CHAPTER 3
IN QUEST OF A SOLUTION
IT WAS HALF-PAST FIVE BEFORE HOLMES RETURNED. HE WAS BRIGHT, EAGER, AND in excellent spirits, a mood which in his case alternated with fits of the blackest depression.
“There is no great mystery in this matter,” he said, taking the cup of tea which I had poured out for him; “the facts appear to admit of only one explanation.”
“What! you have solved it already?”
“Well, that would be too much to say. I have discovered a suggestive fact, that is all. It is, however, very suggestive. The details are still to be added. I have just found, on consulting the back files of the Times, that Major Sholto, of Upper Norwood, late of the Thirty-fourth Bombay Infantry, died upon the twenty-eighth of April, 1882.”
“I may be very obtuse, Holmes, but I fail to see what
