"I find her a puzzle. But I'm afraid it may prove one more suited to the talents of an alienist than to a middle-aged criminal detective. I've had clients who had lost their jewels, their husbands, or their fiances; but one who has lost her past is a new experience."
"But you said you did not think her mad."
"She is clearly capable of logical reasoning and a certain subtlety of observation. Amnesia is not necessarily madness in the padded cell and straight-jacket sense."
"Then you find her problem to be medical, not criminal?"
"It is medical, surely; however, we cannot yet eliminate the possibility of some criminal connection to it. Indeed we may not. I shall be quite interested to hear what Lestrade digs up in Camberwell. No, I shan't come in with you, Mrs. Watson is much better equipped than I to minister to your current needs. My apologies for keeping you from your much needed rest for so long."
I got out before my residence, and waved as the cab bore him away. "Let me know how it turns out," I cried.
***
It was close to midnight as I sat in my study in my home in Queen Anne Street. My wife and the servants had all gone to bed. A long nap in the afternoon had made up for the exhaustion produced by the previous night and morning, but had left me too wakeful to join them. The driest article I could find in the British Medical Journal was showing some prospect of lulling me to sleep, when a ring at the door blasted hopes of an uneventful evening. Midnight calls were invariably patients with emergencies. I was considering the charms of the life of a government clerk as I went in my shirtsleeves to answer the door myself.
"Holmes!" I began. "What brings you out at this - " I broke off in astonishment at the sight of his companion. It was the lady from the Embankment. She was dressed in a well-fitting but very plain raincoat that swept to her ankles, but of the feet beneath it one wore a slipper and the other was bare. Her damp uncombed hair hung loosely about her white, set face, and her eyes were dark and dilated, producing altogether a wild, disheveled effect. She held one arm with the other in an unnatural manner. The sleeve of her coat was stained with blood.
"Holmes, what has happened?" I inquired anxiously as I shut the door behind the bohemian pair, for it seemed to me that Holmes himself did not present quite so prim an appearance as he had that morning.
"It's attempted murder at the very least, Watson," he said quietly, the tone of his voice wholly at variance with the electrifying message it contained. "Sorry to knock you up at this hour, but I need you in your professional capacity. Is Mrs. Watson abed? Just as well. No need to disturb her yet."
I kept my voice down. "Come into the surgery." I led the way and turned up the gas.
"It's going to take some stitchery," said Holmes, helping the lady off with her coat and seating her at the table. Beneath the coat the lady was dressed in a simple skirt and blouse. In the light I could see that she was trembling and pale. "She has a stab wound in the arm. Hardly in danger of being fatal, but it has bled like the very devil."
The blood-soaked towel wrapped about the arm in question told me he did not exaggerate. I gathered my equipment and a basin, and unwrapped the towel and a soaked handkerchief tied tightly beneath it, to disclose a long, straight cut; the length of the lady's forearm, a mere scratch near the wrist but deep near the elbow. "How in God's name did this happen?" I asked.
Holmes gave me this account as I cleansed and stitched the wound. The lady retained her accustomed silence, except for an occasional sharp intake of breath when the operation became unavoidably painful.
"It was partly my fault. Fool that I was to leave it to that idiot Lestrade!" he began bitterly. "But I should begin at the beginning, after which our lady can tell you her part of the story.
"I had spent the rest of the day after I left you at my cross-indexing. After supper Lestrade dropped by for a pipe, as is his occasional habit. I asked him how his search in Camberwell was progressing.
" 'Ah, Mr. Holmes,' said he cheerily. 'What an anticlimax we have had! Not two hours ago the lady's brother turned up to claim her.'
" 'What!' I cried, amazed.
" 'Yes, there was no doubt about it. After what you had said this morning I was inclined to take a suspicious view of him, but he was able to establish his credentials quite satisfactorily. By the way, one of your deductions at least came home to roost; the fellow was a naturalized American citizen who had been born in England, as was his sister, and he had both their passports to prove his word. His name is Ormond Sacker; his sister's name is Violet. He was undoubtably one of the two fellows the lady described, though her view of him was so unflattering it was hard to see at first. He was a dark-haired young fellow about 35, my height or a little shorter, with protuberant brown eyes; he dressed quite the gentleman. He had a round, smooth, pale face an a quick way of moving. It turns out the lady had had brain fever in America and had been in rather a bad way. He said they had despaired of her life for weeks. His uncle, who is also their family doctor, this fellow Sacker, and a devoted maid had brought the lady to England in the hope of speeding her recovery, but they'd hardly reached London when she took a turn for the worse. The uncle, by the way, is the one that Violet Sacker called "the bird-faced man." It appears the lady's symptoms take the form of violent delusions in which she does not recognize her family or friends. The poor fellow was quite embarrassed about it. It's a rough thing for a coming young gent to have a madwoman in the family, though he appears quite devoted to her. I'm afraid I pried a bit when I questioned him. "And how did Miss Sacker come by her brain fever?" I asked. I thought he'd crawl under the rug. It turns out there'd been a young man in the picture, wouldn't you know; he'd been rather a loose screw, who'd left abruptly for South America. Well, you know how these women are when they're hitting middle age and not a man in sight. She'd apparently carried on something fierce until she'd finally broke her health, and there you are.'
"It sounded plausible enough, Watson. There was nothing in what he'd said so far that was absolutely contradicted by the physical facts I had observed this morning. But still there were one or two points that bothered me.
" 'Why didn't they turn up to claim her earlier?' I put the most obvious of them to him. 'Or contact the police as soon as she was missed?'
" 'I wondered that too,' said the inspector. 'Sacker said they'd been out searching for her ever since she'd turned up absent from her bed, and hadn't seen a paper till this morning; the uncle had wanted to call the police, but Sacker had a horror of the publicity that would ensue, and wanted to search himself first. The uncle had convinced him to go to the Yard this morning, when they saw the article in yesterday's paper. The old doctor was quite done in by that time, and sent Sacker around alone to Bart's to collect her.
" 'Well, she flew into one of her agitated fits when she saw her brother. Dr. Stanley had to give her a sedative before the nurses could get her bundled into the clothes he'd brought. Her coat, by the way, had an American label, so that fit. I took his address and sent them off in a hansom.'
'You didn't go with them to see Miss Sacker safely bestowed in Camberwell?' I asked.
'You're out there, Mr. Holmes,' said Lestrade with a chuckle. 'Though it seemed to me that he was more in need of protection than she. She got to be a bit of a wildcat there for a while. But they're not in Camberwell; they're in a rooming house in Hammersmith. You can't expect to be right in every little detail all the time, you know.'
By this time I should have had alarm bells going off in my brain; but I was slow, Watson, culpably slow. I think I'm getting too old for this sort of work. Senile softening of the brain. I contented myself with taking down the address and sent him on his way, pleased with having the matter off his hands. I had planned to go see the new production of Faust at Covent Garden tonight, but that voice in the back of my brain sent me off to Hammersmith instead. I thought I'd just drop by and see Miss Sacker, perhaps apologize for my rather cavalier approach to her problems this morning, any excuse would do. When I got to the address this fellow had given Lestrade, it turned out to be a solicitor's office, sandwiched between a pub and a chemist's. You can imagine I felt pretty sick. I rang Lestrade up from the nearest Exchange-I sincerely hope I got him out of the bath-and fairly screamed at him to get himself and his people down to Camberwell. I've had four clients murdered in my career, as you know, Watson, and I had no desire to repeat the experience. I jumped back into my cab and dashed back to Baker Street, intending to follow on to the Yard. When I got home I found to my profound astonishment Mrs. Hudson in near hysterics, a cabman threatening to call the law, and this lady-dare I call her my client? her name is certainly not Violet Sacker-bleeding in the front hall.