as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the
light and attacked it."

"With the result of driving it through the ventilator."

"And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master
at the other side. Some of the blows of my cane came home and
roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person
it saw. In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr.
Grimesby Roylott's death, and I cannot say that it is likely to
weigh very heavily upon my conscience."



IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER'S THUMB

Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr.
Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy,
there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his
notice--that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb, and that of Colonel
Warburton's madness. Of these the latter may have afforded a
finer field for an acute and original observer, but the other was
so strange in its inception and so dramatic in its details that
it may be the more worthy of being placed upon record, even if it
gave my friend fewer openings for those deductive methods of
reasoning by which he achieved such remarkable results. The story
has, I believe, been told more than once in the newspapers, but,
like all such narratives, its effect is much less striking when
set forth en bloc in a single half-column of print than when the
facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears