***
Within a short time a four-wheeler had deposited us at the door of the great hospital. The house-officer was just coming out of the lady's hospital room as we turned down the dimly-lit corridor.
"Ah, Mr. Lestrade," he cried upon seeing the inspector. "Have the police found something then?"
"Well, not exactly," returned Lestrade. "I brought these gentlemen along by way of consultation. Dr. Stanley, this is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and of course Dr. Watson. Dr. Stanley was on duty yesterday morning when the constables brought her around."
Dr. Stanley blinked with interest at the name of my companion. "I have heard of you, of course, Mr. Holmes. A privilege, I'm sure." Dr. Stanley was a young man something under middle height, who peered at the world through thick-lensed, gold-rimmed glasses with an uncertain, flickering smile. He was clearly of the impoverished senior medical student type.
"Has there been any change in her condition?" asked Lestrade. "Yes, indeed," said Dr. Stanley. "That is, I think so. She spoke to the nurses this morning; they managed to get some breakfast into her at last. So she can speak - I had been toying with the idea of complete aphasia, as from a stroke, even though she has no right-sided weakness; that would be a terrible thing in a woman so young."
"What did she say?" asked Lestrade, highly interested. "She would scarcely even look at me yesterday, much less talk."
"Well, not much," admitted Dr. Stanley. "Actually, all she said was 'Thank you.' But at least it was something. Yesterday I was thinking of diagnosing her as an hysterical cataleptic, but it won't wash. She's not hysteric nor cataleptic today, exactly; but she is still withdrawn. She sits and stares past one into space with a profound, um, indifference. She still will not talk to me. Perhaps you may have better luck; it's worth a try, anyway."
He turned to escort us through the door. The plainly furnished little hospital room was lit by a cool grey light through a pair of tall, narrow windows. The patient we had come to see was sitting up against a pile of pillows upon her metal cot, dressed in a hospital gown, crisp white sheets pulled into her lap. She was a most extraordinary-looking woman. A thick, silken mane of lion-colored hair framed a pale face of prominent but very harmonious bone structure. High, white forehead, high, wide cheekbones, and a square jaw were accentuated by a thinness of flesh almost suggestive of undernourishment. Lips of palest coral were surmounted by a strong, straight nose and deep-set, crystal-grey eyes which took no notice of us at first, but seemed fixed upon the foot of the bed in an inward tenseness. She sat quietly but for some movement of her long, strong-looking hands, tracing small circles upon the hem of the sheet with a short, unevenly broken fingernail.
"Hm," muttered Holmes, standing at the foot of the bed and looking down at her. He moved to the right side of the bed and lifted her hands. They were unresisting, but for the first time her eyelids flickered and it seemed to me she focused on my companion.
"We see at once that she is right-handed, literate, and not a menial," he began, in the tone of a professor addressing his class. His acid-stained finger traced a prominent writer's callus upon the lady's right middle digit. "She has handled chemicals extensively. And she is a woman who cares little for social conventions. Can you see these very faint, washed-out stains upon her fingers?" I peered closely, barely able to distinguish the brownish marks he pointed out. "The lady smokes. Cigars, I think. She plays a stringed musical instrument-as a hobby, not professionally-probably a guitar. Unquestionably a guitar. She has not worn rings lately, which suggests she is unmarried, or has been widowed for some time."
"Unquestionably unmarried," put in Dr. Stanley.
"Ah? That is something, at least. Some fingernails broken, some bitten; none filed. I think we may take it that she has been in her trouble for several days at a minimum. But not, you see, more than three or four weeks-that by the age of the puncture marks upon her arms. These scrapes upon her palms date only from her adventures of night before last, however. Gravel. The cut upon her wrist is indeed from broken glass, also from night before last, and is the principal source of the bloodstains found upon the sheet. Let us see what her feet have to tell us."
He began to drop the hands, but suddenly they tightened upon his own. The lady was now staring at him intently, and her own fingers began to trace over his hands. Her brow furrowed slightly as her index finger passed over a sticking plaster upon the back of his hand and began to turn up his left shirt cuff, then let it fall back into place abruptly. Holmes watched her with utmost intentness, head tilted to one side, an amazed half-smile upon his lips. She raised her chin to look him full in the face.
"You are..." she began, and paused, the phrase unfinished. She spoke in a mellow alto so quiet I could scarcely catch her words. She appeared to think better of what she had been about to say, and let her hands fall back into her lap. She leaned back upon her pillows. "Go on," she said to Holmes. Holmes stepped back a pace, a tiny frown between his eyes. "She spoke to you!" cried Dr. Stanley in delight. "Somewhat nonsensically," put in Lestrade. "Her accent," I began, but Holmes held up a warning finger. "We shall return to her accent later."
"But she can speak." Dr. Stanley stepped eagerly up to the bedside to capture one of those long white hands for himself. "Madam. What is your name?"
It seemed to me she gave a tiny shake of her head, but she did not look up. Dr. Stanley gazed at her hopefully for a moment, then drew back with a sigh and a shrug. Holmes in the meanwhile completed a brief examination of the lady's feet.
"The marks here also date from the night before last; none older. She has been accustomed to wearing well-fitting shoes. She has been quite athletic at one time but has led of late a more sedentary, indoor life. This burn scar upon her leg is many years old; it dates from the same period as that scar on her left arm, which, by the way, is undoubtedly a bullet wound."
"But what does it all add up to?" asked Lestrade, more puzzled by this flow of information by the minute.
"Well, both your frenzied housewife and your remorseful castaway vanish, I'm afraid. We are left," he went on more slowly, as if not yet absolutely sure of the points he was enumerating, "with a strong-minded, even somewhat eccentric spinster who has led a very active and unconventional youth, and who until a month ago made a decent living as either a chemist or a chemist's assistant."
The grey eyes of the woman were fixed on the detective with a flame-like intensity, but she retained her masked silence.
"You have solved it!" cried Dr. Stanley, who had been following Holmes's demonstration with close and amazed attention.
"Hardly," responded Holmes dryly, wholly unflattered. "I cannot yet begin to suggest how such a woman could have turned up in her condition on the Thames Embankment at two in the morning. There is something very unlikely..."
I could see something was puzzling my friend very much. He stood with his chin upon his hand a moment without completing his last thought, then returned to the head of the bed. He gently lifted the mass of tawny hair to look at the back of the lady's neck, then began to examine her scalp.
"Too bad you washed her hair; there may have been something suggestive. .. Necessary, I suppose... Hm. Here, what's this? Now what do you make of that, Watson?" Holmes lifted a lock of the lady's hair to point out a small patch about the size of a farthing just above her right occipital area. "Shaved, I believe. Note that small circular scab in the center. Wait, here's another. Identical," he continued, lifting hair above the left occipital.