He was more attentive when Susan, who waited upon us at lunch,
volunteered the information that she believed Mr. Smith had been out
for a walk yesterday morning, and that he had only returned half an
hour before the tragedy occurred. I could not myself see the bearing
of this incident, but I clearly perceived that Holmes was weaving it
into the general scheme which he had formed in his brain. Suddenly he
sprang from his chair and glanced at his watch. "Two o'clock,
gentlemen," said he. "We must go up and have it out with our friend
the Professor."
The old man had just finished his lunch, and certainly his empty dish
bore evidence to the good appetite with which his housekeeper had
credited him. He was, indeed, a weird figure as he turned his white
mane and his glowing eyes towards us. The eternal cigarette
smouldered in his mouth. He had been dressed and was seated in an
arm-chair by the fire.
"Well, Mr. Holmes, have you solved this mystery yet?" He shoved the
large tin of cigarettes which stood on a table beside him towards my
companion. Holmes stretched out his hand at the same moment, and
between them they tipped the box over the edge. For a minute or two
we were all on our knees retrieving stray cigarettes from impossible
places. When we rose again I observed that Holmes's eyes were shining
and his cheeks tinged with colour. Only at a crisis have I seen those
battle-signals flying.
"Yes," said he, "I have solved it."
Stanley Hopkins and I stared in amazement. Something like a sneer
quivered over the gaunt features of the old Professor.
"Indeed! In the garden?"
"No, here."
"Here! When?"
"This instant."
"You are surely joking, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. You compel me to tell
you that this is too serious a matter to be treated in such a
fashion."
"I have forged and tested every link of my chain, Professor Coram,
and I am sure that it is sound. What your motives are or what exact
part you play in this strange business I am not yet able to say. In a
few minutes I shall probably hear it from your own lips. Meanwhile I
will reconstruct what is past for your benefit, so that you may know
the information which I still require.
"A lady yesterday entered your study. She came with the intention of
possessing herself of certain documents which were in your bureau.
She had a key of her own. I have had an opportunity of examining
yours, and I do not find that slight discolouration which the scratch
made upon the varnish would have produced. You were not an accessory,
therefore, and she came, so far as I can read the evidence, without
your knowledge to rob you."
The Professor blew a cloud from his lips. "This is most interesting
and instructive," said he. "Have you no more to add? Surely, having
traced this lady so far, you can also say what has become of her."
"I will endeavour to do so. In the first place she was seized by your
secretary, and stabbed him in order to escape. This catastrophe I am
inclined to regard as an unhappy accident, for I am convinced that
the lady had no intention of inflicting so grievous an injury. An
assassin does not come unarmed. Horrified by what she had done she
rushed wildly away from the scene of the tragedy. Unfortunately for
her she had lost her glasses in the scuffle, and as she was extremely
short-sighted she was really helpless without them. She ran down a
corridor, which she imagined to be that by which she had come--both
were lined with cocoanut matting--and it was only when it was too
late that she understood that she had taken the wrong passage and
that her retreat was cut off behind her. What was she to do? She
could not go back. She could not remain where she was. She must go
on. She went on. She mounted a stair, pushed open a door, and found
herself in your room."
The old man sat with his mouth open staring wildly at Holmes.
Amazement and fear were stamped upon his expressive features. Now,
with an effort, he shrugged his shoulders and burst into insincere
laughter.
"All very fine, Mr. Holmes," said he. "But there is one little flaw
in your splendid theory. I was myself in my room, and I never left it
during the day."
"I am aware of that, Professor Coram."
"And you mean to say that I could lie upon that bed and not be aware
that a woman had entered my room?"
"I never said so. You were aware of it. You spoke with her. You
recognised her. You aided her to escape."
Again the Professor burst into high-keyed laughter. He had risen to
his feet and his eyes glowed like embers.
"You are mad!" he cried. "You are talking insanely. I helped her to
escape? Where is she now?"
"She is there," said Holmes, and he pointed to a high bookcase in the
corner of the room.
I saw the old man throw up his arms, a terrible convulsion passed
over his grim face, and he fell back in his chair. At the same
instant the bookcase at which Holmes pointed swung round upon a
hinge, and a woman rushed out into the room. "You are right!" she
cried, in a strange foreign voice. "You are right! I am here."
She was brown with the dust and draped with the cobwebs which had
come from the walls of her hiding-place. Her face, too, was streaked
with grime, and at the best she could never have been handsome, for
she had the exact physical characteristics which Holmes had divined,
with, in addition, a long and obstinate chin. What with her natural
blindness, and what with the change from dark to light, she stood as
one dazed, blinking about her to see where and who we were. And yet,
in spite of all these disadvantages, there was a certain nobility in
the woman's bearing, a gallantry in the defiant chin and in the
upraised head, which compelled something of respect and admiration.
Stanley Hopkins had laid his hand upon her arm and claimed her as his
prisoner, but she waved him aside gently, and yet with an
overmastering dignity which compelled obedience. The old man lay back
in his chair, with a twitching face, and stared at her with brooding
eyes.
"Yes, sir, I am your prisoner," she said. "From where I stood I could
hear everything, and I know that you have learned the truth. I
confess it all. It was I who killed the young man. But you are right,
you who say it was an accident. I did not even know that it was a
knife which I held in my hand, for in my despair I snatched anything
from the table and struck at him to make him let me go. It is the
truth that I tell."
"Madam," said Holmes, "I am sure that it is the truth. I fear that
you are far from well."
She had turned a dreadful colour, the more ghastly under the dark
dust-streaks upon her face. She seated herself on the side of the
bed; then she resumed.
"I have only a little time here," she said, "but I would have you to
know the whole truth. I am this man's wife. He is not an Englishman.
He is a Russian. His name I will not tell."
For the first time the old man stirred. "God bless you, Anna!" he
cried. "God bless you!"
She cast a look of the deepest disdain in his direction. "Why should
you cling so hard to that wretched life of yours, Sergius?" said she.
"It has done harm to many and good to none--not even to yourself.
However, it is not for me to cause the frail thread to be snapped
before God's time. I have enough already upon my soul since I crossed
the threshold of this cursed house. But I must speak or I shall be
too late.
"I have said, gentlemen, that I am this man's wife. He was fifty and
I a foolish girl of twenty when we married. It was in a city of
Russia, a University--I will not name the place."
"God bless you, Anna!" murmured the old man again.
"We were reformers--revolutionists--Nihilists, you understand. He and
I and many more. Then there came a time of trouble, a police officer
was killed, many were arrested, evidence was wanted, and in order to
save his own life and to earn a great reward my husband betrayed his
own wife and his companions. Yes, we were all arrested upon his
confession. Some of us found our way to the gallows and some to
Siberia. I was among these last, but my term was not for life. My
husband came to England with his ill-gotten gains, and has lived in
quiet ever since, knowing well that if the Brotherhood knew where he
was not a week would pass before justice would be done."
The old man reached out a trembling hand and helped himself to a
cigarette. "I am in your hands, Anna," said he. "You were always good
to me."
"I have not yet told you the height of his villainy," said she.
"Among our comrades of the Order there was one who was the friend of
my heart. He was noble, unselfish, loving--all that my husband was
not. He hated violence. We were all guilty--if that is guilt--but he
was not. He wrote for ever dissuading us from such a course. These
letters would have saved him. So would my diary, in which from day to
day I had entered both my feelings towards him and the view which
each of us had taken. My husband found and kept both diary and
letters. He hid them, and he tried hard to swear away the young man's
life. In this he failed, but Alexis was sent a convict to Siberia,
where now, at this moment, he works in a salt mine. Think of that,
you villain, you villain; now, now, at this very moment, Alexis, a
man whose name you are not worthy to speak, works and lives like a
slave, and yet I have your life in my hands and I let you go."
"You were always a noble woman, Anna," said the old man, puffing at
his cigarette.
She had risen, but she fell back again with a little cry of pain.
"I must finish," she said. "When my term was over I set myself to get
the diary and letters which, if sent to the Russian Government, would
procure my friend's release. I knew that my husband had come to
England. After months of searching I discovered where he was. I knew
that he still had the diary, for when I was in Siberia I had a letter
from him once reproaching me and quoting some passages from its
pages. Yet I was sure that with his revengeful nature he would never
give it to me of his own free will. I must get it for myself. With
this object I engaged an agent from a private detective firm, who
entered my husband's house as secretary--it was your second
secretary, Sergius, the one who left you so hurriedly. He found that
papers were kept in the cupboard, and he got an impression of the
key. He would not go farther. He furnished me with a plan of the
house, and he told me that in the forenoon the study was always
empty, as the secretary was employed up here. So at last I took my
courage in both hands and I came down to get the papers for myself. I
succeeded, but at what a cost!
"I had just taken the papers and was locking the cupboard when the
young man seized me. I had seen him already that morning. He had met
me in the road and I had asked him to tell me where Professor Coram
lived, not knowing that he was in his employ."
"Exactly! exactly!" said Holmes. "The secretary came back and told
his employer of the woman he had met. Then in his last breath he
tried to send a message that it was she--the she whom he had just
discussed with him."
"You must let me speak," said the woman, in an imperative voice, and
her face contracted as if in pain. "When he had fallen I rushed from
the room, chose the wrong door, and found myself in my husband's
room. He spoke of giving me up. I showed him that if he did so his
life was in my hands. If he gave me to the law I could give him to
the Brotherhood. It was not that I wished to live for my own sake,
but it was that I desired to accomplish my purpose. He knew that I
would do what I said--that his own fate was involved in mine. For
that reason and for no other he shielded me. He thrust me into that
dark hiding-place, a relic of old days, known only to himself. He
took his meals in his own room, and so was able to give me part of
his food. It was agreed that when the police left the house I should
slip away by night and come back no more. But in some way you have
read our plans." She tore from the bosom of her dress a small packet.
"These are my last words," said she; "here is the packet which will
save Alexis. I confide it to your honour and to your love of justice.
Take it! You will deliver it at the Russian Embassy. Now I have done
my duty, and--"
"Stop her!" cried Holmes. He had bounded across the room and had
wrenched a small phial from her hand.
"Too late!" she said, sinking back on the bed. "Too late! I took the
poison before I left my hiding-place. My head swims! I am going! I
charge you, sir, to remember the packet."
"A simple case, and yet in some ways an instructive one," Holmes
