Sherlock Holmes - Deductions
06/08/09 16:32 Filed in: Deductions
“You are, of course, the Mr. John Garrideb mentioned in this document. But surely you have been in England some time?”
“Why do you say that, Mr. Holmes?” I seemed to read sudden suspicion in those expressive eyes.
“Your whole outfit is English.”
“I was wondering, Watson, what on earth could be the object of this man in telling us such a rigmarole of lies. I nearly asked him so — for there are times when a brutal frontal attack is the best policy — but I judged it better to let him think he had fooled us. Here is a man with an English coat frayed at the elbow and trousers bagged at the knee with a year’s wear, and yet by this document and by his own account he is a provincial American lately landed in London. There have been no advertisements in the agony columns. You know that I miss nothing there. They are my favourite covert for putting up a bird, and I would never have overlooked such a cock pheasant as that. I never knew a Dr. Lysander Starr, of Topeka. Touch him where you would he was false. I think the fellow is really an American, but he has worn his accent smooth with years of London.”
Holmes pointed as we passed to the small brass plate which bore the curious name.
“Up some years, Watson,” he remarked, indicating its discoloured surface. “It’s his real name, anyhow, and that is something to note.”
“Yes, it was bad English but good American. The printer had set it up as received. Then the buckboards. That is American also. And artesian wells are commoner with them than with us. It was a typical American advertisement, but purporting to be from an English firm.”
“Anyhow, he wanted to get this good old fossil up to Birmingham. That is very clear. I might have told him that he was clearly going on a wild-goose chase, but, on second thoughts, it seemed better to clear the stage by letting him go.”
“I think we may take it that Prescott, the American criminal, used to live in the very room which our innocent friend now devotes to his museum.”
“He wanted to get our amiable friend out of his room — that is very clear, and, as the collector never went out, it took some planning to do it. The whole of this Garrideb invention was apparently for no other end. I must say, Watson, that there is a certain devilish ingenuity about it, even if the queer name of the tenant did give him an opening which he could hardly have expected. He wove his plot with remarkable cunning.’’
“It has nothing whatever to do with our client, so far as I can read the situation. It is something connected with the man he murdered — the man who may have been his confederate in crime. There is some guilty secret in the room. That is how I read it.”
“Why do you say that, Mr. Holmes?” I seemed to read sudden suspicion in those expressive eyes.
“Your whole outfit is English.”
“I was wondering, Watson, what on earth could be the object of this man in telling us such a rigmarole of lies. I nearly asked him so — for there are times when a brutal frontal attack is the best policy — but I judged it better to let him think he had fooled us. Here is a man with an English coat frayed at the elbow and trousers bagged at the knee with a year’s wear, and yet by this document and by his own account he is a provincial American lately landed in London. There have been no advertisements in the agony columns. You know that I miss nothing there. They are my favourite covert for putting up a bird, and I would never have overlooked such a cock pheasant as that. I never knew a Dr. Lysander Starr, of Topeka. Touch him where you would he was false. I think the fellow is really an American, but he has worn his accent smooth with years of London.”
Holmes pointed as we passed to the small brass plate which bore the curious name.
“Up some years, Watson,” he remarked, indicating its discoloured surface. “It’s his real name, anyhow, and that is something to note.”
“Yes, it was bad English but good American. The printer had set it up as received. Then the buckboards. That is American also. And artesian wells are commoner with them than with us. It was a typical American advertisement, but purporting to be from an English firm.”
“Anyhow, he wanted to get this good old fossil up to Birmingham. That is very clear. I might have told him that he was clearly going on a wild-goose chase, but, on second thoughts, it seemed better to clear the stage by letting him go.”
“I think we may take it that Prescott, the American criminal, used to live in the very room which our innocent friend now devotes to his museum.”
“He wanted to get our amiable friend out of his room — that is very clear, and, as the collector never went out, it took some planning to do it. The whole of this Garrideb invention was apparently for no other end. I must say, Watson, that there is a certain devilish ingenuity about it, even if the queer name of the tenant did give him an opening which he could hardly have expected. He wove his plot with remarkable cunning.’’
“It has nothing whatever to do with our client, so far as I can read the situation. It is something connected with the man he murdered — the man who may have been his confederate in crime. There is some guilty secret in the room. That is how I read it.”