 gave was that you would receive help from Sir
Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?«
    »Exactly.«
    »And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping the
appointment?«
    »He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should
find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he
would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us.«
    »He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing
until you read the reports of the death in the paper?«
    »No.«
    »And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir
Charles?«
    »He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should
certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining
silent.«
    »Quite so. But you had your suspicions?«
    She hesitated and looked down.
    »I knew him,« she said. »But if he had kept faith with me I should always
have done so with him.«
    »I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape,« said Sherlock
Holmes. »You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive.
You have been walking for some months very near to the edge of a precipice. We
must wish you good- now Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you will very
shortly hear from us again.«
    »Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in
front of us,« said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express
from town. »I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single
connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern
times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno,
in Little Russia, in the year '66, and of course there are the Anderson murders
in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its
own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be
very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night.«
    The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog
of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I
saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion
that he had learned a good
