PART II, CHAPTER VII. THE CONCLUSION.
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 where strict justice would be meted out to him. On the very night after his capture the aneurism 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,” 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. 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 simplicity is, that without any help save a few very ordinary deductions I was able to lay my hand upon the criminal within three days.”