When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed, or grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts.’

As he spoke there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he looked over her in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him.

‘Do you not find,’ he said, ‘that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting?’

‘I did at first,’ she answered, ‘but now I know where the letters are without looking.’ Then, suddenly realizing the full purport of his words, she gave a violent start, and looked up with fear and astonishment upon her broad, good-humoured face. ‘You’ve heard about me, Mr Holmes,’ she cried, ‘else how could you know all that?’

‘Never mind,’ said Holmes, laughing, ‘it is my business to know things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?’

‘I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs Etherege, whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up for dead. Oh, Mr Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I’m not rich, but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine, and I would give it all to know what has become of Mr Hosmer Angel.’

‘Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?’ asked Sherlock Holmes, with his fingertips together, and his eyes to the ceiling.

Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss Mary Sutherland. ‘Yes, I did bang out of the house,’ she said, ‘for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr Windibank – that is, my father – took it all. He would not go to the police, and he would not go to you, and so at last, as he would do nothing, and kept on saying that there was no harm done, it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away to you.’

‘Your father?’ said Holmes. ‘Your stepfather, surely, since the name is different?’

‘Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself.’

‘And your mother is alive?’

‘Oh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasn’t best pleased, Mr Holmes, when she married again so soon after father’s death, and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road,5 and he left a tidy business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr Hardy, the foreman, but when Mr Windibank came he made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines. They got four thousand seven hundred for goodwill and interest, which wasn’t near as much as father could have got if he had been alive.’

I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.

‘Your own little income,’ he asked, ‘does it come out of the business?’

‘Oh, no, sir, it is quite separate, and was left me by my uncle Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand Stock, paying 4½ per cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interest’

‘You interest me extremely,’ said Holmes. ‘And since you draw so large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge in every way. I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about sixty pounds.’

‘I could do with much less than that, Mr Holmes, but you understand that as long as I live at home I don’t wish to be a burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course that is only just for the time. Mr Windibank draws my interest every quarter, and pays it over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day.’

‘You have made your position very clear to me,’ said Holmes. ‘This is my friend, Dr Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr Hosmer Angel.’

A flush stole over Miss Sutherland’s face, and she picked nervously at the fringe of her jacket. ‘I met him first at the gasfitters’ ball,’ she said. ‘They used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us, and sent them to mother. Mr Windibank did not wish us to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday school treat.