"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 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 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.
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."
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
