my wandering life in America, I worked once at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisons, and he showed his students some alkaloid. He extracted it from some South American arrow poison. It was so powerful that the least grain meant instant death. After the lecture I took some poison. I worked this alkaloid into small, soluble pills, and each pill I put in a box with a similar pill made without the poison.
I was thinking like that. When I have my chance, my gentlemen each have a pill of these boxes, while I will eat the pill that remains. That will be our deadly game. So from that day I had always my pill boxes about with me.
It was near twelve, and a wild, bleak night. I lit a cigar, my hands were trembling. As I drove, I saw old John Ferrier and sweet Lucy in the darkness. I pulled up at the house in the Brixton Road.
There was nobody. When I looked in at the window, Drebber was sleeping. I shook him by the arm, ‘It’s time to get out,’ I said.
‘All right,’ said he.
I suppose he thought we were near the hotel. He got out without a word, and followed me down the garden. When we came to the door, I opened it, and led him into the front room. The father and the daughter were walking in front of us.
‘It’s infernally dark,’ said he.
‘We’ll soon have a light,’ I said. I took a wax candle. ‘Now, Enoch Drebber,’ I continued, ‘who am I?’
He gazed at me with drunken eyes for a moment, and then I saw a horror in them. He knew me. He staggered back with a livid face, and I saw the perspiration upon his brow. His teeth chattered. I laughed loud and long.
‘You dog!’ I said; ‘I hunted you everywhere, and you always escaped me. Now I got you.’
I saw on his face that he thought I was mad. So I was for the time.
‘Do you remember Lucy Ferrier?’ I cried. I locked the door and shook the key in his face. ‘Punishment is coming.’
His coward lips trembled as I spoke.
‘Will you murder me?’ he stammered.
‘There is no murder,’ I answered. ‘Is it a murder to kill a mad dog? Do you remember my poor darling? You dragged her from her father, and bore her away to your accursed and shameless harem.’
‘It was not I who killed her father,’ he cried.
‘But it was you who broke her innocent heart,’ I shrieked. I gave him the box. ‘Let the God judge between us. Choose and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us see if there is justice upon the earth.’
He prayed for mercy, but I drew my knife and held it to his throat. And he obeyed me. He ate the pill. Then I swallowed the other. Who will live and who will die? The first warning pangs told him that the poison was in him. I laughed as I saw it, and held Lucy’s marriage ring in front of his eyes. The action of the alkaloid is rapid. A spasm of pain; he threw his hands out in front of him, staggered, and then, with a hoarse cry, fell heavily upon the floor. I placed my hand upon his heart. There was no movement. He was dead!
The blood was streaming from my nose. And I wrote upon the wall with it. Perhaps it was some mischievous idea. One day a German was found in New York with RACHE written up above him. The newspapers were writing about the secret societies. What puzzled the New Yorkers will puzzle the Londoners. So I dipped my finger in my own blood and writhe the German word on the wall.
Then I walked down to my cab. I drove some distance. Then I put my hand into the pocket in which I usually kept Lucy’s ring, and found that it was not there. It was the only memento that I had of her! I dropped it when I stooped over Drebber’s body. So I drove back, and left my cab in a side street. I went boldly up to the house. When I arrived there, I walked right into the arms of a police-officer. I pretended to be hopelessly drunk.
That was how Enoch Drebber came to his end. But Stangerson was still alive. I knew that he was staying at Halliday’s Private Hotel, and I waited there all day, but he never came out. I’m sure that that he suspected something. He was cunning, that Stangerson.
I soon found out which was the window of his bedroom, and early next morning I took a ladder which was lying in the lane behind the hotel. I woke him up. I described Drebber’s death to him, and I gave him the same choice of the poisoned pills. But he sprang from his bed and flew at my throat. I stabbed him to the heart.
I have little more to say. After that I was working for a day or so. Then I planned to come back to America. I was standing in the yard when a youngster asked if there was a cabman there called Jefferson Hope. He said that his cab was wanted by a gentleman at 221B, Baker Street. I went there, I suspected no harm. But this man here had the bracelets on my wrists. That’s my story, gentlemen. You may consider me to be a murderer; but I am an officer of justice as you are.”
The man’s narrative was really thrilling. Even the professional detectives were keenly interested in his story. When he finished we sat for some minutes in a stillness.
“I need a little more information,” Sherlock Holmes said at last. “Who was your accomplice who came for the ring?”
The prisoner winked at my friend jocosely.
“I can tell my secrets,” he said, “but I don’t get other people into trouble. I saw your advertisement. My friend volunteered to go and see. I think he did it smartly.”
“Not a doubt of that,” said Holmes heartily.
“Now, gentlemen,” the Inspector remarked gravely, “the law is the law. On Thursday the prisoner will be brought before the magistrates, and your attendance will be required. Until then I will be responsible for him.”
He rang the bell, and a couple of warders led Jefferson off. My friend and I took a cab back to Baker Street.
Chapter VII
The Conclusion
We were waiting for that Thursday. But a higher Judge took the matter in hand. Jefferson Hope’s aneurism burst, and he died upon the floor of the cell, with a placid smile upon his face.
“Gregson and Lestrade will be wild about his death,” Holmes remarked.
“I think they did very little,” I answered.
“What you really do in this world is not important,” returned my companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can you make people believe that you do. Never mind,” he continued, more brightly, after a pause. “I don’t remember any better case. Yet it was simple enough.”
“Simple!” I ejaculated.
“Yes,” said Sherlock Holmes. “The proof of its intrinsic simplicity is, that without any help, I was able to name the criminal within three days.”
“That is true,” said I.
“The grand thing here is to be able to reason backwards[67]. This is very useful, but people do not practice it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more practical to reason forwards. There are fifty men who can reason synthetically, and only one man who can reason analytically.”
Конец ознакомительного
to reason backwards – рассуждать ретроспективно
