w and hand me the water carafe." I undid his collar,
poured the cold water over his face, and raised and sank his arms until
he drew a long natural breath.

"It's only a question of time now," said I, as I turned away from him.

Holmes stood by the table with his hands deep in his trousers pockets
and his chin upon his breast.

"I suppose we ought to call the police in now," said he; "and yet I
confess that I like to give them a complete case when they come."

"It's a blessed mystery to me," cried Pycroft, scratching his head.
"Whatever they wanted to bring me all the way up here for, and then----"

"Pooh! All that is clear enough," said Holmes, impatiently. "It is this
last sudden move."

"You understand the rest, then?"

"I think that it is fairly obvious. What do you say, Watson?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I must confess that I am out of my depths," said I.

"Oh, surely, if you consider the events at first they can only point to
one conclusion."

"What do you make of them?"

"Well, the whole thing hinges upon two points. The first is the making
of Pycroft write a declaration by which he entered the service of this
preposterous company. Do you not see how very suggestive that is?"

"I am afraid I miss the point."

"Well, why did they want him to do it? Not as a business matter, for
these arrangements are usually verbal, and there was no earthly business
reason why this should be an exception. Don't you see, my young friend,
that they were very anxious to obtain a specimen of your handwriting,
and had no other way of doing it?"

"And why?"

"Quite so. Why? When we answer that, we have made some progress with our
little problem. Why? There can be only one adequate reason. Someone
wanted to learn to imitate your writing, and had to procure a specimen
of it first. And now if we pass on to the second point, we find that
each throws light upon the other. That point is the request made by
Pinner that you should not resign your place, but should leave the
manager of this important business in the full expectation that a Mr.
Hall Pycroft, whom he had never seen, was about to enter the office upon
the Monday morning."

"My God!" cried our client, "what a blind beetle I have been!"

"Now you see the point about the handwriting. Suppose that someone
turned up in your place who wrote a completely different hand from that
in which you had applied for the vacancy, of course the game would have
been up. But i