eyes. It was but for a moment, for the action of the alkaloid is
rapid. A spasm of pain contorted his features; he threw his hands out
in front of him, staggered, and then, with a hoarse cry, fell heavily
upon the floor. I turned him over with my foot, and placed my hand
upon his heart. There was no movement. He was dead!
"The blood had been streaming from my nose, but I had taken no notice
of it. I don't know what it was that put it into my head to write
upon the wall with it. Perhaps it was some mischievous idea of
setting the police upon a wrong track, for I felt light-hearted and
cheerful. I remembered a German being found in New York with RACHE
written up above him, and it was argued at the time in the newspapers
that the secret societies must have done it. I guessed that what
puzzled the New Yorkers would puzzle the Londoners, so I dipped my
finger in my own blood and printed it on a convenient place on the
wall. Then I walked down to my cab and found that there was nobody
about, and that the night was still very wild. I had driven some
distance when I put my hand into the pocket in which I usually kept
Lucy's ring, and found that it was not there. I was thunderstruck at
this, for it was the only memento that I had of her. Thinking that I
might have dropped it when I stooped over Drebber's body, I drove
back, and leaving my cab in a side street, I went boldly up to the
house--for I was ready to dare anything rather than lose the ring.
When I arrived there, I walked right into the arms of a
police-officer who was coming out, and only managed to disarm his
suspicions by pretending to be hopelessly drunk.
"That was how Enoch Drebber came to his end. All I had to do then was
to do as much for Stangerson, and so pay off John Ferrier's debt. I
knew that he was staying at Halliday's Private Hotel, and I hung
about all day, but he never came out. I fancy that he suspected
something when Drebber failed to put in an appearance. He was
cunning, was Stangerson, and always on his guard. If he thought he
could keep me off by staying indoors he was very much mistaken. I
soon found out which was the window of his bedroom, and early next
morning I took advantage of some ladders which were lying in the lane
behind the hotel, and so made my way into his room in the grey of the
dawn. I woke him up and told him that the hour had come when he was
to answer for the life he had taken so long before. I described
Drebber's death to him, and I gave him the same choice of the
poisoned pills. Instead of grasping at the chance of safety which
that offered him, he sprang from his bed and flew at my throat. In
self-defence I stabbed him to the heart. It would have been the same
in any case, for Providence would never have allowed his guilty hand
to pick out anything but the poison.
"I have little more to say, and it's as well, for I am about done up.
I went on cabbing it for a day or so, intending to keep at it until I
could save enough to take me back to America. I was standing in the
yard when a ragged youngster asked if there was a cabby there called
Jefferson Hope, and said that his cab was wanted by a gentleman at
221b, Baker Street. I went round, suspecting no harm, and the next
thing I knew, this young man here had the bracelets on my wrists, and
as neatly snackled as ever I saw in my life. That's the whole of my
story, gentlemen. You may consider me to be a murderer; but I hold
that I am just as much an officer of justice as you are."
So thrilling had the man's narrative been, and his manner was so
impressive that we had sat silent and absorbed. Even the professional
detectives, blase as they were in every detail of crime, appeared to
be keenly interested in the man's story. When he finished we sat for
some minutes in a stillness which was only broken by the scratching
of Lestrade's pencil as he gave the finishing touches to his
shorthand account.
"There is only one point on which I should like a little more
information," Sherlock Holmes said at last. "Who was your accomplice
who came for the ring which I advertised?"
The prisoner winked at my friend jocosely. "I can tell my own
secrets," he said, "but I don't get other people into trouble. I saw
your advertisement, and I thought it might be a plant, or it might be
the ring which I wanted. My friend volunteered to go and see. I think
you'll own he did it smartly."
"Not a doubt of that," said Holmes heartily.
"Now, gentlemen," the Inspector remarked gravely, "the forms of the
law must be complied with. On Thursday the prisoner will be brought
before the magistrates, and your attendance will be required. Until
then I will be responsible for him." He rang the bell as he spoke,
and Jefferson Hope was led off by a couple of warders, while my
friend and I made our way out of the Station and took a cab back to
Baker Street.
CHAPTER VII
The Conclusion
We had all been warned to appear before the magistrates upon the
Thursday; but when the Thursday came there was no occasion for our
testimony. A higher Judge had taken the matter in hand, and Jefferson
Hope had been summoned before a tribunal where strict justice would
be meted out to him. On the very night after his capture the aneurism
burst, and he was found in the morning stretched upon the floor of
the cell, with a placid smile upon his face, as though he had been
able in his dying moments to look back upon a useful life, and on
work well done.
"Gregson and Lestrade will be wild about his death," Holmes remarked,
as we chatted it over next evening. "Where will their grand
advertisement be now?"
"I don't see that they had very much to do with his capture," I
answered.
"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence," returned
my companion, bitterly. "The question is, what can you make people
believe that you have done. Never mind," he continued, more brightly,
after a pause. "I would not have missed the investigation for
anything. There has been no better case within my recollection.
Simple as it was, there were several most instructive points about
it."
"Simple!" I ejaculated.
"Well, really, it can hardly be described as otherwise," said
Sherlock Holmes, smiling at my surprise. "The proof of its intrinsic
simplicity is, that without any help save a few very ordinary
deductions I was able to lay my hand upon the criminal within three
days."
"That is true," said I.
"I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is
usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a problem of this
sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a
very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not
practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful
to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are
fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason
analytically."
"I confess," said I, "that I do not quite follow you."
"I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can make it
clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will
tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together
in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass.
There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would
be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps
were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I
talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically."
"I understand," said I.
"Now this was a case in which you were given the result and had to
find everything else for yourself. Now let me endeavour to show you
the different steps in my reasoning. To begin at the beginning. I
approached the house, as you know, on foot, and with my mind entirely
free from all impressions. I naturally began by examining the
roadway, and there, as I have already explained to you, I saw clearly
the marks of a cab, which, I ascertained by inquiry, must have been
there during the night. I satisfied myself that it was a cab and not
a private carriage by the narrow gauge of the wheels. The ordinary
London growler is considerably less wide than a gentleman's brougham.
"This was the first point gained. I then walked slowly down the
garden path, which happened to be composed of a clay soil, peculiarly
suitable for taking impressions. No doubt it appeared to you to be a
mere trampled line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon
its surface had a meaning. There is no branch of detective science
which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing
footsteps. Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much
practice has made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy footmarks
of the constables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had
first passed through the garden. It was easy to tell that they had
been before the others, because in places their marks had been
entirely obliterated by the others coming upon the top of them. In
this way my second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal
visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I
calculated from the length of his stride), and the other fashionably
dressed, to judge from the small and elegant impression left by his
boots.
"On entering the house this last inference was confirmed. My
well-booted man lay before me. The tall one, then, had done the
murder, if murder there was. There was no wound upon the dead man's
person, but the agitated expression upon his face assured me that he
had foreseen his fate before it came upon him. Men who die from heart
disease, or any sudden natural cause, never by any chance exhibit
agitation upon their features. Having sniffed the dead man's lips I
detected a slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he
had had poison forced upon him. Again, I argued that it had been
forced upon him from the hatred and fear expressed upon his face. By
the method of exclusion, I had arrived at this result, for no other
hypothesis would meet the facts. Do not imagine that it was a very
unheard of idea. The forcible administration of poison is by no means
a new thing in criminal annals. The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of
Leturier in Montpellier, will occur at once to any toxicologist.
"And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had
not been the object of the murder, for nothing was taken. Was it
politics, then, or was it a woman? That was the question which
confronted me. I was inclined from the first to the latter
supposition. Political assassins are only too glad to do their work
and to fly. This murder had, on the contrary, been done most
deliberately, and the perpetrator had left his tracks all over the
room, showing that he had been there all the time. It must have been
a private wrong, and not a political one, which called for such a
methodical revenge. When the inscription was discovered upon the wall
I was more inclined than ever to my opinion. The thing was too
evidently a blind. When the ring was found, however, it settled the
question. Clearly the murderer had used it to remind his victim of
some dead or absent woman. It was at this point that I asked Gregson
whether he had enquired in his telegram to Cleveland as to any
particular point in Mr. Drebber's former career. He answered, you
remember, in the negative.
"I then proceeded to make a careful examination of the room, which
confirmed me in my opinion as to the murderer's height, and furnished
me with the additional details as to the Trichinopoly cigar and the
length of his nails. I had already come to the conclusion, since
there were no signs of a struggle, that the blood which covered the
floor had burst from the murderer's nose in his excitement. I could
perceive that the track of blood coincided with the track of his
feet. It is seldom that any man, unless he is very full-blooded,
breaks out in this way through emotion, so I hazarded the opinion
that the criminal was probably a robust and ruddy-faced man. Events
proved that I had judged correctly.
"Having left the house, I proceeded to do what Gregson had neglected.
I telegraphed to the head of the police at Cleveland, limiting my
enquiry to the circumstances connected with the marriage of Enoch
Drebber. The answer was conclusive. It told me that Drebber had
already applied for the protection of the law against an old rival in
love, named Jefferson Hope, and that this same Hope was at present in
Europe. I knew now that I held the clue to the mystery in my hand,
and all that remained was to secure the murderer.
"I had already determined in my own mind that the man who had walked
into the house with Drebber, was none other than the man who had
driven the cab. The marks in the road showed me that the horse had
