CHAPTER VI THE RYGATE PUZZLE It was some time before the health of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by his immense exertions in the spring of eighty-seven. The whole question of the Netherland Sumatra Company and of the colossal schemes of Beren Mopertuis are too recent in the minds of the public, and are too intimately concerned with politics and finance to be fitting subjects for this series of sketches. They led, however, in an indirect fashion to a singular and complex problem which gave my friend an opportunity of demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among the many with which he waged his lifelong battle against crime. On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the fourteenth of April that I received a telegram from Lyons which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the Hotel Doulang. Within twenty-four hours I was in his sick room, and was relieved to find that there was nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron constitution, however, had broken down under the strain of an investigation which had extended over two months, during which period he had never worked less than fifteen hours a day, and had more than once, as he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a stretch. Even the triumphant issue of his labours could not save him from reaction after so terrible an exertion, and at a time when Europe was ringing with his name and when his room was literally ankle deep with congratulatory telegrams I found him a prey to the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he had succeeded where the police of three countries had failed, and that he had outmaneuvered at every point the most accomplished swindler in Europe was insufficient to rouse him from his nervous prostration. Three days later we were back in Baker Street together, but it was evident that my friend would be much the better for a change, and the thought of a week of springtime in the country was full of attractions to me also. My old friend Colonel Hater, who had come under my professional care in Afghanistan, had now taken a house near Rygate in Surrey, and had frequently asked me to come down to him upon a visit. On the last occasion he had remarked that if my friend would only come with me he would be glad to extend his hospitality to him also. A little diplomacy was needed, but when Holmes understood that the establishment was a bachelor one and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom he fell in with my plans, and a week after our return from Lyons we were under the Colonel's roof. Hater was a fine old soldier who had seen much of the world, and he soon found, as I had expected, that Holmes and he had much in common. On the evening of our arrival we were sitting in the Colonel's gun room after dinner, Holmes stretched upon the sofa while Hater and I looked over his little armory of eastern weapons. By the way, said he suddenly, I think I'll take one of these pistols upstairs with me in case we have an alarm. An alarm, said I. Yes, we've had a scare in this part lately. Old Acton, who was one of our county magnates, had his house broken into last Monday. No great damage done, but the fellows are still at large. No clue, asked Holmes, cocking his eye at the Colonel. One is yet, but the affair is a petty one, one of our little country crimes, which must seem too small for your attention, Mr. Holmes, after this great international affair. Holmes waved away the compliment, though his smile showed that it had pleased him. Was there any feature of interest? I fancy not. The thieves ransacked the library, and got very little for their pains. The whole place was turned upside down, drawers burst open and presses ransacked, with the result that an odd volume of pope's homer, two-plated candlesticks and ivory letterweight, a small oak barometer, and a ball of twine are all that have vanished. What an extraordinary assortment, I exclaimed. Oh, the fellows evidently grabbed hold of everything they could get. Holmes grunted from the sofa. The county police ought to make something of that, said he, why it is surely obvious that—but I held up a finger. You are here for a rest, my dear fellow, for heaven's sake, don't get started on a new problem when your nerves are all in shreds. Holmes shrugged his shoulders with a glance of comic resignation towards the Colonel, and the talk drifted away into less dangerous channels. It was destined, however, that all my professional caution should be wasted, for next morning the problem obtruded itself upon us in such a way that it was impossible to ignore it, and our country visit took a turn which neither of us could have anticipated. We were at breakfast when the Colonel's butler rushed in with all his propriety shaken out of him. Have you heard the news, sir? he gasped. At the cutting-end, sir. Berglary cried the Colonel with his coffee cup in mid-air. Murder! The Colonel whistled. By Jove, said he, who's killed then, the JP or his son? Neither, sir, it was William the Coachman shot through the heart, sir, and never spoke again. Who shot him, then? The Berglary, sir, he was off like a shot and got clean away. He just broke in at the pantry window when William came on him and met his end in saving his master's property. What time? It was last night, sir, somewhere about twelve. Ah, then we'll step over afterwards, said the Colonel coolly, settling down to his breakfast again. It's a bad-ish business, he added when the butler had gone. He's our leading man round here, as old Cunningham, and a very decent fellow, too. He'll be cut up over this, for the man has been in his service for years and was a good servant. It's evidently the same villains who broke into Actons. And stole that very singular collection, said Holmes thoughtfully. Precisely. Hum! It may prove the simplest matter in the world, but all the same at first glance this is just a little curious, is it not? A gang of burglars acting in the country might be expected to vary the scene of their operations, and not to crack two cribs in the same district within a few days. When you spoke last night of taking precautions, I remember that it passed through my mind that this was probably the last parish in England to which the thief or thieves would be likely to turn their attention, which shows that I have still much to learn. I fancy it some local practitioner, said the Colonel. In that case, of course, Actons and Cunningham's are just the places he would go for, since they are far the largest about here. And richest? Well, they ought to be, but they've had a lawsuit for some years, which had sucked the blood out of both of them, I fancy. Old Acton has some claim on half Cunningham's estate, and the lawyers have been added with both hands. If it's a local villain, there should not be much difficulty in running him down, said Holmes with a yawn. All right, Walton, I don't intend to meddle. Inspector Forrester, sir, said the butler throwing open the door. The official, a smart, keen-faced young fellow, stepped into the room. Good morning, Colonel, said he. I hope I don't intrude, but we hear that Mr. Holmes of Baker Street is here. The Colonel waved his hand towards my friend, and the inspector bowed. We thought that perhaps you would care to step across, Mr. Holmes. The fates are against you, Watson, said he, laughing. We were chatting about the matter when you came in, Inspector. Perhaps you can let us have a few details. As he leaned back in his chair in the familiar attitude, I knew that the case was hopeless. We had no clue in the Acton affair, but here we have plenty to go on, and there's no doubt it is the same party in each case the man was seen. Ah!  Mr. Cunningham saw him from the bedroom window, and Mr. Alec Cunningham saw him from the back passage. It was quarter to twelve when the alarm broke out. Mr. Cunningham had just got into bed, and Mr. Alec was smoking a pipe in his dressing-gown. They both heard William the Coachman calling for help, and Mr. Alec ran down to see what was the matter. The back door was open, and as he came to the foot of the stairs, he saw two men wrestling together outside. One of them fired a shot, the other dropped, and the murderer rushed across the garden and over the hedge. Mr. Cunningham, looking out of his bedroom, saw the fellow as he gained the road, but lost sight of him at once. Mr. Alec stopped to see if he could help the dying man, and so the villain got clean away. Beyond the fact that he was a middle-sized man and dressed in some dark stuff, we have no personal clue, but we are making energetic inquiries, and if he is a stranger we shall soon find him out. What was this William doing there? Did he say anything before he died? Not a word. He lives at the lodge with his mother, and as he was a very faithful fellow, we imagine that he walked up to the house with the intention of seeing that all was right there. Of course this act in business has put everyone on their guard. The robber must have just burst open the door, the lock has been forced, when William came upon him. Did William say anything to his mother before going out? She is very old and deaf, and we can get no information from her. The shock has made her half-witted, but I understand that she was never very bright. There is one very important circumstance, however. Look at this. He took a small piece of torn paper from a notebook and spread it out upon his knee. This was found between the finger and thumb of the dead man. It appears to be a fragment torn from a larger sheet. You will observe that the hour mentioned upon it is the very time at which the poor fellow met his fate. You see that his murderer might have torn the rest of the sheet from him, or he might have taken this fragment from the murderer. It reads almost as though it were an appointment. This took up the scrap of paper, a facsimile of which is here reproduced. D at quarter to twelve learned what may be. Presuming that it is an appointment continued the inspector. It is, of course, a conceivable theory that this William Kirwin, though he had the reputation of being an honest man, may have been in league with the thief. He may have met him there, may even have helped him to break in the door, and then they may have fallen out between themselves. This writing is of extraordinary interests at Holmes, who had been examining it with intense concentration. These are much deeper waters than I had thought. He sank his head upon his hands while the inspector smiled at the effect which his case had had upon the famous London specialist. Your last remark, said Holmes presently, as to the possibility of there being an understanding between the burglar and the servant, and this being a note of appointment from one to the other, is an ingenious and not entirely impossible supposition. But this writing opens up. He sank his head into his hands again and remained for some minutes in the deepest thought. When he raised his face again, I was surprised to see that his cheek was tinged with colour, and his eyes as bright as before his illness. He sprang to his feet with all his old energy. I'll tell you what, said he, I should like to have a quiet little glance into the details of this case. There's something in it which fascinates me deeply. If you will permit me, Colonel, I will leave my friend Watson and you, and I will step round with the inspector to test the truth of one or two little fancies of mine. I will be with you again in half an hour." An hour and a half had elapsed before the inspector returned alone. Mr. Holmes is walking up and down in the field outside, said he. He wants us all four to go up to the house together. To Mr. Cunningham's. Yes, sir. What for? The inspector shrugged his shoulders. I don't quite know, sir. Between ourselves I think Mr. Holmes had not quite got over his illness yet. He's been behaving very clearly, and he's very much excited. I don't think you need to alarm yourself, said I. I've usually found that there was method in his madness. Some folks might say there was madness in his method, muttered the inspector. But he's all on fire to start, Colonel, so we I best go out if you are ready. We found Holmes pacing up and down in the field. His chin sunk upon his breast, and his hands thrust into his trousers' pockets. The matter grows in interest, said he. Watson, your country trip has been a distinct success. I've had a charming morning. You've been up to the scene of the crime, I understand, said the Colonel. Yes, the inspector and I have made quite a little reconnaissance together. Any success? Well, we have seen some very interesting things. I'll tell you what we did as we walk. First of all, we saw the body of this unfortunate man. He certainly died from a revolver wound, as reported. Had you doubted it, then? Oh, it is as well to test everything. Our inspection was not wasted. We then had an interview with Mr. Cunningham and his son, who were able to point out the exact spot where the murderer had broken through the garden hedge in his flight. That was of great interest. Naturally. Then we had a look at this poor fellow's mother. We could get no information from her, however, as she is very old and feeble. And what is the result of your investigations? The conviction that the crime is a very peculiar one. Perhaps our visit now may do something to make it less obscure. I think that we have both agreed, Inspector, that the fragment of paper in the dead man's hand, bearing as it does the very hour of his death written upon it, is of extreme importance.  It does give a clue. Whoever wrote that note was the man who brought William Kirwin out of his bed at that hour. But where is the rest of that sheet of paper? I examined the ground carefully in the hope of finding it, said the Inspector. It was torn out of the dead man's hand. Why was someone so anxious to get possession of it? Because it incriminated him. And what would he do with it? Thrust it into his pocket, most likely, never noticing that a corner of it had been left in the grip of the corpse. If we could get the rest of that sheet, it is obvious that we should have gone a long way towards solving the mystery. Yes, but how can we get at the criminal's pocket before we catch the criminal? Well, well, it was worth thinking over. Then there was another obvious point. The note was sent to William, the man who wrote it could not have taken it, otherwise, of course, he might have delivered his own message by word of mouth. Who brought the note, then? Or did it come through the post? I have made inquiries, said the Inspector. William received a letter by the afternoon post yesterday. The envelope was destroyed by him. Excellent, cried Holmes, clapping the Inspector on the back. You've seen the post, man. It is a pleasure to work with you. Well, here's the lodge, and if you will come up, Colonel, I will show you the scene of the crime. We passed the pretty cottage where the murdered man had lived, and walked up an oak-lined avenue to the fine old Queen Anne House, which bears the date of Malplaquette upon the lintel of the door. Holmes and the Inspector led us round it until we came to the side gate, which is separated by a stretch of garden from the hedge which lines the road. A constable was standing at the kitchen door. Throw the door open, officer, said Holmes. Now, it was on those stairs that young Mr. Cunningham stood and saw the two men struggling just where we are. Old Mr. Cunningham was at that window, the second on the left, and he saw the fellow get away just to the left of that bush. Then Mr. Alec ran out and knelt beside the wounded man. The ground is very hard, you see, and there are no marks to guide us. As he spoke, two men came down the garden path from round the angle of the house. The one was an elderly man with a strong, deep-lined, heavy-eyed face. The other, a dashing young fellow whose bright-smiling expression and showy dress were in strange contrast with the business which had brought us there. Still at it, then, said he to Holmes, I thought you Londoners were never at fault. You don't seem to be so very quick after all. Ah, you must give us a little time, said Holmes, good-humoredly. You'll want it, said young Alec Cunningham. Why I don't see that we have any clue at all. There's only one, answered the inspector. We thought that if we could only find a good heavens, Mr. Holmes, what is the matter? My poor friend's face had suddenly assumed the most dreadful expression. His eyes rolled upwards. His features writhed in agony, and with a suppressed groan he dropped on his face upon the ground. Horrified at the suddenness and severity of the attack, we carried him into the kitchen, where he lay back in a large chair, and breathed heavily for some minutes. Finally with a shame-faced apology for his weakness, he rose once more. Watson would tell you that I have only just recovered from a severe illness, he explained. I am liable to these sudden, nervous attacks. Shall I send you home in my trap? asked old Cunningham. Well, since I'm here there is one point on which I should like to feel sure. We can very easily verify it. What was it? Well, it seems to me that it is just possible that the arrival of this poor fellow William was not before, but after the entrance of the burglary into the house. You appear to take it for granted that, although the door was forced, the robber never got in. I fancy that is quite obvious, said Mr. Cunningham gravely, why my son Alec had not yet gone to bed, and he would certainly have heard any one moving about. Where was he sitting? I was smoking in my dressing-room. Which window is that? The last on the left, next to my father's. Both of your lamps were lit, of course. Undoubtedly. There are some very singular points here, said Holmes Smiling. Is it not extraordinary that a burglary, and a burglar who had had some previous experience, should deliberately break into a house at a time when he could see from the lights that two of the family were still afoot? He must have been a cool hand. Well, of course, if the case were not an odd one we should not have been driven to ask you for an explanation, said young Mr. Alec. But as to your ideas that the man had robbed the house before William tackled him, I think it a most absurd notion. Then we have found the place disarranged and missed the things which he had taken. It depends on what the things were, said Holmes. You must remember that we are dealing with a burglar who is a very peculiar fellow, and who appears to work on lines of his own. Look, for example, at the queer lot of things which he took from Acton's. What was it? A ball of string, a letter weight, and I don't know what other odds and ends. Well, we are quieting our hats, Mr. Holmes, said old Cunningham. Anything which you, all the inspector, may suggest will most certainly be done. In the first place, said Holmes, I should like you to offer a reward, coming from yourself, for the officials may take a little time before they would agree upon the sum, and these things cannot be done too promptly. I have jotted down the form here, if you would not mind signing it. Fifty pounds was quite enough, I thought. I would willingly give five hundred, said the JP, taking the slip of paper and the pencil which Holmes handed to him. This is not quite correct, however, he added, glancing over the document. I wrote it rather hurriedly. You see, you begin, whereas at about a quarter to one on Tuesday morning an attempt was made, and so on. It was at a quarter to twelve, as a matter of fact. I was pained at the mistake, for I knew how keenly Holmes would feel any slip of the kind. It was his specialty to be accurate as to fact, but his recent illness had shaken him, and this one little incident was enough to show me that he was still far from being himself. He was obviously embarrassed for an instant, while the inspector raised his eyebrows, and Alec Cunningham burst into a laugh. The old gentleman corrected the mistake, however, and handed the paper back to Holmes. Get it printed as soon as possible, he said. I think your idea is a good one. Holmes put the slip of paper carefully away into his pocket-book. And now, said he, it really would be a good thing that we should all go over the house together and make certain that this rather erratic burglar did not after all carry anything away with him. Before entering, Holmes made an examination of the door which had been forced. It was evident that a chisel or strong knife had been thrust in, and the lock forced back with it, we could see the marks in the wood where it had been pushed in. You don't use bars, then, he asked. We have never found it necessary. You don't keep a dog? Yes, but he is chained on the other side of the house. When do the servants go to bed? About ten. I understand that William was usually in bed also at that hour. Yes.  Now, I should be very glad if you would have the kindness to show us over the house, Mr. Conningham. A stone-flagged passage, with the kitchens branching away from it, led by a wooden staircase directly to the first floor of the house. It came out upon the landing opposite to a second more ornamental stair, which came up from the front hall. Out of this landing opened the drawing room, and several bedrooms including those of Mr. Conningham and his son. Holmes walked slowly, taking keynote of the architecture of the house. I could tell from his expression that he was on a hot scent, and yet I could not in the least imagine in what direction his inferences were leading him. My good sir, said Mr. Conningham with some impatience. This is surely very unnecessary. That is my room at the end of the stairs, and my son's is the one beyond it. I leave it to your judgment, whether it was possible for the thief to have come up here without disturbing us. You must try round and get on a fresh scent, I fancy, said the son with a rather malicious smile. Still, I must ask you to humor me a little further. I should like, for example, to see how far the windows of the bedrooms command the front. This I understand is your son's room. He pushed open the door. And that, I presume, is the dressing room in which he sat smoking when the alarm was given. Where does the window of that look out to? He stepped across the bedroom, pushed open the door, and glanced round the other chamber. I hope that you're satisfied now, said Mr. Conningham, tartly. Thank you, I think I have seen all that I wished. Then if it is really necessary we can go into my room. If it is not too much trouble. The JP shrugged his shoulders and led the way into his own chamber which was a plainly furnished and commonplace room. As we moved across it in the direction of the window, Holmes fell back until he and I were the last of the group. Near the foot of the bed stood a dish of oranges and a carafe of water. As we passed it, Holmes, to my unutterable astonishment, leaned over in front of me and deliberately knocked the whole thing over. The glass smashed into a thousand pieces and the fruit rolled about into every corner of the room. You've done it now, Watson, said he, cruelly. A pretty mess you've made of the carpet. I stooped in some confusion and began to pick up the fruit, understanding for some reason my companion desired me to take the blame upon myself. The others did the same and set the table on its legs again. Hello, cried the inspector, where's he got to? Holmes had disappeared. Wait here an instant, said young Alec Conningham. The fellow is off his head in my opinion. Come with me, father, and see where he has got to. They rushed out of the room, leaving the inspector, the colonel, and me staring at each other. Upon my word, I'm inclined to agree with Master Alec, said the official. It may be the effect of this illness, but it seems to me that— His words were cut short by a sudden scream of Help! Help! Murder! With a thrill I recognized the voice of that of my friend. I rushed madly from the room onto the landing. The cries which had sunk down into a horse in articulate shouting came from the room which we had first visited. We dashed in and on into the dressing room beyond. The two Conninghams were bending over the prostrate figure of Sherlock Holmes, the younger clutching his throat with both hands, while the elder seemed to be twisting one of his wrists. In an instant the three of us had torn them away from him, and Holmes staggered to his feet, very pale and evidently greatly exhausted. Arrest these men, inspector! he gasped. On what charge? That of murdering their coachman, William Kerwin. The inspectors stared about him in bewilderment. Oh, come now, Mr. Holmes, said he at last. I'm sure you don't really mean to— Tut, man, look at their faces, cried Holmes curtly. Never certainly have I seen a plainer confession of guilt upon human countenances. The older man seemed numbed and dazed with a heavy sullen expression upon his strongly marked face. The sun, on the other hand, had dropped all that jaunty dashing style which had characterized him, and the ferocity of a dangerous wild beast gleamed in his dark eyes and distorted his handsome features. The inspector said nothing, but stepped to the door. He blew his whistle. Two of the constables came at the call. I have no alternative, Mr. Cunningham, said he. I trust that this may all prove to be an absurd mistake, but you can see that— Oh, would you? Drop it! He struck out with his hand, and a revolver which the younger man was in the act of caulking clattered down upon the floor. Keep that, said Holmes, quietly putting his foot upon it. You will find it useful at the trial. But this is what we really wanted.  The remainder of the sheet, cried the inspector. Precisely. And where was it? Where I was sure it must be. I'll make the whole matter clear to you presently. I think, Colonel, that you and Watson might return now, and I will be with you again in an hour at the furthest. The inspector and I must have a word with the prisoners, but you will certainly see me back at lunch and time. Sherlock Holmes was as good as his word. For about one o'clock he joined us in the Colonel's smoking room. He was accompanied by a little elderly gentleman, who was introduced to me as the Mr. Acton whose house had been the scene of the original burglary. I wished Mr. Acton to be present while I demonstrated this small matter to you, said Holmes, for it is natural that he should take a keen interest in the details. I'm afraid, my dear Colonel, that you must regret the hour that you took in such a stormy petrol as I am. On the contrary, answered the Colonel warmly, I consider it the greatest privilege to have been permitted to study your methods of working. I confess that they quite surpass my expectations, and that I am utterly unable to account for your result. I have not yet seen the vestige of a clue. I am afraid that my explanation may disillusion you, but it has always been my habit to hide none of my methods, either from my friend Watson, or from anyone who might take an intelligent interest in them. But first, as I am rather shaken by the knocking about which I had in the dressing room, I think that I shall help myself to a dash of your brandy, Colonel. My strength had been rather tried of late. I trust that you had no more of those nervous attacks. Sherlock Holmes laughed heartily. We will come to that in its turn, said he. I will lay an account of the case before you in its due order, showing you the various points which guided me in my decision. Pray interrupt me if there is any inference which is not perfectly clear to you. It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize out of a number of facts which are incidental and which vital, otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated. Now in this case there was not the slightest doubt in my mind from the first that the key of the whole matter must be looked for in the scrap of paper in the dead man's hand. Before going into this I would draw your attention to the fact that if Alec Cunningham's narrative was correct and if the assailant after shooting William Kirwin had instantly fled, then it obviously could not be he who tore the paper from the dead man's hand. But if it was not he it must have been Alec Cunningham himself, for by the time that the old man had descended several servants were upon the scene. The point is a simple one, but the inspector had overlooked it because he had started with the supposition that these county magnates had had nothing to do with the matter. Now I make a point of never having any prejudices and of following docilely wherever fact may lead me, and so in the very first stage of the investigation I found myself looking a little escance at the part which had been played by Mr. Alec Cunningham, and now I made a very careful examination of the corner of paper which the inspector had submitted to us. It was at once clear to me that it formed a part of a very remarkable document. Here it is. Do you not now observe something very suggestive about it? It has a very irregular look, said the Colonel. My dear sir, cried Holmes, there cannot be the least doubt in the world that it has been written by two persons doing alternate words. When I draw your attention to the strong T's of at and to, and ask you to compare them with the weak ones of quarter and twelve you will instantly recognize the fact. A very brief analysis of these four words would enable you to say with the utmost confidence that the learn and the maybe are written in the stronger hand and the what in the weaker. By Jovitz as clear as day, cried the Colonel, why on earth should two men write a letter in such a fashion? Obviously the business was a bad one, and one of the men who distrusted the other was determined that whatever was done each should have an equal hand in it. Now of the two men it is clear that the one who wrote the at and to was the ringleader. How do you get at that? We might deduce it from the mere character of the one hand as compared with the other, but we have more assured reasons than that for supposing it. If you examine this scrap with attention you will come to the conclusion that the man with the stronger hand wrote all his words first, leaving blanks for the other to fill up. These blanks were not always sufficient and you can see that the second man had a squeeze to fit his quarter in between the at and the to, showing that the latter were already written. The man who wrote all his words first is undoubtedly the man who planned the affair. Excellent, tried Mr. Acton. But very superficial, said Holmes. We come now, however, to a point which is of importance. You may not be aware that the deduction of a man's age from his writing is one which has been brought to considerable accuracy by experts. In normal cases one can place a man in his true decade with tolerable confidence. I say normal cases because ill health and physical weakness reproduced the signs of old age, even when the invalid is a youth. In this case looking at the bold strong hand of the one and the rather broken-backed appearance of the other which still retains its legibility although the tees have begun to lose their crossing, we can say that the one was a young man and the other was advanced in years without being positively decrepit. Excellent, cried Mr. Acton again. There is a further point, however, which is subtler and of greater interest. There is something in common between these hands. They belong to men who are blood relatives. It may be most obvious to you in the Greek ease, but to me there are many small points which indicate the same thing. I have no doubt at all that a family mannerism can be traced in these two specimens of writing. I'm only of course giving you the leading results now of my examination of the paper. There were twenty-three other deductions which would be of more interest to experts than to you. They all tend to deepen the impressions upon my mind that the Cunningham's father and son had written this letter. Everything got so far, my next step was, of course, to examine into the details of the crime and to see how far they would help us. I went up to the house with the inspector and saw all that was to be seen. The wound upon the dead man was, as I was able to determine with absolute confidence, fired from a revolver at the distance of something over four yards. There was no powder blackening on the clothes. Evidently therefore Alec Cunningham had lied when he said that the two men were struggling when the shot was fired. Both father and son agreed as to the place where the man escaped into the road. At that point, however, as it happens, there is a broadish ditch moist at the bottom, as there were no indications of bootmarks about this ditch, I was absolutely sure, not only that the Cunningham's had again lied, but that there had never been any unknown man upon the scene at all. And now I have to consider the motive of this singular crime. To get at this I endeavored first of all to solve the reason of the original burglary at Mr. Acton's. I understood from something which the Colonel told us that a lawsuit had been going on between you, Mr. Acton, and the Cunningham's. Of course it instantly occurred to me that they had broken into your library with the intention of getting at some document which might be of importance in the case. Precisely so, said Mr. Acton, there can be no possible doubt as to their intentions. I have the clearest claim upon half of their present estate, and if they could have found a single paper which fortunately was in the strongbox of my solicitors they would undoubtedly have crippled our case. There you are, said Holmes smiling. It was a dangerous reckless attempt in which I seemed to trace the influence of young Alec. Having found nothing they tried to divert suspicion by making it appear to be an ordinary burglary, to which end they carried off whatever they could lay their hands upon. That is all clear enough, but there was much that was still obscure. What I wanted above all was to get the missing part of that note. I was certain that Alec had torn it out of the dead man's hand, and almost certain that he must have thrust it into the pocket of his dressing-gown. Where else could he have put it? The only question was whether it was still there. It was worth an effort to find out, and for that object we all went up to the house. The Cunninghams joined us, as you doubtless remember, outside the kitchen door. It was, of course, of the very first importance that they should not be reminded of the existence of this paper, otherwise they would naturally destroy it without delay. The inspector was about to tell them the importance which we attached to it, when by the luckiest chance in the world I tumbled down in a sort of fit, and so changed the conversation. Good heavens! cried the Colonel, laughing. Do you mean to say all our sympathy was wasted, and you're fit and impostor? Speaking professionally, it was admirably done, cried I, looking in amazement at this man who was forever confounding me with some new phase of his astuteness. It is an art which is often useful, said he. When recovered I managed by a device which had perhaps some little merit of ingenuity to get old Cunningham to write the word twelve, so that I might compare it with the twelve upon the paper.  I could see that you were commiserating me over my weakness at home's laughing. I was sorry to cause you the sympathetic pain which I know that you felt. We then went upstairs together and having entered the room, and seen the dressing-gown hanging up behind the door. I contrived by upsetting a table to engage their attention for the moment, and slipped back to examine the pockets. I had hardly got the paper, however, which was, as I had expected in one of them, when the two Cunninghams were on me, and would, I verily believe, have murdered me then and there but for your prompt and friendly aid. As it is I feel that young man's drip on my throat now, and the father has twisted my wrist round in the effort to get the paper out of my hand. They saw that I must know all about it, you see, and the sudden change from absolute security to complete despair made them perfectly desperate. I had a little talk with old Cunningham afterwards as to the motive of the crime. He was tractable enough, though his son was a perfect demon ready to blow out his own or anybody else's brains if he could have got to his revolver. When Cunningham saw that the case against him was so strong, he lost all heart and made a clean breast of everything. It seems that William had secretly followed his two masters on the night when they made their raid upon Mr. Acton's, and having thus got them into his power proceeded under threats of exposure to levy blackmail upon them. Mr. Alec, however, was a dangerous man to play games of that sort with. It was a stroke of positive genius on his part to see in the burglary scare which was convulsing the countryside an opportunity of plausibly getting rid of the man whom he feared. William was decoyed up and shot, and had they only got the whole of the note and paid a little more attention to detail in the accessories, it is very possible that suspicion might never have been aroused. And the note, I asked, Sherlock Holmes placed the subjoined paper before us. If you will only come round at quarter to twelve to the east gate, you will learn what will very much surprise you and maybe of the greatest service to you and also to Annie Morrison, but say nothing to anyone upon the matter. It is very much the sort of thing that I expected, said he. Of course we do not yet know what the relations may have been between Alec Cunningham, William Kirwin, and Annie Morrison, but the results show that the trap was skillfully baited. I am sure that you cannot fail to be delighted with the traces of heredity shown in the peas and in the tales of the G's. The absence of the eye-dots in the old man's writing is also most characteristic. Watson, I think our quiet rest in the country has been a distinct success, and I shall certainly return much invigorated to Baker Street tomorrow. CHAPTER VII OF THE MEMORIES OF SHERLOCK HOMES One summer night, a few months after my marriage, I was seated by my own hearth, smoking a last pipe and nodding over a novel. For my day's work had been an exhausting one. My wife had already gone upstairs, and the sound of the locking of the hall door some time before told me that the servants had also retired. I had risen from my seat and was knocking out the ashes of my pipe when I suddenly heard the clang of the bell. I looked at the clock. It was a quarter to twelve. This could not be a visitor at so late an hour, a patient evidently, and possibly an all-night sitting. With a writhe face I went out into the hall and opened the door. To my astonishment it was Sherlock Holmes who stood upon my step. Ah, Watson, said he. I hope that I might not be too late to catch you. My dear fellow, pray come in. You look surprised and no wonder. Relieved too, I fancy. Huh, you still smoke the arcadey mixture of your bachelor days then? There's no mistaking that fluffy ash upon your coat. It's easy to tell that you have been accustomed to wear a uniform, Watson. You'll never pass as a purebred civilian as long as you keep that habit of carrying your handkerchief in your sleeve. Could you put me up tonight? With pleasure. You told me that you had bachelor quarters for one, and I see that you have no gentleman visitor at present. Your hat stand proclaims as much. I shall be delighted if you will stay. Thank you. I'll fill the vacant peg then. Sorry to see that you've had the British workman in the house. He's a token of evil, not the drains, I hope. No, the gas. Ah, he's left two nail marks from his boot upon your linoleum, just where the light strikes it. No, thank you, I had some supper at Waterloo, but I'll smoke a pipe with you with pleasure. I handed him my pouch, and he seated himself opposite to me, and smoked for some time in silence. I was well aware that nothing but business of importance would have brought him to me at such an hour, so I waited patiently, until he should come round to it. I see that you are professionally rather busy just now, said he glancing very keenly across at me. Yes, I've had a busy day, I answered. It may seem very foolish in your eyes, I added, but really I don't know how you deduced it. Holmes chuckled to himself. I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson, said he. When you're round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a handsome, as I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the handsome. Excellent, I cried. Elementary, said he, it is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meritricious depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands, some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader. Now at present I'm in the position of these same readers, for I hold in this hand several threads of one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a man's brain, and yet I lack the one or two which are needed to complete my theory, but I'll have them, Watson, I'll have them. His eyes kindled and a slight flush sprang into his thin cheeks, for an instant only, when I glanced again his face had resumed that red Indian composure which had made so many regard him as a machine rather than a man. The problem presents features of interest, said he. I may even say exceptional features of interest, I've already looked into the matter and have come, as I think, within sight of my solution, if you could accompany me in that last step you might be of considerable service to me. I should be delighted. Could you go as far as Alder shot tomorrow? I have no doubt Jackson would take my practice. Very good, I want to start by the eleven ten from Waterloo. That would give me time. Then if you are not too sleepy I'll give you a sketch of what has happened and of what remains to be done. I was sleepy before you came. I'm quite wakeful now. I will compress the story as far as may be done without omitting anything vital to the case. It is conceivable that you may even have read some account of the matter. It is the supposed murder of Colonel Barclay of the Royal Munsters at Aldershot which I am investigating. I've heard nothing of it. It has not excited much attention yet except locally. The facts are only two days old. Briefly they are these. The Royal Munsters is, as you know, one of the most famous Irish regiments in the British Army. It did wonders both in the Crimea and the mutiny, and has since that time distinguished itself upon every possible occasion. It was commanded up to Monday night by James Barclay, a gallant veteran who started as a full private, was raised to commissioned rank for his bravery at the time of the mutiny, and so lived to command the regiment in which he had once carried a musket. Colonel Barclay had married at the time when he was a sergeant and his wife whose maiden name was Miss Nancy DeVoy was the daughter of a former color sergeant in the same corps. There was therefore, as can be imagined, some little social friction when the young couple, for they were still young, found themselves in their new surroundings. They appear, however, to have quickly adapted themselves, and Mrs. Barclay has always, I understand, been as popular with the ladies of the regiment as her husband was with his brother officers. I may add that she was a woman of great beauty, and that even now when she has been married for upwards of thirty years, she's still of a striking and queenly appearance. Colonel Barclay's family life appears to have been a uniformly happy one. Major Murphy, to whom I owe most of my facts, assures me that he has never heard of any misunderstanding between the pair. On the whole he thinks that Barclay's devotion to his wife was greater than his wife's to Barclay. He was acutely uneasy if he were absent from her for a day. She, on the other hand, though devoted and beautiful, was less obtrusively affectionate, but they were regarded in the regiment as the very model of a middle-aged couple. There was absolutely nothing in their mutual relations to prepare people for the tragedy which was to follow. Colonel Barclay himself seems to have had some singular traits in his character. He was a dashing jovial old soldier in his usual mood, but there were occasions on which he seemed to show himself capable of considerable violence and vindictiveness. The side of his character, however, appears never to have been turned towards his wife. Another fact which had struck Major Murphy and three out of five of the other officers with whom I conversed was the singular sort of depression which came upon him at times. As the major expressed it, the smile had often been struck from his mouth as if by some invisible hand when he had been joining the gayities and chaff of the mess table. For days on end when the mood was on him, he has been sunk in the deepest gloom. This and a certain range of superstition were the only usual traits in his character which his brother officers had observed. The latter peculiarity took the form of a dislike to being left alone, especially after dark. This purile feature in a nature which was conspicuously manly had often given rise to comment and conjecture. The first battalion of the royal monsters which is the old 117th has been stationed at Aldershot for some years. The married officers live out of the camp. The colonel has during all this time occupied a villa called LaShine about half a mile from the North camp. The house stands in its own grounds but the west side of it is not more than 30 yards from the high road. A coachman and two maids formed the staff of servants. These with their master and mistress were the sole occupants of LaShine for the Barclays had no children nor was it usual for them to have resident visitors. Now for the Mrs. Barclays was as it appears a member of the Roman Catholic Church and had interested herself very much in the establishment of the Guild of St. George which was formed in connection with the Wall Street chapel for the purpose of supplying the poor with cast-off clothing. A meeting of the Guild had been held that evening at eight and Mrs. Barclays had hurried over her dinner in order to be present at it. When leaving the house she was heard by the coachman to make some common plays for very long. She then called for Miss Morrison, a young lady who lives in the next villa, and the two went off together to their meeting. It lasted forty minutes and at a quarter past nine Mrs. Barclays returned home having left Miss Morrison at her door as she passed. There is a room which is used as a morning room at LaShine. This faces the road and opens by a large glass-folding door onto the lawn. The lawn is thirty yards across and is only a low wall with an iron rail above it. It was into this room that Mrs. Barclays went upon her return. The blinds were not down for the room was seldom used in the evening, but Mrs. Barclays herself lit the lamp and then rang the bell asking Jane Stewart the housemaid to bring her a cup of tea which was quite contrary to her usual habits. The colonel had been sitting in the dining room but hearing that his wife had returned he joined her in the morning room. The coachman then alive. The tea which had been ordered was brought up at the end of ten minutes but the maid as she approached the door was surprised to hear the voices of her master and mistress in furious altercation. She knocked without receiving any answer and even turned the handle but only to find that the door was locked upon the inside. Naturally enough she ran down to tell the cook and the two women with the coachman came up into the hall and listened to the dispute which was still raging. They all agreed those of Barclay and of his wife. Barclay's remarks were subdued and abrupt so that none of them were audible to the listeners. The ladies on the other hand were most bitter and when she raised her voice could be plainly hard. You coward she repeated over and over what can be done now what can be done now give me back my life I will never so much as breathe the same air with you again you coward you coward those were scraps of her conversation ending in a sudden dreadful cry of the man's voice with a crash and a piercing scream from the woman convinced that some tragedy had occurred the coachman rushed to the door and strove to force it while scream after scream issued from within he was unable however to make his way in and the maids were too distracted with fear to be of any assistance to him a sudden thought struck him however and he ran through the hall door and round to the lawn upon which the long French windows open. he was in the room and he passed without difficulty into the room his mistress had ceased to scream and was stretched insensible upon a couch while with his feet tilted over the side of an armchair and his head upon the ground near the corner of the fender was lying the unfortunate soldier stone dead in a pool of his own blood naturally the coachman's first thought on finding that he could do nothing for his master was to open not in the inner side of the door nor could he find it anywhere in the room he went out again therefore through the window and having obtained the help of a policeman and of a medical man he returned the lady against whom naturally the strongest suspicion rested was removed to a room still in a state of insensibility the colonel's body was then placed upon the sofa and a careful examination made of the scene of the tragedy the injury from which the unfortunate veteran was suffering was found to be cut some two inches long at the back part of his head which had evidently been caused by a violent blow from a blunt weapon nor was it difficult to guess what that weapon may have been upon the floor close to the body was lying a singular club of hard carved wood with a bone handle the colonel possessed a varied collection of weapons brought from the different countries in which he had fought and it is conjectured by the police that his club was among his trophies the servants deny having seen it before having the numerous curiosities in the house it is possible that it may have been overlooked nothing else of importance was discovered in the room by the police save the inexplicable fact that neither upon Mrs. Barclay's person nor upon that of the victim nor in any part of the room was the missing key to be found the door had eventually to be opened by a locksmith from Aldershot that was the state of things Watson sought to supplement the efforts to the police I think that you will acknowledge that the problem was already one of interest but my observations soon made me realize that it was in truth much more extraordinary than what at first sight appear before examining the room I cross-questioned the servants but only succeeded in eliciting the facts which I have already stated one other detail of interest was remembered by Jane Stewart the housemaid you will remember was returned with the other servants on that first occasion when she was alone she says that the voices of her master and mistress were sunk so low that she could hear hardly anything and judged by their tones rather than their words that they had fallen out on my pressing her however she remembered that she heard the word David uttered twice by the lady the point is of the utmost importance as guiding us towards the reason of the sudden quarrel the Colonel's name the case which had made the deepest impression both upon the servants and the police this was the contortion of the Colonel's face it had set according to their account into the most dreadful expression of fear and horror which a human countenance is capable of assuming more than one person fainted at the mere sight of him so terrible was the effect it was quite certain that he had foreseen his fate and that it had caused him the utmost horror this of course fitted in well enough with the police theory if the Colonel would have seen his wife being a murderous attack upon him nor was the fact of the wound being on the back of his head a fatal objection to this as he might have turned to avoid the blow no information could be got from the lady herself who is temporarily insane from an acute attack of brain fever from the police I learned that Miss Morrison who you remember went out that evening with Mrs. Barclay denied having any knowledge of what it was which had caused the ill humour in which her companion had returned and smoked several pipes over them trying to separate those which were crucial from others which were merely incidental there could be no question that the most distinctive and suggestive point in the case was the singular disappearance of the door key a most careful search had failed to discover it in the room therefore it must have been taken from it but neither the Colonel nor the Colonel's wife could have taken it that was perfectly clear therefore a third person must have entered the room and that third person could only have come in through the window it seemed to me that a careful examination of the room and the lawn might possibly reveal some traces of this mysterious individual you know my methods Watson there was not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry and it ended by my discovering traces but very different ones from those which I had expected there had been a man in the room and he had crossed the lawn coming from the road I was able to obtain five very clear impressions of his foot marks worn in the roadway itself at the point where he had climbed the low wall two on the lawn and two very faint ones upon the stained boards near the window where he had entered he had apparently rushed across the lawn for his toe marks were much deeper than his heels but it was not the man who surprised me it was his companion his companion Holmes pulled a large sheet of tissue paper out of his pocket and carefully unfolded it upon his knee what do you make of that he asked the paper was covered with the foot marks of some small animal it had five well marked foot pads an indication of long nails and the whole print might be nearly as large as a dessert spoon it's a dog said I did you ever hear of a dog running up a curtain I found distinct traces that this creature had done so a monkey then but it is not the print of a monkey what can it be then neither dog nor cat nor monkey nor any creature familiar with I have tried to reconstruct it from the measurements here are four prints where the beast has been standing motionless you see that it is no less than 15 inches from four foot to hind add to that the length of neck and head and you get a creature not much less than two feet long probably more if there is any tail but now observe this other measurement the animal has been moving and we have the length of its stride in each case it is only about three inches you have an indication of a long body with very short legs attached to it it has not been considerate enough to leave any of its hair behind but its general shape must be what I have indicated and it can run up a curtain and it is carnivorous how do you deduce that because it ran up the curtain a canary's cage was hanging in the window and its aim seems to have been to get at the bird then what was the beast if I could give it a name it might go a long way toward solving on the whole it was probably some creature of the weasel and stote tribe and yet it is larger than any of these that I have seen what had it to do with the crime that is also still obscure but we have learned a good deal you perceive we know that a man stood in the road looking at the quarrel between the barclays the blinds were up and the room lighted we know also that he ran across the lawn or as is equally possible that the colonel fell down from sheer fright at the side of him and cut his head on the corner of the fender finally we have the curious fact that the intruder carried away the key with him when he left your discoveries seem to have left the business more obscure than it was before said I quite so they undoubtedly showed that the affair was much deeper than was at first conjectured I thought the matter over and I came to the conclusion that I must approach the case but really Watson I'm keeping you up and I might just as well tell you all this on our way to Aldershot tomorrow thank you you've gone rather too far to stop it is quite certain that when Mrs. Barclay left the house at half past seven she was on good terms with her husband she was never as I think I've said ostentatiously affectionate but she was heard by the coachman chatting with the colonel in a friendly fashion now it was equally certain that immediately on her return she had gone to the room and was least likely to see her husband had flown to T as an agitated woman will and finally on his coming into her had broken into violent recriminations therefore something had occurred between seven thirty and nine o'clock which had completely altered her feelings towards him but Miss Morrison had been with her during the whole of that hour and a half it was absolutely certain therefore in spite of her denial that she must know something of the matter my first conjecture was that possibly this young lady and the old soldier which the former had now confessed to the wife that would account for the angry return and also for the girl's denial that anything had occurred nor would it be entirely incompatible with most of the words overheard but there was the reference to David and there was the known affection of the colonel for his wife to weigh against it to say nothing of the tragic intrusion of this other man which might of course be entirely disconnected with what had gone but on the whole I was inclined to dismiss the idea that there had been anything between the colonel and Miss Morrison but more than ever convinced that the young lady held the clue as to what it was which had turned Mrs. Barclay to hatred of her husband I took the obvious course therefore of calling upon Miss M of explaining to her that I was perfectly certain that she held the fact in her possession and of assuring her that her friend Mrs. Barclay might find herself in the dock and of course Morrison is a little ethereal slip of a girl with timid eyes and blonde hair but I found her by no means wanting intrudeness and common sense she sat thinking for some time after I had spoken and then turning to me with a brisk air of resolution she broke into a remarkable statement which I will condense for your benefit I promise my friend poor darling is closed by illness then I think I am absolved from my promise I will tell you exactly what happened upon Monday evening we were returning from the Watt Street mission about a quarter to nine o'clock on our way we had to pass through Hudson Street which is a very quiet thoroughfare there is only one lamp in it upon the left hand side and as we approached this lamp I saw a man coming towards us with his back very bent and something like a box slung and walked with his knees bent we were passing him when he raised his face to look at us in the circle of light thrown by the lamp and as he did so he stopped and screamed out in a dreadful voice my God it's Nancy Mrs. Barclay turned as white as death and would have fallen down had the dreadful looking creature not caught hold of her I was going to call for the police but she to my surprise spoke quite civilly to the fellow I thought you had been dead this 30 years Henry she said in a shaking voice so I have said he and it was awful to hear the tones that he said in it he had a very dark fearsome face and the gleam in his eyes that comes back to me in my dreams his hair and whiskers were shot with grey and his face was all crinkled and puckered like a withered apple just walk on a little way dear said Mrs. Barclay I want to have a word with this man there's nothing to be afraid of she tried to speak boldly but she was still deadly pale and could hardly hear I did as she asked me and they talked together for a few minutes then she came down the street with her eyes blazing and I saw the crippled wretch standing by the lamppost and shaking his clenched fists in the air as if he were mad with rage she never said a word until we were at the door here when she took me by the hand and begged me to tell no one what it happened it's an old acquaintance of mine who has come down in the world said she when I promised truth and if I withheld it from the police it is because I did not realize then the danger in which my dear friend stood I know that it can only be to her advantage that everything should be known that was her statement Watson and to me as you can imagine it was like a light on a dark night everything which had been disconnected before began it once to assume its true place and I had a shadowy upon Mrs. Barclay if he were still in Aldershot it should not be a very difficult matter there are not such a very great number of civilians and a deformed man was sure to have attracted attention I spent a day in the search and by evening this very evening Watson I had run him down the man's name is Henry Wood and he lives in lodgings in this same street in which the ladies met him he has only been five days in the place in the character of his landlady the man is by trade a conjurer and performer going round the canteens after nightfall and giving a little entertainment at each he carries some creature about with him in that box about which the landlady seemed to be inconsiderable trepidation for she had never seen an animal like it he uses it in some tricks according to her account so much the woman was able to tell me and also that two nights she had heard him groaning and weeping in his bedroom he was alright as far as money went but in his deposit he had given her what looked like a bad florin she showed it to me Watson and it was an Indian rupee so now my dear fellow you see exactly how we stand and why it is I want you it is perfectly plain that after the ladies parted from this man he followed them at a distance that he saw the quarrel between husband and wife through the window that he rushed in and that the creature that is all very certain but he is the only person in this world who can tell us exactly what happened in that room and you intend to ask him most certainly but in the presence of a witness and I am the witness if you will be so good if he can clear the matter up well and good if he refuses we have no alternative but to apply for a warrant but how do you know he'll be there when we return you may be sure that I took some I have one of my Baker Street boys mounting guard over him who would stick to him like a burr go where he might we shall find him in Hudson Street tomorrow Watson and meanwhile I should be the criminal myself if I kept you out of bed any longer it was midday when we found ourselves at the scene of the tragedy and under my companion's guidance we made our way at once to Hudson Street in spite of his capacity for concealing his emotions I could easily see that Holmes was in a state of suppressed excitement myself tingling with that half sporting half intellectual pleasure which I invariably experienced when I associated myself with him in his investigations this is the street said he as we turned into a short thoroughfare lined with plain two storied brick houses ah here is Simpson to report he's in all right Mr. Holmes cried a small street Arab running up to us good Simpson said Holmes patting him on the head come along Watson this is the house he sent in a message that he had come on important business and a moment later we were face to face with the man whom we had come to see in spite of the warm weather he was crouching over a fire and the little room was like an oven the man sat all twisted and huddled in his chair in a way which gave an indescribable impression of deformity but the face which he turned towards us though worn and swarthy must at some time have been remarkable for its beauty more rising he waved towards two chairs Mr. Henry Wood late of India I believe said Holmes affably I've come over this little matter of Colonel Barclay's death what should I know about that that's what I want to ascertain you know I suppose that unless the matter is cleared up Mrs. Barclay who is an old friend of yours will in all probability be tried for murder the man gave a violent start nor how you come to know what you do know but will you swear that this is true that you tell me why they're only waiting for her to come to her senses to arrest her my god are you in the police yourself no what business is it of yours then it's every man's business to see justice done you can take my word that she's innocent then you're guilty no I'm not who killed Colonel James it was a just providence that killed him but mind you this that if I had knocked his brains out as it was in my heart to do he would have had no more than his do from my hands if his own guilty conscience had not struck him down it is likely enough that I might have had his blood upon my soul you want me to tell the story well I don't know why I shouldn't for there's no cause for me to be ashamed of it it was in this way sir you see me now with my back like a camel and my ribs was the smartest man in the 117th foot we were in India then in Cantonments at a place we'll call Bertie Barclay who died the other day was sergeant in the same company as myself and the bell of the regiment I and the finest girl that ever had the breath of life between her lips was Nancy DeVoy the daughter of the colour sergeant there were two men that loved her and one that she loved and you'll smile when you look at this poor thing huddled before the fire and hear me say that it was for my good looks that she loved me well though I had her heart her father was set upon her marrying Barclay I was a harem scarum reckless lad and he had had an education and was already marked for the sword belt but the girl held true to me and it seemed that I would have had her when the mutiny broke out and all hell was loose in the country we were shut up in Bertie the regiment of us with half a battery of artillery a company of six and a lot of civilians and women folk there were ten thousand rebels round us and they were as keen as a set of terriers round a rat cage about the second week of it our water gave out and it was a question whether we could communicate with General Neil's column which was moving up country it was our only chance for we could not hope to fight our way out with all the women and children so I volunteered to go out and to warn General Neil of our danger my offer was accepted and I talked it over with Sergeant Barclay who was supposed to know the ground better than any other man and who drew up a route by which I might get through the rebel lines at ten o'clock the same night I started off upon my journey there were a thousand lives to save but it was of only one I was thinking when I dropped over the wall that night my way ran down a dried up water course which we hoped would screen me from the enemy sentries but as I crept round the corner of it I walked right into six of them who were crouching down in the dark waiting for me in an instant I was stunned with a blow and bound hand and foot but the real blow was to my heart and not to my head for as I came to and listened to as much as I could understand of their talk I heard enough to tell me that my comrade the very man who had arranged to lead me by means of a native servant into the hands of the enemy well there's no need for me to dwell on that part of it you know now what James Barclay was capable of Bertie was relieved by Neil next day but the rebels took me away with them in their retreat and it was many a long year before ever I saw a white face again I was tortured and tried to get away and was captured and tortured again you can see for yourselves the state in which I was left some of them that fled into Nepal took me with them and then afterwards the hill-folk up there murdered the rebels who had me and I became their slave for a time until I escaped but instead of going south I had to go north until I found myself among the Afghans there I wondered about for many a year and at last came back to the Punjab where I lived mostly among the natives and picked up a living by the conjuring tricks that I had learned what use was it for me a wretched cripple to go back to England or to make myself known to my old comrades even my wish for revenge would not make me do that I'd rather that Nancy and my old pals should think of Harry Wood as having died with a straight back than see him living and crawling with a stick like a chimpanzee they never doubted that I was dead and I meant that they never should I heard that Barclay had married Nancy and that he was raising rapidly in the regiment but even that did not make me speak but when one gets old one has a longing for home for years I've been dreaming of the bright green fields and the hedges of England at last I determined to see them before I died I saved enough to bring me across and then I came here where the soldiers are for I know their ways and how to amuse them and so earned enough to keep me your narrative is most interesting said Sherlock Holmes I've already heard of your meeting with Mrs. Barclay and your mutual recognition you then as I understand followed her home and saw through the window an altercation between her husband and her in which she doubtless cast his conduct to you in his teeth your own feelings overcame you and you ran across the lawn and broke in upon them I did sir and at the sight of me looked as I had never seen a man look before and over he went with his head on the fender but he was dead before he fell I read death on his face as plain as I can read that text over the fire the bear sight of me was like a bullet through his guilty heart and then then Nancy fainted and I caught up the key of the door from her hand intending to unlock it and get help but as I was doing it it seemed to me better to leave it alone and get away for the thing might look black against me and anyway my secret would be out if I were taken in my haste I thrust the key into my pocket and dropped my stick while I was chasing Teddy who had run up the curtain when I'd got him into his box from which he had slipped I was off as fast as I could run who's Teddy? asked Holmes the man leaned over and pulled up the front of a kind of hutch in the corner in an instant out there slipped a beautiful reddish brown creature thin and lithe with the legs of a stote a long thin nose and a pair of the finest red eyes that ever I saw in an animal's head it's a mongoose I cried well some call them that and some call them inchnimon said the man snake catcher is what I call them and Teddy is amazing quick on cobras I've one here without the fangs and Teddy catches it every night to please the folk in the canteen any other point sir? well we may have to apply to you again if Mrs. Barclay should prove to be in serious trouble in that case of course I'd come forward but if not there is no object in raking up this scandal against a dead man foully as he has acted you have at least the satisfaction of knowing that for thirty years of his life his conscience bitterly reproached him for this wicked deed ah there goes major Murphy on the other side of the street goodbye wood I want to learn if anything has happened since yesterday we were in time to overtake the major before he reached the corner ah holmes he said I suppose you have heard that all this fuss has come to nothing what then? the inquest is just over the medical evidence showed conclusively that death was due to apoplexy you see it was quite a simple case after all oh remarkably superficial said Holmes smiling come Watson I don't think we shall be wanted in Aldershot anymore there's one thing said I as we walked down to the station if the husband's name was James and the other was Henry what was this talk about David? that one word my dear Watson should have told me the whole story had I been the ideal reasoner which you are so fond of depicting it was evidently a term of reproach of reproach yes David strayed a little occasionally you know and on one occasion in the same direction as sergeant James Barclay you remember the small affair of Uriah and Bathshezba my biblical knowledge is a trifle rusty I fear but you'll find the story in the first or second of Samuel End of Adventure 7 The Crooked Man Chapter 8 Of the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Adventure 8 The Resident Patient glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of memoirs in which I have endeavored to illustrate a few of the mental peculiarities of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes I have been struck by the difficulty which I have experienced in picking out examples which shall in every way answer my purpose for in those cases in which Holmes has performed some tour de force of analytical reasoning and has demonstrated the value of his peculiar methods of investigation the facts themselves have often been so slight or so commonplace that I could not feel justified in laying them before the public on the other hand it has frequently happened that he has been concerned in some research where the facts have been of the most remarkable and dramatic character but where the share which he has himself taken in determining their causes has been less pronounced than I prefer could wish the small matter which I have chronicled under the heading of a study in Scarlet and that other later one connected with the loss of the glorious Scott may serve as examples of this Silla and Teribdis which are forever threatening the historian it may be that in the business of which I am now about to write the part which my friend played is not sufficiently accentuated and yet the whole train of circumstances is so remarkable that I cannot bring myself to omit it entirely from this series it had been a close rainy day in October our blinds were half drawn and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post for myself my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold and a thermometer of 90 was no hardship but the paper was uninteresting Parliament had risen everybody was out of town and I yearned for the glades of the new forest or the shingle of South Sea a depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday and as to my companion neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him he loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people with his filaments stretching out and running through them responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil doer of the town to track down his brother of the country finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I tossed aside the barren paper and leaning back in my chair I fell into a brown study suddenly my companion's voice broke in upon my thoughts you're right Watson said he it does seem a very preposterous way of settling dispute most preposterous I exclaimed and then suddenly realising how he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul I sat up in my chair and stared at him in blank amazement what is this Holmes I cried this is beyond anything which I could have imagined he laughed heartily at my perplexity you remember said he that some little time ago when I read you the passage in one of Poe's sketches in which a close reasoner follows the unspoken thought of his companion you were inclined to treat the matter as a mere tour de force of the author on my remarking that I was constantly inhabit of doing the same thing you expressed incredulity oh no perhaps not with your tongue my dear Watson but certainly with your eyebrows so when I saw you throw down your paper and enter upon a train of thought I was very happy to have the opportunity of reading it off and eventually of breaking into it as a proof that I had been in rapport with you but I was still far from satisfied in the example which you read to me said I the reasoner drew his conclusions from the actions of the man whom he observed if I remember right he stumbled over a heap of stones looked up at the stars and so on but I have been seated quietly in my chair and what clues have I given you you do yourself an injustice the features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his emotions and yours are faithful servants do you mean to say that you read my train of thoughts from my features your features and especially your eyes perhaps you cannot yourself recall how your reverie commenced no I cannot then I will tell you after throwing down your paper which was the action which drew my attention to you you sat for half a minute with a vacant expression then your eyes fixed themselves upon your newly framed picture of general Gordon and I saw by the alteration in your face that a train of thought had been started but it did not lead very far your eyes turned across to the unframed portrait of Henry Ward Beecher which stands upon the top of your books then glanced up at the wall and of course your meaning was obvious you were thinking that if the portrait were framed it would just cover that bare space and correspond with Gordon's picture over there you followed me wonderfully I exclaimed so far I could hardly have gone astray but now your thoughts went back to Beecher and you looked hard across as if you were studying the character in his features then your eyes ceased to pucker but you continued to look across and your face was thoughtful you were recalling the incidents of Beecher's career I was well aware that you could not do this without thinking of the mission which he undertook on behalf of the North at the time of the Civil War for I remember you expressing your passionate indignation at the way in which he was received by the more turbulent of our people you felt so strongly about it that I knew you could not think of Beecher without thinking of that also when a moment later I saw your eyes wander away from the picture I suspected that your mind had now turned to the Civil War and when I observed that your lips set your eyes sparkled and your hands clinched I was positive that you were indeed thinking of the gallantry which was shown by both sides in that desperate struggle but then again your face grew sadder you shook your head you were dwelling upon the sadness and horror and useless waste of life your hand stole towards your own old wound and a smile quivered on your lips which showed me that the ridiculous side of this method of settling international questions had forced itself upon your mind at this point I agreed with you that it was preposterous and was glad to find that all my deductions had been correct absolutely said I and now that you've explained it I confess that I am as amazed as before it was very superficial my dear Watson I assure you I should not have intruded it upon your attention had you not shown some incredulity the other day but the evening has brought a breeze with it what do you say to a ramble through London I was weary of our little sitting room and gladly acquiesced for three hours we strolled about together watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through Fleet Street and the Strand his characteristic talk with its keen observance of detail and subtle power of inference held me amused and enthralled it was ten o'clock before we reached Baker Street again a brahm was waiting at our door hum a doctor's general practitioner I perceive said Holmes being long in practice but has had a good deal to do come to consult us I fancy lucky we come back I was sufficiently conversant with Holmes' methods to be able to follow his reasoning and to see that the nature and state of the various medical instruments in the wicker basket which hung in the lamplight inside the brahm has given him the data for his swift deduction the light in our window above showed that this late visitor was indeed intended for us with some curiosity as to what could have sent our medical to us at such an hour I followed Holmes into our sanctum a pale taper-faced man with sandy whiskers rose up from a chair by the fire as we entered his age may not have been more than three or four and thirty but his haggard expression and unhealthy hue told of a life which had sapped his strength and robbed him of his youth his manner was nervous and shy like that of a sensitive gentleman and the thin white hand which he laid on the mantelpiece as he rose that of an artist rather than of a surgeon his dress was quiet and somber a black frock coat dark trousers and a touch of colour about his necktie good evening doctor said Holmes cheerily I'm glad to see that you have only been waiting a very few minutes you spoke to my coachman then no it was the candle on the side table that told me pray resume your seat and let me know how I can serve you my name is Dr. Percy Travellian said our visitor 403 Brook Street are you not the author of a monograph upon obscure nervous lesions I asked his pale cheeks flushed with pleasure at hearing that his work was known to me I so seldom hear of the work that I thought it was quite dead said he my publishers gave me a most discouraging account of its sale you are yourself I presume a medical man a retired army surgeon my own hobby has always been nervous disease I should wish to make it an absolute specialty but of course a man must take what he can get at first this however is beside the question Mr. Sherlock Holmes and I quite appreciate how valuable your time is the fact is that a very singular train of events has occurred recently at my house in Brook Street and tonight they came to such a head that I felt it was quite impossible for me to wait another hour before asking for your advice and assistance Sherlock Holmes sat down and lit his pipe you're very welcome to both said he pray let me have a detailed account of what the circumstances are which have disturbed you one or two of them are so trivial said Dr. Trevelyan that really I'm almost ashamed to mention them but the matter is so inexplicable and the recent turn which it has taken is so elaborate that I shall lay it all before you and you shall judge what is essential and what is not I'm compelled to begin with to say something of my own college career I'm a London University man you know and I'm sure that you will not think that I am unduly singing my own praises if I say that my student career was considered by my professors to be a very promising one after I had graduated I continued to devote myself to research occupying a minor position in King's College Hospital and I was fortunate enough to excite considerable interest by my research into the pathology of catalepsy and finally to win the Bruce Pinkerton prize and medal by the monograph on nervous lesions to which your friend has just alluded I should not get too far if I were to say that there was a general impression at that time that a distinguished career lay before me but the one great stumbling block lay in my want of capital as you will readily understand a specialist who aims high is compelled to start in one of a dozen streets in the Cavendish Square Quarter all of which entail enormous rents and furnishing expenses besides this preliminary outlay he must be prepared to keep himself for some years and to hire a presentable carriage and horse to do this was quite beyond my power and I could only hope that by economy I might in ten years time save enough to enable me to put up my plate suddenly however an unexpected incident opened up quite a new prospect to me this was a visit from a gentleman of the name of Blessington who was a complete stranger to me he came up to my room one morning and plunged into business in an instant you are the same Percy Trevelyan who has had so distinguished a career and won a great prize lately said he I bowed answer me frankly he continued for you will find it to your interest to do so above all the cleverness which makes a successful man have you the tact I could not help smiling at the abruptness of the question I trust that I have my share I said any bad habits not drawn towards drink a really sir I cried quite right that's all right but I was bound to ask with all these qualities why are you not in practice I shrugged my shoulders come come said he in his bustling way it's the old story more in your brains than in your pocket a what would you say if I were to start you in Brook Street I stared at him in astonishment oh it's for my sake not yours he cried I'll be perfectly frank with you and if it suits you it will suit me very well I have a few thousands to invest you see and I think I'll sink them in you but why I gasped well it's just like any other speculation and safer than most what am I to do then I'll tell you I'll take the house furnish it pay the maids and run the whole place all you have to do is just to wear out your chair in the consulting room I'll let you have pocket money and everything then you hand over to me three quarters of what you earn and you keep the other quarter for yourself this was the strange proposal Mr. Holmes with which the man Blessington approached me I won't wear you with the account of how he bargained and negotiated it ended in my moving into the house next lady day and starting in practice on very much the same conditions as he had suggested he came himself to live with me in the character of a resident patient his heart was weak it appears and he needed constant medical supervision he turned the two best rooms of the first floor into a sitting room and bedroom for himself he was a man of singular habits shunning company and very seldom going out his life was a regular but in one respect he was regularity itself every evening at the same hour he walked into the consulting room examined the books put down five and three pence for every guinea that I had earned and carried the rest off to the strongbox in his own room I may say with confidence that he never had occasion to regret his speculation from the first it was a success a few good cases and the reputation which I had won in the hospital brought me rapidly to the front and during the last few years I have made him a rich man so much Mr. Holmes for my past history and my relations with Mr. Blessington it only remains for me now to tell you what has occurred to bring me here tonight some weeks ago Mr. Blessington came down to me and as it seemed to me a state of confrontation he spoke of some burglary which he said had been committed in the west end and he appeared I remembered to be quite unnecessarily excited about it declaring that a day should not pass before we should add stronger bolts to our windows and doors for a week he continued to be in a peculiar state of restlessness peering continually out of the windows and ceasing to take the short walk which had usually been the prelude to his dinner from his manner it struck me but when I questioned him upon the point he became so offensive that I was compelled to drop the subject gradually as time passed his fears appeared to die away and he had renewed his former habits when a fresh event reduced him to the pitiable state of prostration in which he now lies what happened was this two days ago I received the letter which I now read to you neither address nor date is attached to it a Russian nobleman who is now resident in England it runs would be glad to avail himself of the professional assistance of Dr. Percy Trevelyan he has been for some years a victim to cataleptic attacks on which as is well known Dr. Trevelyan is an authority he proposes to call at about quarter past six tomorrow evening if Dr. Trevelyan will make it convenient to be at home this letter interested me deeply because the chief difficulty in the study of catalepsy is the rareness of the disease I believe then that I was in my consulting room when at the appointed hour the page showed in the patient he was an elderly man thin demure and commonplace by no means the conception one forms of a Russian nobleman I was much more struck by the appearance of his companion this was a tall young man surprisingly handsome with a dark fierce face and the limbs and chest of a Hercules he had his hand under the other's arm as they entered and helped him to a chair with a tenderness which one would likely have expected from his appearance you will excuse my coming in doctor he said to me speaking English with a slight lisp this is my father and his health is a matter of the most overwhelming importance to me I was touched by this filial anxiety you would perhaps care to remain during the consultation said I not for the world he cried with a gesture of horror it is more painful to me than I can express if I were to see my father in one of these dreadful seizures I am convinced that I should never survive it my own nervous system is an exceptionally sensitive one with your permission I will remain in the waiting room while you go into my father's case to this of course I assented and the young man withdrew the patient and I then plunged into a discussion of his case of which I took exhaustive notes he was not remarkable for intelligence and his answers were frequently obscure which I attributed to his limited acquaintance with our language suddenly however as I sat writing he ceased to give any answer at all to my inquiries and on my turning towards him I was shocked to see that he was sitting bolt up right into his chair staring at me with a perfectly blank and rigid face he was again in the grip of his mysterious malady my first feeling as I have just said was one of pity and horror my second I fear was rather one of professional satisfaction I made notes of my patients pulse and temperature tested the rigidity of his muscles examined his reflexes there was nothing markedly abnormal in any of these conditions which harmonized with my former experiences I had obtained good results in such cases by the inhalation of nitrate of anal and the present seemed an admirable opportunity of testing its virtues the bottle was downstairs in my laboratory so leaving my patient seated in his chair I ran down to get it there was some little delay in finding it five minutes let us say and then I returned imagine my amazement to find the room empty and the patient gone of course my first act was to run into the waiting room the son had gone also the hall door had been closed but not shut my page who admits patients is a new boy and by no means quick he waits downstairs and runs up to show patients out when I ring the consulting room bell he had heard nothing and the affair remained a complete mystery Mr. Blessington came in from his walk shortly afterwards but I did not say anything to him upon the subject for to tell the truth I have got in the way of late of holding his little communication with him as possible well I never thought that I should see anything more of the Russian and his son so you can imagine my amazement when at the very same hour this evening they both came marching into my consulting room just as they had done before I feel that I owe you a great many apologies for my abrupt departure yesterday doctor said my patient I confess that I was very much surprised at it said I well the fact is he remarked that when I recover from these attacks my mind is always very clouded as to all that has gone before I woke up in a strange room as it seemed to me and made my way out into the street in a sort of dazed way when you were absent and I said the son seeing my father past the door of the waiting room naturally thought that the consultation had come to an end it was not until we had reached home that I began to realize the true state of affairs well said I laughing there is no harm done except that you puzzled me terribly so if you sir would kindly step into the waiting room I shall be happy to continue our consultation which has brought to so abrupt an ending for half an hour or so I discussed that old gentleman's symptoms with him and then having prescribed for him I saw him go off upon the arm of his son I've told you that Mr. Blessington generally chose this hour of the day for his exercise he came in shortly afterwards passed upstairs an instant later I heard him running down and he burst into my consulting room like a man who is mad with panic who's been in my room he cried no one said I it's a lie he yelled come up and look I passed over the grossness of his language as he seemed half out of his mind with fear when I went upstairs with him he pointed to several footprints upon the light carpet do you mean to say those are mine he cried they were certainly very much larger than any which he could have made and were evidently quite fresh it rained hard this afternoon as you know and my patients were the only people who called it must have been the case then that the man in the waiting room had for some unknown reason while I was busy with the other ascended to the room of my resident patient nothing had been touched or taken but there were the footprints to prove that the intrusion was an undoubted fact Mr. Blessington seemed more excited over the matter he should have thought possible though of course it was enough to disturb anybody's peace of mind he actually sat crying in an arm chair and I could hardly get him to speak coherently it was his suggestion that I should come round to you and of course I at once saw the propriety of it for certainly the incident is a very singular one though he appears to completely overrate its importance if you would only come back with me in my brawl you would at least be able to soothe him though I could hardly hope that you will be able to hear all of this in my brawl occurrence Sherlock Holmes had listened to this long narrative with an intentness which showed me that his interest was keenly aroused his face was as impassive as ever but his lids had drooped more heavily over his eyes and his smoke had curled up more thickly from his pipe to emphasize each curious episode in the doctor's tale as our visitor concluded Holmes sprang up without a word handed me my hat picked his own from the table and followed Dr. Trevelyan to the door after an hour we had been dropped at the door of the physician's residence in Brook Street one of those somber flat-faced houses which one associates with a West End practice a small page admitted us and we began at once to ascend the broad well-carpeted stare but a singular interruption brought us to a stand still the light at the top was suddenly whisked out and from the darkness came a reedy quivering voice I have a pistol it cried I give you my word that I'll fire if you come any closer this really grows outrageous Mr. Blessington cried Dr. Trevelyan oh then it is you doctor said the voice with a great heave of relief but those other gentlemen are they what they pretend to be we were conscious of a long scrutiny out of the darkness yes yes it's all right said the voice at last you can come up and I'm sorry if my precautions have annoyed you he relit the stare gas as he spoke and we saw before us a singular looking man whose appearance as well as his voice testified to his jangled nerves he was very fat but had apparently at some time been much fatter so that the skin hung about his face in loose pouches like the cheeks of a bloodhound he was of a sickly color and his thin sandy hair seemed to bristle up with the intensity of his emotion in his hand he held a pistol but he thrust it into his pocket as we advanced good evening Mr. Holmes said he I'm sure I am very much obliged to you for coming round no one ever needed your advice more than I do I suppose that Dr. Trevelyan has told you of this most unwarrantable intrusion into my rooms quite so said Holmes who are these two men Mr. Blessington and why do they wish to molest you well well said the resident patient in a nervous fashion of course it is hard to say that you can hardly expect me to answer that Mr. Holmes do you mean that you don't know come in here if you please just have the kindness to step in here they led the way into his bedroom which was large and comfortably furnished you see that he said pointing to a big black box at the end of his bed I have never been a very rich man Mr. Holmes never made but one investment in my life as Dr. Trevelyan would tell you but I don't believe in bankers I would never trust a banker Mr. Holmes between ourselves what little I have is in that box so you can understand what it means to me when unknown people force themselves into my rooms Holmes looked at Blessington in his questioning way and shook his head I cannot possibly advise you if you try to deceive me said he but I have told you everything Holmes turned on his heal with a gesture of disgust good night Dr. Trevelyan said he and no advice for me tried Mr. Blessington in a breaking voice my advice to you sir is to speak the truth a minute later we were in the street and walking for home we had crossed Oxford Street and were half way down Harley Street before I could get a word from my companion sorry to bring you out on such a fool's errand Watson he said at last it is an interesting case too at the bottom of it I can make little of it I confessed well it is quite evident that there are two men more perhaps but at least are determined for some reason to get at this fellow Blessington I have no doubt in my mind that both on the first and on the second occasion that young man penetrated to Blessington's room while his confederate by an ingenious device kept the doctor from interfering and the catalepsy a fraudulent imitation Watson though I should hardly dare to hint as much to our specialist it is a very easy complaint to imitate I have done it myself and then by the purest chance Blessington was out on each occasion their reason for choosing so unusual an hour for a consultation was obviously to ensure that there should be no other patient in the waiting room it just happened however that this hour coincided with Blessington's constitutional which seems to show that they were not very well acquainted with his daily routine of course if they had been merely after plunder they would at least have made some attempt to search for it besides I can read in the man's eye when it is his own skin that he's frightened for it is inconceivable that this fellow could have made two such vindictive enemies as these appear to be without knowing of it I hold it therefore to be certain that he does know who these men are and that for reasons of his own he suppresses it it is just possible that tomorrow may find him in a more communicative mood is there not one alternative I suggested grotesquely improbably no doubt but still just conceivable might the whole story of the cataleptic Russian and his son be a concoction of Dr. Trevelyans who has for his own purposes been in Blessington's rooms I saw in the gaslight that Holmes wore an amused smile at this brilliant departure of mine my dear fellow he said it was one of the first solutions which occurred to me but I was soon able to corroborate the doctor's tale this young man has left prints upon the stair carpet which made it quite superfluous for me to ask to see those which he had made in the room when I tell you that his shoes were square-toed instead of being pointed like Blessington's and were quite an inch and a third longer than the doctor's he will acknowledge that there can be no doubt as to his individuality but we may sleep on it now for I shall be surprised if we do not hear something further from Brookstreet in the morning Sherlock Holmes prophecy was soon fulfilled and in a dramatic fashion at half past seven next morning in the first glimmer of daylight I found him standing by my bedside in his dressing-gown there's a braum waiting for us Watson said he what's the matter then the Brookstreet business any fresh news tragic but ambiguous said he pulling up the blind look at this a sheet from a notebook with for God's sake come at once P.T. screlled upon it in pencil our friend the doctor was hard put to it when he wrote this come along my dear fellow for it's an urgent call in a quarter of an hour or so we were back at the physician's house he came running out to meet us with a face of horror oh such a business he cried with his hands to his temples what then? Blessington has committed suicide Holmes whistled yes he hanged himself during the night we had entered and the doctor had proceeded us into what was evidently his waiting room I really hardly know what I'm doing he cried the police are already upstairs it has shaken me most dreadfully when did you find out? he has a cup of tea taken to him early every morning when the maid entered about seven there the unfortunate fellow was hanging in the middle of the room he had tied his cord to the hook on which the heavy lamp used to hang and he had jumped off from the top of the very box that he showed us yesterday Holmes stood for a moment in deep thought with your permission said he at last I should like to go upstairs and look into the matter he ascended followed by the doctor it was a dreadful sight which met us as we entered the bedroom door I have spoken of the impression of flabbiness which this man Blessington conveyed as he dangled from the hook it was exaggerated and intensified until he was scarce human in his appearance the neck was drawn out like a plucked chicken making the rest of him seem the more obese and unnatural by the contrast he was clad only in his long night dress and his swollen ankles and ungainly feet protruded starkly from beneath it beside him stood a smart-looking police inspector who was taking notes in a pocket book ah Mr. Holmes said he heartily as my friend entered I'm delighted to see you good morning Lanner answered Holmes you won't think me an intruder I'm sure have you heard of the events which led up to this affair yes I heard something of them have you formed any opinion as far as I can see the man has been driven out of his senses by fright this bed has been well slept in you see there's his impression deep enough it's about five in the morning you know that suicides are most common that would be about his time for hanging himself it seems to have been a very deliberate affair I should say that he's been dead about three hours judging by the rigidity of the muscles said I noticed anything peculiar about the room asked Holmes found a screw driver in some screws on the wash handstand seems to have smoked heavily during the night too here are four cigar ends that I picked out of the fireplace hmm said Holmes have you got his cigar holder no I've seen none his cigar case then yes it was in his pocket Holmes opened it and smelled the single cigar which it contained oh this is an Avena and these others are cigars of the peculiar sort which are imported by the Dutch from their East Indian colonies they're usually wrapped in straw you know and are thinner for their length than any other brand he picked up the four ends and examined them with his pocket lens two of these have been smoked from a holder and two without said he two have been cut by a not very sharp knife and two have had the ends bitten off by a set of excellent teeth this is no suicide mr. it is a very deeply planned and cold-blooded murder impossible cried the inspector and why why should anyone murder a man in so clumsy a fashion as by hanging him that is what we have to find out how could they get in through the front door it was barred in the morning then it was barred after them how do you know I saw traces excuse me a moment and I may be able to give you some further information about it he went over to the door and turning the lock he examined it in his methodical way then he took out the key which was on the inside and inspected that also the bed the carpet the chairs the mantelpiece the dead body and the rope were each in turn examined until it last he professed himself satisfied and with my aid and that of the inspector cut down the wretched object and laid it reverently under a sheet how about this rope he asked it is cut off this said Dr. Travellian drawing a large coil from under the bed he was morbidly nervous of fire and always kept this beside him so that he might escape by the window in case the stairs were burning that must have saved them trouble said Holmes thoughtfully yes the actual facts are very plain I shall be surprised if by the afternoon I cannot give you the reasons for them as well I will take this photograph of Blessington which I see upon the mantelpiece that may help me in my inquiries but you've told us nothing cried the doctor oh there can be no doubt as to the sequence of events said Holmes there were three of them in it the young man the old man and a third to whose identity I have no clue the first two I need hardly remark are the same who masqueraded as the Russian count and his son so we can give a very full description of them they were admitted by a confederate inside the house if I might offer you a word of advice here it would be to arrest the page who as I understand has only recently come into your service doctor the young imp cannot be found said doctor Trevelyan the maid in the cook have just been searching for him Holmes shrugged his shoulders he has played a not unimportant part in this drama said he the three men having ascended the stairs which they did on tiptoe the elder man first the younger man second and the unknown man in the rear my dear Holmes I ejaculated oh there could be no question as to the superimposing of the footmarks I had the advantage of learning which was which last night they ascended then to Mr. Blessington's room the door of which they found to be locked with the help of a wire however they forced round the key even without the lens you will perceive by the scratches on this ward where the pressure was applied on entering the room their first proceeding must have been to gag Mr. Blessington he may have been asleep or he may have been so paralyzed with terror as to have been unable to cry out these walls are thick and it is conceivable that his shriek if he had time to utter one was unheard having secured him it is evident to me that a consultation of some sort was held probably it was something in the nature of a judicial proceeding it must have lasted for some time for it was then that these cigars were smoked the older man sat in that wicket chair it was he who used the cigar holder the younger man sat over yonder he knocked his ash off against the chest of drawers the third fellow paced up and down Blessington I think sat upright in the bed but of that I cannot be absolutely certain well it ended by their taking Blessington and hanging him the matter was so pre-arranged that it is my belief that they brought with them some sort of block or pulley which might serve as a gallows that screw driver in those screws were as I conceive for fixing it up having the hook however they naturally saved themselves the trouble having finished their work they made off and the door was barred behind them by their confederate we had all listened with the deepest interest to this sketch of the night's do-ings which Holmes had deduced from signs so subtle and minute that even when he had pointed them out to us we could scarcely follow him in his reasoning the inspector hurried away on the instant to make inquiries about the page while Holmes and I returned to Baker Street for breakfast I'll be back by three said he when we had finished our meal both the inspector and the doctor will meet me here at that hour and I hope by that time to have cleared up any little obscurity which the case may still present our visitors arrived at the appointed time but it was a quarter to four before my friend put in an appearance from his expression as he entered however I could see that all had gone well with him any news inspector we've got the boy sir and I have got the men you've got them we cried all three well at least I have got their identity this so-called Blessington is as I expected well known at headquarters and so are his assailants their names are Biddle, Hayward and Moffat the Worthingdon bank gang cried the inspector precisely said Holmes then Blessington must have been Sutton exactly said Holmes why that makes it as clear as crystal said the inspector but Trevelyan and I looked at each other in bewilderment you must surely remember the great Worthington bank business said Holmes five men were in it these four and a fifth called Cartwright Tobin the caretaker was murdered and the thieves got away with seven thousand pounds this was in 1875 they were all five arrested but the evidence against them was by no means conclusive this Blessington Sutton who was the worst of the gang turned in former on his evidence Cartwright was hanged and the other three got fifteen years apiece when they got out the other day which was some years before their full term they set themselves as you perceive to hunt down the traitor and to avenge the death of their comrade upon him twice they tried to get at him and failed a third time you see it came off is there anything further which I can explain Doctor Trevelyan I think you've made it all remarkably clear said the doctor no doubt the day on which he was perturbed was the day when he had seen of their release in the newspapers quite so his talk about a burglary was the nearest blind but why could he not tell you this well my dear sir knowing the vindictive character of his old associates he was trying to hide his own identity from everybody as long as he could his secret was a shameful one and he could not bring himself to divulge it however as he was he was still living under the shield of British law and I have no doubt inspector that you will see that though that shield may fail to guard the sword of justice is still there to avenge such were the singular circumstances in connection with the resident patient and the brook street doctor from that night nothing has been seen of the three murderers by the police and it is surmised at Scotland Yard that they were among the passengers of the ill-fated steamer Nora Crana which was lost some years ago with all hands upon the Portuguese coast some leagues to the north of Oporto the proceedings against the page broke down for want of evidence and the brook street mystery as it was called has never until now been fully dealt with in any public print end of adventure eight the resident patient