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Updated: June 26, 2025
It is a very cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to run. This is for your private eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can get for Birlstone, and I will meet it or have it met if I am too occupied. This case is a snorter. Don't waste a moment in getting started. If you can bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find something after his own heart.
In a few short sentences he explained to the inspector the facts about the letter and the cipher. MacDonald sat with his chin on his hands and his great sandy eyebrows bunched into a yellow tangle. "I was going down to Birlstone this morning," said he. "I had come to ask you if you cared to come with me you and your friend here.
Was there any robbery?" "I have not heard." "If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and in favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it on a promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid so much down to manage it. Either is possible. But whichever it may be, or if it is some third combination, it is down at Birlstone that we must seek the solution.
"The papers will be full of the Birlstone mystery in a day or two; but where's the mystery if there is a man in London who prophesied the crime before ever it occurred? We have only to lay our hands on that man, and the rest will follow." "No doubt, Mr. Mac. But how do you propose to lay your hands on the so-called Porlock?" MacDonald turned over the letter which Holmes had handed him.
What in the whole wide world can be the connection between this dead painting man and the affair at Birlstone?" "All knowledge comes useful to the detective," remarked Holmes.
But from what you say we might perhaps be doing better work in London." "I rather think not," said Holmes. "Hang it all, Mr. Holmes!" cried the inspector. "The papers will be full of the Birlstone mystery in a day or two; but where's the mystery if there is a man in London who prophesied the crime before ever it occurred? We have only to lay our hands on that man, and the rest will follow."
Was there any robbery?" "I have not heard." "If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and in favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it on a promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid so much down to manage it. Either is possible. But whichever it may be, or if it is some third combination, it is down at Birlstone that we must seek the solution.
At three in the morning the chief Sussex detective, obeying the urgent call from Sergeant Wilson of Birlstone, arrived from headquarters in a light dog-cart behind a breathless trotter. By the five-forty train in the morning he had sent his message to Scotland Yard, and he was at the Birlstone station at twelve o'clock to welcome us.
Then I heard the step of Mrs. Douglas, and I could not let her enter the room. It would have been too horrible." "Horrible enough!" said the doctor, looking at the shattered head and the terrible marks which surrounded it. "I've never seen such injuries since the Birlstone railway smash."
It was the sheet upon which I had scrawled the enigmatic message. "Douglas!" he stammered. "Birlstone! What's this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it's witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful did you get those names?" "It is a cipher that Dr. Watson and I have had occasion to solve. But why what's amiss with the names?" The inspector looked from one to the other of us in dazed astonishment.
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