“You had dreamed its solution?” asked Raleigh.
“No,” replied Holmes. “Burgess had disappeared with all my clothing, my false-beard, my suit-case, and my watch. The only thing he had left me was the bathing-suit and a few empty small bottles.”
“And why, may I ask,” put in Hamlet, as they drew near to Charon’s office—“why does that case remind you of business as it is conducted to-day?”
“In this, that it is a good thing to stay out of unless you know it all,” explained Holmes. “I omitted in the case of Burgess to observe one thing about him. Had I observed that his nose was rectilinear, incurved, and with a lifted base, and that his auricular temporal angle was between 96 and 97 degrees, I should have known at once that he was an impostor. Vide Ottolenghui on ‘Ears and Noses I Have Met,’ pp. 631-640.”
“Do you mean to say that you can tell a criminal by his ears?” demanded Hamlet.
“If he has any—yes; but I did not know that at the time of the Brighton mystery. Therefore I should have stayed out of the case. But here we are. Good-morning, Charon.”
By this time the trio had entered the private office of the president of the Styx Navigation Company, and in a few moments the vessel was chartered at a fabulous price.
On the return to the wharf, Sir Walter somewhat nervously asked Holmes if he thought the plan they had settled upon would work.
“Charon is a very shrewd old fellow,” said he. “He may outwit us yet.”
“The chances are just two and one-eighth degrees in your favor,” observed Holmes, quietly, with a glance at Raleigh’s ears. “The temporal angle of your ears is 93-1/8 degrees, whereas Charon’s stand out at 91, by my otometer. To that extent your criminal instincts are superior to his. If criminology is an exact science, reasoning by your respective ears, you ought to beat him out by a perceptible though possibly narrow margin.”