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“I’ve got a good deal to say,” our prisoner
said slowly. “I want to tell you gentlemen all about it.”
“Hadn’t you better reserve that for your
trial?” asked the inspector.
“I may never be tried,” he answered. “You
needn’t look startled. It isn’t suicide I am thinking of. Are you a
doctor?” He turned his fierce dark eyes upon me as he asked this last question.
“Yes, I am,” I answered.
“Then put your hand here,” he said, with a smile,
motioning with his manacled wrists towards his chest.
I did so; and became at once conscious of an extraordinary
throbbing and commotion which was going on inside. The walls of his chest seemed to thrill
and quiver as a frail building would do inside when some powerful engine was at work. In
the silence of the room I could hear a dull humming and buzzing noise which proceeded from
the same source.
“Why,” I cried, “you have an aortic
aneurism!”
“That’s what they call it,” he said, placidly.
“I went to a doctor last week about it, and he told me that it is bound to burst
before many days passed. It has been getting worse for years. I got it from overexposure
and under-feeding among the Salt Lake Mountains. I’ve done my work now, and I
don’t care how soon I go, but I should like to leave some account of the business
behind me. I don’t want to be remembered as a common cut-throat.”
The inspector and the two detectives had a hurried discussion
as to the advisability of allowing him to tell his story.
“Do you consider, Doctor, that there is immediate
danger?” the former asked.
“Most certainly there is,” I answered.
“In that case it is clearly our duty, in the interests of
justice, to take his statement,” said the inspector. “You are at liberty, sir,
to give your account, which I again warn you will be taken down.”
“I’ll sit down, with your leave,” the prisoner
said, suiting the action to the word. “This aneurism of mine makes me easily tired,
and the tussle we had half an hour ago has not mended matters. I’m on the brink of
the grave, and I am not likely [78]
to lie to you. Every word I say is the absolute truth, and how you use it is a matter of
no consequence to me.”
With these words, Jefferson Hope leaned back in his chair and
began the following remarkable statement. He spoke in a calm and methodical manner, as
though the events which he narrated were commonplace enough. I can vouch for the accuracy
of the subjoined account, for I have had access to Lestrade’s notebook, in which the
prisoner’s words were taken down exactly as they were uttered.
“It don’t much matter to you why I hated these
men,” he said; “it’s enough that they were guilty of the death of two human
beings–a father and daughter–and that they had, therefore, forfeited their own
lives. After the lapse of time that has passed since their crime, it was impossible for me
to secure a conviction against them in any court. I knew of their guilt though, and I
determined that I should be judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. You’d
have done the same, if you have any manhood in you, if you had been in my place.
“That girl that I spoke of was to have married me twenty
years ago. She was forced into marrying that same Drebber, and broke her heart over it. I
took the marriage ring from her dead finger, and I vowed that his dying eyes should rest
upon that very ring, and that his last thoughts should be of the crime for which he was
punished. I have carried it about with me, and have followed him and his accomplice over
two continents until I caught them. They thought to tire me out, but they could not do it.
If I die to-morrow, as is likely enough, I die knowing that my work in this world is done,
and well done. They have perished, and by my hand. There is nothing left for me to hope
for, or to desire.
“They were rich and I was poor, so that it was no easy
matter for me to follow them. When I got to London my pocket was about empty, and I found
that I must turn my hand to something for my living. Driving and riding are as natural to
me as walking, so I applied at a cab-owner’s office, and soon got employment. I was
to bring a certain sum a week to the owner, and whatever was over that I might keep for
myself. There was seldom much over, but I managed to scrape along somehow. The hardest job
was to learn my way about, for I reckon that of all the mazes that ever were contrived,
this city is the most confusing. I had a map beside me, though, and when once I had
spotted the principal hotels and stations, I got on pretty well.
“It was some time before I found out where my two
gentlemen were living; but I inquired and inquired until at last I dropped across them.
They were at a boarding-house at Camberwell, over on the other side of the river. When
once I found them out, I knew that I had them at my mercy. I had grown my beard, and there
was no chance of their recognizing me. I would dog them and follow them until I saw my
opportunity. I was determined that they should not escape me again.
“They were very near doing it for all that. Go where they
would about London, I was always at their heels. Sometimes I followed them on my cab, and
sometimes on foot, but the former was the best, for then they could not get away from me.
It was only early in the morning or late at night that I could earn anything, so that I
began to get behindhand with my employer. I did not mind that, however, as long as I could
lay my hand upon the men I wanted.
“They were very cunning, though. They must have thought
that there was some chance of their being followed, for they would never go out alone, and
never after nightfall. During two weeks I drove behind them every day, and never once [79] saw them separate. Drebber
himself was drunk half the time, but Stangerson was not to be caught napping. I watched
them late and early, but never saw the ghost of a chance; but I was not discouraged, for
something told me that the hour had almost come. My only fear was that this thing in my
chest might burst a little too soon and leave my work undone.
“At last, one evening I was driving up and down Torquay
Terrace, as the street was called in which they boarded, when I saw a cab drive up to
their door. Presently some luggage was brought out and after a time Drebber and Stangerson
followed it, and drove off. I whipped up my horse and kept within sight of them, feeling
very ill at ease, for I feared that they were going to shift their quarters. At Euston
Station they got out, and I left a boy to hold my horse and followed them on to the
platform. I heard them ask for the Liverpool train, and the guard answer that one had just
gone, and there would not be another for some hours. Stangerson seemed to be put out at
that, but Drebber was rather pleased than otherwise. I got so close to them in the bustle
that I could hear every word that passed between them. Drebber said that he had a little
business of his own to do, and that if the other would wait for him he would soon rejoin
him. His companion remonstrated with him, and reminded him that they had resolved to stick
together. Drebber answered that the matter was a delicate one, and that he must go alone.
I could not catch what Stangerson said to that, but the other burst out swearing, and
reminded him that he was nothing more than his paid servant, and that he must not presume
to dictate to him. On that the secretary gave it up as a bad job, and simply bargained
with him that if he missed the last train he should rejoin him at Halliday’s Private
Hotel; to which Drebber answered that he would be back on the platform before eleven, and
made his way out of the station.
“The moment for which I had waited so long had at last
come. I had my enemies within my power. Together they could protect each other, but singly
they were at my mercy. I did not act, however, with undue precipitation. My plans were
already formed. There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to
realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him. I had my plans
arranged by which I should have the opportunity of making the man who had wronged me
understand that his old sin had found him out. It chanced that some days before a
gentleman who had been engaged in looking over some houses in the Brixton Road had dropped
the key of one of them in my carriage. It was claimed that same evening, and returned; but
in the interval I had taken a moulding of it, and had a duplicate constructed. By means of
this I had access to at least one spot in this great city where I could rely upon being
free from interruption. How to get Drebber to that house was the difficult problem which I
had now to solve.
“He walked down the road and went into one or two liquor
shops, staying for nearly half an hour in the last of them. When he came out, he staggered
in his walk, and was evidently pretty well on. There was a hansom just in front of me, and
he hailed it. I followed it so close that the nose of my horse was within a yard of his
driver the whole way. We rattled across Waterloo Bridge and through miles of streets,
until, to my astonishment, we found ourselves back in the terrace in which he had boarded.
I could not imagine what his intention was in returning there; but I went on and pulled up
my cab a hundred yards or so from the house. He entered it, and his hansom drove away.
Give me a glass of water, if you please. My mouth gets dry with the talking.”
[80] I
handed him the glass, and he drank it down.
“That’s better,” he said. “Well, I waited
for a quarter of an hour, or more, when suddenly there came a noise like people struggling
inside the house. Next moment the door was flung open and two men appeared, one of whom
was Drebber, and the other was a young chap whom I had never seen before. This fellow had
Drebber by the collar, and when they came to the head of the steps he gave him a shove and
a kick which sent him half across the road. ‘You hound!’ he cried, shaking his
stick at him; ‘I’ll teach you to insult an honest girl!’ He was so hot that
I think he would have thrashed Drebber with his cudgel, only that the cur staggered away
down the road as fast as his legs would carry him. He ran as far as the corner, and then
seeing my cab, he hailed me and jumped in. ‘Drive me to Halliday’s Private
Hotel,’ said he.
“When I had him fairly inside my cab, my heart jumped so
with joy that I feared lest at this last moment my aneurism might go wrong. I drove along
slowly, weighing in my own mind what it was best to do. I might take him right out into
the country, and there in some deserted lane have my last interview with him. I had almost
decided upon this, when he solved the problem for me. The craze for drink had seized him
again, and he ordered me to pull up outside a gin palace. He went in, leaving word that I
should wait for him. There he remained until closing time, and when he came out he was so
far gone that I knew the game was in my own hands.
“Don’t imagine that I intended to kill him in cold
blood. It would only have been rigid justice if I had done so, but I could not bring
myself to do it. I had long determined that he should have a show for his life if he chose
to take advantage of it. Among the many billets which I have filled in America during my
wandering life, I was once janitor and sweeper-out of the laboratory at York College. One
day the professor was lecturing on poisons, and he showed his students some alkaloid, as
he called it, which he had extracted from some South American arrow poison, and which was
so powerful that the least grain meant instant death. I spotted the bottle in which this
preparation was kept, and when they were all gone, I helped myself to a little of it. I
was a fairly good dispenser, so I worked this alkaloid into small, soluble pills, and each
pill I put in a box with a similar pill made without the poison. I determined at the time
that when I had my chance my gentlemen should each have a draw out of one of these boxes,
while I ate the pill that remained. It would be quite as deadly and a good deal less noisy
than firing across a handkerchief. From that day I had always my pill boxes about with me,
and the time had now come when I was to use them.
“It was nearer one than twelve, and a wild, bleak night,
blowing hard and raining in torrents. Dismal as it was outside, I was glad within–so
glad that I could have shouted out from pure exultation. If any of you gentlemen have ever
pined for a thing, and longed for it during twenty long years, and then suddenly found it
within your reach, you would understand my feelings. I lit a cigar, and puffed at it to
steady my nerves, but my hands were trembling and my temples throbbing with excitement. As
I drove, I could see old John Ferrier and sweet Lucy looking at me out of the darkness and
smiling at me, just as plain as I see you all in this room. All the way they were ahead of
me, one on each side of the horse until I pulled up at the house in the Brixton Road.
“There was not a soul to be seen, nor a sound to be
heard, except the dripping of the rain. When I looked in at the window, I found Drebber
all huddled [81] together in
a drunken sleep. I shook him by the arm, ‘It’s time to get out,’ I said.
“‘All right, cabby,’ said he.
“I suppose he thought we had come to the hotel that he
had mentioned, for he got out without another word, and followed me down the garden. I had
to walk beside him to keep him steady, for he was still a little top-heavy. When we came
to the door, I opened it and led him into the front room. I give you my word that all the
way, the father and the daughter were walking in front of us.
“‘It’s infernally dark,’ said he, stamping
about.
“‘We’ll soon have a light,’ I said,
striking a match and putting it to a wax candle which I had brought with me. ‘Now,
Enoch Drebber,’ I continued, turning to him, and holding the light to my own face,
‘who am I?’
“He gazed at me with bleared, drunken eyes for a
moment, and then I saw a horror spring up in them, and convulse his whole features, which
showed me that he knew me. He staggered back with a livid face, and I saw the perspiration
break out upon his brow, while his teeth chattered in his head. At the sight I leaned my
back against the door and laughed loud and long. I had always known that vengeance would
be sweet, but I had never hoped for the contentment of soul which now possessed me.
“‘You dog!’ I said; ‘I have hunted you
from Salt Lake City to St. Petersburg, and you have always escaped me. Now, at last your
wanderings have come to an end, for either you or I shall never see to-morrow’s sun
rise.’ He shrunk still farther away as I spoke, and I could see on his face that he
thought I was mad. So I was for the time. The pulses in my temples beat like
sledge-hammers, and I believe I would have had a fit of some sort if the blood had not
gushed from my nose and relieved me.
“‘What do you think of Lucy Ferrier now?’ I
cried, locking the door, and shaking the key in his face. ‘Punishment has been slow
in coming, but it has overtaken you at last.’ I saw his coward lips tremble as I
spoke. He would have begged for his life, but he knew well that it was useless.
“‘Would you murder me?’ he stammered.
“‘There is no murder,’ I answered. ‘Who
talks of murdering a mad dog? What mercy had you upon my poor darling, when you dragged
her from her slaughtered father, and bore her away to your accursed and shameless
harem?’
“‘It was not I who killed her father,’ he
cried.
“‘But it was you who broke her innocent heart,’
I shrieked, thrusting the box before him. ‘Let the high God judge between us. Choose
and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us
see if there is justice upon the earth, or if we are ruled by chance.’
“He cowered away with wild cries and prayers for mercy,
but I drew my knife and held it to his throat until he had obeyed me. Then I swallowed the
other, and we stood facing one another in silence for a minute or more, waiting to see
which was to live and which was to die. Shall I ever forget the look which came over his
face when the first warning pangs told him that the poison was in his system? I laughed as
I saw it, and held Lucy’s marriage ring in front of his eyes. It was but for a
moment, for the action of the alkaloid is rapid. A spasm of pain contorted his features;
he threw his hands out in front of him, staggered, and then, with a hoarse cry, fell
heavily upon the floor. I turned him over with my foot, and placed my hand upon his heart.
There was no movement. He was dead!
“The blood had been streaming from my nose, but I had
taken no notice of it. [82] I
don’t know what it was that put it into my head to write upon the wall with it.
Perhaps it was some mischievous idea of setting the police upon a wrong track, for I felt
light-hearted and cheerful. I remember a German being found in New York with RACHE written
up above him, and it was argued at the time in the newspapers that the secret societies
must have done it. I guessed that what puzzled the New Yorkers would puzzle the Londoners,
so I dipped my finger in my own blood and printed it on a convenient place on the wall.
Then I walked down to my cab and found that there was nobody about, and that the night was
still very wild. I had driven some distance, when I put my hand into the pocket in which I
usually kept Lucy’s ring, and found that it was not there. I was thunderstruck at
this, for it was the only memento that I had of her. Thinking that I might have dropped it
when I stooped over Drebber’s body, I drove back, and leaving my cab in a side
street, I went boldly up to the house–for I was ready to dare anything rather than
lose the ring. When I arrived there, I walked right into the arms of a police-officer who
was coming out, and only managed to disarm his suspicions by pretending to be hopelessly
drunk.
“That was how Enoch Drebber came to his end. All I had to
do then was to do as much for Stangerson, and so pay off John Ferrier’s debt. I knew
that he was staying at Halliday’s Private Hotel, and I hung about all day, but he
never came out. I fancy that he suspected something when Drebber failed to put in an
appearance. He was cunning, was Stangerson, and always on his guard. If he thought he
could keep me off by staying indoors he was very much mistaken. I soon found out which was
the window of his bedroom, and early next morning I took advantage of some ladders which
were lying in the lane behind the hotel, and so made my way into his room in the gray of
the dawn. I woke him up and told him that the hour had come when he was to answer for the
life he had taken so long before. I described Drebber’s death to him, and I gave him
the same choice of the poisoned pills. Instead of grasping at the chance of safety which
that offered him, he sprang from his bed and flew at my throat. In self-defence I stabbed
him to the heart. It would have been the same in any case, for Providence would never have
allowed his guilty hand to pick out anything but the poison.
“I have little more to say, and it’s as well, for I
am about done up. I went on cabbing it for a day or so, intending to keep at it until I
could save enough to take me back to America. I was standing in the yard when a ragged
youngster asked if there was a cabby there called Jefferson Hope, and said that his cab
was wanted by a gentleman at 221B, Baker Street. I went round suspecting no harm, and the
next thing I knew, this young man here had the bracelets on my wrists, and as neatly
shackled as ever I saw in my life. That’s the whole of my story, gentlemen. You may
consider me to be a murderer; but I hold that I am just as much an officer of justice as
you are.”
So thrilling had the man’s narrative been and his manner
was so impressive that we had sat silent and absorbed. Even the professional detectives,
blase as they were in every detail of crime, appeared to be keenly interested in the
man’s story. When he finished, we sat for some minutes in a stillness which was only
broken by the scratching of Lestrade’s pencil as he gave the finishing touches to his
shorthand account.
“There is only one point on which I should like a little
more information,” Sherlock Holmes said at last. “Who was your accomplice who
came for the ring which I advertised?”
[83] The
prisoner winked at my friend jocosely. “I can tell my own secrets,” he said,
“but I don’t get other people into trouble. I saw your advertisement, and I
thought it might be a plant, or it might be the ring which I wanted. My friend volunteered
to go and see. I think you’ll own he did it smartly.”
“Not a doubt of that,” said Holmes, heartily.
“Now, gentlemen,” the inspector remarked gravely,
“the forms of the law must be complied with. On Thursday the prisoner will be brought
before the magistrates, and your attendance will be required. Until then I will be
responsible for him.” He rang the bell as he spoke, and Jefferson Hope was led off by
a couple of warders, while my friend and I made our way out of the station and took a cab
back to Baker Street.
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