Quote 2

“All the toil,” Geyer said, “all the weary days and weeks of travel – toil and travel in the hottest months of the year, alternating between faith and hope, and discouragement and despair, all were recompensed in that one moment, when I saw the veil about to lift.”

This quote appears near the end of the book in chapter fifty-two, when Detective Geyer and Inspector Gary are about to discover Howard Pitezel’s body. They have already found Alice and Nellie’s bodies, and Geyer returned twice to Indianapolis because of a very strong intuition that Howard never left there alive. They even expanded their search to include all the small towns outside Indianapolis. After investigating nine-hundred leads, this town of Irvington was the very last one Geyer and Gary had to explore, and this town is where someone remembers Holmes. After traveling all over the country in oppressive heat, and getting his hopes up nine-hundred times and being disappointed nine-hundred more times, Geyer finally feels like a resolution is upon him. What he describes is like the anticipation of a father lifting the bride’s veil, or a curtain being opened to discover a long-lost landscape. All of Geyer’s work is worth it.