"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 youwhat the result would be. They can put those events together in theirminds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There arefew people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able toevolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which ledup to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoningbackwards, or analytically."
"I understand," said I.
"Now this was a case in which you were given the result and had tofind everything else for yourself. Now let me endeavour to show you thedifferent steps in my reasoning. To begin at the beginning. I approachedthe house, as you know, on foot, and with my mind entirely free from allimpressions. I naturally began by examining the roadway, and there, as Ihave already explained to you, I saw clearly the marks of a cab, which,I ascertained by inquiry, must have been there during the night. Isatisfied myself that it was a cab and not a private carriage by thenarrow gauge of the wheels. The ordinary London growler is considerablyless wide than a gentleman's brougham.
"This was the first point gained. I then walked slowly down the gardenpath, which happened to be composed of a clay soil, peculiarly suitablefor taking impressions. No doubt it appeared to you to be a meretrampled line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon itssurface had a meaning. There is no branch of detective science whichis so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps.Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practicehas made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy footmarks of theconstables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had first passedthrough the garden. It was easy to tell that they had been before theothers, because in places their marks had been entirely obliterated bythe others coming upon the top of them. In this way my second link wasformed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number,one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of hisstride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small andelegant impression left by his boots.
"On entering the house this last inference was confirmed. My well-bootedman lay before me. The tall one, then, had done the murder, if murderthere was. There was no wound upon the dead man's person, but theagitated expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen hisfate before it came upon him. Men who die from heart disease, or anysudden natural cause, never by any chance exhibit agitation upon theirfeatures. Having sniffed the dead man's lips I detected a slightly soursmell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had poison forced uponhim. Again, I argued that it had been forced upon him from the hatredand fear expressed upon his face. By the method of exclusion, I hadarrived at this result, for no other hypothesis would meet the facts.Do not imagine that it was a very unheard of idea. The forcibleadministration of poison is by no means a new thing in criminal annals.The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of Leturier in Montpellier, willoccur at once to any toxicologist.
"And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had notbeen 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. Politicalassassins are only too glad to do their work and to fly. This murderhad, on the contrary, been done most deliberately, and the perpetratorhad left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been thereall the time. It must have been a private wrong, and not a politicalone, which called for such a methodical revenge. When the inscriptionwas discovered upon the wall I was more inclined than ever to myopinion. The thing was too evidently a blind. When the ring was found,however, it settled the question. Clearly the murderer had used it toremind his victim of some dead or absent woman. It was at this pointthat I asked Gregson whether he had enquired in his telegram toCleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber's former career. Heanswered, you remember, in the negative.
"I then proceeded to make a careful examination of the room, whichconfirmed me in my opinion as to the murderer's height, and furnished mewith the additional details as to the Trichinopoly cigar and the lengthof his nails. I had already come to the conclusion, since there were nosigns of a struggle, that the blood which covered the floor had burstfrom the murderer's nose in his excitement. I could perceive that thetrack of blood coincided with the track of his feet. It is seldom thatany man, unless he is very full-blooded, breaks out in this way throughemotion, so I hazarded the opinion that the criminal was probably arobust and ruddy-faced man. Events proved that I had judged correctly.
"Having left the house, I proceeded to do what Gregson had neglected. Itelegraphed to the head of the police at Cleveland, limiting my enquiryto the circumstances connected with the marriage of Enoch Drebber. Theanswer was conclusive. It told me that Drebber had already applied forthe protection of the law against an old rival in love, named JeffersonHope, and that this same Hope was at present in Europe. I knew now thatI held the clue to the mystery in my hand, and all that remained was tosecure the murderer.
"I had already determined in my own mind that the man who had walkedinto the house with Drebber, was none other than the man who had driventhe cab. The marks in the road showed me that the horse had wanderedon in a way which would have been impossible had there been anyone incharge of it. Where, then, could the driver be, unless he were insidethe house? Again, it is absurd to suppose that any sane man would carryout a deliberate crime under the very eyes, as it were, of a thirdperson, who was sure to betray him. Lastly, supposing one man wishedto dog another through London, what better means could he adopt thanto turn cabdriver. All these considerations led me to the irresistibleconclusion that Jefferson Hope was to be found among the jarveys of theMetropolis.
"If he had been one there was no reason to believe that he had ceased tobe. On the contrary, from his point of view, any sudden change would belikely to draw attention to himself. He would, probably, for a time atleast, continue to perform his duties. The
re was no reason to supposethat he was going under an assumed name. Why should he change his namein a country where no one knew his original one? I therefore organizedmy Street Arab detective corps, and sent them systematically to everycab proprietor in London until they ferreted out the man that I wanted.How well they succeeded, and how quickly I took advantage of it, arestill fresh in your recollection. The murder of Stangerson was anincident which was entirely unexpected, but which could hardly inany case have been prevented. Through it, as you know, I came intopossession of the pills, the existence of which I had already surmised.You see the whole thing is a chain of logical sequences without a breakor 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 foryou."
"You may do what you like, Doctor," he answered. "See here!" hecontinued, handing a paper over to me, "look at this!"
It was the _Echo_ for the day, and the paragraph to which he pointed wasdevoted to the case in question.
"The public," it said, "have lost a sensational treat through the suddendeath of the man Hope, who was suspected of the murder of Mr. EnochDrebber and of Mr. Joseph Stangerson. The details of the case willprobably be never known now, though we are informed upon good authoritythat the crime was the result of an old standing and romantic feud, inwhich love and Mormonism bore a part. It seems that both the victimsbelonged, in their younger days, to the Latter Day Saints, and Hope, thedeceased prisoner, hails also from Salt Lake City. If the case has hadno other effect, it, at least, brings out in the most striking mannerthe efficiency of our detective police force, and will serve as a lessonto all foreigners that they will do wisely to settle their feuds athome, and not to carry them on to British soil. It is an open secretthat the credit of this smart capture belongs entirely to the well-knownScotland Yard officials, Messrs. Lestrade and Gregson. The man wasapprehended, it appears, in the rooms of a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes,who has himself, as an amateur, shown some talent in the detectiveline, and who, with such instructors, may hope in time to attain to somedegree of their skill. It is expected that a testimonial of some sortwill be presented to the two officers as a fitting recognition of theirservices."
"Didn't I tell you so when we started?" cried Sherlock Holmes with alaugh. "That's the result of all our Study in Scarlet: to get them atestimonial!"
"Never mind," I answered, "I have all the facts in my journal, and thepublic shall know them. In the meantime you must make yourself contentedby the consciousness of success, like the Roman miser--
"'Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo Ipse domi simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.'"
ORIGINAL TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
[Footnote 1: Frontispiece, with the caption: "He examined with his glassthe word upon the wall, going over every letter of it with the mostminute exactness." (_Page_ 23.)]
[Footnote 2: "JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.": the initial letters in the name arecapitalized, the other letters in small caps. All chapter titles are insmall caps. The initial words of chapters are in small caps with firstletter capitalized.]
[Footnote 3: "lodgings.": the period should be a comma, as in latereditions.]
[Footnote 4: "hoemoglobin": should be haemoglobin. The o&e areconcatenated.]
[Footnote 5: "221B": the B is in small caps]
[Footnote 6: "THE LAURISTON GARDEN MYSTERY": the table-of-contentslists this chapter as "...GARDENS MYSTERY"--plural, and probably morecorrect.]
[Footnote 7: "brought."": the text has an extra double-quote mark]
[Footnote 8: "individual--": illustration this page, with thecaption: "As he spoke, his nimble fingers were flying here, there, andeverywhere."]
[Footnote 9: "manoeuvres": the o&e are concatenated.]
[Footnote 10: "Patent leathers": the hyphen is missing.]