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_ It was one of those dramatic moments for which my friend existed.
It would be an overstatement to say that he was shocked or even
excited by the amazing announcement. Without having a tinge of
cruelty in his singular composition, he was undoubtedly callous
from long over-stimulation. Yet, if his emotions were dulled,
his intellectual perceptions were exceedingly active. There was
no trace then of the horror which I had myself felt at this curt
declaration; but his face showed rather the quiet and interested
composure of the chemist who sees the crystals falling into position
from his oversaturated solution.
"Remarkable!" said he. "Remarkable!"
"You don't seem surprised."
"Interested, Mr. Mac, but hardly surprised. Why should I be
surprised? I receive an anonymous communication from a quarter
which I know to be important, warning me that danger threatens
a certain person. Within an hour I learn that this danger has
actually materialized and that the person is dead. I am interested;
but, as you observe, I am not surprised."
In a few short sentences he explained to the inspector the facts
about the letter and the cipher. MacDonald sat with his chin on
his hands and his great sandy eyebrows bunched into a yellow
tangle.
"I was going down to Birlstone this morning," said he. "I
had come to ask you if you cared to come with me -- you and
your friend here. But from what you say we might perhaps be
doing better work in London."
"I rather think not," said Holmes.
"Hang it all, Mr. Holmes!" cried the inspector. "The papers
will be full of the Birlstone mystery in a day or two; but where's
the mystery if there is a man in London who prophesied the
crime before ever it occurred? We have only to lay our hands on
that man, and the rest will follow."
"No doubt, Mr. Mac. But how do you propose to lay your
hands on the so-called Porlock?"
MacDonald turned over the letter which Holmes had handed
him. "Posted in Camberwell -- that doesn't help us much. Name,
you say, is assumed. Not much to go on, certainly. Didn't you
say that you have sent him money?"
"Twice."
"And how?"
"In notes to Camberwell post-office."
"Did you ever trouble to see who called for them?"
"No."
The inspector looked surprised and a little shocked. "Why not?"
"Because I always keep faith. I had promised when he first
wrote that I would not try to trace him."
"You think there is someone behind him?"
"I know there is."
"This professor that I've heard you mention?"
"Exactly!"
Inspector MacDonald smiled, and his eyelid quivered as he
glanced towards me. "I won't conceal from you, Mr. Holmes,
that we think in the C. I. D. that you have a wee bit of a bee in
your bonnet over this professor. I made some inquiries myself
about the matter. He seems to be a very respectable, learned, and
talented sort of man."
"I'm glad you've got so far as to recognize the talent."
"Man, you can't but recognize it! After I heard your view I
made it my business to see him. I had a chat with him on
eclipses. How the talk got that way I canna think; but he had out
a reflector lantern and a globe, and made it all clear in a minute.
He lent me a book; but I don't mind saying that it was a bit
above my head, though I had a good Aberdeen upbringing. He'd
have made a grand meenister with his thin face and gray hair and
solemn-like way of talking. When he put his hand on my shoulder
as we were parting, it was like a father's blessing before you
go out into the cold, cruel world."
Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. "Great!" he said.
"Great! Tell me, Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching
interview was, I suppose, in the professor's study?"
"That's so."
"A fine room, is it not?"
"Very fine -- very handsome indeed, Mr. Holmes."
"You sat in front of his writing desk?"
"Just so."
"Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?"
"Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on
my face."
"It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the
professor's head?"
"I don't miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from
you. Yes, I saw the picture -- a young woman with her head on
her hands, peeping at you sideways."
"That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze."
The inspector endeavoured to look interested.
"Jean Baptiste Greuze," Holmes continued, joining his finger
tips and leaning well back in his chair, "was a French artist who
flourished between the years 1750 and 1800. I allude, of course
to his working career. Modern criticism has more than indorsed
the high opinion formed of him by his contemporaries."
The inspector's eyes grew abstracted. "Hadn't we better --"
he said.
"We are doing so," Holmes interrupted. "All that I am
saying has a very direct and vital bearing upon what you have
called the Birlstone Mystery. In fact, it may in a sense be called
the very centre of it."
MacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me.
"Your thoughts move a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You
leave out a link or two, and I can't get over the gap. What in the
whole wide world can be the connection between this dead
painting man and the affair at Birlstone?"
"All knowledge comes useful to the detective," remarked
Holmes. "Even the trivial fact that in the year 1865 a picture by
Greuze entitled La Jeune Fille a l'Agneau fetched one million
two hundred thousand francs -- more than forty thousand pounds --
at the Portalis sale may start a train of reflection in your mind."
It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.
"I may remind you," Holmes continued, "that the professor's
salary can be ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference.
It is seven hundred a year."
"Then how could he buy --"
"Quite so! How could he?"
"Ay, that's remarkable," said the inspector thoughtfully. "Talk
away, Mr. Holmes. I'm just loving it. It's fine!"
Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration --
the characteristic of the real artist. "What about Birlstone?" he
asked.
"We've time yet," said the inspector, glancing at his watch.
"I've a cab at the door, and it won't take us twenty minutes to
Victoria. But about this picture: I thought you told me once, Mr.
Holmes, that you had never met Professor Moriarty."
"No, I never have."
"Then how do you know about his rooms?"
"Ah, that's another matter. I have been three times in his
rooms, twice waiting for him under different pretexts and leaving
before he came. Once -- well, I can hardly tell about the once to
an official detective. It was on the last occasion that I took the
liberty of running over his papers -- with the most unexpected
results."
"You found something compromising?"
"Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However,
you have now seen the point of the picture. It shows him to be a
very wealthy man. How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried.
His younger brother is a station master in the west of England.
His chair is worth seven hundred a year. And he owns a Greuze."
"Well?"
"Surely the inference is plain."
"You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it
in an illegal fashion?"
"Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so --
dozens of exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the
centre of the web where the poisonous, motionless creature is
lurking. I only mention the Greuze because it brings the matter
within the range of your own observation."
"Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting:
it's more than interesting -- it's just wonderful. But let us have it
a little clearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining, burglary -- where
does the money come from?"
"Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?"
"Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel,
was he not? I don't take much stock of detectives in novels --
chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them.
That's just inspiration: not business."
"Jonathan Wild wasn't a detective, and he wasn't in a novel.
He was a master criminal, and he lived last century -- 1750 or
thereabouts."
"Then he's no use to me. I'm a practical man."
"Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your
life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read
twelve hours a day at the annals of crime. Everything comes in
circles -- even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden
force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and
his organization on a fifteen per cent commission. The old
wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done
before, and will be again. I'll tell you one or two things about
Moriarty which may interest you."
"You'll interest me, right enough."
"I happen to know who is the first link in his chain -- a chain
with this Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken
fighting men, pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the
other, with every sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is
Colonel Sebastian Moran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible
to the law as himself. What do you think he pays him?"
"I'd like to hear."
"Six thousand a year. That's paying for brains, you see -- the
American business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance.
It's more than the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of
Moriarty's gains and of the scale on which he works. Another
point: I made it my business to hunt down some of Moriarty's
checks lately -- just common innocent checks that he pays his
household bills with. They were drawn on six different banks.
Does that make any impression on your mind?"
"Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?"
"That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man
should know what he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty
banking accounts; the bulk of his fortune abroad in the Deutsche
Bank or the Credit Lyonnais as likely as not. Sometime when
you have a year or two to spare I commend to you the study of
Professor Moriarty."
Inspector MacDonald had grown steadily more impressed as
the conversation proceeded. He had lost himself in his interest.
Now his practical Scotch intelligence brought him back with a
snap to the matter in hand.
"He can keep, anyhow," said he. "You've got us side-tracked
with your interesting anecdotes, Mr. Holmes. What really counts
is your remark that there is some connection between the professor
and the crime. That you get from the warning received through the
man Porlock. Can we for our present practical needs get any further
than that?"
"We may form some conception as to the motives of the crime.
It is, as I gather from your original remarks, an inexplicable,
or at least an unexplained, murder. Now, presuming that the
source of the crime is as we suspect it to be, there might be two
different motives. In the first place, I may tell you that Moriarty
rules with a rod of iron over his people. His discipline is
tremendous. There is only one punishment in his code. It is
death. Now we might suppose that this murdered man -- this
Douglas whose approaching fate was known by one of the
arch-criminal's subordinates -- had in some way betrayed the chief.
His punishment followed, and would be known to all -- if only to
put the fear of death into them."
"Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes."
"The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the
ordinary course of business. Was there any robbery?"
"I have not heard."
"If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and
in favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to
engineer it on a promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid
so much down to manage it. Either is possible. But whichever it
may be, or if it is some third combination, it is down at Birlstone
that we must seek the solution. I know our man too well to
suppose that he has left anything up here which may lead us to
him."
"Then to Birlstone we must go!" cried MacDonald, jumping
from his chair. "My word! it's later than I thought. I can give
you, gentlemen, five minutes for preparation, and that is all."
"And ample for us both," said Holmes, as he sprang up and
hastened to change from his dressing gown to his coat. "While
we are on our way, Mr. Mac, I will ask you to be good enough
to tell me all about it."
"All about it" proved to be disappointingly little, and yet
there was enough to assure us that the case before us might well
be worthy of the expert's closest attention. He brightened and
rubbed his thin hands together as he listened to the meagre but
remarkable details. A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us,
and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable
powers which, like all special gifts, become irksome to their
owner when they are not in use. That razor brain blunted and
rusted with inaction.
Sherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a
warmer hue, and his whole eager face shone with an inward light
when the call for work reached him. Leaning forward in the cab,
he listened intently to MacDonald's short sketch of the problem
which awaited us in Sussex. The inspector was himself dependent,
as he explained to us, upon a scribbled account forwarded to him
by the milk train in the early hours of the morning. White
Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend, and hence
MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usual
at Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a
very cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally
asked to run.
"DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD [said the letter which he read to us]:
"Official requisition for your services is in separate
envelope. This is for your private eye. Wire me what train in
the morning you can get for Birlstone, and I will meet it --
or have it met if I am too occupied. This case is a snorter.
Don't waste a moment in getting started. If you can bring
Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find something after
his own heart. We would think the whole thing had been
fixed up for theatrical effect if there wasn't a dead man in
the middle of it. My word! it is a snorter."
"Your friend seems to be no fool," remarked Holmes.
"No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge."
"Well, have you anything more?"
"Only that he will give us every detail when we meet."
"Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he
had been horribly murdered?"
"That was in the enclosed official report. It didn't say
'horrible': that's not a recognized official term. It gave the name
John Douglas. It mentioned that his injuries had been in the head,
from the discharge of a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of
the alarm, which was close on to midnight last night. It added
that the case was undoubtedly one of murder, but that no arrest
had been made, and that the case was one which presented some
very perplexing and extraordinary features. That's absolutely all
we have at present, Mr. Holmes."
"Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr.
Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient
data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things
for certain at present -- a great brain in London, and a dead man
in Sussex. It's the chain between that we are going to trace." _
Read next: PART 1 The Tragedy of Birlstone: Chapter 3 The Tragedy of Birlstone
Read previous: PART 1 The Tragedy of Birlstone: Chapter 1 The Warning
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