“Had he ever showed any signs of having taken opium?”


“Never.”


“Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about which I

wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little supper and then

retire, for we may have a very busy day to-morrow.”


A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and

I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure.

Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who, when he had an unsolved problem upon

his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it

over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he

had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It

was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He

took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then

wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from the

sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon

which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box

of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him

sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon

the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent,

motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he

sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused

me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe

was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was

full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I

had seen upon the previous night.


“Awake, Watson?” he asked.


“Yes.”


“Game for a morning drive?”


“Certainly.”


“Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy