taught herself, or himself, to hold the pen between the first and second fingers rather than the first and third, in order to disrupt the muscular habits of the wrist. See the slight stiffness in the downstrokes. It is the work of a person of some ingenuity, who has considered that graphology is not now the parlour amusement it was ten years ago."
He took up his penknife at last, and slit the upper edge with the precise small movement by which he opens everything. A single sheet. He unfolded it, and read. His face, which had been animated a moment before, composed itself into the particular flat expression I had come to associate, over the years, with the arrival of information he had not anticipated and did not at once intend to share.
He read it a second time. Then he folded the sheet once along its original crease, and once more, and placed it in the inner pocket of his dressing-gown.
"Holmes," I said.
"Yes, Watson."
"What does it say?"
He crossed to the fire and took up his pipe from the rack, and was some moments filling it. When he spoke, it was without turning to face me.
"It says a great deal, my dear fellow, which I had not supposed anyone alive to say. I shall want an hour to think about it, if you will bear with me. In the meantime, be so good as to look out the Post Office Directory for Chelsea for the present year. And if Mrs. Hudson comes up again, do not, I beg you, mention the letter to her. She has done me the great service of noticing it; she need not do me the further one of wondering about it."
"From whom is it, Holmes?"
He struck a match. The flame, I recall, trembled slightly in his fingers, though the window was closed and there was no draft in the room.
"From a man," said Holmes, "whom you and I last saw three years ago, above a
🤖 The author declared this story as written with the help of AI.