The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
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 has 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.
“‘D’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 than I
should have thought possible, though of course it was enough to
disturb anybody’s peace of mind. He actually sat crying in an
armchair, 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 brougham,
you would at least be able to soothe him, though I can hardly
hope that you will be able to explain this remarkable
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. Within a quarter of an hour we had been
dropped at the door of the physician’s residence in Brook Street,
one of those sombre, 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 stair.
But a singular interruption brought us to a standstill. 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 nearer.”
“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 am sorry if my precautions have annoyed you.”
He relit the stair 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
blood-hound. He was of a sickly colour, 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 am 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.”
He led the way into his bedroom, which was large and comfortably
furnished.
“You see that,” said he, 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 heel with a gesture of disgust. “Good-night,
Dr. Trevelyan,” said he.
“And no advice for me?” cried 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 two—who 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 insure 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 a
man’s eye when it is his own skin that he is 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 to-morrow may find him in a more communicative
mood.”
“Is there not one alternative,” I suggested, “grotesquely
improbable, no doubt, but still just conceivable? Might the whole
story of the cataleptic Russian and his son be a concoction of
Dr. Trevelyan’s, 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,” said he, “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, you 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 Brook Street
in the morning.”
Sherlock Holmes’s 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 brougham waiting for us, Watson,” said he.
“What’s the matter, then?”
“The Brook Street business.”
“Any fresh news?”
“Tragic, but ambiguous,” said he, pulling up the blind. “Look at
this—a sheet from a note-book, with ‘For God’s sake come at
once—P.T.,’ scrawled 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 preceded us into what was
evidently his waiting-room.
“I really hardly know what I am doing,” he cried. “The police are
already upstairs. It has shaken me most dreadfully.”
“When did you find it out?”
“He has a cup of tea taken in 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.”
We both 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’s,
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 am
delighted to see you.”
“Good-morning, Lanner,” answered Holmes; “you won’t think me an
intruder, I am 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. The bed has been well slept in, you see. There’s his
impression deep enough. It’s about five in the morning, you know,