LITMIR.BIZ

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close to the office. Suddenly he darted away into the fog.”

      “Without a word?”

      “He gave an exclamation; that was all. I waited but he never returned. Then I walked home. Next morning, after the office opened, they came to inquire. About twelve o’clock we heard the terrible news. Oh, Mr. Holmes, if you could only, only save his honour! It was so much to him.”

      Holmes shook his head sadly.

      “Come, Watson,” said he, “our ways lie elsewhere. Our next station must be the office from which the papers were taken.

      “It was black enough before against this young man, but our inquiries make it blacker,” he remarked as the cab lumbered off. “His coming marriage gives a motive for the crime. He naturally wanted money. The idea was in his head, since he spoke about it. He nearly made the girl an accomplice in the treason by telling her his plans. It is all very bad.”

      “But surely, Holmes, character goes for something? Then, again, why should he leave the girl in the street and dart away to commit a felony?”

      “Exactly! There are certainly objections. But it is a formidable case which they have to meet.”

      Mr. Sidney Johnson, the senior clerk, met us at the office and received us with that respect which my companion’s card always commanded. He was a thin, gruff, bespectacled man of middle age, his cheeks haggard, and his hands twitching from the nervous strain to which he had been subjected.

      “It is bad, Mr. Holmes, very bad! Have you heard of the death of the chief?”

      “We have just come from his house.”

      “The place is disorganized. The chief dead, Cadogan West dead, our papers stolen. And yet, when we closed our door on Monday evening, we were as efficient an office as any in the government service. Good God, it’s dreadful to think of! That West, of all men, should have done such a thing!”

      “You are sure of his guilt, then?”

      “I can see no other way out of it. And yet I would have trusted him as I trust myself.”

      “At what hour was the office closed on Monday?”

      “At five.”

      “Did you close it?”

      “I am always the last man out.”

      “Where were the plans?”

      “In that safe. I put them there myself.”

      “Is there no watchman to the building?”

      “There is, but he has other departments to look after as well. He is an old soldier and a most trustworthy man. He saw nothing that evening. Of course the fog was very thick.”

      “Suppose that Cadogan West wished to make his way into the building after hours; he would need three keys, would he not, before he could reach the papers?”

      “Yes, he would. The key of the outer door, the key of the office, and the key of the safe.”

      “Only Sir James Walter and you had those keys?”

      “I had no keys of the doors — only of the safe.”

      “Was Sir James a man who was orderly in his habits?”

      “Yes, I think he was. I know that so far as those three keys are concerned he kept them on the same ring. I have often seen them there.”

      “And that ring went with him to London?”

      “He said so.”

      “And your key never left your possession?”

      “Never.”

      “Then West, if he is the culprit, must have had a duplicate. And yet none was found upon his body. One other point: if a clerk in this office desired to sell the plans, would it not be simpler to copy the plans for himself than to take the originals, as was actually done?”

      “It would take considerable technical knowledge to copy the plans in an effective way.”

      “But I suppose either Sir James, or you, or West had that technical knowledge?”

      “No doubt we had, but I beg you won’t try to drag me into the matter, Mr. Holmes. What is the use of our speculating in this way when the original plans were actually found on West?”

      “Well, it is certainly singular that he should run the risk of taking originals if he could safely have taken copies, which would have equally served his turn.”

      “Singular, no doubt — and yet he did so.”

      “Every inquiry in this case reveals something inexplicable. Now there are three papers still missing. They are, as I understand, the vital ones.”

      “Yes, that is so.”

      “Do you mean to say that anyone holding these three papers and without the seven others, could construct a Bruce-Partington submarine?”

      “I reported to that effect to the Admiralty. But to-day I have been over the drawings again, and I am not so sure of it. The double valves with the automatic self-adjusting slots are drawn in one of the papers which have been returned. Until the foreigners had invented that for themselves they could not make the boat. Of course they might soon get over the difficulty.”

      “But the three missing drawings are the most important?”

      “Undoubtedly.”

      “I think, with your permission, I will now take a stroll round me premises. I do not recall any other question which I desired to ask.”

      He examined the lock of the safe, the door of the room, and finally the iron shutters of the window. It was only when we were on the lawn outside that his interest was strongly excited. There was a laurel bush outside the window, and several of the branches bore signs of having been twisted or snapped. He examined them carefully with his lens, and then some dim and vague marks upon the earth beneath. Finally he asked the chief clerk to close the iron shutters, and he pointed out to me that they hardly met in the centre, and that it would be possible for anyone outside to see what was going on within the room.

      “The indications are ruined by the three days’ delay. They may mean something or nothing. Well, Watson, I do not think that Woolwich can help us further. It is a small crop which we have gathered. Let us see if we can do better in London.”

      Yet we added one more sheaf to our harvest before we left Woolwich Station. The clerk in the ticket office was able to say with confidence that he saw Cadogan West — whom he knew well by sight — upon the Monday night, and that he went to London by the 8:15 to London Bridge. He was alone and took a single third-class ticket. The clerk was struck at the time by his excited and nervous manner. So shaky was he that he could hardly pick up his change, and the clerk had helped him with it. A reference to the timetable showed that the 8:15 was the first train which it was possible for West to take after he had left the lady about 7:30.

      “Let us reconstruct, Watson,” said Holmes after half an hour of silence. “I am not aware that in all our joint researches we have ever had a case which was more difficult to get at. Every fresh advance which we make only reveals a fresh ridge beyond. And yet we have surely made some appreciable progress.

      “The effect of our inquiries at Woolwich has in the main been against young Cadogan West; but the indications at the window would lend themselves to a more favourable hypothesis. Let us suppose, for example, that he had been approached by some foreign agent. It might have been done under such pledges as would have prevented him from speaking of it, and yet would have affected his thoughts in the direction indicated by his remarks to his fiancee. Very good. We will now suppose that as he went to the theatre with the young lady he suddenly, in the fog, caught a glimpse of this same agent going in the direction of the office. He was an impetuous man, quick in his decisions.

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