Sherlock Holmes' Plots and Strategy. assault and false imprisonment before his eyes, turns the key of his door on another, the more readily to extort a confession, serenely flying in the face of the wholesome requirement that neither threat of evil nor promise of favor must be exerted to achieve this consequence. Nor does he scruple when carrying out his design, so impatient is he qf. control, to lay himself open to the charge of being an accessory after the fact or of being concerned in misprision of felony. Mark this astonishingly candid report of the manner in which he obtains possession of a stolen article, and deals with the felon : " It was a delicate part I had to play there; and I knew that so astute a villain would see that our hands were tied in the matter. I went and saw him. At first, of course, he denied everything. But when I gave him every particular that had occurred he tried to bluster, and took down a life-preserver from the wall. I knew my man, however, and I clapped a pistol to his head before he could strike. Then he became a little more reasonable. I told him that we would give him a price for the stones he held — one thousand pounds apiece. That brought out the first signs of grief he had shown. 'Why, dash it all,' said he, ' I've let them go at six hundred pounds for the three!' I soon managed to get the address of the receiver who had them. On promising him that there would be no prosecution, off I set to him, and after much chaffering, I got our stones at one thousand pounds apiece." The shady relations our adventurous zealot confesses to have established with the receiver are worthy of being noted. The conscience, moreover, of this untrammelled operator is not always too nice to deter him from encouraging his clients to accept hushmoney, or, indeed, to save him now and then from pocketing a tidy reward himself to offset expenses for receiving the criminal
dowry. One of the least defensible of Holmes's practices, as it appears to the writer, is the making responsible officials of Scotland Yard parties to compromises, approval of which, if incident to real life, would unquestionably cost them their posi tions. Imagine, for example, a superinten dent of police being complaisant enough to overlook a systematic robbery for years of the public by a fraudulent beggar, and under taking without demur not to prosecute. Some illustrations of Holmes's theorizing may be adduced to make good the assertion that quite as liberal a proportion of sophis try as logic is there embodied. He argues, in one case, from the circumstance of a stranger's hat, which he submits to close inspection, not having been, as he professes to detect, brushed for weeks, that the part ner of his bosom has ceased to love him. Is it the customary lot of the male to find his hat relieved, where needful, of accumu lations of this kind by a ministering Eve, supposing him blest with one? Still des canting upon the hat, he maintains that candles, and not gas, furnish the medium of illumination in its possessor's dwelling, be cause a number of tallow stains adhere to the brim; adding the suggestion that " he walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand, and a tallow candle in the other." But why take his hat upstairs at all, or — if he were in the habit of perform ing this out-of-the-way detail — why put it elsewhere than upon his head? Then, how would grease from the candle, held in one hand, fall on the hat, carried in the other? Again, surmising the identity of a criminal from certain traces he leaves behind, his left-handedness is deduced from observing "that the blow" (inflicted on the murdered man) "was struck immediately from behind," and exceptional height from the compass of his stride in walking. To pass unchallenged
