“My dear sir,” cried Holmes, “there cannot be the least doubt inthe world that it has been written by two persons doing alternatewords. When I draw your attention to the strong t’s of ‘at’ and‘to,’and ask you to compare them with the weak ones of ‘quarter’
and ‘twelve,’ you will instantly recognize the fact. A very brief758 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
analysis of these four words would enable you to say with theutmost confidence that the ‘learn’ and the ‘maybe’ are written inthe stronger hand, and the ‘what’ in the weaker.”
“By Jove, it’s as clear as day!” cried the colonel. “Why on earthshould two men write a letter in such a fashion?”
“Obviously the business was a bad one, and one of the men whodistrusted the other was determined that, whatever was done,each should have an equal hand in it. Now, of the two men, it isclear that the one who wrote the ‘at’ and ‘to’ was the ringleader.”
“How do you get at that?”
“We might deduce it from the mere character of the one handas compared with the other. But we have more assured reasons thanthat for supposing it. If you examine this scrap with attention youwill come to the conclusion that the man with the stronger handwrote all his words first, leaving blanks for the other to fill up. Theseblanks were not always sufficient, and you can see that the secondman had a squeeze to fit his ‘quarter’ in between the ‘at’ and the ‘to,’
showing that the latter were already written. The man who wrote allhis words first is undoubtedly the man who planned the affair.”
“Excellent!” cried Mr. Acton.
“But very superficial,” said Holmes. “We come now, however,to a point which is of importance. You may not be aware that thededuction of a man’s age from his writing is one which has broughtto considerable accuracy by experts. In normal cases one can placeman in his true decade with tolerable confidence. I say normalcases, because ill-health and physical weakness reproduce the signsof old age, even when the invalid is a youth. In this case, lookingat the bold, strong hand of the one, and the rather broken-backedappearance of the other, which still retains its legibility althoughthe t’s have begun to lose their crossing, we can say that the onewas a young man and the other was advanced in years withoutbeing positively decrepit.”
“Excellent!” cried Mr. Acton again.
“There is a further point, however, which is subtler and ofgreater interest. There is something in common between thesehands. They belong to men who are blood-relatives. It may bemost obvious to you in the Greek e’s, but to me there are manysmall points which indicate the same thing. I have no doubt at allthat a family mannerism can be traced in these two specimens ofwriting. I am only, of course, giving you the leading results nowof my examination of the paper. There were twenty-three otherdeductions which would be of more interest to experts than toyou. They all tend to deepen the impression upon my mind thatthe Cunninghams, father and son, had written this letter.
“Having got so far, my next step was, of course, to examine intoMemoirs of Sherlock Holmes 759
the details of the crime, and to see how far they would help us.
I went up to the house with the Inspector, and saw all that wasto be seen. The wound upon the dead man was, as I was able todetermine with absolute confidence, fired from a revolver at thedistance of something over four yards. There was no powderblackeningon the clothes. Evidently, therefore, Alec Cunninghamhad lied when he said that the two men were struggling when theshot was fired. Again, both father and son agreed as to the placewhere the man escaped into the road. At that point, however,as it happens, there is a broadish ditch, moist at the bottom. Asthere were no indications of bootmarks about this ditch, I wasabsolutely sure not only that the Cunninghams had again lied, butthat there had never been any unknown man upon the scene at all.
“And now I have to consider the motive of this singular crime.
To get at this, I endeavored first of all to solve the reason of theoriginal burglary at Mr. Acton’s. I understood, from somethingwhich the Colonel told us, that a lawsuit had been going onbetween you, Mr. Acton, and the Cunninghams. Of course, itinstantly occurred to me that they had broken into your librarywith the intention of getting at some document which might be ofimportance in the case.”
“Precisely so,” said Mr. Acton. “There can be no possible doubtas to their intentions. I have the clearest claim upon half of theirpresent estate, and if they could have found a single paper—which,fortunately, was in the strong-box of my solicitors—they wouldundoubtedly have crippled our case.”
“There you are,” said Holmes, smiling. “It was a dangerous,reckless attempt, in which I seem to trace the influence of youngAlec. Having found nothing they tried to divert suspicion bymaking it appear to be an ordinary burglary, to which end theycarried off whatever they could lay their hands upon. That is allclear enough, but there was much that was still obscure. What Iwanted above all was to get the missing part of that note. I wascertain that Alec had torn it out of the dead man’s hand, andalmost certain that he must have thrust it into the pocket of hisdressing-gown. Where else could he have put it? The only questionwas whether it was still there. It was worth an effort to find out,and for that object we all went up to the house.
“The Cunninghams joined us, as you doubtless remember,outside the kitchen door. It was, of course, of the very firstimportance that they should not be reminded of the existenceof this paper, otherwise they would naturally destroy it withoutdelay. The Inspector was about to tell them the importance whichwe attached to it when, by the luckiest chance in the world, Itumbled down in a sort of fit and so changed the conversation.
760 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“Good heavens!” cried the Colonel, laughing, “do you mean tosay all our sympathy was wasted and your fit an imposture?”
