血字的研究-Chapter 34

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Hope成功杀死了Drebber，却把戒指落在了房子里。之后，Hope又潜入旅馆杀死了Stangerson。

 Chapter 34

We had all been warned to appear before the magistrates upon the Thursday;

but when the Thursday came there was no occasion for our testimony.

A higher Judge had taken the matter in hand, and Jefferson Hope had been summoned before a tribunal（法庭）where strict justice would be meted out to him.

On the very night after his capture the aneurism（动脉瘤）burst, and he was found in the morning stretched upon the floor of the cell, with a placid smile upon his face, as though he had been able in his dying moments to look back upon a useful life, and on work well done.

"Gregson and Lestrade will be wild about his death," Holmes remarked, as we chatted it over next evening.

"Where will their grand advertisement be now?"

"I don't see that they had very much to do with his capture," I answered.

"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence（重要性）," returned my companion, bitterly.

"The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done. Never mind," he continued, more brightly, after a pause.

"I would not have missed the investigation for anything. There has been no better case within my recollection（回忆）.

Simple as it was, there were several most instructive points about it."

"Simple!" I ejaculated.

"Well, really, it can hardly be described as otherwise," said Sherlock Holmes, smiling at my surprise.

"The proof of its intrinsic（本质的）simplicity is, that without any help save a few very ordinary deductions（演绎，推论）I was able to lay my hand upon the criminal within three days."

"That is true," said I.

"I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance（阻碍）.

In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

"That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much.

In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected.

There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically（分析地）."

"I confess," said I, "that I do not quite follow you."

"I hardly expected that you would. Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be.

They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass.

"There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness（意识）what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically."

"I understand," said I.

"Now this was a case in which you were given the result and had to find everything else for yourself.

Now let me endeavour to show you the different steps in my reasoning.

"To begin at the beginning. I approached the house, as you know, on foot, and with my mind entirely free from all impressions.

I naturally began by examining the roadway, and there, as I have already explained to you, I saw clearly the marks of a cab, which, I ascertained by inquiry, must have been there during the night.

"I satisfied myself that it was a cab and not a private carriage by the narrow gauge of the wheels.

The ordinary London growler（四轮马车）is considerably less wide than a gentleman's brougham（一种有篷马车）.

"This was the first point gained. I then walked slowly down the garden path, which happened to be composed of a clay soil, peculiarly（特别地）suitable for taking impressions.

No doubt it appeared to you to be a mere trampled（践踏）line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon its surface had a meaning.

"There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps.

Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me.

I saw the heavy footmarks of the constables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had first passed through the garden.

"It was easy to tell that they had been before the others, because in places their marks had been entirely obliterated（破坏掉）by the others coming upon the top of them.

In this way my second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of his stride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant（精致的）impression left by his boots.

"On entering the house this last inference was confirmed. My well-booted man lay before me.

The tall one, then, had done the murder, if murder there was. There was no wound upon the dead man's person, but the agitated（激动的）expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen his fate before it came upon him.

"Men who die from heart disease, or any sudden natural cause, never by any chance exhibit agitation upon their features.

Having sniffed the dead man's lips I detected a slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had poison forced upon him.

"Again, I argued that it had been forced upon him from the hatred（憎恨）and fear expressed upon his face.

By the method of exclusion, I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis（假设）would meet the facts. Do not imagine that it was a very unheard of idea.

The forcible administration of poison is by no means a new thing in criminal annals.

The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of Leturier in Montpellier, will occur at once to any toxicologist（毒理学家）.

"And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had not been the object of the murder, for nothing was taken.

Was it politics, then, or was it a woman? That was the question which confronted（面对）me.

"I was inclined from the first to the latter supposition（推测）. Political assassins are only too glad to do their work and to fly.

This murder had, on the contrary, been done most deliberately（故意的）, and the perpetrator（犯罪者）had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there all the time.

"It must have been a private wrong, and not a political one, which called for such a methodical（有系统的）revenge.

When the inscription was discovered upon the wall I was more inclined than ever to my opinion.

"The thing was too evidently a blind. When the ring was found, however, it settled the question.

Clearly the murderer had used it to remind his victim of some dead or absent woman.

It was at this point that I asked Gregson whether he had enquired in his telegram（电报）to Cleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber's former career. He answered, you remember, in the negative.（1177 words）

-今日短语-

1.be able to会；能够  

2. evolve from由…进化

3. lead up to导致

4. be composed of  由……组成

5. foresee one's fate预测到某人的命运

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