“I went up to one of them,” he began, “just to see how it was done; I stuck my nose into it. Yes, I don’t think! Impossible to say whether it was done with glue, with soap, with sealing-wax, with sunshine, with leaven, with excrem⁠ ⁠…”

“And one make twelve!” shouted the Doctor, wittily, but just too late, for no one saw the point of his interruption.

“It looks as though it were done with nothing at all,” resumed the painter. “No more chance of discovering the trick than there is in the Night Watch , or the Regents , and it’s even bigger work than either Rembrandt or Hals ever did. It’s all there⁠—and yet, no, I’ll take my oath it isn’t.”