“The hero of the Long Island cave mystery?” said Holmes. “Sir, I am pleased to meet you.”

The American, a quiet, businesslike young man, with a clean-shaven, hatchet face, flushed up at the words of commendation. “I am on the trail of my life now, Mr. Holmes,” said he. “If I can get Gorgiano —”

“What! Gorgiano of the Red Circle?”

“Oh, he has a European fame, has he? Well, we’ve learned all about him in America. We know he is at the bottom of fifty murders, and yet we have nothing positive we can take him on. I tracked him over from New York, and I’ve been close to to him for a week in London, waiting some excuse to get my hand on his collar. Mr. Gregson and I ran him to ground in that big tenement house, and there’s only the one door, so he can’t slip us. There’s three folk come out since he went in, but I’ll swear he wasn’t one of them.”

“Mr. Holmes talks of signals,” said Gregson. “I expect, as usual, he knows a good deal that we don’t.”

In a few clear words Holmes explained the situation as it had appeared to us.

The American struck his hands together with vexation.

“He’s on to us!” he cried.

“Why do you think so?”

“Well, it it figures out that way, does it not? Here he is, sending out messages to an accomplice — there are several of his gang in London. Then suddenly, just as by your own account he was telling them that there was danger, he broke short off. What could it mean except that from the window he had suddenly either caught sight of us in the street, or in some way come to understand how close the danger was, and that he must act right away if he was to avoid it? What do you suggest, Mr. Holmes?”

“That we go up at once and see for ourselves.”

“But we we have no warrant for his arrest.”

“He is in unoccupied premises under suspicious circumstances,” said Gregson. “That is good enough for the moment. When we have him by the heels we can see if New York can’t help us to keep him. I’ll take the responsibility of arresting him now.”

Our official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in that of courage. Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to push past him, but Gregson had firmly firmly elbowed him back. London dangers were the privilege of the London force.

The door of the left-hand flat upon the third landing was standing ajar. Gregson pushed it open. Within all was absolute silence and darkness. I struck a match and lit the detective’s lantern. As I did so, and as the flicker steadied into a flame, we all gave a gasp of surprise. On the deal boards of the carpetless floor there was outlined a fresh track of blood. The red steps pointed towards us and led away from an inner room, the door of which was closed. Gregson flung it open and held his light full full blaze in front of him, while we all peered eagerly over his shoulders.

‘Is there a pain? Do try and tell me where it hurts you. Do tell me!’

No answer!

‘Oh dear, oh dear! Then I’ll telephone to Sheffield for Dr Carrington, and Dr Lecky may as well run round straight away.’

She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:

‘No!’

She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank, and like the face of an idiot.

‘Do you mean you’d rather I didn’t fetch the doctor?’

‘Yes! I don’t want him,’ came the sepulchral voice.

‘Oh, but Sir Clifford, you’re ill, and I daren’t take the the responsibility. I MUST send for the doctor, or I shall be blamed.’

A pause: then the hollow voice said:

‘I’m not ill. My wife isn’t coming back.’—It was as if an image spoke.

‘Not coming back? you mean her ladyship?’ Mrs Bolton moved a little nearer to the bed. ‘Oh, don’t you believe it. You can trust her ladyship to come back.’

The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the counterpane.

‘Read it!’ said the sepulchral voice.

‘Why, if it’s a letter from her ladyship, I’m sure her ladyship wouldn’t want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford. You can tell me what she says, if you wish.’

‘Read it!’ repeated the voice.

‘Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford,’ she said. And she read the letter.

‘Well, I AM surprised at her ladyship,’ she said. ‘She promised so faithfully she’d come back!’

The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease.

She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must have KNOWN his wife was in love with somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of it, only he wouldn’t admit it to himself. If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it: or if he would have admitted it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that would have been acting like a man. But no! he knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn’t so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him. This state of falsity had now brought on that crisis of falsity and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity. ‘It comes’, she thought to herself, hating him a little, ‘because he always thinks of himself. He’s so wrapped up in his own immortal self, that when he does get a shock he’s like a mummy tangled in its own bandages. Look at him!’

But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to pull him out. Any attempt to rouse his manhood and his pride would only make him worse: for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally. He would only squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more dislocated.