The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
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 has 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 and some screws on the wash-hand stand.
Seems to have smoked heavily during the night, too. Here are four
cigar-ends that I picked out of the fireplace.”
“Hum!” said Holmes, “have you got his cigar-holder?”
“No, I have seen none.”
“His cigar-case, then?”
“Yes, it was in his coat-pocket.”
Holmes opened it and smelled the single cigar which it contained.
“Oh, this is a Havana, and these others are cigars of the
peculiar sort which are imported by the Dutch from their East
Indian colonies. They are 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. Lanner. It is a very deeply planned and
cold-blooded murder.”
“Impossible!” cried the inspector.
“And why?”
“Why should any one 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 their 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 at 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. Trevelyan, 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, and 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, as it may help me in my inquiries.”
“But you have 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, Inspector, 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 Dr. Trevelyan; “the maid
and 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
wicker 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 prearranged 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 and those screws were, as I conceive,
for fixing it up. Seeing 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 doings, 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 have got the boy, sir.”
“Excellent, and I have got the men.”
“You have 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 Worthingdon 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 or Sutton, who was the worst of the
gang, turned informer. 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, Dr. Trevelyan?”
“I think you have 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 merest 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, wretch 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 _Norah Creina_, 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.
X. The Greek Interpreter
During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes
I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to
his own early life. This reticence upon his part had increased
the somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until
sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon,
a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was
pre-eminent in intelligence. His aversion to women and his
disinclination to form new friendships were both typical of his
unemotional character, but not more so than his complete
suppression of every reference to his own people. I had come to
believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living, but one
day, to my very great surprise, he began to talk to me about his
brother.
It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which
had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to
the causes of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, came
round at last to the question of atavism and hereditary
aptitudes. The point under discussion was, how far any singular
gift in an individual was due to his ancestry and how far to his
own early training.
“In your own case,” said I, “from all that you have told me, it
seems obvious that your faculty of observation and your peculiar
facility for deduction are due to your own systematic training.”
“To some extent,” he answered, thoughtfully. “My ancestors were
country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is
natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is
in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the
sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable
to take the strangest forms.”