“You say that she must have come back this way?”
“Yes, sir, there is no other.”
“On this strip of grass?”
“Certainly, Mr. Holmes.”
“Hum! It was a very remarkable performance—very remarkable. Well,
I think we have exhausted the path. Let us go farther. This
garden door is usually kept open, I suppose? Then this visitor
had nothing to do but to walk in. The idea of murder was not in
her mind, or she would have provided herself with some sort of
weapon, instead of having to pick this knife off the
writing-table. She advanced along this corridor, leaving no
traces upon the cocoanut matting. Then she found herself in this
study. How long was she there? We have no means of judging.”
“Not more than a few minutes, sir. I forgot to tell you that Mrs.
Marker, the housekeeper, had been in there tidying not very long
before—about a quarter of an hour, she says.”
“Well, that gives us a limit. Our lady enters this room, and what
does she do? She goes over to the writing-table. What for? Not
for anything in the drawers. If there had been anything worth her
taking, it would surely have been locked up. No, it was for
something in that wooden bureau. Halloa! what is that scratch
upon the face of it? Just hold a match, Watson. Why did you not
tell me of this, Hopkins?”
The mark which he was examining began upon the brass-work on the
right-hand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four
inches, where it had scratched the varnish from the surface.
“I noticed it, Mr. Holmes, but you’ll always find scratches round
a keyhole.”
“This is recent, quite recent. See how the brass shines where it
is cut. An old scratch would be the same colour as the surface.
Look at it through my lens. There’s the varnish, too, like earth
on each side of a furrow. Is Mrs. Marker there?”
A sad-faced, elderly woman came into the room.
“Did you dust this bureau yesterday morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you notice this scratch?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“I am sure you did not, for a duster would have swept away these
shreds of varnish. Who has the key of this bureau?”
“The Professor keeps it on his watch-chain.”
“Is it a simple key?”
“No, sir, it is a Chubb’s key.”
“Very good. Mrs. Marker, you can go. Now we are making a little
progress. Our lady enters the room, advances to the bureau, and
either opens it or tries to do so. While she is thus engaged,
young Willoughby Smith enters the room. In her hurry to withdraw
the key, she makes this scratch upon the door. He seizes her, and
she, snatching up the nearest object, which happens to be this
knife, strikes at him in order to make him let go his hold. The
blow is a fatal one. He falls and she escapes, either with or
without the object for which she has come. Is Susan, the maid,
there? Could anyone have got away through that door after the
time that you heard the cry, Susan?”
“No, sir, it is impossible. Before I got down the stair, I’d have
seen anyone in the passage. Besides, the door never opened, or I
would have heard it.”
“That settles this exit. Then no doubt the lady went out the way
she came. I understand that this other passage leads only to the
professor’s room. There is no exit that way?”
“No, sir.”
“We shall go down it and make the acquaintance of the professor.
Halloa, Hopkins! this is very important, very important indeed.
The professor’s corridor is also lined with cocoanut matting.”
“Well, sir, what of that?”
“Don’t you see any bearing upon the case? Well, well. I don’t
insist upon it. No doubt I am wrong. And yet it seems to me to be
suggestive. Come with me and introduce me.”
We passed down the passage, which was of the same length as that
which led to the garden. At the end was a short flight of steps
ending in a door. Our guide knocked, and then ushered us into the
professor’s bedroom.
It was a very large chamber, lined with innumerable volumes,
which had overflowed from the shelves and lay in piles in the
corners, or were stacked all round at the base of the cases. The
bed was in the centre of the room, and in it, propped up with
pillows, was the owner of the house. I have seldom seen a more
remarkable-looking person. It was a gaunt, aquiline face which
was turned towards us, with piercing dark eyes, which lurked in
deep hollows under overhung and tufted brows. His hair and beard
were white, save that the latter was curiously stained with
yellow around his mouth. A cigarette glowed amid the tangle of
white hair, and the air of the room was fetid with stale tobacco
smoke. As he held out his hand to Holmes, I perceived that it was
also stained with yellow nicotine.
“A smoker, Mr. Holmes?” said he, speaking in well-chosen English,
with a curious little mincing accent. “Pray take a cigarette. And
you, sir? I can recommend them, for I have them especially
prepared by Ionides, of Alexandria. He sends me a thousand at a
time, and I grieve to say that I have to arrange for a fresh
supply every fortnight. Bad, sir, very bad, but an old man has
few pleasures. Tobacco and my work—that is all that is left to
me.”
Holmes had lit a cigarette and was shooting little darting
glances all over the room.
“Tobacco and my work, but now only tobacco,” the old man
exclaimed. “Alas! what a fatal interruption! Who could have
foreseen such a terrible catastrophe? So estimable a young man! I
assure you that, after a few months’ training, he was an
admirable assistant. What do you think of the matter, Mr.
Holmes?”
“I have not yet made up my mind.”
“I shall indeed be indebted to you if you can throw a light where
all is so dark to us. To a poor bookworm and invalid like myself
such a blow is paralysing. I seem to have lost the faculty of
thought. But you are a man of action—you are a man of affairs. It
is part of the everyday routine of your life. You can preserve
your balance in every emergency. We are fortunate, indeed, in
having you at our side.”
Holmes was pacing up and down one side of the room whilst the old
professor was talking. I observed that he was smoking with
extraordinary rapidity. It was evident that he shared our host’s
liking for the fresh Alexandrian cigarettes.
“Yes, sir, it is a crushing blow,” said the old man. “That is my
_magnum opus_—the pile of papers on the side table yonder. It is
my analysis of the documents found in the Coptic monasteries of
Syria and Egypt, a work which will cut deep at the very
foundation of revealed religion. With my enfeebled health I do
not know whether I shall ever be able to complete it, now that my
assistant has been taken from me. Dear me! Mr. Holmes, why, you
are even a quicker smoker than I am myself.”
Holmes smiled.
“I am a connoisseur,” said he, taking another cigarette from the
box—his fourth—and lighting it from the stub of that which he had
finished. “I will not trouble you with any lengthy
cross-examination, Professor Coram, since I gather that you were
in bed at the time of the crime, and could know nothing about it.
I would only ask this: What do you imagine that this poor fellow
meant by his last words: ‘The professor—it was she’?”
The professor shook his head.
“Susan is a country girl,” said he, “and you know the incredible
stupidity of that class. I fancy that the poor fellow murmured
some incoherent delirious words, and that she twisted them into
this meaningless message.”
“I see. You have no explanation yourself of the tragedy?”
“Possibly an accident, possibly—I only breathe it among
ourselves—a suicide. Young men have their hidden troubles—some
affair of the heart, perhaps, which we have never known. It is a
more probable supposition than murder.”
“But the eyeglasses?”
“Ah! I am only a student—a man of dreams. I cannot explain the
practical things of life. But still, we are aware, my friend,
that love-gages may take strange shapes. By all means take
another cigarette. It is a pleasure to see anyone appreciate them
so. A fan, a glove, glasses—who knows what article may be carried
as a token or treasured when a man puts an end to his life? This
gentleman speaks of footsteps in the grass, but, after all, it is
easy to be mistaken on such a point. As to the knife, it might
well be thrown far from the unfortunate man as he fell. It is
possible that I speak as a child, but to me it seems that
Willoughby Smith has met his fate by his own hand.”
Holmes seemed struck by the theory thus put forward, and he
continued to walk up and down for some time, lost in thought and
consuming cigarette after cigarette.
“Tell me, Professor Coram,” he said, at last, “what is in that
cupboard in the bureau?”
“Nothing that would help a thief. Family papers, letters from my
poor wife, diplomas of universities which have done me honour.
Here is the key. You can look for yourself.”
Holmes picked up the key, and looked at it for an instant, then
he handed it back.
“No, I hardly think that it would help me,” said he. “I should
prefer to go quietly down to your garden, and turn the whole
matter over in my head. There is something to be said for the
theory of suicide which you have put forward. We must apologize
for having intruded upon you, Professor Coram, and I promise that
we won’t disturb you until after lunch. At two o’clock we will
come again, and report to you anything which may have happened in
the interval.”
Holmes was curiously distrait, and we walked up and down the
garden path for some time in silence.
“Have you a clue?” I asked, at last.
“It depends upon those cigarettes that I smoked,” said he. “It is
possible that I am utterly mistaken. The cigarettes will show
me.”
“My dear Holmes,” I exclaimed, “how on earth——”
“Well, well, you may see for yourself. If not, there’s no harm
done. Of course, we always have the optician clue to fall back
upon, but I take a short cut when I can get it. Ah, here is the
good Mrs. Marker! Let us enjoy five minutes of instructive
conversation with her.”
I may have remarked before that Holmes had, when he liked, a
peculiarly ingratiating way with women, and that he very readily
established terms of confidence with them. In half the time which
he had named, he had captured the housekeeper’s goodwill and was
chatting with her as if he had known her for years.
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, it is as you say, sir. He does smoke something
terrible. All day and sometimes all night, sir. I’ve seen that
room of a morning—well, sir, you’d have thought it was a London
fog. Poor young Mr. Smith, he was a smoker also, but not as bad
as the professor. His health—well, I don’t know that it’s better
nor worse for the smoking.”
“Ah!” said Holmes, “but it kills the appetite.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, sir.”
“I suppose the professor eats hardly anything?”
“Well, he is variable. I’ll say that for him.”
“I’ll wager he took no breakfast this morning, and won’t face his
lunch after all the cigarettes I saw him consume.”
“Well, you’re out there, sir, as it happens, for he ate a
remarkable big breakfast this morning. I don’t know when I’ve
known him make a better one, and he’s ordered a good dish of
cutlets for his lunch. I’m surprised myself, for since I came
into that room yesterday and saw young Mr. Smith lying there on
the floor, I couldn’t bear to look at food. Well, it takes all
sorts to make a world, and the professor hasn’t let it take his
appetite away.”
We loitered the morning away in the garden. Stanley Hopkins had
gone down to the village to look into some rumours of a strange
woman who had been seen by some children on the Chatham Road the
previous morning. As to my friend, all his usual energy seemed to
have deserted him. I had never known him handle a case in such a
half-hearted fashion. Even the news brought back by Hopkins that
he had found the children, and that they had undoubtedly seen a
woman exactly corresponding with Holmes’s description, and
wearing either spectacles or eyeglasses, failed to rouse any sign
of keen interest. 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 armchair 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
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
recognized 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
over-mastering 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 forever 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 a 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 paper; and was locking the cupboard, when
the young man seized me. I had seen him already that morning. He
had met me on 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 remarked, as we travelled back to town. “It hinged from
the outset upon the pince-nez. But for the fortunate chance of
the dying man having seized these, I am not sure that we could
ever have reached our solution. It was clear to me, from the
strength of the glasses, that the wearer must have been very
blind and helpless when deprived of them. When you asked me to
believe that she walked along a narrow strip of grass without
once making a false step, I remarked, as you may remember, that
it was a noteworthy performance. In my mind I set it down as an
impossible performance, save in the unlikely case that she had a
second pair of glasses. I was forced, therefore, to consider
seriously the hypothesis that she had remained within the house.
On perceiving the similarity of the two corridors, it became
clear that she might very easily have made such a mistake, and,
in that case, it was evident that she must have entered the
professor’s room. I was keenly on the alert, therefore, for
whatever would bear out this supposition, and I examined the room
narrowly for anything in the shape of a hiding-place. The carpet
seemed continuous and firmly nailed, so I dismissed the idea of a
trap-door. There might well be a recess behind the books. As you
are aware, such devices are common in old libraries. I observed
that books were piled on the floor at all other points, but that
one bookcase was left clear. This, then, might be the door. I
could see no marks to guide me, but the carpet was of a dun
colour, which lends itself very well to examination. I therefore
smoked a great number of those excellent cigarettes, and I
dropped the ash all over the space in front of the suspected
bookcase. It was a simple trick, but exceedingly effective. I
then went downstairs, and I ascertained, in your presence,
Watson, without your perceiving the drift of my remarks, that
Professor Coram’s consumption of food had increased—as one would
expect when he is supplying a second person. We then ascended to
the room again, when, by upsetting the cigarette-box, I obtained
a very excellent view of the floor, and was able to see quite
clearly, from the traces upon the cigarette ash, that the
prisoner had in our absence come out from her retreat. Well,
Hopkins, here we are at Charing Cross, and I congratulate you on
having brought your case to a successful conclusion. You are
going to headquarters, no doubt. I think, Watson, you and I will
drive together to the Russian Embassy.”