"Doyle, Arthur Conan - Sherlock Holmes 04 - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

Straker had defended himself vigorously against his
assailants, for in his right hand he held a small
knife, which was clotted with blood up to the handle,
while in his left he clasped a red and black silk
cravat, which was recognized by the maid as having
been worn on the preceding evening by the stranger who
had visited the stables. Hunter, on recovering from
his stupor, was also quite positive as to the
ownership of the cravat. He was equally certain that
the same stranger had, while standing at the window,
drugged his curried mutton, and so deprived the
stables of their watchman. As to the missing horse,
there were abundant proofs in the mud which lay at the
bottom of the fatal hollow that he had been there at
the time of the struggle. But from that morning he
has disappeared, and although a large reward has been
offered, and all the gypsies of Dartmoor are on the
alert, no news has come of him. Finally, an analysis
has shown that the remains of his supper left by the
stable-lad contain an appreciable quantity of powdered
opium, while the people at the house partook of the
same dish on the same night without any ill effect.

"Those are the main facts of the case, stripped of all
surmise, and stated as baldly as possible. I shall
now recapitulate what the police have done in the
matter.

"Inspector Gregory, to whom the case has been
committed, is an extremely competent officer. Were he
but gifted with imagination he might rise to great
heights in his profession. On his arrival he promptly
found and arrested the man upon whom suspicion
naturally rested. There was little difficulty in
finding him, for he inhabited one of those villas
which I have mentioned. His name, it appears, was
Fitzroy Simpson. He was a man of excellent birth and
education, who had squandered a fortune upon the turf,
and who lived now by doing a little quiet and genteel
book-making in the sporting clubs of London. An
examination of his betting-book shows that bets to the
amount of five thousand pounds had been registered by
him against the favorite. On being arrested he
volunteered that statement that he had come down to
Dartmoor in the hope of getting some information about
the King's Pyland horses, and also about Desborough,
the second favorite, which was in charge of Silas
Brown at the Mapleton stables. He did not attempt to
deny that he had acted as described upon the evening
before, but declared that he had no sinister designs,