The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
“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 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 recognise 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 Jove, it’s 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!” cried 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
reproduce 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 t’s 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 e’s, 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 am 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 impression upon my mind that the
Cunninghams, father and son, had written this letter.
“Having 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. Again, 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 Cunninghams 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 endeavoured 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 Cunninghams. 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 strong-box 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 seem 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 your fit an imposture?”
“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 I 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.”
“Oh, what an ass I have been!” I exclaimed.
“I could see that you were commiserating me over my weakness,”
said Holmes, 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
grip 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 country
side 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.
piece of paper
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
be 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 Kirwan, and Annie Morrison. The
results shows that the trap was skillfully baited. I am sure that
you cannot fail to be delighted with the traces of heredity shown
in the p’s and in the tails of the g’s. The absence of the i-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
to-morrow.”
VIII. The Crooked Man
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 wry 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 hoped 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! Hum!
You still smoke the Arcadia mixture of your bachelor days then!
There’s no mistaking that fluffy ash upon your coat. It’s easy to