sident
Patient and the Brook Street Doctor. From that night nothing has
been seen of the three murderers by the police, and it is surmised
at Scotland Yard that they were among the passengers of the ill-fated
steamer Norah Creina, which was lost some years ago with all hands
upon the Portuguese coast, some leagues to the north of Oporto. The
proceedings against the page broke down for want of evidence, and the
Brook Street Mystery, as it was called, has never until now been fully
dealt with in any public print.

Adventure IX. The Greek Interpreter

During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had
never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early
life. This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat inhuman
effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes I found myself
regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as
deficient in human sympathy as he was pre-eminent in intelligence. His
aversion to women and his disinclination to form new friendships were
both typical of his unemotional character, but not more so than his
complete suppression of every reference to his own people. I had come to
believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living, but one day, to
my very great surprise, he began to talk to me about his brother.

It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which had
roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes
of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, came round at last
to the question of atavism and hereditary aptitudes. The point under
discussion was, how far any singular gift in an individual was due to
his ancestry and how far to his own early training.

"In your own case," said I, "from all that you have told me, it seems
obvious that your faculty of observation and your peculiar facility for
deduction are due to your own systematic training."

"To some extent," he answered, thoughtfully. "My ancestors were country
squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to
their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and
may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the
French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms."

"But how do you know that it is hereditary?"

"Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do."

This was news to me indeed. If there were another man wi