“Quite so. His talk about a burglary was
the merest blind.”
“But why could he not tell you this?”
“Well, my dear sir, knowing the vindictive character
of his old associates, he was trying to hide his own
identity from everybody as long as he could.
His secret was a shameful one, and he could not bring
himself to divulge it. However, wretch as he
was, he was still living under the shield of British
law, and I have no doubt, Inspector, that you will
see that, though that shield may fail to guard, the
sword of justice is still there to avenge.”
Such were the singular circumstances in connection
with the Resident Patient and the Brook Street Doctor.
From that night nothing has been seen of the three
murderers by the police, and it is surmised at Scotland
Yard that they were among the passengers of the ill-fated
steamer Norah Creina, which was lost some years ago
with all hands upon the Portuguese coast, some leagues
to the north of Oporto. The proceedings against
the page broke down for want of evidence, and the
Brook Street Mystery, as it was called, has never
until now been fully dealt with in any public print.
The Greek Interpreter
During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr.
Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his
relations, and hardly ever to his own early life.
This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat
inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes
I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon,
a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy
as he was pre-eminent in intelligence. His aversion
to women and his disinclination to form new friendships
were both typical of his unemotional character, but
not more so than his complete suppression of every
reference to his own people. I had come to believe
that he was an orphan with no relatives living, but
one day, to my very great surprise, he began to talk
to me about his brother.
It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation,
which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion
from golf clubs to the causes of the change in the
obliquity of the ecliptic, came round at last to the
question of atavism and hereditary aptitudes.
The point under discussion was, how far any singular
gift in an individual was due to his ancestry and
how far to his own early training.
“In your own case,” said I, “from
all that you have told me, it seems obvious that your
faculty of observation and your peculiar facility
for deduction are due to your own systematic training.”
“To some extent,” he answered, thoughtfully.
“My ancestors were country squires, who appear
to have led much the same life as is natural to their
class. But, none the less, my turn that way
is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother,
who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.
Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest
forms.”
