was waiting for us at the door.

"A telegram for you, Mr. Holmes," said he.

"Ha! It is the answer!" He tore it open, glanced his eyes over it, and
crumpled it into his pocket. "That's all right," said he.

"Have you found out anything?"

"I have found out everything!"

"What!" Lestrade stared at him in amazement. "You are joking."

"I was never more serious in my life. A shocking crime has been
committed, and I think that I have now laid bare every detail of it."

"And the criminal?"

Holmes scribbled a few words upon the back of one of his visiting cards
and threw it over to Lestrade.

"That is it," he said; "you cannot effect an arrest until to-morrow
night at the earliest. I should prefer that you would not mention my
name at all in connection with the case, as I choose to be associated
only with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.
Come on, Watson." We strode off together to the station, leaving
Lestrade still staring with a delighted face at the card which Holmes
had thrown him.

* * * * *

"The case," said Sherlock Holmes, as we chatted over our cigars that
night in our rooms at Baker Street, "is one where, as in the
investigations which you have chronicled under the names of the 'Study
in Scarlet' and of the 'Sign of Four,' we have been compelled to reason
backward from effects to causes. I have written to Lestrade asking him
to supply us with the details which are now wanting, and which he will
only get after he has secured his man. That he may be safely trusted to
do, for although he is absolutely devoid of reason, he is as tenacious
as a bulldog when he once understands what he has to do, and indeed it
is just this tenacity which has brought him to the top at Scotland
Yard."

"Your case is not complete, then?" I asked.

"It is fairly complete in essentials. We know who the author of the
revolting business is, although one of the victims still escapes us. Of
course, you have formed your own conclusions."

"I presume that this Jim Browner, the steward of a Liverpool boat, is
the man whom you suspect?"

"Oh! it is more than a suspicion."

"And yet I cannot see anything save very vague indications."

"On the contrary, to my mind nothing could be more clear. Let me run
over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an
absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no
theories. We were simply ther