The return of Sherlock Holmes (completed)

The Return Of Sherlock Holmes (part 6)

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle)

as his prisoner, but she waved him aside gently, and yet with an
over-mastering dignity which compelled obedience. The old man
lay back in his chair with a twitching face, and stared at her
with brooding eyes.

"Yes, sir, I am your prisoner," she said. "From where I stood I
could hear everything, and I know that you have learned the
truth. I confess it all. It was I who killed the young man. But
you are right--you who say it was an accident. I did not even
know that it was a knife which I held in my hand, for in my
despair I snatched anything from the table and struck at him to
make him let me go. It is the truth that I tell."

"Madam," said Holmes, "I am sure that it is the truth. I fear
that you are far from well."

She had turned a dreadful colour, the more ghastly under the
dark dust-streaks upon her face. She seated herself on the side
of the bed; then she resumed.

"I have only a little time here," she said, "but I would have
you to know the whole truth. I am this man's wife. He is not an
Englishman. He is a Russian. His name I will not tell."

For the first time the old man stirred. "God bless you, Anna!"
he cried. "God bless you!"

She cast a look of the deepest disdain in his direction. "Why
should you cling so hard to that wretched life of yours,
Sergius?" said she. "It has done harm to many and good to
none--not even to yourself. However, it is not for me to cause
the frail thread to be snapped before God's time. I have enough
already upon my soul since I crossed the threshold of this
cursed house. But I must speak or I shall be too late.

"I have said, gentlemen, that I am this man's wife. He was fifty
and I a foolish girl of twenty when we married. It was in a city
of Russia, a university--I will not name the place."

"God bless you, Anna!" murmured the old man again.

"We were reformers--revolutionists--Nihilists, you understand.
He and I and many more. Then there came a time of trouble, a
police officer was killed, many were arrested, evidence was
wanted, and in order to save his own life and to earn a great
reward, my husband betrayed his own wife and his companions.
Yes, we were all arrested upon his confession. Some of us found
our way to the gallows, and some to Siberia. I was among these
last, but my term was not for life. My husband came to England
with his ill-gotten gains and has lived in quiet ever since,
knowing well that if the Brotherhood knew where he was not a
week would pass before justice would be done."

The old man reached out a trembling hand and helped himself to
a cigarette. "I am in your hands, Anna," said he. "You were
always good to me."

"I have not yet told you the height of his villainy," said she.
"Among our comrades of the Order, there was one who was the
friend of my heart. He was noble, unselfish, loving--all that my
husband was not. He hated violence. We were all guilty--if that
is guilt--but he was not. He wrote forever dissuading us from
such a course. These letters would have saved him. So would my
diary, in which, from day to day, I had entered both my feelings
towards him and the view which each of us had taken. My husband
found and kept both diary and letters. He hid them, and he tried
hard to swear away the young man's life. In this he failed, but
Alexis was sent a convict to Siberia, where now, at this moment,
he works in a salt mine. Think of that, you villain, you
villain!--now, now, at this very moment, Alexis, a man whose
name you are not worthy to speak, works and lives like a slave,
and yet I have your life in my hands, and I let you go."

"You were always a noble woman, Anna," said the old man, puffing
at his cigarette.

She had risen, but she fell back again with a little cry of pain.