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"There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!" said Holmes, laughing, as he

threw himself down into his chair once more. "That fellow will

rise from crime to crime until he does something very bad, and

ends on a gallows. The case has, in some respects, been not

entirely devoid of interest."

"I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning," I

remarked.

"Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr.

Hosmer Angel must have some strong object for his curious

conduct, and it was equally clear that the only man who really

profited by the incident, as far as we could see, was the

stepfather. Then the fact that the two men were never together,

but that the one always appeared when the other was away, was

suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious voice,

which both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My

suspicions were all confirmed by his peculiar action in

typewriting his signature, which, of course, inferred that his

handwriting was so familiar to her that she would recognise even

the smallest sample of it. You see all these isolated facts,

together with many minor ones, all pointed in the same

direction."