fellow, we can't help matter by making ourselves
nervous about them, so let me implore you to go to bed
and so be fresh for whatever may await us to-morrow."
I was able at last to persuade my companion to take my
advice, though I knew from his excited manner that
there was not much hope of sleep for him. Indeed, his
mood was infectious, for I lay tossing half the night
myself, brooding over this strange problem, and
inventing a hundred theories, each of which was more
impossible than the last. Why had Holmes remained at
Woking? Why had he asked Miss Harrison to remain in
the sick-room all day? Why had he been so careful not
to inform the people at Briarbrae that he intended to
remain near them? I cudgelled my brains until I fell
asleep in the endeavor to find some explanation which
would cover all these facts.
It was seven o'clock when I awoke, and I set off at
once for Phelps's room, to find him haggard and spent
after a sleepless night. His first question was
whether Holmes had arrived yet.
"He'll be here when he promised," said I, "and not an
instant sooner or later."
And my words were true, for shortly after eight a
hansom dashed up to the door and our friend got out of
it. Standing in the window we saw that his left hand
was swathed in a bandage and that his face was very
grim and pale. He entered the house, but it was some
little time before he came upstairs.
"He looks like a beaten man," cried Phelps.
I was forced to confess that he was right. "After
all," said I, "the clue of the matter lies probably
here in town."
Phelps gave a groan.
"I don't know how it is," said he, "but I had hoped
for so much from his return. But surely his hand was
not tied up like that yesterday. What can be the
matter?"
"You are not wounded, Holmes?" I asked, as my friend
entered the room.
"Tut, it is only a scratch through my own clumsiness,"
he answered, nodding his good-mornings to us. "This
case of yours, Mr. Phelps, is certainly one of the
darkest which I have ever investigated."
"I feared that you would find it beyond you."
"It has been a most remarkable experience."
"That bandage tells of adventures," said I. "Won't
you tell us what has happened?"
"After breakfast, my dear Watson. Remember that I
have breathed thirty mile of Surrey air this morning.
I suppose that there has been no answer from my cabman
advertisement? Well, well, we cannot expect to score
every time."
The table was all laid, and just as I was about to
ring Mrs. Hudson entered wit the tea and coffee. A
few minutes later she brought in three covers, and we
all drew up to the table, Holmes ravenous, I curious,
and Phelps in the gloomiest state of depression.
"Mrs. Hudson has risen to the occasion," said Holmes,
uncovering a dish of curried chicken. "Her cuisine is
a little limited, but she has as good an idea of
breakfast as a Scotch-woman. What have you here,
Watson?"
"Ham and eggs," I answered.
"Good! What are you going to take, Mr.
Phelps--curried fowl or eggs, or will you help
yourself?"
"Thank you. I can eat nothing," said Phelps.
"Oh, come! Try the dish before you."
"Thank you, I would really rather not."
"Well, then," said Holmes, with a mischievous twinkle,
"I suppose that you have no objection to helping me?"
Phelps raised the cover, and as hi did so he uttered a
scream, and sat there staring with a face as white as
the plate upon which he looked. Across the centre of
it was lying a little cylinder of blue-gray paper. He
caught it up, devoured it with his eyes, and then
danced madly about the room, passing it to his bosom
and shrieking out in his delight. Then he fell back
into an arm-chair so limp and exhausted with his own
emotions that we had to pour brandy down his throat to
keep him from fainting.
"There! there!" said Holmes, soothing, patting him
upon the shoulder. "It was too bad to spring it on
you like this, but Watson here will tell you that I
never can resist a touch of the dramatic."
Phelps seized his hand and kissed it. "God bless
you!" he cried. "You have saved my honor."
"Well, my own was at stake, you know," said Holmes.
"I assure you it is just as hateful to me to fail in a
case as it can be to you to blunder over a
commission."
Phelps thrust away the precious document into the
innermost pocket of his coat.
"I have not the heart to interrupt your breakfast any
further, and yet I am dying to know how you got it and
where it was."
Sherlock Holmes swallowed a cup of coffee, and turned
his attention to the ham and eggs. Then he rose, lit
his pipe, and settled himself down into his chair.
"I'll tell you what I did first, and how I came to do
it afterwards," said he. "After leaving you at the
station I went for a charming walk through some
admirable Surrey scenery to a pretty little village
called Ripley, where I had my tea at an inn, and took
the precaution of filling my flask and of putting a
paper of sandwiches in my pocket. There I remained
until evening, when I set off for Woking again, and
found myself in the high-road outside Briarbrae just
after sunset.
"Well, I waited until the road was clear--it is never
a very frequented one at any time, I fancy--and then I
clambered over the fence into the grounds."
"Surely the gate was open!" ejaculated Phelps.
"Yes, but I have a peculiar taste in these matters. I
chose the place where the three fir-trees stand, and
behind their screen I got over without the least
chance of any one in the house being able to see me.
I crouched down among the bushes on the other side,
and crawled from one to the other--witness the
disreputable state of my trouser knees--until I had
reached the clump of rhododendrons just opposite to
your bedroom window. There I squatted down and
awaited developments.
"The blind was not down in your room, and I could see
Miss Harrison sitting there reading by the table. It
was quarter-past ten when she closed her book,
fastened the shutters, and retired.
"I heard her shut the door, and felt quite sure that
she had turned the key in the lock."
"The key!" ejaculated Phelps.
"Yes; I had given Miss Harrison instructions to lock
the door on the outside and take the key with her when
she went to bed. She carried out every one of my
injunctions to the letter, and certainly without her
cooperation you would not have that paper in you
coat-pocket. She departed then and the lights went
out, and I was left squatting in the
> rhododendron-bush.
"The night was fine, but still it was a very weary
vigil. Of course it has the sort of excitement about
it that the sportsman feels when he lies beside the
water-course and waits for the big game. It was very
long, though--almost as long, Watson, as when you and
I waited in that deadly room when we looked into the
little problem of the Speckled Band. There was a
church-clock down at Woking which struck the quarters,
and I thought more than once that it had stopped. At
last however about two in the morning, I suddenly
heard the gentle sound of a bolt being pushed back and
the creaking of a key. A moment later the servant's
door was opened, and Mr. Joseph Harrison stepped out
into the moonlight."
"Joseph!" ejaculated Phelps.
"He was bare-headed, but he had a black coat thrown
over his shoulder so that he could conceal his face in
an instant if there were any alarm. He walked on
tiptoe under the shadow of the wall, and when he
reached the window he worked a long-bladed knife
through the sash and pushed back the catch. Then he
flung open the window, and putting his knife through
the crack in the shutters, he thrust the bar up and
swung them open.
"From where I lay I had a perfect view of the inside
of the room and of every one of his movements. He lit
the two candles which stood upon the mantelpiece, and
then he proceeded to turn back the corner of the
carpet in the neighborhood of the door. Presently he
stopped and picked out a square piece of board, such
as is usually left to enable plumbers to get at the
joints of the gas-pipes. This one covered, as a
matter of fact, the T joint which gives off the pipe
which supplies the kitchen underneath. Out of this
hiding-place he drew that little cylinder of paper,
pushed down the board, rearranged the carpet, blew out
the candles, and walked straight into my arms as I
stood waiting for him outside the window.
"Well, he has rather more viciousness than I gave him
credit for, has Master Joseph. He flew at me with his
knife, and I had to grass him twice, and got a cut
over the knuckles, before I had the upper hand of him.
He looked murder out of the only eye he could see with
when we had finished, but he listened to reason and
gave up the papers. Having got them I let my man go,
but I wired full particulars to Forbes this morning.
If he is quick enough to catch is bird, well and good.
But if, as I shrewdly suspect, he finds the nest empty
before he gets there, why, all the better for the
government. I fancy that Lord Holdhurst for one, and
Mr. Percy Phelps for another, would very much rather
that the affair never got as far as a police-court.
"My God!" gasped our client. "Do you tell me that
during these long ten weeks of agony the stolen papers
were within the very room with me all the time?"
"So it was."
"And Joseph! Joseph a villain and a thief!"
"Hum! I am afraid Joseph's character is a rather
deeper and more dangerous one than one might judge
from his appearance. From what I have heard from him
this morning, I gather that he has lost heavily in
dabbling with stocks, and that he is ready to do
anything on earth to better his fortunes. Being an
absolutely selfish man, when a chance presented itself
he did not allow either his sister's happiness or your
reputation to hold his hand."
Percy Phelps sank back in his chair. "My head
whirls," said he. "Your words have dazed me."
"The principal difficulty in your case," remarked
Holmes, in his didactic fashion, "lay in the fact of
there being too much evidence. What was vital was
overlaid and hidden by what was irrelevant. Of all
the facts which were presented to us we had to pick
just those which we deemed to be essential, and then
piece them together in their order, so as to
reconstruct this very remarkable chain of events. I
had already begun to suspect Joseph, from the fact
that you had intended to travel home with him that
night, and that therefore it was a likely enough thing
that he should call for you, knowing the Foreign
Office well, upon his way. When I heard that some one
had been so anxious to get into the bedroom, in which
no one but Joseph could have concealed anything--you
told us in your narrative how you had turned Joseph
out when you arrived with the doctor--my suspicions
all changed to certainties, especially as the attempt
was made on the first night upon which the nurse was
absent, showing that the intruder was well acquainted
with the ways of the house."
"How blind I have been!"
"The facts of the case, as far as I have worked them
out, are these: this Joseph Harrison entered the
office through the Charles Street door, and knowing
his way he walked straight into your room the instant
after you left it. Finding no one there he promptly
rang the bell, and at the instant that he did so his
eyes caught the paper upon the table. A glance showed
him that chance had put in his way a State document of
immense value, and in an instant he had thrust it into
his pocket and was gone. A few minutes elapsed, as
you remember, before the sleepy commissionnaire drew
your attention to the bell, and those were just enough
to give the thief time to make his escape.
"He made his way to Woking by the first train, and
having examined his booty and assured himself that it
really was of immense value, he had concealed it in
what he thought was a very safe place, with the
intention of taking it out again in a day or two, and
carrying it to the French embassy, or wherever he
thought that a long price was to be had. Then came
your sudden return. He, without a moment's warning,
was bundled out of his room, and from that time onward
there were always at least two of you there to prevent
him from regaining his treasure. The situation to him
must have been a maddening one. But at last he
thought he saw his chance. He tried to steal in, but
was baffled by your wakefulness. You remember that
you did not take your usual draught that night."
"I remember."
"I fancy that he had taken steps to make that draught
efficacious, and that he quite relied upon your being
unconscious. Of course, I understood that he would
repeat the attempt whenever it could be done with
safety. Your leaving the room gave him the chance he
wanted. I kept Miss Harrison in it all day so that he
might not anticipate us. Then, having given him the
idea that the coast was clear, I kept guard as I have
described. I already knew that the papers were
probably in the room, but I had no desire to rip up
all
the planking and skirting in search of them. I
let him take them, therefore, from the hiding-place,
and so saved myself an infinity of trouble. Is there
any other point which I can make clear?"
"Why did he try the window on the first occasion," I
asked, "when he might have entered by the door?"
"In reaching the door he would have to pass seven
bedrooms. On the other hand, he could get out on to
the lawn with ease. Anything else?"
"You do not think," asked Phelps, "that he had any
murderous intention? The knife was only meant as a
tool."
"It may be so," answered Holmes, shrugging his
shoulders. "I can only say for certain that Mr.
Joseph Harrison is a gentleman to whose mercy I should
be extremely unwilling to trust."
Adventure XI
The Final Problem
It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to
write these the last words in which I shall ever
record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr.
Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an incoherent
and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion,
I have endeavored to give some account of my strange
experiences in his company from the chance which first
brought us together at the period of the "Study in
Scarlet," up to the time of his interference in the
matter of the "Naval Treaty"--and interference which
had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious
international complication. It was my intention to
have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that
event which has created a void in my life which the
lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand
has been forced, however, by the recent letters in
which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his
brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts
before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone
know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am
satisfied that the time has come when on good purpose
is to be served by its suppression. As far as I know,
there have been only three accounts in the public
press: that in the Journal de Geneve on May 6th,
1891, the Reuter's despatch in the English papers on
May 7th, and finally the recent letter to which I have
alluded. Of these the first and second were extremely
condensed, while the last is, as I shall now sow, an
absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to
tell for the first time what really took place between
Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my
subsequent start in private practice, the very
intimate relations which had existed between Holmes
and myself became to some extent modified. He still
came to me from time to time when he desired a
companion in his investigation, but these occasions
grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the
year 1890 there were only three cases of which I
retain any record. During the winter of that year and
the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he
had been engaged by the French government upon a
matter of supreme importance, and I received two notes
from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from Nimes, from
which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to
be a long one. It was with some surprise, therefore,
that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the
evening of April 24th. It struck me that he was
looking even paler and thinner than usual.
"Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely,"
he remarked, in answer to my look rather than to my
words; "I have been a little pressed of late. Have
you any objection to my closing your shutters?"
The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the
table at which I had been reading. Holmes edged his
way round the wall and flinging the shutters together,
he bolted them securely.
"You are afraid of something?" I asked.
"Well, I am."
"Of what?"
"Of air-guns."
"My dear Holmes, what do you mean?"
"I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to
understand that I am by no means a nervous man. At
the same time, it is stupidity rather than courage to
refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.