A Study in Scarlet
but for a moment, for the action of the alkaloid is rapid. A spasm of
pain contorted his features; he threw his hands out in front of him,
staggered, and then, with a hoarse cry, fell heavily upon the floor. I
turned him over with my foot, and placed my hand upon his heart. There
was no movement. He was dead!
“The blood had been streaming from my nose, but I had taken no notice
of it. I don’t know what it was that put it into my head to write upon
the wall with it. Perhaps it was some mischievous idea of setting the
police upon a wrong track, for I felt light-hearted and cheerful. I
remembered a German being found in New York with RACHE written up above
him, and it was argued at the time in the newspapers that the secret
societies must have done it. I guessed that what puzzled the New
Yorkers would puzzle the Londoners, so I dipped my finger in my own
blood and printed it on a convenient place on the wall. Then I walked
down to my cab and found that there was nobody about, and that the
night was still very wild. I had driven some distance when I put my
hand into the pocket in which I usually kept Lucy’s ring, and found
that it was not there. I was thunderstruck at this, for it was the only
memento that I had of her. Thinking that I might have dropped it when I
stooped over Drebber’s body, I drove back, and leaving my cab in a side
street, I went boldly up to the house—for I was ready to dare anything
rather than lose the ring. When I arrived there, I walked right into
the arms of a police-officer who was coming out, and only managed to
disarm his suspicions by pretending to be hopelessly drunk.
“That was how Enoch Drebber came to his end. All I had to do then was
to do as much for Stangerson, and so pay off John Ferrier’s debt. I
knew that he was staying at Halliday’s Private Hotel, and I hung about
all day, but he never came out. I fancy that he suspected something
when Drebber failed to put in an appearance. He was cunning, was
Stangerson, and always on his guard. If he thought he could keep me off
by staying indoors he was very much mistaken. I soon found out which
was the window of his bedroom, and early next morning I took advantage
of some ladders which were lying in the lane behind the hotel, and so
made my way into his room in the grey of the dawn. I woke him up and
told him that the hour had come when he was to answer for the life he
had taken so long before. I described Drebber’s death to him, and I
gave him the same choice of the poisoned pills. Instead of grasping at
the chance of safety which that offered him, he sprang from his bed and
flew at my throat. In self-defence I stabbed him to the heart. It would
have been the same in any case, for Providence would never have allowed
his guilty hand to pick out anything but the poison.
“I have little more to say, and it’s as well, for I am about done up. I
went on cabbing it for a day or so, intending to keep at it until I
could save enough to take me back to America. I was standing in the
yard when a ragged youngster asked if there was a cabby there called
Jefferson Hope, and said that his cab was wanted by a gentleman at
221B, Baker Street. I went round, suspecting no harm, and the next
thing I knew, this young man here had the bracelets on my wrists, and
as neatly shackled as ever I saw in my life. That’s the whole of my
story, gentlemen. You may consider me to be a murderer; but I hold that
I am just as much an officer of justice as you are.”
So thrilling had the man’s narrative been, and his manner was so
impressive that we had sat silent and absorbed. Even the professional
detectives, _blasé_ as they were in every detail of crime, appeared to
be keenly interested in the man’s story. When he finished we sat for
some minutes in a stillness which was only broken by the scratching of
Lestrade’s pencil as he gave the finishing touches to his shorthand
account.
“There is only one point on which I should like a little more
information,” Sherlock Holmes said at last. “Who was your accomplice
who came for the ring which I advertised?”
The prisoner winked at my friend jocosely. “I can tell my own secrets,”
he said, “but I don’t get other people into trouble. I saw your
advertisement, and I thought it might be a plant, or it might be the
ring which I wanted. My friend volunteered to go and see. I think
you’ll own he did it smartly.”
“Not a doubt of that,” said Holmes heartily.
“Now, gentlemen,” the Inspector remarked gravely, “the forms of the law
must be complied with. On Thursday the prisoner will be brought before
the magistrates, and your attendance will be required. Until then I
will be responsible for him.” He rang the bell as he spoke, and
Jefferson Hope was led off by a couple of warders, while my friend and
I made our way out of the Station and took a cab back to Baker Street.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CONCLUSION.
We had all been warned to appear before the magistrates upon the
Thursday; but when the Thursday came there was no occasion for our
testimony. A higher Judge had taken the matter in hand, and Jefferson
Hope had been summoned before a tribunal where strict justice would be
meted out to him. On the very night after his capture the aneurism
burst, and he was found in the morning stretched upon the floor of the
cell, with a placid smile upon his face, as though he had been able in
his dying moments to look back upon a useful life, and on work well
done.
“Gregson and Lestrade will be wild about his death,” Holmes remarked,
as we chatted it over next evening. “Where will their grand
advertisement be now?”
“I don’t see that they had very much to do with his capture,” I
answered.
“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,” returned my
companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can you make people believe
that you have done. Never mind,” he continued, more brightly, after a
pause. “I would not have missed the investigation for anything. There
has been no better case within my recollection. Simple as it was, there
were several most instructive points about it.”
“Simple!” I ejaculated.
“Well, really, it can hardly be described as otherwise,” said Sherlock
Holmes, smiling at my surprise. “The proof of its intrinsic simplicity
is, that without any help save a few very ordinary deductions I was
able to lay my hand upon the criminal within three days.”
“That is true,” said I.
“I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is
usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this
sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very
useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise
it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason
forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who
can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.”
“I confess,” said I, “that I do not quite follow you.”
“I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can make it clearer.
Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you
what the result would be. They can put those events together in their
minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are
few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to
evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led
up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning
backwards, or analytically.”
“I understand,” said I.
“Now this was a case in which you were given the result and had to find
everything else for yourself. Now let me endeavour to show you the
different steps in my reasoning. To begin at the beginning. I
approached the house, as you know, on foot, and with my mind entirely
free from all impressions. I naturally began by examining the roadway,
and there, as I have already explained to you, I saw clearly the marks
of a cab, which, I ascertained by inquiry, must have been there during
the night. I satisfied myself that it was a cab and not a private
carriage by the narrow gauge of the wheels. The ordinary London growler
is considerably less wide than a gentleman’s brougham.
“This was the first point gained. I then walked slowly down the garden
path, which happened to be composed of a clay soil, peculiarly suitable
for taking impressions. No doubt it appeared to you to be a mere
trampled line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon its
surface had a meaning. There is no branch of detective science which is
so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps.
Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has
made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy footmarks of the
constables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had first
passed through the garden. It was easy to tell that they had been
before the others, because in places their marks had been entirely
obliterated by the others coming upon the top of them. In this way my
second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were
two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the
length of his stride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from
the small and elegant impression left by his boots.
“On entering the house this last inference was confirmed. My
well-booted man lay before me. The tall one, then, had done the murder,
if murder there was. There was no wound upon the dead man’s person, but
the agitated expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen
his fate before it came upon him. Men who die from heart disease, or
any sudden natural cause, never by any chance exhibit agitation upon
their features. Having sniffed the dead man’s lips I detected a
slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had
poison forced upon him. Again, I argued that it had been forced upon
him from the hatred and fear expressed upon his face. By the method of
exclusion, I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis would
meet the facts. Do not imagine that it was a very unheard of idea. The
forcible administration of poison is by no means a new thing in
criminal annals. The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of Leturier in
Montpellier, will occur at once to any toxicologist.
“And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had not
been the object of the murder, for nothing was taken. Was it politics,
then, or was it a woman? That was the question which confronted me. I
was inclined from the first to the latter supposition. Political
assassins are only too glad to do their work and to fly. This murder
had, on the contrary, been done most deliberately, and the perpetrator
had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there
all the time. It must have been a private wrong, and not a political
one, which called for such a methodical revenge. When the inscription
was discovered upon the wall I was more inclined than ever to my
opinion. The thing was too evidently a blind. When the ring was found,
however, it settled the question. Clearly the murderer had used it to
remind his victim of some dead or absent woman. It was at this point
that I asked Gregson whether he had enquired in his telegram to
Cleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber’s former career. He
answered, you remember, in the negative.
“I then proceeded to make a careful examination of the room, which
confirmed me in my opinion as to the murderer’s height, and furnished
me with the additional details as to the Trichinopoly cigar and the
length of his nails. I had already come to the conclusion, since there
were no signs of a struggle, that the blood which covered the floor had
burst from the murderer’s nose in his excitement. I could perceive that