"By Jove, it's as clear as day!" cried the Colonel. "Why on earth shouldtwo men write a letter in such a fashion?"
"Obviously the business was a bad one, and one of the men who distrustedthe other was determined that, whatever was done, each should have anequal hand in it. Now, of the two men, it is clear that the one whowrote the 'at' and 'to' was the ringleader."
"How do you get at that?"
"We might deduce it from the mere character of the one hand as comparedwith the other. But we have more assured reasons than that for supposingit. If you examine this scrap with attention you will come to theconclusion that the man with the stronger hand wrote all his wordsfirst, leaving blanks for the other to fill up. These blanks were notalways sufficient, and you can see that the second man had a squeezeto fit his 'quarter' in between the 'at' and the 'to,' showing that thelatter were already written. The man who wrote all his words first isundoubtedly the man who planned the affair."
"Excellent!" cried Mr. Acton.
"But very superficial," said Holmes. "We come now, however, to a pointwhich is of importance. You may not be aware that the deduction of aman's age from his writing is one which has been brought to considerableaccuracy by experts. In normal cases one can place a man in his truedecade with tolerable confidence. I say normal cases, because ill-healthand physical weakness reproduce the signs of old age, even when theinvalid is a youth. In this case, looking at the bold, strong hand ofthe one, and the rather broken-backed appearance of the other, whichstill retains its legibility although the t's have begun to lose theircrossing, we can say that the one was a young man and the other wasadvanced in years without being positively decrepit."
"Excellent!" cried Mr. Acton again.
"There is a further point, however, which is subtler and of greaterinterest. There is something in common between these hands. They belongto men who are blood-relatives. It may be most obvious to you in theGreek e's, but to me there are many small points which indicate the samething. I have no doubt at all that a family mannerism can be traced inthese two specimens of writing. I am only, of course, giving youthe leading results now of my examination of the paper. There weretwenty-three other deductions which would be of more interest to expertsthan to you. They all tend to deepen the impression upon my mind thatthe Cunninghams, father and son, had written this letter.
"Having go
t so far, my next step was, of course, to examine into thedetails of the crime, and to see how far they would help us. I went upto the house with the Inspector, and saw all that was to be seen. Thewound upon the dead man was, as I was able to determine with absoluteconfidence, fired from a revolver at the distance of something overfour yards. There was no powder-blackening on the clothes. Evidently,therefore, Alec Cunningham had lied when he said that the two men werestruggling when the shot was fired. Again, both father and son agreedas to the place where the man escaped into the road. At that point,however, as it happens, there is a broadish ditch, moist at the bottom.As there were no indications of bootmarks about this ditch, I wasabsolutely sure not only that the Cunninghams had again lied, but thatthere had never been any unknown man upon the scene at all.
"And now I have to consider the motive of this singular crime. To getat this, I endeavored first of all to solve the reason of the originalburglary at Mr. Acton's. I understood, from something which the Coloneltold us, that a lawsuit had been going on between you, Mr. Acton, andthe Cunninghams. Of course, it instantly occurred to me that they hadbroken into your library with the intention of getting at some documentwhich might be of importance in the case."
"Precisely so," said Mr. Acton. "There can be no possible doubt as totheir intentions. I have the clearest claim upon half of their presentestate, and if they could have found a single paper--which, fortunately,was in the strong-box of my solicitors--they would undoubtedly havecrippled our case."
"There you are," said Holmes, smiling. "It was a dangerous, recklessattempt, in which I seem to trace the influence of young Alec. Havingfound nothing they tried to divert suspicion by making it appear to bean ordinary burglary, to which end they carried off whatever they couldlay their hands upon. That is all clear enough, but there was much thatwas still obscure. What I wanted above all was to get the missing partof that note. I was certain that Alec had torn it out of the dead man'shand, and almost certain that he must have thrust it into the pocket ofhis dressing-gown. Where else could he have put it? The only questionwas whether it was still there. It was worth an effort to find out, andfor that object we all went up to the house.
"The Cunninghams joined us, as you doubtless remember, outside thekitchen door. It was, of course, of the very first importance that theyshould not be reminded of the existence of this paper, otherwise theywould naturally destroy it without delay. The Inspector was about totell them the importance which we attached to it when, by the luckiestchance in the world, I tumbled down in a sort of fit and so changed theconversation.
"Good heavens!" cried the Colonel, laughing, "do you mean to say all oursympathy was wasted and your fit an imposture?"
"Speaking professionally, it was admirably done," cried I, looking inamazement at this man who was forever confounding me with some new phaseof his astuteness.
"It is an art which is often useful," said he. "When I recovered Imanaged, by a device which had perhaps some little merit of ingenuity,to get old Cunningham to write the word 'twelve,' so that I mightcompare it with the 'twelve' upon the paper."
"Oh, what an ass I have been!" I exclaimed.
"I could see that you were commiserating me over my weakness," saidHolmes, laughing. "I was sorry to cause you the sympathetic pain whichI know that you felt. We then went upstairs together, and having enteredthe room and seen the dressing-gown hanging up behind the door, Icontrived, by upsetting a table, to engage their attention for themoment, and slipped back to examine the pockets. I had hardly got thepaper, however--which was, as I had expected, in one of them--when thetwo Cunninghams were on me, and would, I verily believe, have murderedme then and there but for your prompt and friendly aid. As it is, I feelthat young man's grip on my throat now, and the father has twisted mywrist round in the effort to get the paper out of my hand. They saw thatI must know all about it, you see, and the sudden change from absolutesecurity to complete despair made them perfectly desperate.
"I had a little talk with old Cunningham afterwards as to the motive ofthe crime. He was tractable enough, though his son was a perfect demon,ready to blow out his own or anybody else's brains if he could have gotto his revolver. When Cunningham saw that the case against him was sostrong he lost all heart and made a clean breast of everything. It seemsthat William had secretly followed his two masters on the night whenthey made their raid upon Mr. Acton's, and having thus got them intohis power, proceeded, under threats of exposure, to levy blackmail uponthem. Mr. Alec, however, was a dangerous man to play games of thatsort with. It was a stroke of positive genius on his part to see in theburglary scare which was convulsing the country side an opportunity ofplausibly getting rid of the man whom he feared. William was decoyed upand shot, and had they only got the whole of the note and paid a littlemore attention to detail in the accessories, it is very possible thatsuspicion might never have been aroused."
"And the note?" I asked.
Sherlock Holmes placed the subjoined paper before us.
If you will only come round at quarter to twelve to the east gate you will learn what will very much surprise you and maybe [sic] be of the greatest service to you and also to Annie Morrison. But say nothing to anyone upon the matter.
"It is very much the sort of thing that I expected," said he. "Ofcourse, we do not yet know what the relations may have been between AlecCunningham, William Kirwan, and Annie Morrison. The results shows thatthe trap was skillfully baited. I am sure that you cannot fail to bedelighted with the traces of heredity shown in the p's and in the tailsof the g's. The absence of the i-dots in the old man's writing is alsomost characteristic. Watson, I think our quiet rest in the country hasbeen a distinct success, and I shall certainly return much invigoratedto Baker Street to-morrow."
Adventure VII. The Crooked Man
One summer night, a few months after my marriage, I was seated by my ownhearth smoking a last pipe and nodding over a novel, for my day's workhad been an exhausting one. My wife had already gone upstairs, and thesound of the locking of the hall door some time before told me that theservants had also retired. I had risen from my seat and was knocking outthe ashes of my pipe when I suddenly heard the clang of the bell.
I looked at the clock. It was a quarter to twelve. This could not bea visitor at so late an hour. A patient, evidently, and possibly anall-night sitting. With a wry face I went out into the hall and openedthe door. To my astonishment it was Sherlock Holmes who stood upon mystep.
"Ah, Watson," said he, "I hoped that I might not be too late to catchyou."
"My dear fellow, pray come in."
"You look surprised, and no wonder! Relieved, too, I fancy! Hum! Youstill smoke the Arcadia mixture of your bachelor days then! There's nomistaking that fluffy ash upon your coat. It's easy to tell that youhave been accustomed to wear a uniform, Watson. You'll never pass asa pure-bred civilian as long as you keep that habit of carrying yourhandkerchief in your sleeve. Could you put me up to-night?"