A Study in Scarlet Part II

Chapter 7

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 tes-
timony. A higher Judge had taken the matter in
hand, and Jefferson Hope had been summoned be-
fore 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 advertise-
ment 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 con-
sequence,” 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 sur-
prise. “The proof of its intrinsic simplicity is, that
without any help save a few very ordinary deduc
tions 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 your-
self. Now let me endeavour to show you the differ-
ent steps in my reasoning. To begin at the begin-
ning. I approached the house, as you know, on foot,
and with my mind entirely free from all impres-
sions. 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 sec-
ond 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 oth-
ers, 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 cal-
culated 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 dis-
ease, or any sudden natural cause, never by any
chance exhibit agitation upon their features. Hav-
ing 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 ad-
ministration 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 examina-
tion 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 opin-
ion 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 protec-
tion 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 be-
lieve that he had ceased to be. On the contrary,
from his point of view, any sudden chance 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 fer-
reted 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 un-
expected, 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 an-
swered. “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 de-
tails 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 se-
cret that the credit of this smart capture belongs
entirely to the well-known Scotland Yard officials,
Messrs. Lestrade and Gregson. The man was ap-
prehended, 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 tes-
timonial 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 contemplar in arca.’ ”