I
have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man
Windibank sprang out of his chair and picked up his hat
“I cannot
waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr
“If
you can catch the man, catch him, and let me know when you have done
it.”

“Certainly,” said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in the
door
“I let you know, then, that I have caught him!”

“What
Windibank, turning white to his lips and
glancing about him like a rat in a trap
“Oh, it won’t do—really it won’t,” said Holmes suavely
“There is no
possible getting out of it, Mr
It is quite too transparent,
and it was a very bad compliment when you said that it was impossible
for me to solve so simple a question
Sit down and let us
talk it over.”

Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face and a glitter
of moisture on his brow
“It—it’s not actionable,” he stammered
“I am very much afraid that it is not
But between ourselves,
Windibank, it was as cruel and selfish and heartless a trick in a petty
way as ever came before me
Now, let me just run over the course of
events, and you will contradict me if I go wrong.”

The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his
breast, like one who is utterly crushed
Holmes stuck his feet up on
the corner of the mantelpiece and, leaning back with his hands in his
pockets, began talking, rather to himself, as it seemed, than to us
“The man married a woman very much older than himself for her money,”
said he, “and he enjoyed the use of the money of the daughter as long
as she lived with them
It was a considerable sum, for people in their
position, and the loss of it would have made a serious difference
It
was worth an effort to preserve it
Now her
marriage would mean, of course, the loss of a hundred a year, so what
does her stepfather do to prevent it
He takes the obvious course of
keeping her at home and forbidding her to seek the company of people of
her own age
But soon he found that that would not answer forever
She
became restive, insisted upon her rights, and finally announced her
positive intention of going to a certain ball
What does her clever
stepfather do then
He conceives an idea more creditable to his head
than to his heart
Hosmer Angel, and keeps off other
lovers by making love himself.”

“It was only a joke at first,” groaned our visitor
“We never thought
that she would have been so carried away.”

“Very likely not
She was flattered by the gentleman’s
attentions, and the effect was increased by the loudly expressed
admiration of her mother
Angel began to call, for it was
obvious that the matter should be pushed as far as it would go if a
real effect were to be produced
There were meetings, and an
engagement, which would finally secure the girl’s affections from
turning towards anyone else
But the deception could not be kept up
forever
These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous
Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a
Testament, and hence also the allusions to a possibility of something
happening on the very morning of the wedding
James Windibank wished
Miss Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to
his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not listen
to another man
As far as the church door he brought her, and then, as
he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished away by the old trick
of stepping in at one door of a four-wheeler and out at the other
I
think that was the chain of events, Mr
Windibank!”

Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes had
been talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold sneer upon his
pale face
“It may be so, or it may not, Mr
Holmes,” said he, “but if you are so
very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is you who are
breaking the law now, and not me
If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought
to lay a whip across your shoulders
James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the
road
“There’s a cold-blooded scoundrel!” said Holmes, laughing, as he threw
himself down into his chair once more
“That fellow will rise from
crime to crime until he does something very bad, and ends on a gallows
The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest.”

“I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning,” I
remarked
“Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr
Hosmer
Angel must have some strong object for his curious conduct, and it was
equally clear that the only man who really profited by the incident, as
far as we could see, was the stepfather
Then the fact that the two men
were never together, but that the one always appeared when the other
was away, was suggestive
So were the tinted spectacles and the curious
voice, which both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers
You see all these isolated facts, together with many minor ones,
all pointed in the same direction.”

“And how did you verify them?”

“Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration
I knew
the firm for which this man worked
Having taken the printed
description