"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 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 the name," he said. "You cannot effect an arrest until
to-morrow night at the earliest. I should prefer that you do not
mention my name at all in connection with the case, as I choose
to be only associated 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 or cigars
that night in our rooms at Baker Street, "is one where, as in the
investigations which you have chronicled under the names of 'A