But a singular interruption brought us to a standstill. The lightat the top was suddenly whisked out, and from the darkness camea reedy, quivering voice.
“I have a pistol,” it cried. “I give you my word that I’ll fire if youcome any nearer.”
“This really grows outrageous, Mr. Blessington,” cried Dr.
Trevelyan.
“Oh, then it is you, Doctor,” said the voice, with a great heaveof relief. “But those other gentlemen, are they what they pretendto be?”
We were conscious of a long scrutiny out of the darkness.
“Yes, yes, it’s all right,” said the voice at last. “You can come up,and I am sorry if my precautions have annoyed you.”
He relit the stair gas as he spoke, and we saw before us asingular-looking man, whose appearance, as well as his voice,testified to his jangled nerves. He was very fat, but had apparentlyat some time been much fatter, so that the skin hung about hisface in loose pouches, like the cheeks of a blood-hound. He wasof a sickly color, and his thin, sandy hair seemed to bristle up withthe intensity of his emotion. In his hand he held a pistol, but hethrust it into his pocket as we advanced.
“Good-evening, Mr. Holmes,” said he. “I am sure I am verymuch obliged to you for coming round. No one ever needed youradvice more than I do. I suppose that Dr. Trevelyan has told youof this most unwarrantable intrusion into my rooms.”
“Quite so,” said Holmes. “Who are these two men Mr.
Blessington, and why do they wish to molest you?”
“Well, well,” said the resident patient, in a nervous fashion, “ofcourse it is hard to say that. You can hardly expect me to answerthat, Mr. Holmes.”
“Do you mean that you don’t know?”
“Come in here, if you please. Just have the kindness to step inhere.”
He led the way into his bedroom, which was large and comfortablyfurnished.
“You see that,” said he, pointing to a big black box at the end ofhis bed. “I have never been a very rich man, Mr. Holmes—nevermade but one investment in my life, as Dr. Trevelyan would tellyou. But I don’t believe in bankers. I would never trust a banker,Mr. Holmes. Between ourselves, what little I have is in that box,so you can understand what it means to me when unknown peopleforce themselves into my rooms.”
Holmes looked at Blessington in his questioning way and shookhis head.
“I cannot possibly advise you if you try to deceive me,” said he.
“But I have told you everything.”
Holmes turned on his heel with a gesture of disgust. “Goodnight,Dr. Trevelyan,” said he.
“And no advice for me?” cried Blessington, in a breaking voice.
“My advice to you, sir, is to speak the truth.”
A minute later we were in the street and walking for home. Wehad crossed Oxford Street and were half way down Harley Streetbefore I could get a word from my companion.
“Sorry to bring you out on such a fool’s errand, Watson,” he saidat last. “It is an interesting case, too, at the bottom of it.”
“I can make little of it,” I confessed.
“Well, it is quite evident that there are two men—more,perhaps, but at least two—who are determined for some reasonto get at this fellow Blessington. I have no doubt in my mind thatboth on the first and on the second occasion that young manpenetrated to Blessington’s room, while his confederate, by aningenious device, kept the doctor from interfering.”
“And the catalepsy?”
“A fraudulent imitation, Watson, though I should hardly dareto hint as much to our specialist. It is a very easy complaint toimitate. I have done it myself.”
“And then?”
“By the purest chance Blessington was out on each occasion.
Their reason for choosing so unusual an hour for a consultationwas obviously to insure that there should be no other patientin the waiting-room. It just happened, however, that this hourcoincided with Blessington’s constitutional, which seems to showthat they were not very well acquainted with his daily routine. Ofcourse, if they had been merely after plunder they would at leasthave made some attempt to search for it. Besides, I can read ina man’s eye when it is his own skin that he is frightened for. It isinconceivable that this fellow could have made two such vindictiveenemies as these appear to be without knowing of it. I hold it,therefore, to be certain that he does know who these men are, andthat for reasons of his own he suppresses it. It is just possible thatto-morrow may find him in a more communicative mood.”
“Is there not one alternative,” I suggested, “grotesquelyimprobably, no doubt, but still just conceivable? Might the wholestory of the cataleptic Russian and his son be a concoction of Dr.
Trevelyan’s, who has, for his own purposes, been in Blessington’srooms?”
I saw in the gas-light that Holmes wore an amused smile at thisbrilliant departure of mine.
“My dear fellow,” said he, “it was one of the first solutions whichoccurred to me, but I was soon able to corroborate the doctor’stale. This young man has left prints upon the stair-carpet whichmade it quite superfluous for me to ask to see those which he hadmade in the room. When I tell you that his shoes were square-toedinstead of being pointed like Blessington’s, and were quite an inchand a third longer than the doctor’s, you will acknowledge thatthere can be no doubt as to his individuality. But we may sleep onit now, for I shall be surprised if we do not hear something furtherfrom Brook Street in the morning.”
Sherlock Holmes’s prophecy was soon fulfilled, and in adramatic fashion. At half-past seven next morning, in the firstglimmer of daylight, I found him standing by my bedside in hisdressing-gown.
“There’s a brougham waiting for us, Watson,” said he.
“What’s the matter, then?”
“The Brook Street business.”
“Any fresh news?”
“Tragic, but ambiguous,” said he, pulling up the blind. “Lookat this—a sheet from a note-book, with ‘For God’s sake come atonce—P. T.,’ scrawled upon it in pencil. Our friend, the doctor,was hard put to it when he wrote this. Come along, my dear fellow,for it’s an urgent call.”
In a quarter of an hour or so we were back at the physician’shouse. He came running out to meet us with a face of horror.
