“Write a message.”
“Exactly. You would like to tell people how you died. No use writing on paper. That would be seen. If you wrote on the wall some one might rest upon it. Now, look here! Just above the skirting is scribbled with a purple indelible pencil: ‘We we———’ That’s all.”
“What do you make of that?”
“Well, it’s only a foot above the ground. The poor devil was on the floor dying when he wrote it. He lost his senses before he could finish.”
“He was writing, ‘We were murdered.’”
“That’s how I read it. If you find an indelible pencil on the body———”
“We’ll look out for it, you may be sure. But those securities? Clearly there was no robbery at all. And yet he did possess those bonds. We verified that.”
“You may be sure he has them hidden in a safe place. When the whole elopement had passed into history he would suddenly discover them, and announce that the guilty couple had relented and sent back the plunder or had dropped it on the way.”
“You certainly seem to have met every difficulty,” said the Inspector. “Of course, he was bound to call us in, but why he should have gone to you I can’t understand.”
“Pure swank!” Holmes answered. ‘“He felt so clever and so sure of himself that he imagined no one could touch him. He could say to any suspicious neighbour, ‘Look at the steps I have taken. I have consulted not only the police, but even Sherlock Holmes.’”
