A Study in Scarlet (Serial Edition Cover) — page 179: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A STUDY IN SCARLET. 171 would meet the facts. Do not imagine that it was a very unheard-of idea. The forcible administration of ~ peison is by no means a new thing in criminal annals. The cases of Dolsky, in Odessa, and of Leturier, in Montpellier, will occur at once to any toxicologist. “And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had not been the object of the murder, for nothing was taken. Was it politics, then, or was it a woman? That was the question which confronted me. I was inclined from the first to the latter supposi- tion. Political assassins are only too glad to do their work and to fly. This murder had, on the contrary, been done most deliberately, and the perpetrator had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there all the time. It must have been a private wrong, and not a political one, which called for such a methodical revenge. When the inscription was discov- ered upon the wall I was more inclined than ever to my opinion. ‘The thing was too evidently a blind. When the ring was found, however, it settled the question. Clearly the murderer had used it to remind his victim of some dead or absent woman. It was at this point that 1 asked Gregson whether he had inquired in his telegram to Cleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber’s former career. He answered, you remember, in the negative. “I then proceeded to make a careful examination ef CORNIECLOO S (©