“Never mind later, they are hunting him now. Peter, I am going to go back to Scotland Yard and wait. If John is brought in I’ll be there. After coming all the way across the Atlantic, I am not going to be sent off like a child to bed. You may go to your hotel and rest if you are tired.”
There followed some five minutes’ dispute between the two, which I found rather embarrassing. Moore’s angry pleas and arguments had no more effect upon the lady’s determination than did the milder protests that I, at intervals, dared to interject. At last I judged it would be wiser to comply with her ideas as far as I reasonably could, and shortly all three of us were in a cab and headed for Scotland Yard. It seemed to me that her return visit there would be less difficult for all concerned if I were present to act as intermediary; I was well known in those precincts after so many years as Holmes’ associate. His parting instructions were, of course, also fresh in my mind.
Our old acquaintance Tobias Gregson was, as I soon found out, the detective in charge of tracing all connections between the Scott case and the Grafenstein killing, while his old rival Lestrade continued to direct the overall search for the murderer.
Gregson, tall, stooped, and fair, quite courteously led the two young Americans to a comfortably furnished anteroom where, as he said, they were welcome to wait, and where any fresh news of John Scott would be brought to them at once. Then the detective beckoned me away, asking for a word in private. As soon as we were alone, I detected something like triumph in his pale face.
“Well, Dr. Watson, I suppose Mr. Holmes is close on the heels of some suspect in the killing?”
“I am sure he is very busy.”
“But not on the brink of a solution?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then, Doctor, I’d just like you to hear this.”
So saying, Gregson led me along a narrow corridor. Stopping before a plain door, my guide motioned me to silence, and then opened a small spy-hole in the door, indicating with a gesture that I should look in. The room revealed was large enough to hold on one of its walls a vast map of London, and a couple of policemen seated with their backs toward me. In another chair, facing the spy-hole, sat an emaciated old man, wrapped from his shoulders down in a prison blanket that he kept clutched about him.
“And is that your mad killer, Gregson?” I asked, closing the judas window and turning away.
“Him?” The detective laughed softly. “Not by a long way. No, he’s charged only with stealing a blanket—not the one he has wrapped about him now, but one he pinched through an open window in Whitechapel. Nor has he the least idea that a murder’s under investigation. But I think you and Mr. Holmes are both going to be mighty interested in what he has to say.”
Gregson opened the door and we both went in. The old man, who by his speech and manners gave the impression of belonging to the lower classes, looked up briefly startled, and then went on with what he had been saying:
“I tells you gentlemen, I took that bit o’ cloth only in the name o’ common decency, and meanin’ to bring it back in the morning when the shops and stalls opened, and I could buy some proper clothes.”
Bit by bit, under the prodding questions of the policemen, the man’s story came out, interspersed with his objections at being made to repeat it to them once again. The essence of his account was that he had reached into someone’s window for the blanket only because he had been compelled, during the night, to sell almost all the clothing he had been wearing to a stranger. The mysterious man who had forced him into the transaction under threat of bodily harm had then paid him for his rags with gold.
“Oh, come off it, now!” Gregson’s voice was suddenly thick with convincing doubt. He picked up an envelope from a desk in the center of the room, and slid a gold coin out of it into his hand. “You stole this sovereign just as you stole the blanket. Now didn’t you?”
“I never! Nossir! Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but I sold my clothes for that. Sold ’em fair, I did, and I was just a-borryin’ the blanket to see me over until—”
“Yes, yes. Let’s hear just once again how you came to sell your clothes. Who bought ’em?”
The man unburdened himself of a hopelessly weary sigh. “You’ve ’eard all that.”
“The good doctor here hasn’t,” Gregson prodded, meanwhile casting a faintly triumphant glance in my direction. “Now, once more, if you please.”
“Well, sir.” The old man sighed again, this time resignedly. “It were this ’ere madman, like.”
“Who?”
“Lor’ bless you, sir, I didn’t know ’im. And I wish I may never see the like of ’im again. Stark nekkid ’e was—talk of decency! Grip like a vise ’e ’ad, I swear.
And ’is eyes—I don’t like t’ think on ’em, and that’s a fact.”
The old man was now warming somewhat to the repetition of the tale, which after all earned him the respectful attention from an assemblage of persons who may perhaps have seemed to him important. “The madman? I’ll tell you. Myke a noise, says ’e, and the next noise ’eard in this ’ere street ’ll be the crunch o’ yer bones a-breakin’. ’Ere, tyke this coin, ’esays, a-’oldin’ up that wery sovereign, an’ toss me over yer rags. An’ I tossed ’em over, sir—you would, too, an’ that’s the Lord’s truth. An’ bless meif ’e didn’t pay me, just as ’e said ’e would.”*
* I said in an earlier chapter that
