edges and with embossed lettering.

“He left a message to say that he would call back at eleven-thirty,” said Holmes, glancing at the clock. “We have just enough time to describe him to our own satisfaction before he returns. Would you care to begin?”

“He has an excellent address, near the Park,” I began after a moment, “and his taste in visiting cards clearly tends to the extravagant. Yet his cigar case has a decidedly woebegone appearance.”

“Those are indeed the main observations one might make from the material at our disposal,” my companion concurred. “What, then, are the deductions to be made from those observations?”

“The anomaly lies especially in the contrast between the card and the case,” I continued after a moment. “I would suggest, therefore, that your visitor’s circumstances are perhaps not the most affluent – hence the old case – and that his expensive-looking calling card is provided by his employer.”

Holmes shook his head. “There is no mention on the card of any form of employment,” he remarked. “In any case, Mr Townsend can hardly be poverty-stricken: the cigars are very expensive ones, imported from Cuba by Waterlow’s of Oxford Street.”

“Then the explanation must be that the case, although worthless in itself, is of great personal value to Mr Townsend because it was given to him by a friend or relation.”

“If so, he has treated it in a surprisingly cavalier fashion,” interjected Holmes. “It has clearly been kept for prolonged periods in a pocket with coins or keys. It has also been dropped many times, both when closed and when open, and has suffered a serious derangement of the hinges, probably by being stood upon when on the floor. This seems unusually harsh treatment for something of supposedly great personal value!”

“Do you have a better theory?” I asked, a trifle irritated by my companion’s dismissive manner.

“There are a few indications,” said he after a moment, in an offhand tone. “Mr Godfrey Townsend is, I should say, comfortably situated, financially speaking. He is a bachelor, of course, and there are thus fewer demands upon his purse than would be the case for a married man of the same age. His present modest wealth is largely the result of his own hard work over the last thirty years, and either because of this, or because the memory of his father’s profligacy is constantly before his mind, he is very careful with his money, and does not spend it unnecessarily. His comfortable existence has, however, suffered something of a shock in the last couple of days. Something unusual and puzzling has occurred, and he has lost an item of personal property.”

“‘His father’s profligacy’!” I cried in incredulity. “What can you possibly know of your visitor’s father!”

“Not a great deal,” returned my friend with a shake of the head. “He entertained ambitions of his own when young, but at some stage he lost heart, perhaps disappointed at the elusiveness of success, and took to drink. His fortunes declined, he drank away what money he had and left his son with poor prospects.”

I laughed loudly in disbelief.

“How can you possibly pretend to know all these things?” I cried. “Come, Holmes, admit it is sheer fantasy! You have failed to find any significant indications on the cigar case and are indulging in wild speculation, secure in the knowledge that I cannot disprove any of it!”

“Not at all,” returned my friend in a vehement tone. “I never speculate further than is warranted by the evidence. I do not claim that all my suggestions are necessarily true, Watson; merely that the balance of probability lies in the direction I indicate.”

“Well, then, explain yourself! Why, for instance, are you so certain that your visitor is a bachelor?”

“It is strongly suggested by his ornate calling card. No married man would order such an extravagant specimen. His address, too – 34C, Gloucester Terrace – indicates that he occupies rooms on an upper floor of the house, which is more suggestive of a bachelor than a married man, you must admit.”

“His comfortable existence, then, his hard work, profligate father and all the rest of it?”

“In your own analysis,” responded my friend after a moment, “you saw that the most obvious anomaly lay in the contrast between the distressed-looking cigar case and the elegant visiting card, but you were insufficiently bold in the deductions you drew from that observation. You made the mistake of assuming that the cigar case Mr Townsend left here was his property just as much as was the visiting card.”

“Any other assumption would be ludicrous!” I protested strongly. “Why, the case has his initials upon it! Surely you are not suggesting that he found the case in the street on his way here, and that the coincidence of the initials is some kind of fantastic chance!”

My friend shook his head. “No,” said he with a chuckle. “I am not proposing such an unlikely coincidence. But when we examine the case, we cannot fail to be struck by the incongruity of finding those expensive cigars there. There seems something unnatural about it, like finding half a dozen bottles of claret in a potato sack. It is difficult to imagine a man so fastidious in his taste in visiting cards and cigars regularly producing this case in society with equanimity. There is a smell about the case, too, of older, cheaper tobacco. This suggests that Mr Townsend’s cigars have not been in there for longer than twenty-four hours or so, and that, prior to its present employment, the case has not been put to use for some considerable time. All in all, therefore, it is surely not an unreasonable conjecture that the case is not Mr Townsend’s usual one, but one which has been pressed into temporary service, and which was perhaps once the property of someone else – a member of his family, say, who might well have shared his initials.”

I nodded. “It is possible,” I agreed.

“The likelihood of this conjecture is increased,” he continued, “when we note a date: 1840 – presumably the date of manufacture – inscribed in small characters, inside the case.”

“I saw no date.”

“Nevertheless, it is there. Now, 1840 is much too early a date for our middle-aged visitor to have bought the case when it was new, and yet the engraved initials are very rubbed, and appear as old as the case itself. It seems a plausible hypothesis, then, to suppose that the case belonged originally to Mr Townsend’s father, and that the latter’s initials were also G. T.”

“That does seem a reasonable conjecture,” I conceded.

“Now, the case must have been fairly expensive when new, so Mr Townsend’s father must have thought it worth his while to make such a purchase – perhaps because of the class of society he hoped to move in – rather than buy a cheaper but equally serviceable case. We can therefore conclude that he had at that time some money, or some ambition, or both.”

“The case may have been a present from a wealthy relative,” I interjected.

“Yes, that is possible, but if so, our line of reasoning is similar: he had some moneyed connections, at least one of whom thought sufficiently of him to buy him a good quality cigar case, in the belief, presumably, that he would value it and that it would accord with his expected station in life. However, the case has subsequently been so damaged and ill-treated that we must conclude that the senior Mr Townsend subsequently took to drink. There is no other plausible explanation for the careless abuse to which the case has been subjected. So serious is this abuse, indeed, that we must conclude that he became a hopeless drunkard, in which case it is likely that he drank away whatever money he possessed, leaving his son with nothing. That the son – our morning visitor – now enjoys a modestly comfortable existence, as indicated by his address, his visiting card and his expensive cigars, is therefore almost certainly the result of his own hard work. Is there anything else?”