"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 our 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 Study in
Scarlet' and of 'The Sign of Four,' we have been compelled to reason
backward from effects to causes. I have written to Lestrade asking him
to supply us with the details which are now wanting, and which he will
only get after he had secured his man. That he may be safely trusted
to do, for although he is absolutely devoid of reason, he is as
tenacious as a bulldog when he once understands what he has to do, and
indeed, it is just this tenacity which has brought him to the top at
Scotland Yard."

"Your case is not complete, then?" I asked.

"It is fairly complete in essentials. We know who the author of the
revolting business is, although one of the victims still escapes us.
Of course, you have formed your own conclusions."

"I presume that this Jim Browner, the steward of a Liverpool boat, is
the man whom you suspect?"

"Oh! it is more than a suspicion."

"And yet I cannot see anything save very vague indications."

"On the contrary, to my mind nothing could be more clear. Let me run
over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with
an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed
no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences
from our observations. What did we see first? A very placid and
respectable lady, who seemed quite innocent of any secret, and a
portrait which showed me that she had two younger sisters. It
instantly flashed across my mind that the box