Surely, having traced this lady so far, you can also say what has become of her.""I will endeavour to do so.In the first place she was seized by your secretary, and stabbed him in order to escape.
This catastrophe I am inclined to regard as an unhappy accident, for I am convinced that the lady had no intention of inflicting so grievous an injury.An assassin does not come unarmed.
Horrified by what she had done she rushed wildly away from the scene of the tragedy.Unfortunately for her she had lost her glasses in the scuffle, and as she was extremely short-sighted she was really helpless without them.She ran down a corridor, which she imagined to be that by which she had come -- both were lined with cocoanut matting -- and it was only when it was too late that she understood that she had taken the wrong passage and that her retreat was cut off behind her.What was she to do?
She could not go back.She could not remain where she was.
She must go on.She went on.She mounted a stair, pushed open a door, and found herself in your room."The old man sat with his mouth open staring wildly at Holmes.
Amazement and fear were stamped upon his expressive features.
Now, with an effort, he shrugged his shoulders and burst into insincere laughter.
"All very fine, Mr.Holmes," said he."But there is one little flaw in your splendid theory.I was myself in my room, and I never left it during the day.""I am aware of that, Professor Coram."
"And you mean to say that I could lie upon that bed and not be aware that a woman had entered my room?""I never said so.You WERE aware of it.You spoke with her.
You recognised her.You aided her to escape."Again the Professor burst into high-keyed laughter.
He had risen to his feet and his eyes glowed like embers.
"You are mad!" he cried."You are talking insanely.
I helped her to escape? Where is she now?""She is there," said Holmes, and he pointed to a high bookcase in the corner of the room.
I saw the old man throw up his arms, a terrible convulsion passed over his grim face, and he fell back in his chair.
At the same instant the bookcase at which Holmes pointed swung round upon a hinge, and a woman rushed out into the room.
"You are right!" she cried, in a strange foreign voice.
"You are right! I am here."
She was brown with the dust and draped with the cobwebs which had come from the walls of her hiding-place.Her face, too, was streaked with grime, and at the best she could never have been handsome, for she had the exact physical characteristics which Holmes had divined, with, in addition, a long and obstinate chin.
What with her natural blindness, and what with the change from dark to light, she stood as one dazed, blinking about her to see where and who we were.And yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, there was a certain nobility in the woman's bearing, a gallantry in the defiant chin and in the upraised head, which compelled something of respect and admiration.Stanley Hopkins had laid his hand upon her arm and claimed her as his prisoner, but she waved him aside gently, and yet with an overmastering dignity which compelled obedience.The old man lay back in his chair, with a twitching face, and stared at her with brooding eyes.
"Yes, sir, I am your prisoner," she said."From where I stood I could hear everything, and I know that you have learned the truth.I confess it all.It was I who killed the young man.
But you are right, you who say it was an accident.I did not even know that it was a knife which I held in my hand, for in my despair I snatched anything from the table and struck at him to make him let me go.It is the truth that I tell.""Madam," said Holmes, "I am sure that it is the truth.
I fear that you are far from well."
She had turned a dreadful colour, the more ghastly under the dark dust-streaks upon her face.She seated herself on the side of the bed; then she resumed.
"I have only a little time here," she said, "but I would have you to know the whole truth.I am this man's wife.He is not an Englishman.He is a Russian.His name I will not tell."For the first time the old man stirred."God bless you, Anna!"he cried."God bless you!"
She cast a look of the deepest disdain in his direction.
"Why should you cling so hard to that wretched life of yours, Sergius?" said she."It has done harm to many and good to none -- not even to yourself.However, it is not for me to cause the frail thread to be snapped before God's time.
I have enough already upon my soul since I crossed the threshold of this cursed house.But I must speak or I shall be too late.
"I have said, gentlemen, that I am this man's wife.He was fifty and I a foolish girl of twenty when we married.It was in a city of Russia, a University -- I will not name the place.""God bless you, Anna!" murmured the old man again.
"We were reformers -- revolutionists -- Nihilists, you understand.
He and I and many more.Then there came a time of trouble, a police officer was killed, many were arrested, evidence was wanted, and in order to save his own life and to earn a great reward my husband betrayed his own wife and his companions.
Yes, we were all arrested upon his confession.Some of us found our way to the gallows and some to Siberia.I was among these last, but my term was not for life.My husband came to England with his ill-gotten gains, and has lived in quiet ever since, knowing well that if the Brotherhood knew where he was not a week would pass before justice would be done."The old man reached out a trembling hand and helped himself to a cigarette."I am in your hands, Anna," said he.
"You were always good to me."
"I have not yet told you the height of his villainy," said she.
"Among our comrades of the Order there was one who was the friend of my heart.He was noble, unselfish, loving -- all that my husband was not.He hated violence.We were all guilty --if that is guilt -- but he was not.He wrote for ever dissuading us from such a course.These letters would have saved him.
So would my diary, in which from day to day I had entered both my feelings towards him and the view which each of us had taken.
