As the personal friend, as well as the medical attendant of Sir
Charles, Mortimer knew him to be a strong-minded man, shrewd, practical,
and as unimaginative as the Doctor himself, yet he had taken the
document very seriously, and had been prepared for just such an end as
did eventually overtake him.
Holmes took the manuscript, drew my attention to the alternative use of
the long and short "s", which was one of several indications which
enabled him to fix the date, and handed it back to Mortimer with a sigh
of resignation and some boredom when the Doctor said he would like to read
it to us since the document was closely connected with an urgent affair
that had to be decided within the next twenty-four hours.
He read the legend in a high, cracking voice, and was evidently
disappointed that Holmes observed it to be of interest only to a
