should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the other is to the

young lady’s stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking him whether he could meet

us here at six o’clock to-morrow evening. It is just as well that we

should do business with the male relatives. And now, Doctor, we can do nothing

until the answers to those letters come, so we may put our little problem upon

the shelf for the interim.”


I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend’s subtle powers of

reasoning and extraordinary energy in action that I felt that he must have some

solid grounds for the assured and easy demeanour with which he treated the

singular mystery which he had been called upon to fathom. Once only had I known

him to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler

photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of the Sign of Four,

and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the Study in Scarlet, I felt

that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel.


I left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the conviction that

when I came again on the next evening I would find that he held in his hands

all the clues which would lead up to the identity of the disappearing

bridegroom of Miss Mary Sutherland.


A professional case of great gravity was engaging my own attention at the time,

and the whole of next day I was busy at the bedside of the sufferer. It was not

until close upon six o’clock that I found myself free and was able to

spring into a hansom and drive to Baker Street, half afraid that I might be too

late to assist at the dénouement of the little mystery. I found Sherlock

Holmes alone, however, half asleep, with his long, thin form curled up in the

recesses of his armchair. A formidable array of bottles and test-tubes, with

the pungent cleanly smell of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his

day in the chemical work which was so dear to him.