Menacingly, he glared at me which immediately sent a shiver across my body; this somehow foreboded something which I found it quite disturbing. Treating Jefferson like a sandbag, Holmes, Gregon and Lestreade yanked him up by the shirt violently and barged him into a dirty ragged seat of a police car. Slamming the door shut with a bang the police officer mounted himself to his smooth, light-blue and clean seat. I felt the urge of the officer willing to get rid of the prisoner for he stepped on the pedal to the floor.
Arriving at the police station, we all got off and stomped into the Head of Police's room. On the way through the corridor, several police officers gasped at Jefferson's bruised look.
“So, Mr Jefferson. Already back again here now?” declared the Head.
“Sir, I have done nothing wrong! I am innocent!”
“Say no more,” bellowed the head.
Holmes kicked Jefferson into a cell designated for him. It smelt of dog poo and the area was flooded with filthy water on the floor. The bedstead was covered with cobwebs and bits of gum below. It was just an old mattress laid on a piece of old, wooden plank. The Head scoffed and plodded away. Seeing the smile on Holmes' face, I knew he was jubilant. However, I was depressed from not doing enough.
In this passage, the narrator, Dr Watson, is observing his companion, the
detective Sherlock Holmes.
I was surprised to find my companion speaking as though he were about to set out on a journey, since he had not said anything to me about it. There was a small portmanteau* in the room, and this he pulled out and began to strap. He was busily engaged at it when the cabman entered the room.
"Just give me a help with this buckle, cabman," he said, kneeling over his task, and never turning his head.
The fellow came forward with a somewhat sullen, defiant air, and put down his hands to assist. At that instant there was a sharp click, the jangling of metal, and Sherlock Holmes sprang to his feet again.
"Gentlemen," he cried, with flashing eyes, "let me introduce you to Mr Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Enoch Drebber and of Joseph Stangerson."
The whole thing occurred in a moment- so quickly that I had no time to realise it. I have a vivid recollection of that instant, of Holmes's triumphant expression and the ring of his voice, of the cabman's dazed, savage face, as he glared at the glittering handcuffs, which had appeared as if by magic upon his wrists. For a second or two we might have been a group of statues. Then, with an inarticulate roar of fury, the prisoner wrenched himself free from Holmes's grasp, and hurled himself through the window. Woodwork and glass gave way before him; but before he got quite through, Gregson, Lestrade, and Holmes sprang upon him like so many staghounds.
He was dragged back into the room, and then commenced a terrific conflict. So powerful and so fierce was he, that the four of us were shaken off again and again. He appeared to have the convulsive strength of a man in an epileptic fit. His face and hands were terribly mangled by his passage through the glass, but loss of blood had no effect in diminishing his resistance. It was not until Lestrade succeeded in getting his hand inside his neckcloth and half-strangling him that we made him realise that his struggles were of no avail; and even then we felt no security until we had pinioned his feet as well as his hands.
·portmanteau = travelling bag
Comments