The Last Sherlock Holmes Story Read Online Free Page A

compiling a few cuttings on the subject. It is never a good idea to let the constabulary feel that they have you at a disadvantage. It inflames their inherent sense of superiority. Now then, if you are agreeable, I will run over the facts as briefly and clearly as I can. This will be of the greatest benefit to me, in refreshing my grasp of the case.’
    ‘I could wish for nothing better,’ said I, and meant it most sincerely. The coolness that had sprung up between us since I announced my engagement had suddenly been dispelled. The cloud I feared had settled for ever on Holmes’s spirit had suddenly lifted. The game was afoot once more!
    Holmes leafed through the commonplace book with one hand, while with the other he lifted down the Persian slipper containing his tobacco.
    ‘Let me see! “Another Ghastly Murder in Whitechapel.” Hm! “Horrible Atrocities of a Maniac.” Quite so! “Reign of Terror in East London.” “Police Impotent.” Dear me! “Fearful Scenes,” “Sketches at the Inquest,” “Bloodstains on the Stones.” Well! The fourth estate has certainly been having a field-day. But once you skim off the froth and the frissons , the actual matter might be copied on to a single sheet of note-paper – such as this one. Now before examining the murders individually we should note the important features they have in common. Each of the victims was a female pauper of doubtful morals. All three were middle-aged, physically unprepossessing, and lacking even a few pence for a bed. They thus had to spend the night in the streets, where they were murdered within a few hundred yards of each other during the early hours of the morning. All of which raises theinteresting question of motive, or rather the lack of it. Why should anyone wish to kill these pathetic drabs? Gain is out of the question, and the notion of any of the three being the object of a crime passionel is plainly grotesque. But there is another and even greater mystery, which also stamps the three killings as being the work of the same hand. In each case the weapon used was a knife, and it was wielded not merely to kill but to mutilate. The first victim, Tabram, was stabbed repeatedly in the stomach. The other two had their throats cut and were then disembowelled. It was this that first drew my attention to the case. It makes for something distinctly out of the ordinary. Here is a cutting from the Star , describing the corpse of the second victim, Nicholls.’
    I took the open volume from him, and read the following.
    The throat is cut in two gashes, the instrument having been a sharp one, but used in a ferocious and reckless way. There is a gash under the left ear, reaching nearly to the centre of the throat. Along half its length, however, it is accompanied by another one which reaches around under the other ear, making a wide and horrible hole, and nearly severing the head from the body. The ghastliness of this cut, however, pales into insignificance alongside the other. No murder was ever more ferociously or more brutally done. The knife, which must have been a large and sharp one, was jabbed into the deceased at the lower part of the abdomen, and then drawn upwards, not once but twice. The first cut veered to the right, slitting up the groin, and passing over the left hip, but the second cut went straight upward, along the centre of the body, and reaching to the breast-bone.
    ‘Good God, Holmes! What manner of man could –’
    ‘All in good time, Watson, all in good time. I am notwithout my ideas, but these are deep waters. We would do well not to theorise in advance of the facts.’
    ‘If I had not read it in the newspaper, I would not have believed it possible. In these days! In our England! Of all the infamies you have ever had to deal with, this must surely be the most abominable!’
    ‘I do not doubt it. Certainly this killer, whoever he may be, is no common criminal. But to continue. Tabram was slain on the seventh of last month, and