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 smoke. 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
care-taker, 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 remarkable 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 bur
glary 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.
Adventure IX
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."
"But how do you know that it is hereditary?"
"Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger
degree than I do."
This was news to me indeed. If there were another man
with such singular powers in England, how was it that
neither police nor public had heard of him? I put the
question, with a hint that it was my companion's
modesty which made him acknowledge his brother as his
superior. Holmes laughed at my suggestion.
"My dear Watson," said he, "I cannot agree with those
who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician
all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to
underestimate one's self is as much a departure from
truth as to exaggerate one's own powers. When I say,
therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of
observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking
the exact and literal truth."
"Is he your junior?"
"Seven years my senior."
"How comes it that he is unknown?"
"Oh, he is very well known in his own circle."
"Where, then?"
"Well, in the Diogenes Club, for example."
I had never heard of the institution, and my face must
have proclaimed as much, for Sherlock Holmes pulled
out his watch.
"The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and
Mycroft one of the queerest men. He's always there
from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It's six
now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful
evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two
curiosities."
"Five minutes later we were in the street, walking
towards Regent's Circus.
"You wonder," said my companion, "why it is that
Mycroft does not use his powers for detective work.
He is incapable of it."
"But I thought you said--"
"I said that he was my superior in observation and
deduction. If the art of the detective began and
ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would
be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But
he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go
out of his way to verify his own solution, and would
rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to
prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a
problem to him, and have received an explanation which
has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet
he was absolutely incapable of working out the
practical points which must be gone into before a case
could be laid before a judge or jury."
"It is not his profession, then?"
"By no means. What is to me a means of livelihood is
to him the merest hobby of a dilettante. He has an
extraordinary faculty for figures, and audits the
books in some of the government departments. Mycroft
lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner
into Whitehall every morning and back every evening.
From year's end to year's end he takes no other
exercise, and is seen nowhere else, except only in the
Diogenes Club, which is just opposite his rooms."
"I cannot recall the name."
"Very likely not. There are many men in London, you
know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy,
have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet
they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the
latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of
these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now
contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in
town. No member is permitted to take the least notice
of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no
talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and
three offences, if brought to the notice of the
committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My
brother was one of the founders, and I have myself
found it a very soothing atmosphere."
&
nbsp; We had reached Pall Mall as we talked, and were
walking down it from the St. James's end. Sherlock
Holmes stopped at a door some little distance from the
Carlton, and, cautioning me not to speak, he led the
way into the hall. Through the glass paneling I
caught a glimpse of a large and luxurious room, in
which a considerable number of men were sitting about
and reading papers, each in his own little nook.
Holmes showed me into a small chamber which looked out
into Pall Mall, and then, leaving me for a minute, he
came back with a companion whom I knew could only be
his brother.
Mycroft Holmes was a much larger and stouter man than
Sherlock. His body was absolutely corpulent, but is
face, though massive, had preserved something of the
sharpness of expression which was so remarkable in
that of his brother. His eyes, which were of a
peculiarly light, watery gray, seemed to always retain
that far-away, introspective look which I had only
observed in Sherlock's when he was exerting his full
powers.
"I am glad to meet you, sir," said he, putting out a
broad, fat hand like the flipper of a seal. "I hear
of Sherlock everywhere since you became his
chronicler. By the way, Sherlock, I expected to see
you round last week, to consult me over that Manor
House case. I thought you might be a little out of
your depth."
"No, I solved it," said my friend, smiling.
"It was Adams, of course."
"Yes, it was Adams."
"I was sure of it from the first." The two sat down
together in the bow-window of the club. "To any one
who wishes to study mankind this is the spot," said
Mycroft. "Look at the magnificent types! Look at
these two men who are coming towards us, for example."
"The billiard-marker and the other?"
"Precisely. What do you make of the other?"
The two men had stopped opposite the window. Some
chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only
signs of billiards which I could see in one of them.
The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat
pushed back and several packages under his arm.
"An old soldier, I perceive," said Sherlock.
"And very recently discharged," remarked the brother.
"Served in India, I see."
"And a non-commissioned officer."
"Royal Artillery, I fancy," said Sherlock.
"And a widower."
"But with a child."
"Children, my dear boy, children."
"Come," said I, laughing, "this is a little too much."
"Surely," answered Holmes, "it is not hard to say that
a man with that bearing, expression of authority, and
sunbaked skin, is a soldier, is more than a private,
and is not long from India."
"That he has not left the service long is shown by his
still wearing is ammunition boots, as they are
called," observed Mycroft.
"He had not the cavalry stride, yet he wore his hat on
one side, as is shown by the lighter skin of that side
of his brow. His weight is against his being a
sapper. He is in the artillery."
"Then, of course, his complete mourning shows that he
has lost some one very dear. The fact that he is
doing his own shopping looks as though it were his
wife. He has been buying things for children, you
perceive. There is a rattle, which shows that one of
them is very young. The wife probably died in
childbed. The fact that he has a picture-book under
his arm shows that there is another child to be
thought of."
I began to understand what my friend meant when he
said that his brother possessed even keener faculties
that he did himself. He glanced across at me and
smiled. Mycroft took snuff from a tortoise-shell box,
and brushed away the wandering grains from his coat
front with a large, red silk handkerchief.
"By the way, Sherlock," said he, "I have had something
quite after your own heart--a most singular
problem--submitted to my judgment. I really had not
the energy to follow it up save in a very incomplete
fashion, but it gave me a basis for some pleasing
speculation. If you would care to hear the facts--"