Bab Bab 14 · Part II - The Conclusion.

. Part II - 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 wandered on

in a way which would have been impossible had there been anyone in

charge of it. Where, then, could the driver be, unless he were inside

the house? Again, it is absurd to suppose that any sane man would carry

out a deliberate crime under the very eyes, as it were, of a third

person, who was sure to betray him. Lastly, supposing one man wished to

dog another through London, what better means could he adopt than to

turn cabdriver. All these considerations led me to the irresistible

conclusion that Jefferson Hope was to be found among the jarveys of the

Metropolis.

“If he had been one there was no reason to believe that he had ceased

to be. On the contrary, from his point of view, any sudden change would

be likely to draw attention to himself. He would, probably, for a time

at least, continue to perform his duties. There was no reason to

suppose that he was going under an assumed name. Why should he change

his name in a country where no one knew his original one? I therefore

organized my Street Arab detective corps, and sent them systematically

to every cab proprietor in London until they ferreted out the man that

I wanted. How well they succeeded, and how quickly I took advantage of

it, are still fresh in your recollection. The murder of Stangerson was

an incident which was entirely unexpected, but which could hardly in

any case have been prevented. Through it, as you know, I came into

possession of the pills, the existence of which I had already surmised.

You see the whole thing is a chain of logical sequences without a break

or flaw.”

“It is wonderful!” I cried. “Your merits should be publicly recognized.

You should publish an account of the case. If you won’t, I will for

you.”

“You may do what you like, Doctor,” he answered. “See here!” he

continued, handing a paper over to me, “look at this!”

It was the _Echo_ for the day, and the paragraph to which he pointed

was devoted to the case in question.

“The public,” it said, “have lost a sensational treat through the

sudden death of the man Hope, who was suspected of the murder of Mr.

Enoch Drebber and of Mr. Joseph Stangerson. The details of the case

will probably be never known now, though we are informed upon good

authority that the crime was the result of an old standing and romantic

feud, in which love and Mormonism bore a part. It seems that both the

victims belonged, in their younger days, to the Latter Day Saints, and

Hope, the deceased prisoner, hails also from Salt Lake City. If the

case has had no other effect, it, at least, brings out in the most

striking manner the efficiency of our detective police force, and will

serve as a lesson to all foreigners that they will do wisely to settle

their feuds at home, and not to carry them on to British soil. It is an

open secret that the credit of this smart capture belongs entirely to

the well-known Scotland Yard officials, Messrs. Lestrade and Gregson.

The man was apprehended, it appears, in the rooms of a certain Mr.

Sherlock Holmes, who has himself, as an amateur, shown some talent in

the detective line, and who, with such instructors, may hope in time to

attain to some degree of their skill. It is expected that a testimonial

of some sort will be presented to the two officers as a fitting

recognition of their services.”

“Didn’t I tell you so when we started?” cried Sherlock Holmes with a

laugh. “That’s the result of all our Study in Scarlet: to get them a

testimonial!”

“Never mind,” I answered, “I have all the facts in my journal, and the

public shall know them. In the meantime you must make yourself

contented by the consciousness of success, like the Roman miser—

“‘Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo

Ipse domi simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.’”