CONTENTS
THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE
THE GREAT HIATUS
BARITSU
THE DARKENING SKY
THE PATH OF THE COLONEL’S BULLET
THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND FINGERPRINTING
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN
THE DANCING MEN ALPHABET
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST
BICYCLING IN THE TIME OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL
THE DUKE OF HOLDERNESSE
WHICH WAY DID THE BICYCLE TRAVEL?
THE ADVENTURE OF BLACK PETER
THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS
THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE STUDENTS
THE STUDY OF EARLY ENGLISH CHARTERS
THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING THREE-QUARTER
THE RULES OF RUGBY
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN
“LORD BELLINGER” AND THE “RIGHT HONOURABLE TRELAWNEY HOPE”
HIS LAST BOW
PREFACE
THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE
THE SECRET MESSAGE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS
AN IMPENDING CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT
NAVAL WARFARE
THE POLYPHONIC MOTETS OF LASSUS
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DYING DETECTIVE
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX
“THEY COULD BURY HER . . .”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT
HIS LAST BOW
THE CASE-BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
PREFACE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS CLIENT
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLANCHED SOLDIER
THE BOER WAR
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAZARIN STONE
THE AUTHOR OF “THE MAZARIN STONE”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GABLES
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE
“BUT WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT VAMPIRES?”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GARRIDEBS
THE PROBLEM OF THOR BRIDGE
SYNOPSIS OF THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY
THE ORIGINAL “PROBLEM OF THOR BRIDGE”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CREEPING MAN
“AS TO YOUR DATES, THAT IS THE BIGGEST MYSTIFICATION OF ALL”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE LION’S MANE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE VEILED LODGER
HOLMES’S CAREER
THE ADVENTURE OF SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE RETIRED COLOURMAN
THE IDENTITY OF “CARINA”
SELECTED SOURCES
GENERAL
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
HIS LAST BOW
THE CASE-BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
NOTES FOR SCHOLARS
ACTIVE SHERLOCKIAN SOCIETIES
THE SHERLOCKIAN WEB
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Arthur Conan Doyle.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s 1903.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE1
“The Empty House” may be the most widely hailed story of the entire
Canon. When it was published in the Strand Magazine’s October 1903
issue, ten years after the public was informed of Holmes’s death (in
“The Final Problem”), the magazine made no pretence of that issue’s
contents: bold letters at the top of the cover trumpeted “Sherlock
Holmes,” with the story title in smaller letters below, and the first
page of the story declared “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” in large
letters above the title. In September 1903, the Strand had announced:
“Fortunately, the news of [Holmes’s] death, though based on
circumstantial evidence which at the time seemed conclusive, turns out
to be erroneous.” While many read the story for the highly emotional
scene of Holmes and Watson’s reunion, there are scholarly issues as
well: The murder of Ronald Adair seems impossible as described,
unless Moran were on top of a passing bus. Another puzzle is why
Moran escaped the gallows for his crime. Finally, there are clues to
the location of the “real” 221 Baker Street provided by the description
of the “empty house” across the street.
IT WAS IN the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the
fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable2 Ronald3 Adair
under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already
learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation;
but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the
prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring
forward all the facts. Only now, at the end of nearly ten years,4 am I allowed to
supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain.
The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me
compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and
surprise of any event in my adventurous life. Even now, after this long interval, I
find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of
joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. Let me say
to that public, which has shown some interest in those glimpses which I have
occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a very remarkable man,
that they are not to blame me if I have not shared my knowledge with them, for I
should have considered it my first duty to have done so, had I not been barred by
a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the
third of last month.
It can be imagined that my close intimacy with Sherlock Holmes had
interested me deeply in crime, and that after his disappearance I never failed to
read with care the various problems which came before the public, and I even
attempted, more than once, for my own private satisfaction, to employ his
methods in their solution, though with indifferent success. There was none,
however, which appealed to me like this tragedy of Ronald Adair. As I read the
evidence at the inquest, which led up to a verdict of wilful murder against some
person or persons unknown, I realized more clearly than I had ever done the loss
which the community had sustained by the death of Sherlock Holmes. There
were points about this strange business which would, I was sure, have specially
appealed to him, and the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or
more probably anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the
first criminal agent in Europe. All day5 as I drove upon my round I turned over
the case in my mind6 and found no explanation which appeared to me to be
adequate. At the risk of telling a twice-told tale, I will recapitulate the facts as
they were known to the public at the conclusion of the inquest.
The Honourable Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, at
that time Governor of one of the Australian Colonies.7 Adair’s mother had
returned from Australia to undergo the operation for cataract, and she, her son
Ronald, and her daughter Hilda were living together at 427 Park Lane.8 The
youth moved in the best society, had, so far as was known, no enemies, and no
particular vices. He had been engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, of Carstairs, but
the engagement had been broken off by mutual consent some months before, and
there was no sign that it had left any very profound feeling behind it. For the
rest, the man’s life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits
were quiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-going young
aristocrat that death came, in most strange and unexpected form, between the
hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night of March 30, 1894.
Park Lane near Marble Arch.
Victorian and Edwardian London
Ronald Adair was fond of cards—playing continually, but never for such
stakes as would hurt him. He was a member of the Baldwin, the Cavendish, and
the Bagatelle card clubs.9 It was shown that, after dinner on the day of his death,
he had played a rubber of whist10 at the latter club. He had also played there in
the afternoon. The evidence of those who had played with him—Mr. Murray, Sir
John Hardy, and Colonel Moran—showed that the game was whist, and that
there was a fairly equal fall of the cards. Adair might have lost five pounds, but
not more. His fortune was a considerable one, and such a loss could not in any
way affect him. He had played nearly every day at one club or other, but he was
a cautious player, and usually rose a winner. It came out in evidence that, in
partnership with Colonel Moran, he had actually won as much £420 in a sitting,
some weeks before, from Godfrey Milner and Lord Balmoral.11 So much for his
recent history as it came out at the inquest.
On the evening of the crime, he returned from the club exactly at ten. His
mother and sister were out spending the evening with a relation. The servant
deposed that she heard him enter the front room on the second floor,12 generally
used as his sitting-room. She had lit a fire there, and as it smoked she had opened
the window. No sound was heard from the room until eleven-twenty, the hour of
the return of Lady Maynooth and her daughter. Desiring to say good-night, she
had attempted to enter her son’s room. The door was locked on the inside, and
no answer could be got to their cries and knocking. Help was obtained, and the
door forced. The unfortunate young man was found lying near the table. His
head had been horribly mutilated by an expanding revolver bullet,13 but no
weapon of any sort was to be found in the room. On the table lay two bank-notes
for £10 each and £10 17s. in silver and gold, the money arranged in little piles of
varying amount. There were some figures also upon a sheet of paper, with the
names of some club friends opposite to them, from which it was conjectured that
before his death he was endeavouring to make out his losses or winnings at
cards.
The unfortunate young man was found lying near the
table.
G. A. Dowling, Portland Oregonian, July 9, 1911
A minute examination of the circumstances served only to make the case more
complex. In the first place, no reason could be given why the young man should
have fastened the door upon the inside. There was the possibility that the
murderer had done this, and had afterwards escaped by the window. The drop
was at least twenty feet, however, and a bed of crocuses in full bloom lay
beneath. Neither the flowers nor the earth showed any sign of having been
disturbed, nor were there any marks upon the narrow strip of grass which
separated the house from the road. Apparently, therefore, it was the young man
himself who had fastened the door. But how did he come by his death? No one
could have climbed up to the window without leaving traces. Suppose a man had
fired through the window, it14 would indeed be a remarkable shot who could
with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound. Again, Park Lane is a frequented
thoroughfare, and there is a cab-stand within a hundred yards of the house. No
one had heard a shot. And yet there was the dead man, and there the revolver
bullet, which had mushroomed out, as soft-nosed bullets will, and so inflicted a
wound which must have caused instantaneous death. Such were the
circumstances of the Park Lane Mystery, which were further complicated by
entire absence of motive, since, as I have said, young Adair was not known to
have any enemy, and no attempt had been made to remove the money or
valuables in the room.
All day I turned these facts over in my mind, endeavouring to hit upon some
theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that line of least resistance
which my poor friend had declared to be the starting-point of every
investigation. I confess that I made little progress. In the evening I strolled
across the Park, and found myself about six o’clock at the Oxford Street end of
Park Lane. A group of loafers upon the pavements, all staring up at a particular
window, directed me to the house which I had come to see. A tall, thin man with
coloured glasses,15 whom I strongly suspected of being a plain-clothes detective,
was pointing out some theory of his own, while the others crowded round to
listen to what he said. I got as near him as I could, but his observations seemed
to me to be absurd, so I withdrew again in some disgust. As I did so I struck
against an elderly deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down
several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up, I
observed the title of one of them, The Origin of Tree Worship,16 and it struck me
that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile who, either as a trade or as a
hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes. I endeavoured to apologize for the
accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately
maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of
contempt he turned upon his heel, and I saw his curved back and white side-
whiskers disappear among the throng.
“I knocked down several books which he was carrying.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
My observations of No. 427, Park Lane, did little to clear up the problem in
which I was interested. The house was separated from the street by a low wall
and railing, the whole not more than five feet high. It was perfectly easy,
therefore, for anyone to get into the garden, but the window was entirely
inaccessible, since there was no water-pipe or anything which could help the
most active man to climb it. More puzzled than ever, I retraced my steps to
Kensington. I had not been in my study five minutes when the maid entered to
say that a person desired to see me. To my astonishment it was none other than
my strange old book collector, his sharp, wizened face peering out from a frame
of white hair, and his precious volumes, a dozen of them at least, wedged under
his right arm.
I knocked down several books which he was carrying.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
With a snarl he turned upon his heel.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“You’re surprised to see me, sir,” said he, in a strange, croaking voice.
I acknowledged that I was.
“Well, I’ve a conscience, sir, and when I chanced to see you go into this
house, as I came hobbling after you, I thought to myself, I’ll just step in and see
that kind gentleman, and tell him that if I was a bit gruff in my manner there was
not any harm meant, and that I am much obliged to him for picking up my
books.”
“You make too much of a trifle,” said I. “May I ask how you knew who I
was?”
“Well, sir, if it isn’t too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you’ll
find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street, and very happy to see
you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir—here’s British Birds, and
Catullus,17 and The Holy War—a bargain, every one of them. With five volumes
you could just fill that gap on that second shelf. It looks untidy, does it not, sir?”
I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again,
Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my
feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that
I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life.18 Certainly a grey
mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone
and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over
my chair, his flask in his hand.19
“My dear Watson,” said the well-remembered voice, “I owe you a thousand
apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.”
I gripped him by the arm.
Sherlock Holmes stood smiling at me over my study
table.
Frederic Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing
smiling at me across my study table.
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“Holmes!” I cried. “Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it
possible that you succeeded in climbing out of that awful abyss?”
“Wait a moment,” said he. “Are you sure that you are really fit to discuss
things? I have given you a serious shock by my unnecessarily dramatic
reappearance.”
“I am all right, but indeed, Holmes, I can hardly believe my eyes. Good
heavens! to think that you—you of all men—should be standing in my study!”
Again I gripped him by the sleeve, and felt the thin, sinewy arm beneath it.
“Well, you’re not a spirit, anyhow,” said I. “My dear chap, I am overjoyed to see
you. Sit down, and tell me how you came alive out of that dreadful chasm.”
He sat opposite to me and lit a cigarette in his old, nonchalant manner. He was
dressed in the seedy frock-coat of the book merchant, but the rest of that
individual lay in a pile of white hair and old books upon the table. Holmes
looked even thinner and keener than of old, but there was a dead-white tinge in
his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not been a healthy one.
“I am glad to stretch myself, Watson,” said he. “It is no joke when a tall man
has to take a foot off his stature for several hours on end. Now, my dear fellow,
in the matter of these explanations, we have, if I may ask for your cooperation, a
hard and dangerous night’s work in front of us. Perhaps it would be better if I
gave you an account of the whole situation when that work is finished.”
“I am full of curiosity. I should much prefer to hear now.”
“You’ll come with me to-night?”
“When you like and where you like.”
“This is, indeed, like the old days. We shall have time for a mouthful of dinner
before we need go. Well, then, about that chasm. I had no serious difficulty in
getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it.”
“You never were in it?”
“No, Watson, I never was in it. My note to you was absolutely genuine. I had
little doubt that I had come to the end of my career when I perceived the
somewhat sinister figure of the late Professor Moriarty standing upon the narrow
pathway which led to safety. I read an inexorable purpose in his grey eyes.20 I
exchanged some remarks with him, therefore, and obtained his courteous
permission to write the short note which you afterwards received. I left it with
my cigarette-box and my stick, and I walked along the pathway, Moriarty still at
my heels. When I reached the end I stood at bay. He drew no weapon, but he
rushed at me and threw his long arms around me. He knew that his own game
was up, and was only anxious to revenge himself upon me. We tottered together
upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu,21 or the
Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me.
I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few
seconds, and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could
not get his balance, and over he went. With my face over the brink, I saw him
fall for a long way. Then he struck a rock, bounded off, and splashed into the
water.”
I listened with amazement to this explanation, which Holmes delivered
between the puffs of his cigarette.
“But the tracks!” I cried. “I saw, with my own eyes, that two went down the
path and none returned.”
“It came about in this way. The instant that the Professor had disappeared, it
struck me what a really extraordinarily lucky chance Fate had placed in my way.
I knew that Moriarty was not the only man who had sworn my death. There were
at least three others whose desire for vengeance upon me would only be
increased by the death of their leader. They were all most dangerous men. One
or other would certainly get me. On the other hand, if all the world was
convinced that I was dead they would take liberties, these men; they would22 lay
themselves open, and sooner or later I could destroy them. Then it would be time
for me to announce that I was still in the land of the living. So rapidly does the
brain act that I believe I had thought this all out before Professor Moriarty had
reached the bottom of the Reichenbach Fall.23
“I stood up and examined the rocky wall behind me. In your picturesque
account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later,24 you
assert that the wall was sheer. This was not literally true. A few small footholds
presented themselves, and there was some indication of a ledge. The cliff is so
high that to climb it all was an obvious impossibility, and it was equally
impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving some tracks. I
might, it is true, have reversed my boots, as I have done on similar occasions,
but the sight of three sets of tracks in one direction would certainly have
suggested a deception. On the whole, then, it was best that I should risk the
climb. It was not a pleasant business, Watson. The fall roared beneath me. I am
not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear Moriarty’s
voice screaming at me out of the abyss. A mistake would have been fatal. More
than once, as tufts of grass came out in my hand or my foot slipped in the wet
notches of the rock, I thought that I was gone. But I struggled upwards, and at
last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where
I could lie unseen, in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched, when you,
my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most
sympathetic and inefficient manner the circumstances of my death.
“At last, when you had all formed your inevitable and totally erroneous
conclusions, you departed for the hotel, and I was left alone. I had imagined that
I had reached the end of my adventures, but a very unexpected occurrence
showed me that there were surprises still in store for me. A huge rock, falling
from above, boomed past me, struck the path, and bounded over into the chasm.
For an instant I thought that it was an accident; but a moment later, looking up, I
saw a man’s head against the darkening sky,25 and another stone struck the very
ledge upon which I was stretched, within a foot of my head. Of course, the
meaning of this was obvious. Moriarty had not been alone. A confederate—and
even that one glance had told me how dangerous a man that confederate was—
had kept guard while the Professor had attacked me.26 From a distance, unseen
by me, he had been a witness of his friend’s death and of my escape. He had
waited, and then, making his way round to the top of the cliff, he had
endeavoured to succeed where his comrade had failed.
“I did not take long to think about it, Watson. Again I saw that grim face look
over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled
down on to the path. I don’t think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a
hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the
danger, for another stone sang past me as I hung by my hands from the edge of
the ledge. Half-way down I slipped, but by the blessing of God I landed, torn and
bleeding, upon the path. I took to my heels, did ten miles over the mountains in
the darkness, and a week later I found myself in Florence, with the certainty that
no one in the world knew what had become of me.27
“I had only one confidant—my brother Mycroft. I owe you many apologies,
my dear Watson, but it was all-important that it should be thought I was dead,
and it is quite certain that you would not have written so convincing an account
of my unhappy end had you not yourself thought that it was true. Several times
during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I
feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion
which would betray my secret.28 For that reason I turned away from you this
evening when you upset my books, for I was in danger at the time, and any show
of surprise and emotion upon your part might have drawn attention to my
identity and led to the most deplorable and irreparable results.29 As to Mycroft, I
had to confide in him in order to obtain the money which I needed. The course
of events in London did not run so well as I had hoped, for the trial of the
Moriarty gang left two of its most dangerous members, my own most vindictive
enemies, at liberty. I travelled for two years in Tibet,30 therefore, and amused
myself by visiting Lhassa, and spending some days with the head Lama.31 You
may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson,
but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your
friend.32 I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca,33 and paid a short but
interesting visit to the Khalifa34 at Khartoum,35 the results of which I have
communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent some months
in a research into the coal-tar derivatives,36 which I conducted in a laboratory at
Montpellier,37 in the South of France. Having concluded this to my satisfaction
and learning that only one of my enemies was now left in London,38 I was about
to return when my movements were hastened by the news of this very
remarkable Park Lane Mystery, which not only appealed to me by its own
merits, but which seemed to offer some most peculiar personal opportunities. I
came over at once to London, called in my own person at Baker Street, threw
Mrs. Hudson into violent hysterics, and found that Mycroft had preserved my
rooms and my papers exactly as they had always been.39 So it was, my dear
Watson, that at two o’clock to-day I found myself in my old arm-chair in my
own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in
the other chair which he has so often adorned.”
Such was the remarkable narrative to which I listened on that April evening—
a narrative which would have been utterly incredible to me had it not been
confirmed by the actual sight of the tall, spare figure and the keen, eager face,
which I had never thought to see again. In some manner he had learned of my
own sad bereavement,40 and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than
in his words. “Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,” said he,
“and I have a piece of work for us both to-night which, if we can bring it to a
successful conclusion, will in itself justify a man’s life on this planet.” In vain I
begged him to tell me more. “You will hear and see enough before morning,” he
answered. “We have three years of the past to discuss. Let that suffice until halfpast nine, when we start upon the notable adventure of the empty house.”
It was indeed like old times when, at that hour, I found myself seated beside
him in a hansom, my revolver in my pocket, and the thrill of adventure in my
heart. Holmes was cold and stern and silent. As the gleam of the streetlamps
flashed upon his austere features, I saw that his brows were drawn down in
thought and his thin lips compressed. I knew not what wild beast we were about
to hunt down in the dark jungle of criminal London, but I was well assured, from
the bearing of this master huntsman, that the adventure was a most grave one,
while the sardonic smile which occasionally broke through his ascetic gloom
boded little good for the object of our quest.
I had imagined that we were bound for Baker Street, but Holmes stopped the
cab at the corner of Cavendish Square. I observed that as he stepped out he gave
a most searching glance to right and left, and at every subsequent street corner
he took the utmost pains to assure that he was not followed. Our route was
certainly a singular one. Holmes’s knowledge of the by-ways of London was
extraordinary, and on this occasion he passed rapidly, and with an assured step,
through a network of mews and stables, the very existence of which I had never
known. We emerged at last into a small road, lined with old, gloomy houses,
which led us into Manchester Street, and so to Blandford Street. Here he turned
swiftly down a narrow passage, passed through a wooden gate into a deserted
yard, and then opened with a key41 the back door of a house. We entered
together, and he closed it behind us.
The place was pitch-dark, but it was evident to me that it was an empty house.
Our feet creaked and crackled over the bare planking, and my outstretched hand
touched a wall from which the paper was hanging in ribbons. Holmes’s cold,
thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forwards down a long hall, until I
dimly saw the murky fanlight over the door. Here Holmes turned suddenly to the
right, and we found ourselves in a large, square, empty room, heavily shadowed
in the corners, but faintly lit in the centre from the lights of the street beyond.
There was no lamp near and the window was thick with dust, so that we could
only just discern each other’s figures within. My companion put his hand upon
my shoulder and his lips close to my ear.
“Do you know where we are?” he whispered.
“Surely that is Baker Street,” I answered, staring through the dim window.
“Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old
quarters.”42
“But why are we here?”
“Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile. Might I
trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every
precaution not to show yourself, and then to look up at our old rooms—the
starting-point of so many of your little fairy-tales?43 We will see if my three
years of absence have entirely taken away my power to surprise you.”
I crept forward and looked across at the familiar window. As my eyes fell
upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong
light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair
within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the
window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the
shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the
effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to
frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out
my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was
quivering with silent laughter.
“Well?” said he.
“Good heavens!” I cried. “It is marvellous.”
“I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,”44 said
he, and I recognised in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his
own creation. “It really is rather like me, is it not?”
“I should be prepared to swear that it was you.”
“The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble,
who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax.45 The rest I
arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon.”
“I crept forward and looked across at the familiar
window.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“But why?”
“Because, my dear Watson, I had the strongest possible reason for wishing
certain people to think that I was there when I was really elsewhere.”
“And you thought the rooms were watched?”
“I knew that they were watched.”
“By whom?”
“By my old enemies, Watson. By the charming society whose leader lies in
the Reichenbach Fall. You must remember that they knew, and only they knew,
that I was still alive. Sooner or later they believed that I should come back to my
rooms. They watched them continuously,46 and this morning they saw me
arrive.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I recognised their sentinel when I glanced out of my window. He is
a harmless enough fellow, Parker by name, a garroter47 by trade, and a
remarkable performer upon the jew’s-harp.48 I cared nothing for him. But I cared
a great deal for the much more formidable person who was behind him, the
bosom friend of Moriarty, the man who dropped the rocks over the cliff, the
most cunning and dangerous criminal in London. That is the man who is after
me to-night, Watson, and that is the man who is quite unaware that we are after
him.”
My friend’s plans were gradually revealing themselves. From this convenient
retreat, the watchers were being watched and the trackers tracked. That angular
shadow up yonder was the bait, and we were the hunters. In silence we stood
together in the darkness and watched the hurrying figures who passed and
repassed in front of us. Holmes was silent and motionless; but I could tell that he
was keenly alert, and that his eyes were fixed intently upon the stream of
passers-by. It was a bleak and boisterous night, and the wind whistled shrilly
down the long street. Many people were moving to and fro, most of them
muffled in their coats and cravats. Once or twice it seemed to me that I had seen
the same figure before, and I especially noticed two men who appeared to be
sheltering themselves from the wind in the doorway of a house some distance up
the street. I tried to draw my companion’s attention to them, but he gave a little
ejaculation of impatience, and continued to stare into the street. More than once
he fidgeted with his feet and tapped rapidly with his fingers upon the wall. It was
evident to me that he was becoming uneasy, and that his plans were not working
out altogether as he had hoped. At last, as midnight approached and the street
gradually cleared, he paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. I
was about to make some remark to him, when I raised my eyes to the lighted
window, and again experienced almost as great a surprise as before. I clutched
Holmes’s arm, and pointed upwards.
“The shadow has moved!” I cried.
It was, indeed, no longer the profile, but the back, which was turned towards
us.
Three years had certainly not smoothed the asperities of his temper or his
impatience with a less active intelligence than his own.
“Of course it has moved,” said he. “Am I such a farcical bungler, Watson, that
I should erect an obvious dummy, and expect that some of the sharpest men in
Europe would be deceived by it? We have been in this room two hours, and Mrs.
Hudson has made some change in that figure eight times, or once in every
quarter of an hour. She works it from the front so that her shadow may never be
seen. Ah!” He drew in his breath with a shrill, excited intake. In the dim light I
saw his head thrown forward, his whole attitude rigid with attention. Outside, the
street was absolutely deserted.49 Those two men might still be crouching in the
doorway, but I could no longer see them. All was still and dark, save only that
brilliant yellow screen in front of us with the black figure outlined upon its
centre. Again in the utter silence I heard that thin, sibilant note which spoke of
intense suppressed excitement. An instant later he pulled me back into the
blackest corner of the room, and I felt his warning hand upon my lips. The
fingers which clutched me were quivering. Never had I known my friend more
moved, and yet the dark street still stretched lonely and motionless before us.
But suddenly I was aware of that which his keener senses had already
distinguished. A low, stealthy sound came to my ears, not from the direction of
Baker Street, but from the back of the very house in which we lay concealed. A
door opened and shut. An instant later steps crept down the passage—steps
which were meant to be silent, but which reverberated harshly through the empty
house. Holmes crouched back against the wall, and I did the same, my hand
closing upon the handle of my revolver. Peering through the gloom, I saw the
vague outline of a man, a shade blacker than the blackness of the open door. He
stood for an instant, and then he crept forward, crouching, menacing, into the
room. He was within three yards of us, this sinister figure, and I had braced
myself to meet his spring, before I realized that he had no idea of our presence.
He passed close beside us, stole over to the window, and very softly and
noiselessly raised it for half a foot. As he sank to the level of this opening the
light of the street, no longer dimmed by the dusty glass, fell full upon his face.
The man seemed to be beside himself with excitement. His two eyes shone like
stars, and his features were working convulsively. He was an elderly man, with a
thin, projecting nose, a high, bald forehead, and a huge grizzled moustache. An
opera-hat was pushed to the back of his head, and an evening dress shirt-front
gleamed out through his open overcoat. His face was gaunt and swarthy, scored
with deep, savage lines. In his hand he carried what appeared to be a stick, but as
he laid it down upon the floor it gave a metallic clang. Then from the pocket of
his overcoat he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which
ended with a loud, sharp click, as if a spring or bolt had fallen into its place. Still
kneeling upon the floor he bent forward and threw all his weight and strength
upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling,50 grinding
noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I
saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun, with a curiously misshapen
butt. He opened it at the breech, put something in, and snapped the breechblock.51 Then, crouching down, he rested the end of the barrel upon the ledge of
the open window, and I saw his long moustache droop over the stock and his eye
gleam as it peered along the sights. I heard a little sigh of satisfaction as he
cuddled the butt into his shoulder, and saw that amazing target, the black man on
the yellow ground, standing clear at the end of his fore sight. For an instant he
was rigid and motionless. Then his finger tightened on the trigger. There was a
strange, loud whiz and a long, silvery tinkle of broken glass. At that instant
Holmes sprang like a tiger on to the marksman’s back and hurled him flat upon
his face. He was up again in a moment, and with convulsive strength he seized
Holmes by the throat; but I struck him on the head with the butt of my revolver
and he dropped again upon the floor. I fell upon him, and as I held him my
comrade blew a shrill call upon a whistle. There was the clatter of running feet
upon the pavement, and two policemen in uniform, with one plain-clothes
detective, rushed through the front entrance and into the room.
“The light of the street fell full upon his face.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
Then, crouching down, he rested the end of the barrel
upon the ledge of the open window.
G. A. Dowling, Portland Oregonian, July 9, 1911
“He seized Holmes by the throat.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“That you, Lestrade?” said Holmes.
“Yes, Mr. Holmes. I took the job myself. It’s good to see you back in London,
sir.”
“I think you want a little unofficial help. Three undetected murders in one
year won’t do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than
your usual—that’s to say, you handled it fairly well.”
We had all risen to our feet, our prisoner breathing hard, with a stalwart
constable on each side of him. Already a few loiterers had begun to collect in the
street. Holmes stepped up to the window, closed it, and dropped the blinds.
Lestrade had produced two candles, and the policemen had uncovered their
lanterns. I was able at last to have a good look at our prisoner.
It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us.
With the brow of a philosopher above52 and the jaw of a sensualist below, the
man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil. But one could
not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the
fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading
Nature’s plainest danger-signals. He took no heed of any of us, but his eyes were
fixed upon Holmes’s face with an expression in which hatred and amazement
were equally blended. “You fiend!” he kept on muttering—“you clever, clever
fiend!”
“Ah, Colonel!” said Holmes, arranging his rumpled collar, “‘journeys end in
lovers’ meetings,’ as the old play says.53 I don’t think I have had the pleasure of
seeing you since you favoured me with those attentions as I lay on the ledge
above the Reichenbach Fall.”
The Colonel still stared at my friend like a man in a trance. “You cunning,
cunning fiend!” was all that he could say.
“I have not introduced you yet,” said Holmes. “This, gentlemen, is Colonel
Sebastian54 Moran, once of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, and the best heavy
game shot that our Eastern Empire has ever produced. I believe I am correct,
Colonel, in saying that your bag of tigers still remains unrivalled?”
The fierce old man said nothing, but still glared at my companion; with his
savage eyes and bristling moustache he was wonderfully like a tiger himself.
“I wonder that my very simple stratagem could deceive so old a shikari,”55
said Holmes. “It must be very familiar to you. Have you not tethered a young kid
under a tree, lain above it with your rifle, and waited for the bait to bring up your
tiger? This empty house is my tree, and you are my tiger. You have possibly had
other guns in reserve in case there should be several tigers, or in the unlikely
supposition of your own aim failing you. These,” he pointed around, “are my
other guns. The parallel is exact.”
Colonel Moran sprang forward, with a snarl of rage, but the constables
dragged him back. The fury upon his face was terrible to look at.
“Colonel Moran sprang forward, with a snarl of rage.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“I confess that you had one small surprise for me,” said Holmes. “I did not
anticipate that you would yourself make use of this empty house and this
convenient front window. I had imagined you as operating from the street, where
my friend Lestrade and his merry men were awaiting you. With that exception,
all has gone as I expected.”
Colonel Moran turned to the official detective.
“You may or may not have just cause for arresting me,” said he, “but at least
there can be no reason why I should submit to the gibes of this person. If I am in
the hands of the law, let things be done in a legal way.”
“Well, that’s reasonable enough,” said Lestrade. “Nothing further you have to
say, Mr. Holmes, before we go?”
Holmes had picked up the powerful air-gun from the floor, and was
examining its mechanism.
“An admirable and unique weapon,” said he, “noiseless and of tremendous
power. I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, who constructed it to
the order of the late Professor Moriarty. For years I have been aware of its
existence, though I have never before had an opportunity of handling it. I
commend it very specially to your attention, Lestrade, and also the bullets which
fit it.”
“You can trust us to look after that, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade, as the whole
party moved towards the door. “Anything further to say?”
“Only to ask what charge you intend to prefer?”
“What charge, sir? Why, of course, the attempted murder of Mr. Sherlock
Holmes.”
“Not so, Lestrade. I do not propose to appear in the matter at all.56 To you,
and to you only, belongs the credit of the remarkable arrest which you have
effected. Yes, Lestrade, I congratulate you! With your usual happy mixture of
cunning and audacity, you have got him.”
“Got him! Got whom, Mr. Holmes?”
“The man that the whole force has been seeking in vain—Colonel Sebastian
Moran, who shot the Honourable Ronald Adair with an expanding bullet from an
air-gun through the open window of the second-floor front57 of No. 427, Park
Lane, upon the 30th of last month. That’s the charge, Lestrade. And now,
Watson, if you can endure the draught from a broken window, I think that half
an hour in my study over a cigar may afford you some profitable amusement.”
Colonel Moran sprang forward with a snarl of rage.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s Magazine, 1903
Our old chambers had been left unchanged through the supervision of Mycroft
Holmes and the immediate care of Mrs. Hudson.58 As I entered I saw, it is true,
an unwonted tidiness, but the old landmarks were all in their places. There were
the chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf
was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of
our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violincase, and the pipe-rack—even the Persian slipper which contained the tobacco—
all met my eye as I glanced round me.
There were two occupants of the room—one Mrs. Hudson, who beamed upon
us both as we entered, the other the strange dummy which had played so
important a part in the evening’s adventures. It was a wax-coloured model of my
friend, so admirably done that it was a perfect facsimile. It stood on a small
pedestal table with an old dressing-gown of Holmes’s so draped round it that the
illusion from the street was absolutely perfect.
“I hope you observed59 all precautions, Mrs. Hudson?” said Holmes.
“I went to it on my knees, sir, just as you told me.”
“Excellent. You carried the thing out very well. Did you observe where the
bullet went?”
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid it has spoilt your beautiful bust, for it passed right
through the head and flattened itself on the wall. I picked it up from the carpet.
Here it is!”60
Holmes held it out to me. “A soft revolver bullet, as you perceive, Watson.
There’s genius in that—for who would expect to find such a thing fired from an
air-gun? All right, Mrs. Hudson. I am much obliged for your assistance. And
now, Watson, let me see you in your old seat once more, for there are several
points which I should like to discuss with you.”
He had thrown off the seedy frock-coat, and now he was the Holmes of old in
the mouse-coloured dressing-gown which he took from his effigy.
“The old shikari’s nerves have not lost their steadiness, nor his eyes their
keenness,” said he, with a laugh, as he inspected the shattered forehead of his
bust.
“Plumb in the middle of the back of the head and smack through the brain. He
was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have
you heard the name?”
“No, I have not.”61
“Well, well, such is fame! But, then, if I remember aright, you had not heard
the name of Professor James62 Moriarty, who had one of the great brains of the
century. Just give me down my index of biographies from the shelf.”
He turned over the pages lazily, leaning back in his chair and blowing great
clouds of smoke63 from his cigar.
“My collection of M’s is a fine one,” said he. “Moriarty himself is enough to
make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of
abominable memory, and Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the
waiting-room at Charing Cross, and, finally, here is our friend of to-night.”
“‘My collection of M’s is a fine one,’ said he.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“My collection of M’s is a fine one.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
He handed over the book, and I read:
Moran, Sebastian, Colonel. Unemployed. Formerly 1st Bengalore64
Pioneers. Born London, 1840. Son of Sir Augustus Moran, C.B.,65 once
British Minister to Persia. Educated Eton and Oxford.66 Served in Jowaki
Campaign,67 Afghan Campaign, Charasiab (despatches), Sherpur, and
Cabul.68 Author of “Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas” (1881);
“Three Months in the Jungle” (1884). Address: Conduit Street. Clubs: The
Anglo-Indian,69 the Tankerville,70 the Bagatelle Card Club.
On the margin was written, in Holmes’s precise hand:
The second most dangerous man in London.
“This is astonishing,” said I, as I handed back the volume. “The man’s career
is that of an honourable soldier.”
“It is true,” Holmes answered. “Up to a certain point he did well. He was
always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled
down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger. There are some trees, Watson,
which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly
eccentricity. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual
represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that
such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came
into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the
history of his own family.”
“It is surely rather fanciful.”
“Well, I don’t insist upon it. Whatever the cause, Colonel Moran began to go
wrong. Without any open scandal, he still made India too hot to hold him. He
retired, came to London, and again acquired an evil name. It was at this time that
he was sought out by Professor Moriarty,71 to whom for a time he was chief of
the staff. Moriarty supplied him liberally with money and used him only in one
or two very high-class jobs, which no ordinary criminal could have undertaken.
You may have some recollection of the death of Mrs. Stewart, of Lauder, in
1887. Not? Well, I am sure Moran was at the bottom of it; but nothing could be
proved. So cleverly was the Colonel concealed that, even when the Moriarty
gang was broken up, we could not incriminate him. You remember at that date,
when I called upon you in your rooms, how I put up the shutters for fear of airguns? No doubt you thought me fanciful. I knew exactly what I was doing, for I
knew of the existence of this remarkable gun, and I knew also that one of the
best shots in the world would be behind it. When we were in Switzerland he
followed us with Moriarty, and it was undoubtedly he who gave me that evil five
minutes on the Reichenbach ledge.
“You may think that I read the papers with some attention during my sojourn
in France, on the look-out for any chance of laying him by the heels. So long as
he was free in London, my life would really not have been worth living. Night
and day the shadow would have been over me, and sooner or later his chance
must have come. What could I do? I could not shoot him at sight, or I should
myself be in the dock. There was no use appealing to a magistrate. They cannot
interfere on the strength of what would appear to them to be a wild suspicion. So
I could do nothing. But I watched the criminal news, knowing that sooner or
later I should get him. Then came the death of this Ronald Adair. My chance had
come at last! Knowing what I did, was it not certain that Colonel Moran had
done it? He had played cards with the lad; he had followed him home from the
club; he had shot him through the open window. There was not a doubt of it. The
bullets alone are enough to put his head in a noose.72 I came over at once. I was
seen by the sentinel, who would, I knew, direct the Colonel’s attention to my
presence. He could not fail to connect my sudden return with his crime, and to
be terribly alarmed. I was sure that he would make an attempt to get me out of
the way at once, and would bring round his murderous weapon for that purpose.
I left him an excellent mark in the window, and, having warned the police that
they might be needed—by the way, Watson, you spotted their presence in that
doorway with unerring accuracy—I took up what seemed to me to be a judicious
post for observation, never dreaming that he would choose the same spot for his
attack. Now, my dear Watson, does anything remain for me to explain?”
“Yes,” said I. “You have not made it clear what was Colonel Moran’s motive
in murdering the Honourable Ronald Adair.”
“Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where
the most logical mind may be at fault. Each may form his own hypothesis upon
the present evidence, and yours is as likely to be correct as mine.”
“You have formed one, then?”
“I think that it is not difficult to explain the facts. It came out in evidence that
Colonel Moran and young Adair had between them won a considerable amount
of money. Now, Moran undoubtedly played foul—of that I have long been
aware. I believe that on the day of the murder Adair had discovered that Moran
was cheating. Very likely he had spoken to him privately, and had threatened to
expose him unless he voluntarily resigned his membership of the club, and
promised not to play cards again. It is unlikely that a youngster like Adair would
at once make a hideous scandal by exposing a well-known man so much older
than himself. Probably he acted as I suggest. The exclusion from his clubs would
mean ruin to Moran, who lived by his ill-gotten card gains. He therefore
murdered Adair, who at the time was endeavouring to work out how much
money he should himself return, since he could not profit by his partner’s foul
play. He locked the door lest the ladies should surprise him and insist upon
knowing what he was doing with these names and coins. Will it pass?”
“I have no doubt that you have hit upon the truth.”
“It will be verified or disproved at the trial. Meanwhile, come what may,
Colonel Moran will trouble us no more,73 the famous air-gun of Von Herder will
embellish the Scotland Yard Museum, and once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is
free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the
complex life of London so plentifully presents.”
THE GREAT HIATUS
THERE are far too many studies of the activities of Sherlock Holmes during the
years 1891 to 1894 to be dealt with in any but the most cursory fashion in a work
such as this. The following, then, should be viewed as a mere sampling of the
more interesting conjectures. Pastiches that attempt to tell the “story” of the
Great Hiatus, complete with descriptions of action and dialogue, although in
many instances suggesting activities not that different from those outlined in
“scholarship,” are not discussed below:
Fundamentalism
A substantial group of scholars accept Holmes’s tale of travels to Tibet, Persia,
Mecca, Egypt, and France as essentially true, although perhaps lacking in
explanation. The most detailed study is that of A. Carson Simpson, Sherlock
Holmes’s Wanderjahre. This consists of four volumes, Fanget An!; Post Huc nec
ergo Propter Huc Gabetque; In fernem Land, unnahbar euren Schritten; and Auf
der Erde Rücken rührt’ ich mich viel. Simpson considers Holmes’s homeward
trip in detail, setting forth voluminous background material on then-current
situations in Switzerland, Tibet, Lhasa, Khartoum, and other locales mentioned
and exploring the precise routes by which Holmes likely travelled. Lord
Donegall, in “April 1891–April 1894,” clearly expresses the faith of the
fundamentalist and confirms that the journey could have happened as outlined
by Holmes.
Some add background or additional detail to the basic journey. For example,
C. Arnold Johnson, in “An East Wind,” suggests that Moriarty survived
Reichenbach and pursued Holmes to Tibet, where, to gain control of the wealth
and resources of the Orient, he disguised himself as a Prince of the Manchus. In
his madness, fiction became reality and eventually he emerged as Dr. Fu
Manchu.
Others consider possible messages sent by Holmes. Jerold M. Bensky’s “
‘Sigerson’—What Is in a Name?” investigates Holmes’s use of the name
“Sigerson” as a code or cipher to inform Mycroft of the location where he was
hiding or seeking seclusion. In addition, reports from “Sigerson” possibly carried
vital information to Mycroft about the political situation of each country.
Similarly, Patricia Dodd, in “Communicating in Code,” suggests that during the
Great Hiatus, Holmes continued to keep in touch with both Mycroft and Watson
through an intricate network of coded messages. Watson’s messages from
Mycroft to Sherlock, who was disguised as a fledgling member of Moran’s gang,
were cleverly inserted in the cases known as the Adventures and the Memoirs.
Tibet and Holmes’s sojourn there are the subjects of special study. T. S.
Blakeney’s “Disjecta Membra” considers the likely path of Holmes’s entry into
Tibet. In “ ‘A High-at-us,’ ” Ron Carlson proposes that Holmes used his visit to
negotiate with the head Lama to grow a certain “ ‘highly’ relaxing product” that
was to have been marketed by Moriarty. Similarly, Patrick E. Drazen maintains,
in his article “The Greater Vehicle: Holmes in Tibet,” that Holmes spent two
years in Tibet pursuing Tibetan Buddhism to rid himself of the cocaine habit.
In another flight of fancy, Robert S. Chambers, in “The Journey to a Lost
Horizon,” suggests that Holmes discovered “Shangri-La,” first described in a
fictionalized narrative by James Hilton. A similar suggestion is made by Dana
Martin Batory, in “Hiatus in Paradise.” Batory’s essay theorises that Holmes and
the Norwegian explorer Sigerson journeyed to Tibet to investigate the
disappearance of strange cargo caravans in the Himalayas. Both found
themselves “guests” at the lamasery of Shangri-La. Sigerson was never allowed
to leave. Holmes was sent back into the world to finish his work.
In a fascinating piece entitled “A Norwegian Named Sigerson,” Hans-Uno
Bengtsson recounts how, when the thirteenth Dalai Lama came of age in 1895,
Demo Rinpoche, the retired regent, plotted an assassination, using as his
instrument a pair of cursed slippers. The plot was discovered through some
remarkable detective work by the Dalai Lama. Bengtsson proposes that Holmes
must have had an audience with the Dalai Lama, in which Holmes gave
instruction in the art of detection.
Other aspects of the trip as reported by Holmes are examined. Ed Moorman,
in “A Short But Interesting Visit,” explains why Holmes would have visited
Khartoum on behalf of the Foreign Office to see the Khalifa and how his visit
affected England’s involvement in world affairs well into the twentieth century.
The study of coal-tar derivatives mentioned by Holmes draws special
attention. Carol Whitlam, in “Researching the Coal-Tar Derivatives,” speculates
on the compounds Holmes may have researched in Montpellier in 1894. In
“Double ‘L’—Why in the Empty House?,” Donald A. Redmond considers why
Holmes conducted his coal-tar research in Montpellier (France), not Montpelier
(Vermont), as spelled by Watson. However, Raymond L. Holly (“A Laboratory
at Montpelier”) suggests that Holmes may have conducted his research in coaltar derivatives at Montpelier in England. Brad Keefauver, in “So You Think
Coal-Tar Derivatives Are Boring? Not So!,” speculates that Holmes, who had
considerable knowledge of perfumes, may have been researching synthetic
perfumes derived from coal tar. Richard M. Caplan comes to a different
conclusion in “Why Coal-Tar Derivatives at Montpellier?,” where he suggests
that Holmes’s research focused on the prospect of identifying and tracing for
forensic purposes the origins of aniline dyes and inks.
No Deposit, No Return
There is a distinct school of thought that the Great Hiatus never happened. The
leading proponent is Walter P. Armstrong, Jr., in “The Truth About Sherlock
Holmes.” Succinctly, Armstrong argues, “Holmes did not return. He did not
return because he had never been away. . . . Not only was Holmes in London,
but he was living in the same house with Watson all the time. Watson has
deceived us. But we cannot blame him, for the deception was necessary in order
to trap the wily members of the Moriarty gang who remained.”
Richard Lancelyn Green follows along the lines of Armstrong in “On Tour
with Sigerson,” arguing that the only logical place where Holmes could have
gone into hiding and, at the same time, maintain contact with the criminal world
was in London. He returned to live at 221B, venturing forth in disguise, and only
Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, and Lestrade were in his confidence.
Anthony Boucher, in “Was the Later Holmes an Imposter?,” also concludes
that because of numerous inconsistencies in Holmes and Watson’s accounts of
the events at the falls (see, for example, “The Darkening Sky,” an appendix to
“The Empty House”), Holmes must not have taken the reported journey and did,
in fact, fall over the cliff at the Reichenbach. The man who in 1894 returned to
London was, according to Boucher, in reality Holmes’s cousin Sherrinford. This
hypothesis is rejected by Jay Finley Christ, in “The Later Holmes An Imposter:
A Sequel,” who demonstrates in detail that Holmes’s and Watson’s accounts of
the events at the Reichenbach are logically consistent. Boucher offers a reply in
verse in “Ballade of the Later Holmes,” which concludes:
Christ and you others gathered here
Both Holmes sprang from Vernet’s seed.
What matters which? The truth is clear:
A master did return indeed.
A different imposter is suggested by Stefan Ernstson, in “The Counterfeit
Sherlock Holmes Unmasked,” who concludes that the Master’s sister replaced
Holmes.
An even more spectacular suggestion is that of Harry Halén, set forth in
“Sherlock Holmes Venäjällä” [“Sherlock Holmes in Russia”]:
The author’s main thesis is that the vanishing trick of the century was
performed by Holmes in 1891–1893 and after. In Tibet he underwent a
“tantric materialization ritual” that resulted in Sherlock Holmes II, a live
copy of the detective—a phantom body with almost all the intellectual and
physical faculties of the original. In the company of his newly-born
identical brother, the real Holmes, in the guise of a tobacco merchant
named Anaxagoras Gurr, arrived in Russia at the invitation of Anton
Chekhov. The two Holmeses parted in Riga: the phantom Holmes returned
to London and the real Holmes began working in Russia, first in the Baltic
provinces. Halén cites several Estonian-language titles of books telling
about Holmes’s exploits. These books belong to the apocryphal literature
on Holmes.74
Similarly, Robert Keller, in “Sherlock Holmes: A Spectra?,” proposes that
Holmes did indeed die in the fall at Reichenbach and then returned in a spiritual,
resurrected form. His later adventures were actually those of “the world’s first
consulting ghost.”
A Different Journey
A third school of writers constructs entirely different itineraries for the Great
Hiatus. Anders Fage-Pedersen, in A Case of Identity, demonstrates that Holmes
and Dr. Nikola, a mystical doctor who travelled in Tibet during the Hiatus, are
the same person.
A love affair is a common theme. Benjamin Grosbayne, in “Sherlock
Holmes’s Honeymoon,” concludes that he married Irene Adler, became a
distinguished operatic conductor and toured the musical centres of the world
with his wife. Martin J. King (“Holmes in Hoboken?”) sees Holmes slipping off
to Hoboken, New Jersey, and identifies the Meyers Hotel there as the location of
Holmes’s tryst with Irene Adler, resulting in the birth of their son, Nero Wolfe.
Stanley McComas, in “Lhove at Lhassa,” presents evidence that Holmes and
Irene Adler (divorced from Godfrey Norton) were married in Florence and then
spent the next three years travelling about Asia.
More farfetched is the work of Alastair Martin, in “Finding the Better Half,”
which identifies Moriarty as the widow of Count Dracula whom Holmes
encountered at the Reichenbach, wed, and spent three years with during the
Great Hiatus. An even greater leap is taken by James Nelson, in “Sherlock and
the Sherpas,” who proposes that in Tibet Holmes met and mated with the
Abominable Snow-woman. According to Ronald B. DeWaal’s The Universal
Sherlock Holmes, “This takes the prize for the most fanciful of all Sherlockian
conjectures!”
Several writers conclude that Holmes was involved with the Lizzie Borden
case, which occurred in 1892. Edgar W. Smith’s “Sherlock Holmes and the
Great Hiatus” seems to have been the first. Allen Robertson’s “Baker Street,
Beecher and Borden” expands on the connection, while in Jon Borden Sisson’s
“Dr. Handy’s Wild-Eyed Man,” a document purportedly written in 1892 by Dr.
Benjamin Handy of Fall River, Massachusetts, describes Holmes’s acquaintance
with Lizzie Borden and his investigation of the murders of her father and
stepmother. Handy concludes that Holmes may have committed the murders
himself, and the article further suggests that Holmes had an affair with Lizzie.
The Russians are a common theme in the “Sherlock Holmes, Secret Agent”
line of theories. T. Frederick Foss, in “The Missing Years,” argues that Holmes
did not spend two years in Tibet posing as a Norwegian explorer named
Sigerson, but, instead, assisted his country by ferreting out information on
Russian intrigues in India. He expands this argument in “But That Is Another
Story,” contending that the Indian Government reluctantly agreed to his presence
there, but arranged for Kipling’s policeman, Strickland, to keep an eye on him.
The eminent writer Poul Anderson, in “Sherlock Holmes, Explorer,” suggests
that Holmes’s travels during the Hiatus were a working out of a lifelong wish to
be an explorer, although his activities in Tibet also involved counteracting the
machinations of the Russian agent Dorijev. See also Manly Wade Wellman’s
“Scoundrels in Bohemia,” suggesting far-flung espionage activities.
There was spying to be done in Persia as well, contends William P. Collins, in
“It Is Time That I Should Turn to Other Memories: Sherlock Holmes and Persia,
1893.” Collins’s evidence strongly suggests that Holmes indeed spent at least
two months in Persia, where he observed the activities of the Russians; assessed
the effects of the activities of Siyyid Jamálu’d-Dín “al-Afqhání” and Mírzá
Malkam Khán on British interests; and made a number of recommendations on
British policy to Her Majesty’s representatives.
Similarly, John P. and Susan M. Thornton, in “The Adventure of the Elusive
Boundary Line: An Account of the Master’s Encounter with Destiny in Central
Asia,” argue that “Holmes was not the casual wanderer that he made himself out
to be, but the Foreign Office’s master agent who masterminded much of the
Empire’s success in Central Asia at the turn of the century. In character with his
adventures as described in the Canon, he provided the stepping-stones for many
others to rise to fame while he remained in the shadows.”
Another “secret agent” suggestion is that of Raymond L. Holly, in “Europeans
in Lhasa in 1891.” He points out that H. Rider Haggard attributes his tales She
and Ayesha to one Ludwig Horace Holly, who claims to have been in Tibet with
his adopted son in 1891. They were saved from execution by a friendly Chinese
official, who, Raymond Holly suggests, in reality was Holmes in disguise,
working as a secret operative for Her Majesty’s government.
Other activities are proposed as well. Alan Olding, head of the Sherlock
Holmes Society of Australia, suggests (in “Holmes in Terra Australis Incognita
—Incognito”) that Holmes gained his knowledge of the Australian criminal class
by spending part of his Hiatus in Australia. Bob Reyom, in “The Great Hiatus, or
Locked in the Music Room Without My Cello,” hypothesises that the hiatus was
spent studying the motets of Orlando di Lasso, while Dana Martin Batory (“Tut,
Tut, Sherlock!”) examines the possibility that the mysterious Egyptian
“detective” Abu Tabah (of Sax Rohmer’s Tales of Secret Egypt (1918)) was in
actuality Sherlock Holmes, who spent part of his Great Hiatus in Egypt
disrupting the hashish trade on behalf of the British government.
On a musical note, Gordon R. Speck’s article, “ ‘. . . And a Week Later I Was
in Florence,’ ” considers that Holmes may have spent the first weeks and the
final weeks of the Great Hiatus in Cremona collecting samples from the
Stradivari workshop and in Montpellier analysing them.
According to Tomas Gejrot (“Was Sherlock Holmes a Patient of Sigmund
Freud’s?”), Holmes spent his Hiatus in Vienna being treated for his addiction to
cocaine. Of course, this view was taken to the extreme in Nicholas Meyer’s
novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, who recorded not only that Freud cured
Holmes of his addiction (by elucidating that the villainous Moriarty was but a
projection of Holmes’s mind, based on Holmes’s childhood discovery that his
mother had committed adultery with his tutor Professor Moriarty) but that Freud
and Holmes together solved a mystery and rescued a beautiful woman.
“Infinite possibilities” here!
BARITSU
BARTITSU, as it was properly spelled, was a Japanese style of self-defence
introduced by E. W. Barton-Wright (1860–1951) in an article published in the
March and April 1899 issues of Pearson’s magazine. Barton-Wright had lived in
Japan for three years; during that time, he studied with a sensei to learn the art of
jujitsu (or jujutsu), a weaponless method of self-defence, developed by samurais,
that was once meant to complement swordsmanship. Known as “the gentle art,”
jujitsu emphasises temporarily yielding to the moves of one’s attacker and then,
in turn, controlling them—crippling or even killing the opponent—by the use of
various holds, blows, and throws.
Upon his return to England, Barton-Wright opened his own martial arts school
and published “The New Art of Self-Defence,” which couched his methods in
utterly practical terms: headings included “How to Put a Troublesome Man Out
of the Room” and “One of Many Ways of Defending Yourself, When a Man
Strikes at Your Face with His Right Fist.” What he called “Bartitsu”—a
combination of “Barton” and “jujitsu”—was essentially jujitsu with some
elements of boxing and wrestling thrown in. Barton-Wright’s boasts of
invincibility were met with both enthusiasm and scepticism. Nonetheless, his
new method created a small sensation, and he is usually credited with having
brought jujitsu (which later spawned judo, karate, and aikido) to England, even
bringing experts over from Japan to aid him in his teaching and exhibition
endeavours.
While “The Empty House” was published four years after the Pearson’s
article appeared, Holmes’s use of “baritsu” in grappling with Moriarty at
Reichenbach Falls predated the Barton-Wright system by eight years. How to
explain the incongruity? In “The Mystery of Baritsu: A Sidelight Upon Sherlock
Holmes’s Accomplishments,” Ralph Judson puts forth the theory that Holmes
had actually studied jujitsu and that Watson, having read the Pearson’s article by
the time he heard Holmes’s account, confused the two terms (confused them so
much, in fact, that he dropped the “t” in “bartitsu” to make the word sound more
like “jujitsu”). Since Judson calculates that it takes seven years or so to master a
defensive art completely, he puts the beginning of Holmes’s jujitsu training at
around 1883 or 1884. In slipping through Moriarty’s grasp, Judson imagines,
Holmes must have dropped to one knee, “gripped with one hand Moriarty’s heel,
which was closer to the abyss, and lifting the heel and with it the foot,
diagonally, away from himself, he [must have] pushed hard, at the same time,
with his other hand, into the groin of the captured leg, applying terrific leverage.
This caused Moriarty to lose completely his balance and gave him no time to
clutch at his opponent.”
In their fascinating work Some Knowledge of Baritsu: An Investigation of the
Japanese System of Wrestling Used by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Hirayama Yuichi
and John Hall take a contrary view, concluding that the Master was not
proficient in jujitsu at all. In previous cases, when confronted with the prospect
of physical combat, Holmes displayed little to no skill. “This is indicated,” they
write, “by his inability to cope with the two assailants in the middle of his career
in ‘The Reigate Puzzle’ (1887), and by his defeat at the hands of Gruner’s hired
villains towards the end of Holmes’s career in ‘The Illustrious Client.’ . . .
[E]ither Holmes learned his skills from a less than masterly teacher, or . . .
Holmes did study with a master, but for too short a time to learn the technique
properly.”
THE DARKENING SKY
ANTHONY BOUCHER, the esteemed mystery critic and author, proposes, in his
essay “Was the Later Holmes an Imposter?,” that there are serious problems in
reconciling the time intervals described by Holmes and Watson regarding the
trips to the Reichenbach Falls with Watson’s statements in “The Final Problem”
and Holmes’s explanation in “The Empty House.” Based on Watson’s
statements, Boucher constructs the following timetable:
Time
2 P.M. (“afternoon”)
Event
Holmes and
Watson depart from
Meiringen
4 P.M. (“two hours” on Watson’s
Holmes and
second trip; assume the same on the Watson arrive at
first, which may have been more falls
leisurely)
4:15 P.M. (estimated)
Conversation
with
messenger,
Watson departs for
Meiringen
5:15 P.M. (“over an hour to come
Watson arrives
down”)
back at Meiringen,
discovers fraud
7:15 P.M. (“two more had passed”)
Watson hurries
back to Falls
At this point, Boucher asserts that Watson returned to Meiringen to fetch the
“experts” and travelled back to the falls. He allows another three hours for this
return. By the time the experts left, then, it would be well after 10:30 P.M. It is
very puzzling, he concludes, that Holmes should describe the sky at such an hour
as “darkening.” Sunset must have occurred more than two hours earlier, and
Holmes couldn’t possibly have seen Moran’s head.
But Karl Baedeker’s Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy,
and the Tyrol: Handbook for Travellers states that it is only a quarter hour to the
lower falls from the Hotel Reichenbach in Meiringen and three-quarters of an
hour to the upper falls. A. Carson Simpson, in Sherlock Holmes’s Wanderjahre
(Fanget An!), excuses Watson’s error as a result of his stress: “[L]earning of
Moriarty’s deception when he reached Meiringen, his apprehensions were
aroused and his anxiety made minutes seem like hours. . . . A simple arithmetical
calculation will demonstrate that the various trips to and fro could easily be
made, with ample margins between trips, before sunset at 7:10 P.M.”
Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler also concludes that the timing suggested by
Watson’s statements is misleading. “There is not the slightest indication that
Watson made the upward journey [to the Fall] three times. . . . Watson told
Steiler that he suspected foul play, and Steiler surely fetched the police and sent
them up after Watson without delay, so that they probably arrived at the Fall
shortly after Watson.” Under this assumption, the “experts” could have
completed their investigation as early as 6:30 P.M., well before sunset. Even if
another hour or so is added to the timetable, twilight would have accounted for
Holmes’s vision of Moran. The same conclusion is reached by Jay Finley Christ
in his essay “The Later Holmes An Imposter: A Sequel”: “Nowhere in The Final
Problem or in The Empty House is there the slightest suggestion or basis for an
assumption that Watson made three trips to the fall, nor that he brought experts
‘later.’75 On the contrary, there is in The Empty House a clear statement to the
effect that Watson was accompanied by several persons when he returned to the
fall after having been lured away.” Actually, in “The Empty House,” Holmes
describes “you . . . and all your following” investigating the circumstances of his
“death,” and it does seem odd that if Watson made two return trips to the falls,
Holmes did not mention them.
THE PATH OF THE COLONEL’S BULLET
PERCIVAL WILDE, in his novel Design for Murder, expresses, through several
characters, the criticisms that a bullet fired from the ground floor of a house on
one side of the street into the second storey of a house across a street the width
of Baker Street cannot penetrate both the shadow and the bust of Sherlock
Holmes that is casting it, because the bust must be at some distance from its
shadow; or, if it strikes both shadow and bust, it should strike the lamp that is in
a straight line with them; and, in either event, because of the required elevation
of the gun’s muzzle, it must strike the ceiling and not the far wall of the room.
Robert S. Schultz, however, writing in “The Ballistics of the Empty House,”
attempts to refute each of these points:
•The bust was very close to the window, rather than far away. Watson
describes seeing a “hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the
window.” Had the bust been any great distance removed from the window,
Schultz argues, it would have cast a large, fuzzy shadow; and if it were
closer to the lamp than to the window, the outline would have been even
larger and more indistinct. Schultz estimates, then, that the model was
approximately one foot from the window.
•The gun, shadow, bust, and lamp need not have been in a straight line.
“Needless to say, all this talk about straight lines is misleading; one would
think it was well known that the path of a bullet is a parabola, not a straight
line.” (This refutation is not well developed, however, and the parabolic
distortion cannot have been significant over these short distances.)
•After an elaborate analysis of the heights and distances involved, Schultz
concludes that only if the sitting room were of “palatial” dimensions could
the bullet have failed to strike the wall.
To the first of these points, Wilde replies in “The Bust in the Window” that
only a large light would create an indistinct shadow, with both an umbra (the
main, darkest part of the silhouette) and a penumbra (the lighter, outer shadow).
Since Holmes’s lamp was a small one, there would have been no penumbra,
leaving only a sharp outline, no matter where the bust was placed. To the third
point, he argues that Schultz miscalculates the height of the room and that “[t]he
height of the shadow above the muzzle of the gun was far more than [Mr.
Schultz] admits, and . . . I decline to find that the angle was so small that it was
inconsequential.”
This editor’s experiments with light sources confirm Schultz’s point that, even
with a brilliant lamp, the bust must have been close to the shade to produce a
shadow the approximate size of the bust (and note that there is no suggestion that
the bust was considerably smaller than life-sized, which would be required to
produce a life-sized shadow if it were not close to the shade). However, personal
experiments will confirm that while the distance from the lamp to the bust may
affect the degree of “sharpness” of the shadow, it will not affect the size; only
the distance of the bust from the shade affects that. Thus, in a darkened room, a
very bright lamp some distance from the bust could produce a shadow with a
“hard, black outline,” and no lamp-smashing would occur with only the slightest
elevation of the gun muzzle.
Furthermore, both commentators fail to recognise that the critical distance in
the equation is not the height of the room but the distance across Baker Street,
which Schultz states to be approximately 66 feet, a distance Wilde does not
challenge. While present-day scholars may question the certainty expressed by
Wilde and Schultz respecting the identification of particular buildings as
Camden House and 221 Baker Street, the distance at other locations on Baker
Street cannot have been significantly less.
A diagram indicates this editor’s understanding and the absurdity of Wilde’s
position. One does not even need to resort to trigonometry to do the relevant
computations, only to use the basic rule that triangles with angles that are equal
have sides that are proportional in length. If we accept that the distance from
Moran’s gun to a bust placed about 1 foot from the window is 67 feet and that
the height of the bust above Moran’s shoulder is 10.5 feet (allowing a 5.5-foot
high shoulder, 4.5 foot distance from the floor of 221B to the top of the bust, and
an 11.5 foot distance from ground to the floor of 221B, roughly Schultz’s
assumptions), we have a triangular ratio of 10.5/67 (see diagram). Two
additional triangles must be considered: the length of the suite in Baker Street
and the striking place of the bullet on the wall, and the distance of the lamp from
the bust and the path of the bullet (and, concomitantly, whether the lamp is in the
bullet’s path).
If the wall of the suite were 14 feet from the bust (not an unusual length for a
room), the height of the bullet’s striking place must be x/14 = 10.5/67, or about
2.2. That is, the bullet must have struck the wall about 2' 3" higher than the top
of the bust—an acceptable result. If the room is elongated to 20 feet, the height
of the striking place is x/19 = 10.5/67, or about 3 feet above the top of the bust.
Surely the ceiling was higher than 7.5 feet! Even assuming that the height of the
bust above Moran’s shoulder were much greater—say, 15 feet—similar results
are achieved. For a 15-foot suite, the formula is x/14 = 15/67, or 3.14 feet, again
producing a 7.5-foot ceiling. It is obvious that the great distance across Baker
Street produces these results.
As to the lamp-smashing, if one assumes that the lamp were no more than one
foot from the bust, then the formula x/1 =10.5/67 produces the information the
bullet would rise 0.15 feet, or about 2” in that one-foot trip, enough to miss a
carefully-positioned lamp if the bullet struck the top of the bust. The farther back
from the bust the lamp is placed, the more clearance there is between the path of
the bullet and the lamp. Therefore, so long as the lamp did not extend above the
top of the bust, no smashing need be imagined.
The path of the colonel’s bullet.
“The Empty House” was published in Collier’s Weekly
on September 26, 1903, and in the Strand Magazine in
October 1903.
1
As Christopher Morley explains, Ronald Adair earns the
title “The Honourable” by virtue of being the son of a
peer—in this particular case, an earl. For more on the
peerage, see “The Noble Bachelor,” note 16. Morley goes
on to clarify that while the title could be used by either
sex (his sister would also be an Honourable), it was not
transferable by marriage; therefore, had Adair married, he
and his wife “would have been announced by the butler
as The Honourable Ronald Adair and Mrs. Adair.”
2
“Robert” in the original manuscript (corrected) and in
the first English edition; the Strand Magazine and
Collier’s Weekly versions, as well as the American
3
editions, use “Ronald.”
Publication of “The Empty House” occurred almost
immediately following Holmes’s retirement. See “The
Second Stain,” note 5. From 1894 to 1903, Watson had
supposedly been prohibited from revealing the news of
Holmes’s return from the dead to the public, and yet there
is a plethora of evidence that Holmes was actively
pursuing cases during that time. Edgar W. Smith finds it
“difficult to believe” that the news was a shock “to the
hundreds of people who had come in contact with the
Master in the course of the dozens of cases he had
handled since his tardily acknowledged resurrection, or to
the many thousands of others who had heard of these
cases, and, inevitably, of him.” Smith does not suggest
what story, if any, Holmes bothered to tell his new clients
and old friends.
4
The exact date is not stated. “One would have thought,”
remarks June Thomson, in Holmes and Watson, “that,
even if [Watson] were not keeping a journal at the time,
the day of his reunion with Holmes would have been
etched in figures of fire in his memory.”
5
In visiting his various patients, muses Christopher
Morley, Watson would likely have to utilise the services
of a hired carriage, as it’s unlikely he would be earning
enough to maintain his own. Furthermore, Morley chides,
6
despite his apparent dedication to his work, “The fact that
he kept thinking about the Adair case rather than his
patients suggests his heart was not in his profession.”
7
See “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” note 14.
An address on the mansion-heavy Park Lane, alongside
the eastern edge of Hyde Park, signified a stature of high
status and considerable wealth. In William Makepeace
Thackeray’s novel of social climbing Vanity Fair (1848),
for example, a clear-eyed student at Miss Pinkerton’s
academy for young ladies is described as being
“attached” to a desirable gentleman named Frederick
Augustus Bullock not out of any great love for him, but
because her mind is “fixed,—as that of a well-bred young
woman should be,—upon a house in Park Lane, a country
house at Wimbledon, a handsome chariot, and two
prodigious tall horses and footmen, and a fourth of the
annual profits of the eminent firm of Hulker & Bullock,
all of which advantages were represented in the person of
Frederick Augustus.”
8
Gaming clubs, started mostly by veteran gamblers,
proliferated in the West End sometime around 1891, as
Ralph Nevill details in his London Clubs: Their History
and Treasures (1911). Given his apparent fondness for
gambling, Adair was fortunate to escape any great
financial catastrophe; Nevill writes, “Such clubs were in
9
reality little but miniature casinos, and the main, if not the
sole, qualification for membership lay in being possessed
of ample funds and a tendency to part with them easily.”
Perhaps Adair was wise in limiting his appearances to an
establishment like the Baldwin, a club for card players
that, according to Nevill, “admits no strangers . . . [and]
which opens at two o’clock in the afternoon. The stakes
here are very small.”
10
See “The Red-Headed League,” note 56.
We have seen references to Lord Balmoral before in
the Canon: He is the unseen father of Lord Robert St.
Simon (“The Noble Bachelor”), and his horse ran in the
“Wessex Cup” (“Silver Blaze”).
Balmoral Castle was the royal summer and hunting
estate in the Scottish highlands, leased by Queen Victoria
in 1848 and bought for her by Prince Albert in 1852.
Philip Weller reports that Victoria occasionally used the
name Balmoral as an alias (presenting herself as “the
Duchess of Balmoral” when travelling incognito), and he
suggests that Lord Balmoral may thus be a concealed
reference to the Prince of Wales’s involvement in the
great 1890 “Baccarat” or “Tranby Croft” card scandal. In
1890, the prince’s friend Sir William Gordon-Cumming
was accused of cheating in a private game of baccarat
(cards) in which the prince was a player. The prince
extracted a written agreement from Gordon-Cumming
11
that in exchange for the silence of everyone present,
Gordon-Cumming would never play cards again. The
affair resulted in a serious embarrassment to the Crown,
when an action for libel was brought by GordonCumming in 1891. The prince was called as a witness,
and vicious cross-examination laid bare seamy aspects of
the prince’s private life. Rumours even spread that
Gordon-Cumming had been forced to “take the fall” for
the prince’s wrongdoing.
12
In American numbering, the third floor.
In the manuscript, this is a “bullet of an expanding
character”; in Collier’s Weekly and American editions, an
“expanded revolver bullet.” Also known as a “dumdum”
bullet, the expanding bullet was once primarily used in
game hunting; the exposed lead nose (or “soft nose,” for
lead is a soft metal) distorts the body of the bullet upon
impact, creating a larger wound. These bullets were first
made in the town of Dum Dum, a suburb of Calcutta, and
the headquarters of the Bengal artillery until 1853. In
1899, the use of dumdum bullets in warfare was banned
at the Hague Convention, and that ban was agreed to by
Great Britain in 1905—not that the ban would have saved
Ronald Adair.
13
14
“He” in American editions.
S. E. Dahlinger, in “The Adventures of a Hated Rival,”
suggests that this is Barker, Holmes’s “hated rival upon
the Surrey shore,” described in “The Retired Colourman”
as “[a] tall, dark, heavily-moustached man . . . with greytinted sun-glasses.” D. Martin Dakin comes to the same
conclusion. See “The Retired Colourman,” note 17.
15
There is no book in English, apparently, called The
Origin of Tree Worship; S. Tupper Bigelow notes that the
closest match is James Ferguson’s 1868 book Tree and
Serpent Worship, with the handful of a subtitle,
illustrations of mythology and art in India in the first and
fourth centuries after Christ from the sculptures of the
Buddhist Topes at Sanchi and Amravati prepared under
the authority of the Secretary of State for India in Council
with Introductory Essays and descriptions of the plates.
Unfortunately, this appears unlikely to be the book so
handily carried by the old “bibliophile,” for it weighs
over eleven pounds!
16
Bliss Austin, in “Two Bibliographical Footnotes,”
suggests that the Catullus and the earlier mentioned
Origin of Tree Worship might perhaps be a single book,
Grant Allen’s The Attis of . . . Catullus . . . with
Dissertations on . . . the Origin of Tree Worship, and on
the Galliambic Metre (1892). Book collectors argue
unendingly over the exact “five volumes” carried by
Holmes.
17
Even despite the drama of the situation, Watson, an exsoldier who has seen battle, displays a surprisingly weak
constitution here, leading S. C. Roberts (in Doctor
Watson) to conclude that other emotional factors—such
as the illness and death of his wife, Mary Morstan—must
have also contributed to the doctor’s sudden loss of
consciousness. Yet Walter P. Armstrong, Jr., thinks that
Watson did not faint at all, but in fact invented his
dramatic reaction in a burst of poetic licence. “A Watson
who in real life had never fainted,” he reasons, “might
easily in composing an imaginative account of an
emotional scene which never happened depict Watson as
fainting.”
18
It does seem a bit strange that Holmes, posing as a
doddering book collector, conveniently happens to be
carrying a flask of brandy. “Where did this brandy come
from?” asks Walter P. Armstrong, Jr. “Did Sherlock
Holmes, as one of the properties in his character of an
aged bibliophile, carry a hip flask? It does not seem
likely. Nor can he, after a three years’ absence, have
known where the brandy in Watson’s home was kept.” In
fact, Holmes would not have been familiar with the
layout of Watson’s current residence, which, being in
Kensington, is therefore not the Paddington residence of
“The Engineer’s Thumb” nor the apartment that backs on
Mortimer Street in “The Final Problem.”
19
Of course, Armstrong could be underestimating
Holmes, who shrewdly could have had a flask at the
ready for just the purpose of reviving his friend. In Baker
Street Chronology: Commentaries on the Sacred Writings
of Dr. John H. Watson, Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler argues
Holmes surely “foresaw the possibility, if not the
likelihood, that his faithful old friend might be so startled
[by his reappearance] as to require resuscitation; he
prepared himself for this by pocketing his brandy flask.”
Here we learn that Moriarty’s eyes, like Holmes’s (The
Hound of the Baskervilles), were grey.
20
21
See “Baritsu,” page 822.
22
American editions add the word “soon.”
Holmes’s ostensible reasons for faking his own death
don’t quite hold up upon closer examination. He speaks
of lulling Moriarty’s conspirators into complacency and
then having his vengeance upon them; but as T. S.
Blakeney points out, Holmes had not long before been
informed by the London police that the whole of
Moriarty’s gang—save the professor himself—had been
captured. Not until after he makes the decision to
fabricate his demise does Holmes learn that the police
wire was not entirely accurate and that Colonel Moran
was still at large. Perhaps, Blakeney suggests, Holmes’s
23
memory of the experience has (understandably) gotten
somewhat jumbled, and “his statement of his thoughts, as
given by Watson, must have been coloured by wisdom
after the event.”
What does this mean? By its context, “some months
later,” although ambiguous, seems to refer to a short
period of time after the incident at the falls. Holmes and
Moriarty clashed in the spring of 1891, and “The Final
Problem” was not published in the Strand Magazine until
December 1893. Is it reasonable to take “some months
later” to mean the almost three-year period from April
1891 to February or March of 1894, when Holmes could
have read the published account? Or was it the case
instead that—even though Watson supposedly kept his
grief private for two years until finally penning “The
Final Problem”—he wrote another “account” of the
matter, perhaps for the benefit of brother Mycroft, which
the latter forwarded?
24
Watson’s (and Holmes’s) time references in “The Final
Problem” and “The Empty House” are severely criticised
by numerous scholars, especially Holmes’s reference to
“the darkening sky.” See the appendix on page 823.
25
While Moriarty may have brought the confederate
(Colonel Moran) along as a “bodyguard,” argues Noah
André Trudeau, in “The Second Most Dangerous Man in
26
London—Dangerous to Whom?,” this particular
henchman had a different purpose in mind. In Trudeau’s
scenario, Colonel Moran could see that Moriarty was
about to “take a fall” through Holmes’s efforts and
wanted to be sure that Holmes in fact eliminated
Moriarty, so that Moran could take over the organisation.
He shot Moriarty just as he was on the verge of the falls
(hence Moriarty’s “horrible scream”). Holmes did not
hear the shot fired by the silent air-gun. This also
explains why Moran was situated atop the cliff, not at
Moriarty’s side. Trudeau also answers the question raised
by critics of why Colonel Moran did not prepare himself
with a gun to use against Holmes and was inexpediently
slinging rocks. If, after killing Moriarty with the gun
Moran did bring, Moran’s gun jammed, the stone slinging
is explained. Finally, Trudeau’s theory explains the
absence of Moriarty’s body, for Moran would have
retrieved it to prevent the discovery of the bullet wound.
Holmes’s logic here is baffling. Given that Moran had
witnessed his “escape” and never actually saw whether
either stone he threw hit his mark, wouldn’t the colonel
have assumed that Holmes was still alive—and thus
wouldn’t Holmes have feared his cover blown? Yet
Holmes instead seems strangely complacent in the
certainty that no one knows his true fate. “In other
words,” Stanley McComas sums up in “Lhove at
27
Lhassa,” “Moran saw him alive, so Moran will believe he
is dead. Every underworld character in London must
have known Holmes was alive. Watson’s acceptance of
this incongruous tale can only be put down to his shock at
seeing Holmes again.”
June Thomson, writing in Holmes and Watson, is one
scholar who believes Holmes’s reasoning “sounds
suspiciously like an attempt to excuse the inexcusable.”
While Holmes excels at scrutinising objective, external
situations, he is far less adept at analysing his own
actions and motivations, and thus has chosen to shift the
burden of fault onto Watson’s hapless shoulders.
“[Holmes] was not given to deep or critical selfexamination,” Thomson explains, “and his first instinct
when faced with the need to explain his own
unacceptable behaviour was to look for something or
someone else to blame, in this case, Watson’s inability to
dissemble. By doing this he could justify his conduct not
only to Watson but also to himself.” Thomson is
unsympathetic toward Watson, labelling him “not given
himself to subtle psychological inquiry and prone anyway
to believe Holmes was usually right”—which, in fact, he
does here.
28
Again, Holmes’s explanation of his behaviour rests on
thin logic. While it may be true that Holmes wanted to
avoid drawing attention to himself in public, history
29
shows that he was in little danger of Watson even giving
him a second glance and therefore had no need to turn
away. On nearly every occasion reported in the Canon in
which Holmes disguised himself, Watson failed to see
through the disguise at first glance, whether it be that of a
drunken-looking groom (“A Scandal in Bohemia”—
Watson said it took three looks to be sure that it was
Holmes), a tall thin old man (“The Man with the Twisted
Lip”), an Italian priest (“The Final Problem”), or an
unshaven French workman (“The Disappearance of Lady
Frances Carfax”). “Will this explanation hold water?”
Walter P. Armstrong, Jr., marvels, “It is incredible that
[Holmes’s] confidence in his art of make-up had grown
so weak that he was afraid Watson would recognize in
the aged bookseller a man whom he thought long dead.”
At this time, the mountainous, secluded region of Tibet
was nominally a Chinese protectorate, the ruling Qing (or
Manchu) Dynasty having sent troops in 1720 to drive out
the occupying Mongols. Because the Chinese had
brought with them Tibet’s seventh Dalai Lama (the
spiritual leader had been sequestered in China for his
“protection”), Tibetans welcomed the liberators and
accepted a Chinese presence at the capital city of Lhasa.
At least initially, these representatives, or ambans,
wielded only symbolic power, and throughout the
nineteenth century Tibet strove to ignore them and go
30
about administering its own affairs.
In visiting Tibet, Holmes was in fact violating a
century-old ban against foreigners, instituted in 1792
after a Gurkha invasion. Tibetans deeply mistrusted a
British government not only connected to the Gurkhas
but also plainly covetous of a trade route to China
through Tibet; in this latter respect, Britain was anxious
that Russia, with its own expansionist plans, might
succeed where it had failed. Yet Tibet, its borders closed,
continued to reject its ardent British suitor. Finally, in
1903, the thirteenth Dalai Lama’s alarming reliance on
his Russian adviser led Britain to send a military force,
commanded by Francis Younghusband, to Lhasa to force
negotiation of a trade agreement. The Tibetans, naturally,
refused to cooperate, and in March 1904 Lord Curzon
gave Younghusband the order to attack. Within minutes,
628 Tibetans were dead, 222 injured. (The British lost six
men.) The Dalai Lama fled to Mongolia with his adviser,
and in his absence Britain signed the Lhasa Convention,
establishing relations with Tibet and granting the region
its autonomy. Without Chinese approval, however, the
Lhasa Convention held up only until 1906, when the
British did an about-face and negotiated another treaty
with China—a treaty that was in turn nullified when the
Qing dynasty’s collapse in 1912 granted Tibet a brief
period of independence.
While there is much debate over whether Holmes
could have penetrated Tibet, other foreigners had been
there before him, notably, George Bogle, the first
Englishman to visit (1774), Thomas Manning, who
visited Lhasa in 1811, and French Lazarist priests Huc
and Gabet, whose 1846 visit to Lhasa is detailed in their
1850 Souvenirs d’un Voyage . . .
Which “head Lama”? Upon Holmes’s arrival in Tibet
in 1891, the thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso
(1876–1933), would have been around fifteen years old;
the ninth Panchen Lama (or Tashi Lama, the second most
powerful figure in Tibet), Panchen Choekyi Nyima
(1883–1937), even younger at nine or so. It is possible,
but not probable, that Holmes would have spent several
days consulting with a minor, regardless of his titular
status.
In any event, neither the Dalai Lama nor the Panchen
Lama is ever referred to as “head lama”; in fact, events to
come would illustrate just how thorny and complex the
sharing of spiritual leadership could be. At the close of
the nineteenth century, Tibetan leadership had been
marked by a string of Dalai Lamas who had either been
weak leaders or who had died prematurely (some say
under suspicious circumstances), whereas the Panchen
Lamas had come to embody Tibetan resistance to
Chinese rule. During the ensuing trade entanglements
among Britain, China, and Tibet, the thirteenth Dalai
31
Lama and the ninth Panchen Lama were pitted against
each other by the Chinese government, creating a rift
between the two positions that has never really been
repaired. One leader, the Dalai Lama, would eventually
return from exile to rule Tibet for two decades as “the
Great Thirteenth,” restoring faith in the institution of the
Dalai Lama; the other would be forced to flee to China to
spend the rest of his own life in exile. When the Panchen
Lama wrote to the Dalai Lama complaining about the
way he had been treated, the Dalai Lama’s response was
unsympathetic, to say the least: “You seem to have
forgotten the sacred history of your predecessors and
wandered away to a desert. . . . It is difficult to believe
that a person who thinks of himself only . . . should be
regarded as a lama of Buddha.”
In light of the young ages of the two lamas during
Holmes’s visit as well as Holmes’s unconventional use of
the title, A. Carson Simpson identifies the “head lama” as
the Regent, abbot of the Ten-gye-ling Monastery; he was
referred to as the “Head Lama” in Sir Charles Bell’s
Tibet, Past and Present (1924). Bell befriended the
thirteenth Dalai Lama during his exile and also wrote a
biography of the Great Thirteenth.
Oddly, the word is “Llama” in the Strand Magazine,
many other magazine publications, and early American
texts. One doubts that Holmes would have spent his time
in collaboration with a pack animal (one that in any case
was indigenous to the Andes, not the Himalayas).
It is possible, notes June Thomson, that Holmes chose
his assumed Scandinavian nationality out of admiration
for (or competition with) the Swedish explorer Sven
Hedin (1865–1952). By the early 1890s, Hedin had
already published a number of books about his travels
throughout Persia, Mesopotamia, and other areas of
Central Asia, and his accounts were eagerly received by
newspaper readers. Holmes was probably still in Tibet
when Hedin embarked on a four-year exploration of
Russia, China, and northern Tibet in 1893, nearly
perishing in his first crossing of the great Taklamakan
Desert. Hedin returned to Asia to explore Tibet more
thoroughly in an 1899–1902 expedition, publishing the
first detailed maps of Tibet in 1905–1908. Unlike
Holmes, Hedin was not able to visit Lhasa, his poor
disguise as a Buddhist pilgrim failing to gain him entry
(although he was able to meet the Panchen Lama).
32
Thomson dismisses the oft-repeated complaint that
Holmes could not have entered Mecca as an Englishman
or even as a Norwegian. After all, if Richard Burton
could enter Mecca in disguise (in 1853), why couldn’t
Holmes, who had expertise in masking his appearance
(although lacking Burton’s fluency in languages and
sincere adoption of the Muslim faith)? In fact, Holmes’s
visit may have been inspired by Burton’s Personal
33
Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah,
published in three volumes from 1855 to 1856. “[I]t is
quite possible,” hypothesises Thomson, “that for this part
of his journey [Holmes] adopted not only a new name
and a new nationality, as he had done in Tibet, but also a
new religion and appearance, passing himself off as
either an Algerian or Moroccan Muslim. . . .” As proof
that he might have pulled it off, Thomson draws attention
to Holmes’s “dark eyes and hair as well as his lean
features and hawk-like nose . . . [which] already gave him
a cast of features not unlike an Arab’s, a similarity which
would have been enhanced by the deep tan he had
acquired through exposure to the sun and wind during his
travels in Tibet.” As for Holmes’s presumed inability to
speak Arabic, posing as an Algerian or Moroccan Muslim
would have helped to conceal that defect, for the primary
language of those countries was French at that time, “and
Holmes spoke French like a native.”
This would be Khalifa Abdallahi, or ’Abd Allah
(1846–1899), who assumed leadership of the religious
and political Mahdist movement following the death of
Muhammad Ahmad (al-Mahdi) in 1885. (For more on alMahdi, see “The Cardboard Box,” note 9). Abdallahi may
have lacked the Mahdi’s religious fervor, but he worked
to establish his authority among the different Mahdist
factions and to continue the Mahdi’s campaign against
34
Egypt. By the time Holmes visited him, Abdallahi had
weathered famine and various unsuccessful military
campaigns and was enjoying a four-year period of
administrative stability. But in 1896—perhaps acting on
information provided by Holmes—British and Egyptian
troops again attempted to take Sudan, and the last of the
Mahdists (along with Abdallahi himself) fell on
November 24, 1899.
Immediately after the Mahdists’ capture of Khartoum,
the capital of Sudan, in 1885 (see “The Cardboard Box,”
note 9, for a discussion of the rôle of General Charles
Gordon, Watson’s hero), al-Mahdi and his followers
abandoned the devastated city and established a new
cultural and administrative centre at nearby Omdurman.
This village of mud houses was higher and better-drained
than Khartoum; and by moving there al-Mahdi sought to
disassociate himself completely from a city that had been
founded by Egyptians. (Khartoum was retaken by the
British in 1898 and rebuilt under the command of
Governor-General Lord Kitchener.) Given that Khalifa
Abdallahi was not living in Khartoum when Holmes had
his audience, Holmes presumably refers to “Khartoum”
in the expansive sense of the seat of government; in the
modern era the “Three Towns of Khartoum” encompass
Khartoum, Khartoum North, and Omdurman.
35
36
Which “derivatives” (dyes? oils? carbolic acids?) and
why they interested Holmes is the subject of endless
speculation. One scholar points out that 80 percent of all
chemical research in the last century was devoted to
studies of one form or another of the “coal-tar
derivatives.”
The name is misspelled “Montpelier” in the Strand
Magazine and various book editions. Holmes would
likely have conducted his experiments at, or with the
backing of, the University of Montpellier, founded in
1220 and focussed on medicine and the law, boasting a
fine anatomical museum and a rich library. Suppressed
by the French Revolution of 1789, the school was divided
into separate faculties (of medicine, pharmacy, science,
and letters) for nearly a hundred years, regaining
recognition as an official university in 1896. Montepellier
is also known for its many vineyards, which might have
further attracted an oenophile such as Holmes.
37
This was clearly Moran; but what happened to the
other, unnamed enemy?
38
The reader may recall that in “The Final Problem,”
Holmes reports that Moriarty’s men had “set fire to our
rooms” but that “no great harm was done.” The image of
Mycroft busily arranging Holmes’s rooms to his liking
might give one pause, or at least it does Walter P.
Armstrong, Jr. Considering that Mycroft had previously
39
made only a single visit to Holmes’s rooms (in “The
Greek Interpreter”), it seems implausible that he would
have known how to restore them “exactly as they had
always been,” regardless of his vaunted powers of
observation. Casting about for others who may have had
a hand in the renovations, Armstrong also dismisses Mrs.
Hudson, “for she seldom crossed the threshold,” and
Holmes’s eccentric contraptions would most likely have
baffled her. “In fact,” Armstrong concludes, “only one
man could have done it, and that man was Watson.
Naturally he did not want his name to appear, because he
is supposed to have thought that Holmes was dead.”
Does this mean the death of Mary Morstan? Once
again, some theorists, seeing that Watson rarely discusses
his wife in the Canon, take the view that his marriage was
an unsuccessful one and that his “bereavement” does not
refer to grief over his wife’s death. Wingate Bett, in
“Watson’s Second Marriage,” advances the hypothesis
that “bereavement” here means deprivation, either by
estrangement (which he dismisses as unthinkable) or by
mental derangement. Bett suggests that “the prolonged
strain to which Miss Morstan’s sensitive nature had been
subjected during the events of The Sign of Four and for
some years previously might well have led to a mental
breakdown.” C. Alan Bradley and William A. S. Sarjeant
note that Watson does not even identify the name of the
40
deceased person; “it could have been Watson’s mother,
his father or his brother, for all that the chronicle tells
us.”
Most scholars, however, accept the conventional view
that Watson’s “sad bereavement” was caused by the
death of Mary Morstan. Watson, presumably unwilling
(unable) to dwell on the details in such a public forum,
never does reveal the circumstances of her death. She was
still only thirty years old in 1891, which leads some to
propose that she died in childbirth, as did so many other
women in the Victorian era. Another theory, that Mary
Morstan succumbed to tuberculosis—which could
explain why Watson was so quick to leave Holmes’s side
to take care of the consumptive (and fictitious)
Englishwoman in “The Final Problem” (see note 40)—is
readily discounted by June Thomson, who observes that
tuberculosis was fatal and, at that time, untreatable;
patients were prescribed only rest and fresh air as they
grew progressively weaker. Yet when Holmes arrived at
Watson’s apartment to solicit his aid in capturing
Moriarty, Watson revealed that his wife was “away upon
a visit,” behaviour hardly appropriate for a woman
suffering from a debilitating disease. “Watson would not
have allowed it,” Thomson writes, “nor would he have
been as eager to accompany Holmes abroad had he
known his wife was already suffering from consumption
which, as a doctor, he would almost certainly have
diagnosed.”
Holmes’s possession of the key is yet another mystery.
The house is empty, implying that it is available for rent
or sale; June Thomson suggests that Holmes, posing as a
prospective buyer, paid a fruitful visit to the real estate
agent whose name must have appeared on a sign outside.
Thomas L. Stix, on the other hand, expresses doubt:
“Where did Holmes get the key? We do not know, but
our experience is that estate agents do not casually give
out keys to properties that they control.”
41
Although Watson’s directions are explicit, in the words
of David L. Hammer in The Game Is Afoot, “There are as
many candidates for the Empty House as for 221B, and
the most which can be said is that it remains a shadowy
location.” The principal reason for the dilemma is that in
1881, when Holmes moved to 221 Baker Street, Baker
Street had not yet merged with York Place (1921) or
Upper Baker Street (1930) and there was no 221. In fact
Baker Street was barely a quarter-mile long and consisted
of eighty buildings, with the highest number No. 85.
Scholars assume that Watson disguised only the number,
however, and not the street. Based on their examinations
of the route described in “The Empty House,” the
descriptive elements described in this and other stories—
the mews (“The Empty House”), the back yard (“Problem
of Thor Bridge”), the windows (A Study in Scarlet, “The
42
Beryl Coronet”), the absence of a streetlamp (“The
Empty House”)—they propose other candidates on Baker
Street. The most popular is No. 31, selected by Bernard
Davies (“The Back Yards of Baker Street”), William S.
Baring-Gould (“ ‘I Have My Eye on a Suite in Baker
Street’ ”), and David L. Hammer. No. 111 also has its
supporters, including the eminent Chandler Briggs and
Vincent Starrett (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes)
and Christopher Morley (“Report from Baker Street”),
although, as noted, No. 111 was not incorporated into
Baker Street proper until long after Holmes had departed.
For a detailed listing of candidates, see this editor’s “The
Location of ‘A Most Desirable Residence,’ ” in The
Return of Sherlock Holmes (Indianapolis: Gasogene
Books, 2003).
In the English edition, the phrase “your little fairytales” has been replaced by “our little adventures.”
43
Apparently a paraphrase of dialogue from
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, in which Antony’s
friend Enobarbus explains to Caesar’s friend Agrippa the
appeal of Cleopatra to the two men: “Age cannot wither
her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety; other women
cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry /
Where most she satisfies . . .” (Act II, Scene 2). Modern
writers make of this a paean to mature women.
44
It is tempting to wonder whether Monsieur Meunier
was employed by Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition, the wax
museum founded by Marie Gresholtz Tussaud (1760–
1850) and located on nearby Marylebone Road. Tussaud,
born in France, learned how to make wax models from an
uncle who owned wax museums in Paris. Among her
early subjects were both Voltaire and Rousseau; but she
was imprisoned during the French Revolution and forced
during the Reign of Terror to make death masks from the
heads of prisoners (her friends among them) who had just
been executed by the guillotine. Tussaud came to London
with her two sons in 1802, and they toured their
collection of wax models throughout England, Scotland,
and Ireland for thirty-three years, finally establishing a
permanent exhibition in 1835 on Baker Street and
Portman Square. The museum was an immense success,
featuring lifelike figures and death masks of figures such
as Napoleon, Shakespeare, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Sir
Walter Scott, and Benjamin Franklin—with the most
popular attraction being the “Chamber of Horrors”
(originally the “Separate Room,” which young ladies
were advised not to visit and described in 1888 in
Dickens’s Dictionary of London as “over-strong meat for
babes”), in which famous murderers and other violent
criminals were represented alongside their victims.
Tussaud’s sons moved the museum to Marylebone Road
in 1888, almost immediately adjacent to the Baker Street
45
Underground station and a statue of Sherlock Holmes
erected in 1999.
Ronald A. Knox, the father of Sherlockian scholarship,
whose thesis it is that Mycroft was a double agent aiding
both his brother and Professor Moriarty (see “The Final
Problem”), writes, “Credat Judœus Apella; you do not
really watch a house on the chance of its being revisited,
for three years on end. No, Colonel Moran’s information
will have come, as usual, from Mycroft. . . .” As before,
Knox believes that Mycroft was not an entirely devious
person, and that he aimed ultimately to double-cross
Sherlock’s enemy rather than betray his brother. While
Mycroft probably did inform Moran’s people that
Sherlock had returned, he also must have known about
the installation of the wax model and therefore was
assisting his brother in setting a trap for them. Sherlock
must have been concerned that Watson might not share
his faith in Mycroft or understand his complex character
and so hid from Watson the real story of Mycroft’s
conflicting loyalties.
46
Garrot, or garrote, was a method of Spanish execution
in which the condemned was strangled by a cord, wire, or
iron collar. According to E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary
of Phrase and Fable, originally the executioner would
induce asphyxiation by twisting the cord with a stick;
such a method lends meaning to the term itself, garrote
47
being Spanish for “stick.” “In 1851,” Brewer continues,
“General Lopez was garrotted by the Spanish authorities
for attempting to gain possession of Cuba; since which
time the thieves of London, etc., have adopted the method
of strangling their victim by throwing their arms round
his throat, while an accomplice rifles his pockets.”
In “Parker the Garrotter: Why Was He Harmless?,”
Lionel Needleman speculates that Parker had been a
notorious garroter in the 1860s who was captured during
the outbreak of garroting that took place in the autumn
and winter of 1862–1863 in London. After a term of
imprisonment, he turned to the streets, a broken man,
begging and performing on the jew’s-harp, where he
came to Holmes’s attention.
This small musical instrument, known for centuries all
over Europe and Asia, consists of a flexible metal (or
wooden) “tongue” affixed to a two-pronged metal frame.
The player places the frame in his or her teeth and plucks
at the metal tongue with a finger; different notes may be
achieved by modifying the shape of the mouth, altering
the quality of the sound. Additionally, some eighteenthand nineteenth-century jew’s harps increased their ranges
by incorporating two to as many as sixteen tongues. The
etymology of the name is murky, but no connection has
ever been made between the instrument and Jews. (It is
also sometimes referred to as a “jaw’s harp.”)
48
49
This sentence is omitted in the English edition.
50
Given as “whirring” in some editions.
A metal cover that closes the breech of a gun once the
cartridges have been loaded.
51
See “The Final Problem,” note 14, for a discussion of
Victorian interest in phrenology, the study of the shape of
the head.
52
Holmes apparently paraphrases Shakespeare’s Twelfth
Night, Act II, Scene 3: “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”
Scholars note that Holmes has a special fondness for
Twelfth Night, as it is the only one of Shakespeare’s
works he quotes twice (see also “The Red Circle”). From
this, some have built a case that Holmes’s birthday was
“twelfth night,” or January 6.
53
54
“Aloysius” in the manuscript.
55
An Anglo-Indian term, meaning a hunter, a sportsman.
The police have no choice but to bow to Holmes’s
wishes, since none of them were witness to any of the
events that just took place. And while Moran has been
caught in possession of an air-gun (the same air-gun that
Holmes professed to fear at the outset of “The Final
Problem”), nothing links this weapon to the bullet fired.
June Thomson wonders at Holmes’s refusal to cooperate
56
with the police. In other cases, Holmes had kept his name
out of any official reports in order to induce the police to
continue to refer matters to him. Here, Holmes not only
declines to take any credit for the capture but indicates
that he will not even press charges against Moran. “In the
absence of any explanation on Holmes’s part one can
only assume that during the three years spent abroad he
had learned to appreciate the advantages of living
incognito and now preferred to avoid publicity . . .”
Park Lane fronts on Hyde Park for its entire length.
From where, then, did the colonel fire? Percival Wilde, in
“The Bust in the Window,” suggests a location inside the
park near the Marble Arch entrance, though he would
have faced the difficult task of escaping attention from
the scores of people who frequented the park “between
the hours of ten and eleven-twenty” at night. Edgar W.
Smith also nominates a position within the park, but in
considering the difficulties of firing accurately while
aiming upward toward a target two flights above ground
level, he posits that Moran must have climbed “a
strategically placed tree” to reach the appropriate level.
Nicholas Utechin, disregarding the height issue as well as
that of any bystanders, argues that the Colonel shot Adair
while standing on the pavement on the Hyde Park side of
Park Lane.
57
58
The reference is to “Mrs. Turner” in the manuscript,
corrected. Because there are earlier references to “Mrs.
Hudson” in this adventure, this strongly supports the
conclusion that Mrs. Turner worked for Mrs. Hudson.
See “A Scandal in Bohemia” for a detailed discussion of
the Hudson-Turner connection.
59
“Preserved” in the Strand Magazine.
For a discussion of the path of the colonel’s bullet, see
the appendix on page 825.
60
This professed ignorance, comments D. Martin Dakin,
appears to be a literary device used by Watson—the same
device that he used to explain who Professor Moriarty
was in “The Final Problem.” Watson did apparently
know who Colonel Moran was, having noted his
employment by Moriarty in The Valley of Fear (whose
events predate those of “The Empty House”).
61
Remember that Moriarty’s Christian name is not
disclosed in “The Final Problem,” and that the
Professor’s brother, whose slanderous accounts of
Holmes’s role in Moriarty’s death trouble Watson so, is
named “Colonel James Moriarty.” Ian McQueen argues
that the Professor never had a brother at all, and that
Colonel Moran, attempting to reconvene the Professor’s
gang upon his return to London, adopted Moriarty’s
name professionally so as to assume a greater air of
62
authority. Moran may have seen himself as a “brotheroutlaw” to Moriarty, says McQueen, and used the term in
his letters to the press in the sense not of a blood
relationship but rather one of kinship with a close friend
and colleague.
The phrase “of smoke” has been added in the English
edition.
63
Bangalore is the capital (since 1830) of Karnataka, in
southern India, and served as the military and
administrative headquarters of British India from 1831 to
1881. Notwithstanding Watson’s efforts to disguise the
regiment, the American editions refer to the Pioneers as
the Bangalore Pioneers.
64
C.B. stands for “Companion of the Bath,” an order of
British knighthood bestowed by the monarch as reward
for outstanding military or civil service. The recipient of
a C.B. would not actually become a knight or be referred
to as “sir” or “dame”; such titles are reserved for the two
highest classes of knighthood, Knight or Dame Grand
Cross (G.C.B.) and Knight or Dame Commander (K.C.B.
or D.C.B.). Those knights and dames, together with the
sovereign, the “great master of the order,” and members
of the C.B. class, make up the Most Honourable Order of
the Bath.
65
The same educational career has been ascribed to
another Holmes villain, John Clay in “The Red-Headed
League”—meaning that both “the second most dangerous
man in London” and “the fourth smartest man in
London” were products of Eton and Oxford. Christopher
Morley, placing Holmes as a graduate of that other wellknown British university, sees the detective’s fixation on
both as no mere coincidence, noting, “It must be borne in
mind that Holmes was a Cambridge man and might
perhaps be prejudiced.” Other, more favourably viewed
graduates of Eton and Oxford, as culled by Morley,
include Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and Monsignor
Ronald A. Knox, chaplain of Trinity College at Oxford,
who translated the Bible into English and “started the
whole trend of modern Sherlock Holmes criticism” with
the satirical essay “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock
Holmes.” (Knox was himself a detective novelist whose
best-known such work was Still Dead, published in
1934.)
66
The “Jowaki Campaign” was a term for two separate
British military expeditions, mounted in 1853 and 1877–
1878, against the Jowaki Afridis, a Pashtun tribe whose
territory encompassed the Khyber Pass in northern
Pakistan. After annexing the Punjab, the British,
recognising the strategic importance of the mountain
gateway, clashed frequently with the resistant Afridis in
67
an attempt to keep the pass open. The expeditions of the
Jowaki Campaign were undertaken specifically as
punitive strikes, meant to retaliate for Afridi raids into
British territory in India and Pakistan.
Sherpur is a fortified plain outside Kabul (Cabul), the
scene of a British victory in the Second Afghan War, in
which Dr. Watson served as well.
68
Probably the East India United Service Club, located in
St. James’s Square.
69
In “The Five Orange Pips,” we learn that Holmes
saved Major Prendergast in the “Tankerville Club
Scandal.”
70
Nicholas Utechin makes the interesting suggestion that
the young Sebastian Moran used Professor Moriarty as
his army coach (see “The Final Problem”) to gain his
commission and that Moriarty followed young Moran’s
career and later “sought him out.”
71
Holmes seems to be referring to the science of
ballistics—the branch of physics that, in looking at the
behaviour of projectiles, is more commonly understood to
mean the study of bullets and firearms, particularly when
used in policework. Yet Judge S. Tupper Bigelow, in
“Was It Attempted Murder?,” believes Holmes to be
mistaken in thinking that the bullets could be indisputably
72
linked to Moran’s gun. “[I]t is useful to know,” writes
Bigelow, “that ballistics was unknown at Scotland Yard,
and for that matter, in any police department in the world,
in 1895; the police became aware of its possibilities no
earlier than 1909.” Bigelow goes on to note that it was
only in 1910 that all U.S. police forces were using
ballistics to investigate gun-related crimes. Perhaps
Holmes expected to test-fire bullets from Moran’s air-gun
and compare them to the bullet found in Adair’s body. If
two bullets fired from the same gun looked alike, he must
have reasoned, then two bullets that look alike must have
been fired from the same gun. In this respect, “he was
anticipating the part ballistics has played in the
investigation of crime by about 15 years.”
Long before Moran’s trial, Holmes seems terribly
confident that the villain would be sentenced “with
extreme prejudice.” Later stories indicate that Holmes
may have been premature in closing the book on
London’s second-most dangerous man. In “The
Illustrious Client,” which took place in 1902 (see
Chronological Table), Holmes refers to “the living
Sebastian Moran”; and in “His Last Bow” (definitely set
in 1914), Holmes implies that Moran is still alive, saying:
“The old sweet song. It was a favourite ditty of the late
lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran
has also been known to warble it.” How does Moran
73
escape the predicted gallows? In the end, all the evidence
against him is circumstantial, as Judge Bigelow points
out. The murder of Adair, for example, was witnessed by
no one. The list of numbers and club friends found in his
room could have been been written up by Adair solely to
figure out how much money he had won and lost, and to
whom; and finally, the fact that Moran shot at a wax
dummy of Holmes is not grounds for attempted murder
(proof of “similar acts” being inadmissible under British
law). “So the overwhelmingly strong case against
Moran,” Bigelow concludes, “boils down to this: Adair
was killed; the expanding revolver bullet that killed him
was similar to one that was shot from Moran’s air-gun;
therefore Moran killed Adair.” Bigelow reports that as a
result, Moran was in fact found not guilty of Adair’s
murder.
Summarized by Ronald B. DeWaal in The Universal
Sherlock Holmes.
74
Jay Finley Christ points out that Baedeker’s guide to
Switzerland lists fourteen guides who were available in
Meiringen, presumably the “experts” referred to by Dr.
Watson.
75
THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD
BUILDER1
With publication of “The Empty House” and Holmes in retirement
(although the latter was unknown to the public), Watson was free at
last to draw on his entire casebook of Holmes’s career to select his
tales. His first post-Return effort was “The Norwood Builder.” The
case is the first in the Canon to feature fingerprints as the key clue,
and Holmes was clearly ahead of his law enforcement colleagues and
the courts in recognising their significance. Scholars also raise
questions about the strange will produced by Holmes’s client and
suggest his incompetence as a lawyer.
FROM THE POINT of view of the criminal expert,” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
“London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late
lamented2 Professor Moriarty.”3
“I can hardly think that you would find many decent citizens to agree with
you,” I answered.
“Well, well, I must not be selfish,” said he, with a smile, as he pushed back
his chair from the breakfast-table. “The community is certainly the gainer, and
no one the loser, save the poor out-of-work specialist, whose occupation has
gone. With that man in the field, one’s morning paper presented infinite
possibilities. Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest indication,
and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the
gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which
lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless outrage—to the
man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected whole. To the
scientific student of the higher criminal world, no capital in Europe offered the
advantages which London then possessed. But now—” He shrugged his
shoulders in humorous deprecation of the state of things which he had himself
done so much to produce.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
At the time of which I speak, Holmes had been back for some months, and I,
at his request, had sold my practice and returned to share the old quarters in
Baker Street.4 A young doctor, named Verner,5 had purchased my small
Kensington practice, and given with astonishingly little demur the highest price
that I ventured to ask—an incident which only explained itself some years later,
when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes’s, and that it was my
friend who had really found the money.6
Our months of partnership had not been so uneventful as he had stated, for I
find, on looking over my notes, that this period includes the case of the papers of
ex-President Murillo,7 and also the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship
Friesland, which so nearly cost us both our lives.8 His cold and proud nature
was always averse, however, to anything in the shape of public applause, and he
bound me in the most stringent terms to say no further word of himself, his
methods, or his successes—a prohibition which, as I have explained, has only
now been removed.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes was leaning back in his chair after his whimsical
protest, and was unfolding his morning paper in a leisurely fashion, when our
attention was arrested by a tremendous ring at the bell, followed immediately by
a hollow drumming sound, as if someone were beating on the outer door with his
fist. As it opened there came a tumultuous rush into the hall, rapid feet clattered
up the stair, and an instant later a wild-eyed and frantic young man, pale,
dishevelled, and palpitating, burst into the room. He looked from one to the other
of us, and under our gaze of inquiry he became conscious that some apology was
needed for this unceremonious entry.
“A wild-eyed and frantic young man burst into the
room.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes,” he cried. “You mustn’t blame me. I am nearly mad.
Mr. Holmes, I am the unhappy John Hector McFarlane.”
He made the announcement as if the name alone would explain both his visit
and its manner, but I could see by my companion’s unresponsive face that it
meant no more to him than to me.
“Have a cigarette, Mr. McFarlane,” said he, pushing his case across. “I am
sure that, with your symptoms, my friend Dr. Watson here would prescribe a
sedative. The weather has been so very warm these last few days. Now, if you
feel a little more composed, I should be glad if you would sit down in that chair
and tell us very slowly and quietly who you are and what it is that you want. You
mentioned your name, as if I should recognise it, but I assure you that, beyond
the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and an
asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.”
Familiar as I was with my friend’s methods, it was not difficult for me to
follow his deductions, and to observe the untidiness of attire, the sheaf of legal
papers, the watch-charm, and the breathing which had prompted them. Our
client, however, stared in amazement.
“Yes, I am all that, Mr. Holmes, and, in addition, I am the most unfortunate
man at this moment in London. For heaven’s sake, don’t abandon me, Mr.
Holmes! If they come to arrest me before I have finished my story, make them
give me time, so that I may tell you the whole truth. I could go to gaol happy if I
knew that you were working for me outside.”
“Arrest you!” said Holmes. “This is really most grati—most interesting. On
what charge do you expect to be arrested?”
“Upon the charge of murdering Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood.”
My companion’s expressive face showed a sympathy which was not, I am
afraid, entirely unmixed with satisfaction.
“Dear me,” said he, “it was only this moment at breakfast that I was saying to
my friend, Dr. Watson, that sensational cases had disappeared out of our
papers.”
Our visitor stretched forward a quivering hand and picked up the Daily
Telegraph, which still lay upon Holmes’s knee.
“If you had looked at it, sir, you would have seen at a glance what the errand
is on which I have come to you this morning. I feel as if my name and my
misfortune must be in every man’s mouth.” He turned it over to expose the
central page. “Here it is, and with your permission I will read it to you. Listen to
this, Mr. Holmes. The headlines are: ‘Mysterious Affair at Lower Norwood.
Disappearance of a Well-Known Builder. Suspicion of Murder and Arson. A
Clue to the Criminal.’ That is the clue which they are already following, Mr.
Holmes, and I know that it leads infallibly to me. I have been followed from
London Bridge Station, and I am sure that they are only waiting for the warrant
to arrest me. It will break my mother’s heart—it will break her heart!” He wrung
his hands in an agony of apprehension, and swayed backward and forward in his
chair.
I looked with interest upon this man, who was accused of being the
perpetrator of a crime of violence. He was flaxen-haired and handsome, in a
washed-out negative fashion, with frightened blue eyes, and a clean-shaven face,
with a weak, sensitive mouth. His age may have been about twenty-seven, his
dress and bearing that of a gentleman. From the pocket of his light summer
overcoat protruded the bundle of indorsed papers which proclaimed his
profession.
“We must use what time we have,” said Holmes. “Watson, would you have
the kindness to take the paper and to read the paragraph in question?”
Underneath the vigorous headlines which our client had quoted, I read the
following suggestive narrative:
Late last night, or early this morning,9 an incident occurred at Lower
Norwood which points, it is feared, to a serious crime. Mr. Jonas Oldacre is
a well-known resident of that suburb, where he has carried on his business
as a builder for many years. Mr. Oldacre is a bachelor, fifty-two years of
age, and lives in Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that
name. He has had the reputation of being a man of eccentric habits,
secretive and retiring. For some years he has practically withdrawn from the
business, in which he is said to have amassed considerable wealth. A small
timber-yard still exists, however, at the back of the house, and last night,
about twelve o’clock, an alarm was given that one of the stacks was on fire.
The engines were soon upon the spot, but the dry wood burned with great
fury, and it was impossible to arrest the conflagration until the stack had
been entirely consumed. Up to this point the incident bore the appearance
of an ordinary accident, but fresh indications seem to point to serious crime.
Surprise was expressed at the absence of the master of the establishment
from the scene of the fire, and an inquiry followed, which showed that he
had disappeared from the house. An examination of his room revealed that
the bed had not been slept in, that a safe which stood in it was open, that a
number of important papers were scattered about the room, and, finally, that
there were signs of a murderous struggle, slight traces of blood being found
within the room, and an oaken walking-stick, which also showed stains of
blood upon the handle. It is known that Mr. Jonas Oldacre had received a
late visitor in his bedroom upon that night, and the stick found has been
identified as the property of this person, who is a young London solicitor
named John Hector McFarlane, junior partner of Graham & McFarlane, of
426 Gresham Buildings,10 E. C. The police believe that they have evidence
in their possession which supplies a very convincing motive for the crime,
and altogether it cannot be doubted that sensational developments will
follow.
Later.—It is rumoured as we go to press that Mr. John Hector McFarlane
has actually been arrested on the charge of the murder of Mr. Jonas
Oldacre. It is at least certain that a warrant has been issued. There have
been further and sinister developments in the investigation at Norwood.
Besides the signs of a struggle in the room of the unfortunate builder it is
now known that the French windows of his bedroom (which is on the
ground floor) were found to be open, that there were marks as if some
bulky object had been dragged across to the wood-pile, and, finally, it is
asserted that charred remains have been found among the charcoal ashes of
the fire. The police theory is that a most sensational crime has been
committed, that the victim was clubbed to death in his own bedroom, his
papers rifled, and his dead body dragged across to the wood-stack, which
was then ignited so as to hide all traces of the crime. The conduct of the
criminal investigation has been left in the experienced hands of Inspector
Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, who is following up the clues with his
accustomed energy and sagacity.
Sherlock Holmes listened with closed eyes and finger-tips together to this
remarkable account.
“The case has certainly some points of interest,” said he, in his languid
fashion. “May I ask, in the first place, Mr. McFarlane, how it is that you are still
at liberty, since there appears to be enough evidence to justify your arrest?”
“I live at Torrington Lodge, Blackheath, with my parents, Mr. Holmes, but
last night having to do business very late with Mr. Jonas Oldacre, I stayed at an
hotel in Norwood, and came to my business from there. I knew nothing of this
affair until I was in the train, when I read what you have just heard. I at once saw
the horrible danger of my position, and I hurried to put the case into your hands.
I have no doubt that I should have been arrested either at my City office or at my
home. A man followed me from London Bridge Station, and I have no doubt—
Great heaven, what is that?”
It was a clang of the bell, followed instantly by heavy steps upon the stair. A
moment later, our old friend Lestrade appeared in the doorway. Over his
shoulder I caught a glimpse of one or two uniformed policemen outside.
“Mr. John Hector McFarlane?” said Lestrade.
Our unfortunate client rose with a ghastly face.
“I arrest you for the wilful murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre, of Lower Norwood.”
McFarlane turned to us with a gesture of despair, and sank into his chair once
more like one who is crushed.
“One moment, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “Half an hour more or less can make
no difference to you, and the gentleman was about to give us an account of this
very interesting affair, which might aid us in clearing it up.”
“I think there will be no difficulty in clearing it up,” said Lestrade, grimly.
“None the less, with your permission, I should be much interested to hear his
account.”
“Well, Mr. Holmes, it is difficult for me to refuse you anything, for you have
been of use to the Force once or twice in the past, and we owe you a good turn at
Scotland Yard,” said Lestrade. “At the same time I must remain with my
prisoner, and I am bound to warn him that anything he may say will appear in
evidence against him.”
“I arrest you for the wilful murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“I wish nothing better,” said our client. “All I ask is that you should hear and
recognize the absolute truth.”
Lestrade looked at his watch. “I’ll give you half an hour,” said he.
“I must explain first,” said McFarlane, “that I knew nothing of Mr. Jonas
Oldacre. His name was familiar to me, for many years ago my parents were
acquainted with him, but they drifted apart. I was very much surprised, therefore,
when yesterday, about three o’clock in the afternoon, he walked into my office
in the city. But I was still more astonished when he told me the object of his
visit. He had in his hand several sheets of a notebook, covered with scribbled
writing—here they are—and he laid them on my table.
“ ‘Here is my will,’ said he. ‘I want you, Mr. McFarlane, to cast it into proper
legal shape. I will sit here while you do so.’
“I set myself to copy it, and you can imagine my astonishment when I found
that, with some reservations, he had left all his property to me. He was a strange
little ferret-like man, with white eyelashes, and when I looked up at him I found
his keen gray eyes fixed upon me with an amused expression.11 I could hardly
believe my own senses as I read the terms of the will; but he explained that he
was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in
his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man,
and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could
only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed
by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are
the rough draft.12 Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there were a number
of documents—building leases, title-deeds, mortgages, scrip, and so forth—
which it was necessary that I should see and understand. He said that his mind
would not be easy until the whole thing was settled, and he begged me to come
out to his house at Norwood that night, bringing the will with me, and to arrange
matters. ‘Remember, my boy, not one word to your parents about the affair until
everything is settled. We will keep it as a little surprise for them.’ He was very
insistent upon this point, and made me promise it faithfully.
“You can imagine, Mr. Holmes, that I was not in a humour to refuse him
anything that he might ask. He was my benefactor, and all my desire was to
carry out his wishes in every particular. I sent a telegram home, therefore, to say
that I had important business on hand, and that it was impossible for me to say
how late I might be. Mr. Oldacre had told me that he would like me to have
supper with him at nine, as he might not be home before that hour. I had some
difficulty in finding his house, however, and it was nearly half-past before I
reached it. I found him—”
“One moment!” said Holmes. “Who opened the door?”
“A middle-aged woman, who was, I suppose, his housekeeper.”13
“And it was she, I presume, who mentioned your name?”
“Exactly,” said McFarlane.
“Pray proceed.”
Mr. McFarlane wiped his damp brow, and then continued his narrative:
“I was shown by this woman into a sitting-room, where a frugal supper was
laid out. Afterwards, Mr. Jonas Oldacre led me into his bedroom, in which there
stood a heavy safe. This he opened and took out a mass of documents, which we
went over together. It was between eleven and twelve when we finished. He
remarked that we must not disturb the housekeeper. He showed me out through
his own French window, which had been open all this time.”
A mass of documents, which we went over together.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“Was the blind down?” asked Holmes.
“I will not be sure, but I believe that it was only half down. Yes, I remember
how he pulled it up in order to swing open the window. I could not find my
stick, and he said, ‘Never mind, my boy, I shall see a good deal of you now, I
hope, and I will keep your stick until you come back to claim it.’ I left him there,
the safe open, and the papers made up in packets upon the table. It was so late
that I could not get back to Blackheath, so I spent the night at the Anerley
Arms,14 and I knew nothing more until I read of this horrible affair in the
morning.”
“Anything more that you would like to ask, Mr. Holmes?” said Lestrade,
whose eyebrows had gone up once or twice during this remarkable explanation.
“Not until I have been to Blackheath.”
“You mean to Norwood,” said Lestrade.
“Oh, yes, no doubt that is what I must have meant,” said Holmes, with his
enigmatical smile. Lestrade had learned by more experiences than he would care
to acknowledge that that razor-like brain could cut through that which was
impenetrable to him. I saw him look curiously at my companion.
“I think I should like to have a word with you presently, Mr. Sherlock
Holmes,” said he. “Now, Mr. McFarlane, two of my constables are at the door,
and there is a four-wheeler waiting.” The wretched young man arose, and with a
last beseeching glance at us walked from the room. The officers conducted him
to the cab, but Lestrade remained. Holmes had picked up the pages which
formed the rough draft of the will, and was looking at them with the keenest
interest upon his face.
“There are some points about that document Lestrade, are there not?” said he,
pushing them over.
The official looked at them with a puzzled expression.
“I can read the first few lines, and these in the middle of the second page, and
one or two at the end. Those are as clear as print,” said he, “but the writing in
between is very bad, and there are three places where I cannot read it at all.”
“What do you make of that?” said Holmes.
“Well, what do you make of it?”
“That it was written in a train; the good writing represents stations, the bad
writing movement, and the very bad writing passing over points. A scientific
expert would pronounce at once that this was drawn up on a suburban line, since
nowhere save in the immediate vicinity of a great city could there be so quick a
succession of points. Granting that his whole journey was occupied in drawing
up the will, then the train was an express, only stopping once between Norwood
and London Bridge.”
“The wretched young man arose.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
Lestrade began to laugh.
“You are too many for me when you begin to get on your theories, Mr.
Holmes,” said he. “How does this bear on the case?”
“Well, it corroborates the young man’s story to the extent that the will was
drawn up by Jonas Oldacre in his journey yesterday. It is curious—is it not?—
that a man should draw up so important a document in so haphazard a fashion. It
suggests that he did not think it was going to be of much practical importance. If
a man drew up a will which he did not intend ever to be effective, he might do it
so.”
“Well, he drew up his own death-warrant at the same time,” said Lestrade.
“Oh, you think so?”
“Don’t you?”
“Well, it is quite possible, but the case is not clear to me yet.”
“Not clear? Well, if that isn’t clear, what could be clear? Here is a young man
who learns suddenly that, if a certain older man dies, he will succeed to a
fortune. What does he do? He says nothing to anyone, but he arranges that he
shall go out on some pretext to see his client that night; he waits until the only
other person in the house is in bed, and then in the solitude of a man’s room he
murders him, burns his body in the wood-pile, and departs to a neighbouring
hotel. The blood-stains in the room and also on the stick are very slight. It is
probable that he imagined his crime to be a bloodless one, and hoped that if the
body were consumed it would hide all traces of the method of his death—traces
which, for some reason, must have pointed to him. Is not all this obvious?”
“It strikes me, my good Lestrade, as being just a trifle too obvious,” said
Holmes. “You do not add imagination to your other great qualities, but if you
could for one moment put yourself in the place of this young man, would you
choose the very night after the will had been made to commit your crime?
Would it not seem dangerous to you to make so very close a relation between the
two incidents? Again, would you choose an occasion when you are known to be
in the house, when a servant has let you in? And, finally, would you take the
great pains to conceal the body, and yet leave your own stick as a sign that you
were the criminal? Confess, Lestrade, that all this is very unlikely.”
“As to the stick, Mr. Holmes, you know as well as I do that a criminal is often
flurried, and does such things, which a cool man would avoid. He was very
likely afraid to go back to the room. Give me another theory that would fit the
facts.”
“I could very easily give you half a dozen,” said Holmes. “Here, for example,
is a very possible and even probable one. I make you a free present of it. The
older man is showing documents which are of evident value. A passing tramp
sees them through the window, the blind of which is only half down. Exit the
solicitor. Enter the tramp! He seizes a stick, which he observes there, kills
Oldacre, and departs after burning the body.”
“Why should the tramp burn the body?”
“For the matter of that, why should McFarlane?”
“To hide some evidence.”
“Possibly the tramp wanted to hide that any murder at all had been
committed.”
“And why did the tramp take nothing?”
“Because they were papers that he could not negotiate.”
Lestrade shook his head, though it seemed to me that his manner was less
absolutely assured than before.
“Well, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you may look for your tramp, and while you are
finding him we will hold on to our man. The future will show which is right. Just
notice this point, Mr. Holmes—that so far as we know, none of the papers were
removed, and that the prisoner is the one man in the world who had no reason
for removing them, since he was heir-at-law, and would come into them in any
case.”
My friend seemed struck by this remark.
“I don’t mean to deny that the evidence is in some ways very strongly in
favour of your theory,” said he. “I only wish to point out that there are other
theories possible. As you say, the future will decide. Good-morning! I dare say
that in the course of the day I shall drop in at Norwood and see how you are
getting on.”
When the detective departed, my friend rose and made his preparations for the
day’s work with the alert air of a man who has a congenial task before him.
“My first movement, Watson,” said he, as he bustled into his frock-coat,
“must, as I said, be in the direction of Blackheath.”
“And why not Norwood?”
“Because we have in this case one singular incident coming close to the heels
of another singular incident. The police are making the mistake of concentrating
their attention upon the second, because it happens to be the one which is
actually criminal. But it is evident to me that the logical way to approach the
case is to begin by trying to throw some light upon the first incident—the
curious will, so suddenly made, and to so unexpected an heir. It may do
something to simplify what followed. No, my dear fellow, I don’t think you can
help me. There is no prospect of danger, or I should not dream of stirring out
without you. I trust that when I see you in the evening, I will be able to report
that I have been able to do something for this unfortunate youngster who has
thrown himself upon my protection.”
“‘My first movement, Watson,’ said he, ‘must be in the
direction of Blackheath.’”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
It was late when my friend returned, and I could see, by a glance at his
haggard and anxious face, that the high hopes with which he had started had not
been fulfilled. For an hour he droned away upon his violin, endeavouring to
soothe his own ruffled spirits. At last he flung down the instrument, and plunged
into a detailed account of his misadventures.
“It’s all going wrong, Watson—all as wrong as it can go. I kept a bold face
before Lestrade, but, upon my soul, I believe that for once the fellow is on the
right track and we are on the wrong. All my instincts are one way, and all the
facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that
pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over
Lestrade’s facts.”
“Did you go to Blackheath?”
“Yes, Watson, I went there, and I found very quickly that the late lamented
Oldacre was a pretty considerable blackguard. The father was away in search of
his son. The mother was at home—a little, fluffy, blue-eyed person, in a tremor
of fear and indignation. Of course, she would not admit even the possibility of
his guilt. But she would not express either surprise or regret over the fate of
Oldacre. On the contrary, she spoke of him with such bitterness that she was
unconsciously considerably strengthening the case of the police; for, of course, if
her son had heard her speak of the man in this fashion, it would predispose him
towards hatred and violence. ‘He was more like a malignant and cunning ape
than a human being,’ said she, ‘and he always was, ever since he was a young
man.’
“ ‘You knew him at that time?’ said I.
“ ‘Yes, I knew him well; in fact, he was an old suitor of mine. Thank heaven
that I had the sense to turn away from him and to marry a better, if a poorer,
man. I was engaged to him, Mr. Holmes, when I heard a shocking story of how
he had turned a cat loose in an aviary, and I was so horrified at his brutal cruelty
that I would have nothing more to do with him.’ She rummaged in a bureau, and
presently she produced a photograph of a woman, shamefully defaced and
mutilated with a knife. ‘That is my own photograph,’ she said. ‘He sent it to me
in that state, with his curse, upon my wedding morning.’
“ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘at least he has forgiven you now, since he has left all his
property to your son.’
“ ‘Neither my son nor I want anything from Jonas Oldacre, dead or alive!’ she
cried, with a proper spirit. ‘There is a God in heaven, Mr. Holmes, and that same
God who has punished that wicked man will show, in His own good time, that
my son’s hands are guiltless of his blood.’
“He sent it to me in that state, with his curse, upon my
wedding morning.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“Well, I tried one or two leads, but could get at nothing which would help our
hypothesis, and several points which would make against it. I gave it up at last,
and off I went to Norwood.
“This place, Deep Dene House, is a big modern villa of staring brick, standing
back in its own grounds, with a laurel-clumped lawn in front of it. To the right
and some distance back from the road was the timber-yard which had been the
scene of the fire. Here’s a rough plan on a leaf of my notebook. This window on
the left is the one which opens into Oldacre’s room. You can look into it from
the road, you see. That is about the only bit of consolation I have had to-day.
Lestrade was not there, but his head constable did the honours. They had just
found a great treasure-trove. They had spent the morning raking among the ashes
of the burned wood-pile, and besides the charred organic remains they had
secured several discoloured metal discs. I examined them with care, and there
was no doubt that they were trouser buttons. I even distinguished that one of
them was marked with the name of ‘Hyams,’ who was Oldacre’s tailor.15 I then
worked the lawn very carefully for signs and traces, but this drought has made
everything as hard as iron. Nothing was to be seen save that some body or
bundle had been dragged through a low privet hedge which is in a line with the
wood-pile. All that, of course, fits in with the official theory. I crawled about the
lawn with an August sun on my back, but I got up at the end of an hour no wiser
than before.
“Well, after this fiasco I went into the bedroom and examined that also. The
blood-stains were very slight, mere smears and discolourations, but undoubtedly
fresh. The stick had been removed, but there also the marks were slight. There is
no doubt about the stick belonging to our client. He admits it. Footmarks of both
men could be made out on the carpet, but none of any third person, which again
is a trick for the other side. They were piling up their score all the time, and we
were at a standstill.
“Only one little gleam of hope did I get—and yet it amounted to nothing. I
examined the contents of the safe, most of which had been taken out and left on
the table. The papers had been made up into sealed envelopes, one or two of
which had been opened by the police. They were not, so far as I could judge, of
any great value, nor did the bank book show that Mr. Oldacre was in such very
affluent circumstances. But it seemed to me that all the papers were not there.
There were allusions to some deeds—possibly the more valuable—which I could
not find. This, of course, if we could definitely prove it, would turn Lestrade’s
argument against himself, for who would steal a thing if he knew that he would
shortly inherit it?
“Finally, having drawn every other cover and picked up no scent, I tried my
luck with the housekeeper. Mrs. Lexington is her name, a little, dark, silent
person, with suspicious and sidelong eyes. She could tell us something if she
would—I am convinced of it. But she was as close as wax. Yes, she had let Mr.
McFarlane in at half-past nine. She wished her hand had withered before she had
done so. She had gone to bed at half-past ten. Her room was at the other end of
the house, and she could hear nothing of what passed. Mr. McFarlane had left
his hat, and to the best of her belief his stick, in the hall. She had been awakened
by the alarm of fire. Her poor, dear master had certainly been murdered. Had he
any enemies? Well, every man had enemies, but Mr. Oldacre kept himself very
much to himself, and only met people in the way of business. She had seen the
buttons, and was sure that they belonged to the clothes which he had worn last
night. The wood-pile was very dry, for it had not rained for a month. It burned
like tinder, and by the time she reached the spot, nothing could be seen but
flames. She and all the firemen smelled the burned flesh from inside it. She
knew nothing of the papers, nor of Mr. Oldacre’s private affairs.
“So, my dear Watson, there’s my report of a failure. And yet—and yet”—he
clenched his thin hands in a paroxysm of conviction—”I know it’s all wrong. I
feel it in my bones. There is something that has not come out, and that
housekeeper knows it. There was a sort of sulky defiance in her eyes which only
goes with guilty knowledge. However, there’s no good talking any more about
it, Watson; but unless some lucky chance comes our way I fear that the Norwood
Disappearance Case will not figure in that chronicle of our successes which I
foresee that a patient public will sooner or later have to endure.”16
There was a sort of sulky defiance in her eyes.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“Surely,” said I, “the man’s appearance would go far with any jury?”
“That is a dangerous argument, my dear Watson. You remember that terrible
murderer, Bert Stevens, who wanted us to get him off in ’87? Was there ever a
more mild-mannered, Sunday-school young man?”
“It is true.”
“Unless we succeed in establishing an alternative theory, this man is lost. You
can hardly find a flaw in the case which can now be presented against him, and
all further investigation has served to strengthen it. By the way, there is one
curious little point about those papers which may serve us as the starting-point
for an inquiry. On looking over the bank book I found that the low state of the
balance was principally due to large cheques which have been made out during
the last year to Mr. Cornelius. I confess that I should be interested to know who
this Mr. Cornelius may be with whom a retired builder has had such very large
transactions. Is it possible that he has had a hand in the affair? Cornelius might
be a broker, but we have found no scrip to correspond with these large payments.
Failing any other indication, my researches must now take the direction of an
inquiry at the bank for the gentleman who has cashed these cheques. But I fear,
my dear fellow, that our case will end ingloriously by Lestrade hanging our
client, which will certainly be a triumph for Scotland Yard.”
I do not know how far Sherlock Holmes took any sleep that night, but when I
came down to breakfast I found him pale and harassed, his bright eyes the
brighter for the dark shadows round them. The carpet round his chair was littered
with cigarette ends, and with the early editions of the morning papers. An open
telegram lay upon the table.
“What do you think of this, Watson?” he asked, tossing it across. It was from
Norwood, and ran as follows:
Important fresh evidence to hand. McFarlane’s guilt definitely established.
Advise you to abandon case.
Lestrade.
“This sounds serious,” said I.
“It is Lestrade’s little cock-a-doodle of victory,” Holmes answered with a
bitter smile. “And yet it may be premature to abandon the case. After all,
important fresh evidence is a two-edged thing, and may possibly cut in a very
different direction to that which Lestrade imagines. Take your breakfast,
Watson, and we will go out together and see what we can do. I feel as if I shall
need your company and your moral support to-day.”
My friend had no breakfast himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in
his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known
him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition.
“At present I cannot spare energy and nerve force for digestion,” he would say,
in answer to my medical remonstrances. I was not surprised, therefore, when this
morning he left his untouched meal behind him and started with me for
Norwood. A crowd of morbid sightseers were still gathered round Deep Dene
House, which was just such a suburban villa as I had pictured. Within the gates
Lestrade met us, his face flushed with victory, his manner grossly triumphant.
“Well, Mr. Holmes, have you proved us to be wrong yet? Have you found
your tramp?” he cried.
“I have formed no conclusion whatever,” my companion answered.
“But we formed ours yesterday, and now it proves to be correct; so you must
acknowledge that we have been a little in front of you this time, Mr. Holmes.”
“You certainly have the air of something unusual having occurred,” said
Holmes.
Lestrade laughed loudly.
“You don’t like being beaten any more than the rest of us do,” said he. “A
man can’t expect always to have it his own way—can he, Dr. Watson? Step this
way, if you please, gentlemen, and I think I can convince you once for all that it
was John McFarlane who did this crime.”
He led us through the passage and out into a dark hall beyond.
“This is where young McFarlane must have come out to get his hat after the
crime was done,” said he. “Now look at this.” With dramatic suddenness he
struck a match, and by its light exposed a stain of blood upon the whitewashed
wall. As he held the match nearer I saw that it was more than a stain. It was the
well-marked print of a thumb.
“Look at that with your magnifying glass, Mr. Holmes.”
“Yes, I am doing so.”
“You are aware that no two thumb-marks are alike?”
“I have heard something of the kind.”17
“Well, then, will you please compare that print with this wax impression of
young McFarlane’s right thumb, taken by my orders this morning?”
As he held the waxen print close to the blood-stain, it did not take a
magnifying glass to see that the two were undoubtedly from the same thumb. It
was evident to me that our unfortunate client was lost.
“That is final,” said Lestrade.
It was more than a stain. It was a well-marked print of a
thumb.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“Yes, that is final,” I involuntarily echoed.
“It is final,” said Holmes.
Something in his tone caught my ear, and I turned to look at him. An
extraordinary change had come over his face. It was writhing with inward
merriment. His two eyes were shining like stars. It seemed to me that he was
making desperate efforts to restrain a convulsive attack of laughter.
“Dear me! Dear me!” he said at last. “Well, now, who would have thought it?
And how deceptive appearances may be, to be sure! Such a nice young man to
look at! It is a lesson to us not to trust our own judgment—is it not, Lestrade?”
“Yes, some of us are a little too much inclined to be cocksure, Mr. Holmes,”
said Lestrade. The man’s insolence was maddening, but we could not resent it.
“What a providential thing that this young man should press his right thumb
against the wall in taking his hat from the peg! Such a very natural action, too, if
you come to think if it.” Holmes was outwardly calm, but his whole body gave a
wriggle of suppressed excitement as he spoke.
“By the way, Lestrade, who made this remarkable discovery?”
“It was the housekeeper, Mrs. Lexington, who drew the night constable’s
attention to it.”
“Where was the night constable?”
“He remained on guard in the bedroom where the crime was committed, so as
to see that nothing was touched.”
“But why didn’t the police see this mark yesterday?”
“Well, we had no particular reason to make a careful examination of the hall.
Besides, it’s not in a very prominent place, as you see.”
“Look at that with your magnifying glass, Mr. Holmes.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“No, no, of course not. I suppose there is no doubt that the mark was there
yesterday?”
Lestrade looked at Holmes as if he thought he was going out of his mind. I
confess that I was myself surprised both at his hilarious manner and at his rather
wild observation.
“I don’t know whether you think that McFarlane came out of gaol in the dead
of the night in order to strengthen the evidence against himself,” said Lestrade.
“I leave it to any expert in the world whether that is not the mark of his thumb.”
“It is unquestionably the mark of his thumb.”
“There, that’s enough,” said Lestrade. “I am a practical man, Mr. Holmes, and
when I have got my evidence I come to my conclusions. If you have anything to
say you will find me writing my report in the sitting-room.”
Holmes had recovered his equanimity, though I still seemed to detect gleams
of amusement in his expression.
“Dear me, this is a very sad development, Watson, is it not?” said he. “And
yet there are singular points about it which hold out some hopes for our client.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” said I, heartily. “I was afraid it was all up with
him.”
“I would hardly go so far as to say that, my dear Watson. The fact is that there
is one really serious flaw in this evidence to which our friend attaches so much
importance.”
“Indeed, Holmes! What is it?”
“Only this—that I know that that mark was not there when I examined the hall
yesterday. And now, Watson, let us have a little stroll round in the sunshine.”
With a confused brain, but with a heart into which some warmth of hope was
returning, I accompanied my friend in a walk round the garden. Holmes took
each face of the house in turn and examined it with great interest. He then led the
way inside, and went over the whole building from basement to attics. Most of
the rooms were unfurnished, but none the less Holmes inspected them all
minutely. Finally, on the top corridor, which ran outside three untenanted
bedrooms, he again was seized with a spasm of merriment.
“There are really some very unique features about this case, Watson,” said he.
“I think it is time now that we took our friend Lestrade into our confidence. He
has had his little smile at our expense, and perhaps we may do as much by him if
my reading of this problem proves to be correct. Yes, yes; I think I see how we
should approach it.”
The Scotland Yard inspector was still writing in the parlour when Holmes
interrupted him.
“I understood that you were writing a report of this case,” said he.
“So I am.”
“Don’t you think it may be a little premature? I can’t help thinking that your
evidence is not complete.”
Lestrade knew my friend too well to disregard his words. He laid down his
pen and looked curiously at him.
“What do you mean, Mr. Holmes?”
“Only that there is an important witness whom you have not seen.”
“Can you produce him?”
“I think I can.”
“Then do so.”
“I will do my best. How many constables have you?”
“There are three within call.”
“Excellent!” said Holmes. “May I ask if they are all large, able-bodied men
with powerful voices?”
“I have no doubt they are, though I fail to see what their voices have to do
with it.”
“Perhaps I can help you to see that, and one or two other things as well,” said
Holmes. “Kindly summon your men, and I will try.”
Five minutes later three policemen had assembled in the hall.
“In the outhouse you will find a considerable quantity of straw,” said Holmes.
“I will ask you to carry in two bundles of it. I think it will be of the greatest
assistance in producing the witness whom I require. Thank you very much. I
believe you have some matches in your pocket, Watson. Now, Mr. Lestrade, I
will ask you all to accompany me to the top landing.”
As I have said, there was a broad corridor there, which ran outside three
empty bedrooms. At one end of the corridor we were all marshalled by Sherlock
Holmes, the constables grinning and Lestrade staring at my friend with
amazement, expectation, and derision chasing each other across his features.
Holmes stood before us with the air of a conjurer who is performing a trick.
“Would you kindly send one of your constables for two buckets of water? Put
the straw on the floor here, free from the wall on either side. Now I think that we
are all ready.”
Lestrade’s face had begun to grow red and angry.
“I don’t know whether you are playing a game with us, Mr. Sherlock
Holmes,” said he. “If you know anything you can surely say it without all this
tomfoolery.”
“I assure you, my good Lestrade, that I have an excellent reason for
everything that I do. You may possibly remember that you chaffed me a little
some hours ago, when the sun seemed on your side of the hedge, so you must
not grudge me a little pomp and ceremony now. Might I ask you, Watson, to
open that window, and then to put a match to the edge of the straw?” I did so,
and driven by the draught, a coil of grey smoke swirled down the corridor, while
the dry straw crackled and flamed.
“Now we must see if we can find this witness for you, Lestrade. Might I ask
you all to join in the cry of ‘Fire’? Now, then; one, two, three—”
“Fire!” we all yelled.
“Thank you. I will trouble you once again.”
“Fire!”
“Just once more, gentlemen, and all together.”
“Fire!” The shout must have rung over Norwood.
It had hardly died away when an amazing thing happened. A door suddenly
flew open out of what appeared to be solid wall at the end of the corridor, and a
little wizened man darted out of it, like a rabbit out of its burrow.
“Capital!” said Holmes calmly. “Watson, a bucket of water over the straw.
That will do! Lestrade, allow me to present you with your principal missing
witness, Mr. Jonas Oldacre.”
The detective stared at the new-comer with blank amazement. The latter was
blinking in the bright light of the corridor, and peering at us and at the
smouldering fire. It was an odious face—crafty, vicious, malignant, with shifty,
light-gray eyes and white eyelashes.
“What’s this, then?” said Lestrade at last. “What have you been doing all this
time, eh?”
“A little, wizened man darted out.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
Oldacre gave an uneasy laugh, shrinking back from the furious red face of the
angry detective.
“I have done no harm.”
“No harm? You have done your best to get an innocent man hanged. If it
wasn’t for this gentleman here, I am not sure that you would not have
succeeded.” The wretched creature began to whimper.
“I am sure, sir, it was only my practical joke.”
“Oh! a joke, was it? You won’t find the laugh on your side, I promise you.
Take him down and keep him in the sitting-room until I come. Mr. Holmes,” he
continued, when they had gone, “I could not speak before the constables, but I
don’t mind saying, in the presence of Dr. Watson, that this is the brightest thing
that you have done yet, though it is a mystery to me how you did it. You have
saved an innocent man’s life, and you have prevented a very grave scandal,
which would have ruined my reputation in the Force.”
Mr. Jonas Oldacre.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
Holmes smiled and clapped Lestrade upon the shoulder.
“Instead of being ruined, my good sir, you will find that your reputation has
been enormously enhanced. Just make a few alterations in that report which you
were writing, and they will understand how hard it is to throw dust in the eyes of
Inspector Lestrade.”
“And you don’t want your name to appear?”
“Not at all. The work is its own reward. Perhaps I shall get the credit also at
some distant day when I permit my zealous historian to lay out his foolscap once
more—eh, Watson? Well, now, let us see where this rat has been lurking.”
A lath-and-plaster partition had been run across the passage six feet from the
end, with a door cunningly concealed in it. It was lit within by slits under the
eaves. A few articles of furniture and a supply of food and water were within,
together with a number of books and papers.
“There’s the advantage of being a builder,” said Holmes as we came out. “He
was able to fix up his own little hiding-place without any confederate—save, of
course, that precious housekeeper of his, whom I should lose no time in adding
to your bag, Lestrade.”
“Holmes smiled and clapped Lestrade upon the
shoulder.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“I’ll take your advice. But how did you know of this place, Mr. Holmes?”
“I made up my mind that the fellow was in hiding in the house. When I paced
one corridor and found it six feet shorter than the corresponding one below, it
was pretty clear where he was. I thought he had not the nerve to lie quiet before
an alarm of fire. We could, of course, have gone in and taken him, but it amused
me to make him reveal himself; besides, I owed you a little mystification,
Lestrade, for your chaff in the morning.”
“Well, sir, you certainly got equal with me on that. But how in the world did
you know that he was in the house at all?”
“The thumb-mark, Lestrade. You said it was final; and so it was, in a very
different sense. I knew it had not been there the day before. I pay a good deal of
attention to matters of detail, as you may have observed, and I had examined the
hall, and was sure that the wall was clear. Therefore, it had been put on during
the night.”
“But how?”
“Very simply. When those packets were sealed up, Jonas Oldacre got
McFarlane to secure one of the seals by putting his thumb upon the soft wax. It
would be done so quickly and so naturally that I daresay the young man himself
has no recollection of it. Very likely it just so happened, and Oldacre had himself
no notion of the use he would put it to. Brooding over the case in that den of his,
it suddenly struck him what absolutely damning evidence he could make against
McFarlane by using that thumb-mark. It was the simplest thing in the world for
him to take a wax impression from the seal, to moisten it in as much blood as he
could get from a pin-prick, and to put the mark upon the wall during the night,
either with his own hand or with that of his housekeeper. If you examine among
these documents which he took with him into his retreat, I will lay you a wager
that you find the seal with the thumb-mark upon it.”
“Wonderful!” said Lestrade. “Wonderful! It’s all as clear as crystal, as you put
it. But what is the object of this deep deception, Mr. Holmes?”
It was amusing to me to see how the detective’s overbearing manner had
changed suddenly to that of a child asking questions of its teacher.
“Well, I don’t think that is very hard to explain. A very deep, malicious,
vindictive person is the gentleman who is now awaiting us downstairs. You
know that he was once refused by McFarlane’s mother? You don’t! I told you
that you should go to Blackheath first and Norwood afterwards. Well, this
injury, as he would consider it, has rankled in his wicked, scheming brain, and
all his life he has longed for vengeance, but never seen his chance. During the
last year or two things have gone against him—secret speculation, I think—and
he finds himself in a bad way. He determines to swindle his creditors, and for
this purpose he pays large cheques to a certain Mr. Cornelius, who is, I imagine,
himself under another name. I have not traced these cheques yet, but I have no
doubt that they were banked under that name at some provincial town where
Oldacre from time to time led a double existence. He intended to change his
name altogether, draw this money, and vanish, starting life again elsewhere.”
“Well, that’s likely enough.”
“It would strike him that in disappearing he might throw all pursuit off his
track, and at the same time have an ample and crushing revenge upon his old
sweetheart, if he could give the impression that he had been murdered by her
only child. It was a masterpiece of villainy, and he carried it out like a master.
The idea of the will, which would give an obvious motive for the crime, the
secret visit unknown to his own parents, the retention of the stick, the blood, and
the animal remains and buttons in the wood-pile, all were admirable. It was a net
from which it seemed to me, a few hours ago, that there was no possible escape.
But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop. He
wished to improve that which was already perfect—to draw the rope tighter yet
round the neck of his unfortunate victim—and so he ruined all. Let us descend,
Lestrade. There are just one or two questions that I would ask him.”
The malignant creature was seated in his own parlour with a policeman upon
each side of him.
“It was a joke, my good sir, a practical joke, nothing more,” he whined
incessantly. “I assure you, sir, that I simply concealed myself in order to see the
effect of my disappearance, and I am sure that you would not be so unjust as to
imagine that I would have allowed any harm to befall poor young Mr.
McFarlane.”
“That’s for the jury to decide,” said Lestrade. “Anyhow, we shall have you on
a charge of conspiracy, if not for attempted murder.”
“And you’ll probably find that your creditors will impound the banking
account of Mr. Cornelius,” said Holmes.
The little man started and turned his malignant eyes upon my friend.
“I have to thank you for a good deal,” said he. “Perhaps I’ll pay my debt some
day.”
Holmes smiled indulgently.
“I fancy that for some few years you will find your time very fully occupied,”
said he. “By the way, what was it you put into the wood-pile besides your old
trousers? A dead dog, or rabbits, or what? You won’t tell? Dear me, how very
unkind of you! Well, well, I daresay that a couple of rabbits would account both
for the blood and for the charred ashes.18 If ever you write an account, Watson,
you can make rabbits serve your turn.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND FINGERPRINTING
ONE OF the first significant developments in forensic science was the ability to
identify people by their fingerprints. As early as 1858, Sir William Herschel, a
magistrate in Jungipoor, India, began requiring locals to impress their handprints
(and later, their fingerprints) on the backs of contracts when signing them.
Because the native Indians believed that physical contact with a document was
more binding than a mere signature, Herschel’s procedure was meant more to
enforce the contract’s legitimacy than to provide any sort of personal
identification. Still, through this experience he came to realise that each
individual’s fingerprints were unique. He began collecting the prints of family
members and friends, studying how they remained unchanged over time.
Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Faulds, while working as a surgeon in Japan,
discovered ancient fingerprint markings in prehistoric clay pottery and began
taking people’s fingerprints so as to examine the properties and distinctions of
“skin-furrows.” He even managed to use his collection to discover who had
stolen a bottle of alcohol from his medical clinic, matching the greasy
fingerprints found on a cocktail glass to those of one of his medical students,
whose prints he had on file. (This is the first reported example of a crime being
solved through fingerprinting.) From his research, Faulds published a letter in
the October 28, 1880, edition of Nature, stating, “When blood finger-marks or
impressions on clay, glass, etc., exist, they may lead to the scientific
identification of criminals. . . . There can be no doubt as to the advantage of
having, besides their photographs, a nature-copy of the for-ever unchangeable
finger-furrows of important criminals.” Herschel published a letter in the
following month’s edition of Nature, detailing his own use of fingerprints as
identifying “sign-manuals.”
Despite Faulds’s attempts to persuade Scotland Yard to create some sort of
fingerprint identification system, it was Francis Galton, an anthopologist and
cousin of Sir Charles Darwin, who would get most of the credit for fathering the
science of fingerprinting. Faulds had sent a summary of his research to Darwin,
who, being advanced in age, had promised to forward it to his cousin. Using
Faulds’s as well as Herschel’s research, Galton began conducting his own
experiments and collaborating with Herschel, a man whose family credentials
and social status were more elevated than Faulds’s.
Although Galton had to concede failure in his attempts to establish a link
between fingerprints and race, intelligence, or genetic history, his work
progressed, and in 1892—acknowledging the research of Herschel, but not
Faulds—he published the book Finger Prints, which not only determined that no
two people’s fingerprints were alike but also introduced a classification system
that broke down the patterns of each print’s loops, arches, and whorls. This
system was developed further by Edward R. Henry, future commissioner of the
London metropolitan police. Following the 1893 endorsement of the Troup
Committee, fingerprinting was successfully introduced in India in 1897, and in
1901 Scotland Yard established its own fingerprint bureau using the so-called
Galton-Henry system (or Galton’s Details), which remains the preferred
classification system today. Galton was knighted in 1909. Faulds, on the other
hand, received no recognition for his work until the mid-1900s.
Scholars have long pondered how much Holmes might have known about this
fledgling science. As “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder” is thought to
have taken place in 1894, Holmes could certainly have read Herschel and
Faulds’s letters in Nature, read Galton’s book, or attended Galton’s lecture on
“Personal Identification and Description,” given on Friday evening, May 25,
1888, at the Royal Institution. (Alternatively, Holmes may have seen the reprint
of that lecture in the June 28, 1888, issue of Nature, which discussed Herschel’s
work and the use of fingerprints in China to identify criminals.) Additional work
by Galton was published in Nature on December 4, 1890, and referenced by
Henry E. Varigny in an article entitled “Anthropology—The Finger Prints
According to M. F. Galton,” in Revue Scientifique (May 1891). During this time,
fingerprinting was also being utilised in Argentina, where police official Juan
Vucetich solved a murder case in 1892—of a mother who killed her two sons—
by extracting a bloody fingerprint left on a doorpost. In 1904 Vucetich
developed his own, Galton-based classification system, which is now used in
most Spanish-speaking countries.
Holmes’s stated admiration in “The Naval Treaty” for Alphonse Bertillon,
founder of a sophisticated system of measurement to identify criminals, leads
some scholars to wonder why he did not similarly reference Galton when
speaking to Lestrade about fingerprinting. Vernon Rendall, noting specifically
that Holmes made no mention of Galton’s Fingerprints and the Detection of
Crime in India, a paper he presented to the British Association in 1899,
concludes that egotism in this situation prevented Holmes from giving others
proper credit: “All one can suggest is that Holmes was not eager to take up other
people’s methods. With his vanity, he found it difficult to use another expert to
help him.”
William S. Baring-Gould makes nonsense of Rendall’s claim, exposing his
error in thinking Holmes would have read a paper that would not be presented
for another four or five years. (Baring-Gould puts “The Adventure of the
Norwood Builder” as occurring in 1895, not 1894, as most other chronologists
have determined.). “On the contrary,” Baring-Gould declares, “the obviously
sarcastic tone of Holmes’ ‘I have heard something of the kind’ clearly indicates
that he had studied fingerprints and was aware of their importance in the
detection of crime. It is more difficult to explain how Lestrade, in 1895, was
aware that ‘no two thumbprints are alike,’ since the system was not adopted by
Scotland Yard until 1901.” Of course, Lestrade, while lacking Holmes’s
prodigious intelligence, may also have read any of the various publications about
this intriguing new science.
Holmes clearly understood the importance of fingerprints; indeed, his
knowledge is demonstrated by his observations in five other reported cases, three
occurring prior to “The Norwood Builder”: The Sign of Four (thumb-mark on
letter sent by Thaddeus Sholto to Mary Morstan); “The Man with the Twisted
Lip” (letter to Mrs. St. Clair posted by “a man with a dirty thumb”); “The
Cardboard Box” (box had “nothing distinctive save two thumb-marks”); “The
Three Students” (there are no finger impressions on the examination papers);
and “The Red Circle” (paper torn away to eliminate thumbprint). In “The Three
Gables,” even the police are aware of finger-marks, as evidenced by the
anonymous inspector’s remark to Holmes as he passes Holmes a sheet of
foolscap.
Therefore, it is safe to assume that by 1894 or 1895, Holmes would indeed
have been familiar with the technique of fingerprinting and the uniqueness of
fingerprints. Clearly Watson was (“It was evident to me that our unfortunate
client was lost”); and Lestrade was apparently aware of the notion as well,
regardless of whether the Yard had officially adopted a system of fingerprinting.
Until a bank of fingerprint data was available, however, the technique alone
would have limited value.
“The Norwood Builder” was published in the Strand
Magazine in November 1903 and in Collier’s Weekly on
October 31, 1903. The manuscript is in the Berg
Collection of the New York Public Library.
1
The manuscript reveals that the phrase “late lamented”
has been inserted in Watson’s original draft, in the same
hand as the manuscript.
2
Contrast this with Watson’s remark in “The Solitary
Cyclist”: “From the years 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr.
Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man.”
3
The phrase “as a Junior and insignificant member of the
firm” is added in the manuscript.
4
Curiously, in the manuscript Watson originally refers to
“Crocker.”
5
The reader will recall that in “The Greek Interpreter”
Holmes describes his grandmother as the sister of
“Vernet, the French artist.”
6
Most scholars accept this as a reference to “Wisteria
Lodge,” in which “ex-President Murillo” of the fictitious
country of “San Pedro” figures, although the reference to
“papers” is puzzling, for “papers” are not directly
involved in the case.
7
Although Friesland is located in the Netherlands, the
S.S. Friesland was actually of Belgian registry. The
transatlantic passenger liner was owned and operated by
the Red Star line, carrying scores of emigrants from
Antwerp to New York throughout the 1890s. In 1903,
8
supplanted by faster, larger steamships, she was
transferred to charter service between Liverpool and
Philadelphia and was finally scrapped in 1912.
Christopher Morley, who sailed on the Friesland from
Philadelphia to Liverpool in September 1910, described
her as “a beauty, a smart little Red Star liner.” Several
scholars point out that in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost
World, it was the S.S. Friesland, a Dutch-American liner,
that sighted Professor George Edward Challenger’s
pterodactyl when it escaped from the Queen’s Hall.
“Now this really was swift work in the Telegraph
office,” John Hyslop writes.”The murder took place, said
the newspaper, last night or in the early morning. Yet
here was the Telegraph with a full story . . .”
9
These were a large office block in the City, located off
Throgmorton Street and apparently named after Sir
Thomas Gresham (1518/19–1579), English merchant,
financier, and founder of the Royal Exchange.
“Gresham’s law”—the principle that “bad money drives
out good”—was not formulated by him but named after
him.
10
In the manuscript, the phrase is “a most curious
expression which certainly seemed to be more
threatening than benevolent.”
11
British law requires two witnesses to be present at the
signing of a will; thus, with only the clerk to serve as
witness, Oldacre’s will would have been invalid. Perhaps
McFarlane supposed himself to be the second witness,
which, as S. T. L. Harbottle points out, would also have
rendered much of the will null and void (under the Wills
Act, 1837), since McFarlane was a primary beneficiary of
the will he was purportedly witnessing. Conjecturing that
McFarlane could either have made a mistake or have
intended to deceive Oldacre, Harbottle comes down on
the side of the latter, conjecturing that McFarlane
conspired with a relative who would benefit from an
intestacy. “I fear McFarlane deliberately planned that the
will should be ineffective,” writes Harbottle. “The fact
that it was written on blue paper (at that time universally
used for drafts and not for final copies or engrossments)
then assumes a sinister significance.” The will of Elias
Openshaw in “The Five Orange Pips” must also must
have suffered from “witness” problems. Apparently
“Fordham, the Horsham lawyer” and McFarlane had
similar gaps in their training.
Conversely, D. Martin Dakin proposes that there was
no error, but that there might have been another witness
present (“a clerk from a neighbouring office, or the
caretaker”) whom McFarlane simply did not mention.
Michael Waxenberg also argues that under the Forfeiture
Act of 1870, one could still inherit money or property
12
after being arrested or convicted of a felony. Only in
1911 did English courts rule that a murderer could not
benefit from killing his benefactor. “So, in 1895, it would
have been possible, in theory, for McFarlane to murder
Oldacre and still inherit from him. Thereafter, if
McFarlane were hanged for the murder, his property
would pass to his heirs. If McFarlane were acquitted, he
would be free to enjoy the harvest of his inheritance.”
In the United States, modern laws do not
automatically invalidate a will witnessed by an interested
party. First, there may be other, disinterested witnesses
present. And the fact that a will is witnessed by a
beneficiary (such as McFarlane) merely creates the
presumption that he or she acted fraudulently or exerted
undue influence. If the suspected party can prove that
there was no conflict of interest, then the presumption
may be overcome.
Watson’s notes are confused at this point, for he has
deleted from the manuscript the following, which
appeared after the word “housekeeper”: “ ‘A bad shot
that, Mr. McFarlane,’ said Lestrade, with a cynical smile.
‘Jonas Oldacre is well known as a woman hater, he has
no servant except an old Charwoman who comes in for
two hours every morning, and he gets all his meals at the
Station restaurant. I warn you again that you are only
making a bad case worse and this will all come up against
13
you.’ Our unfortunate Client had turned a ghastly colour,
and he looked from one to the other of us like a hunted
creature. Twice he tried to speak but his dry lips would
utter no sound. At last with an effort he was able to
continue his statement. ‘I am speaking to you, Mr.
Holmes. You will find out how far I am speaking the
truth. I was shown into a sitting room . . .’ ”
Lower Norwood and Blackheath, Christopher Morley
estimates, are only four miles from each other. “It has
always bothered me,” he comments in “Clinical Notes by
a Resident Patient,” “why could not the unhappy John
Hector McFarlane get back from Lower Norwood to
Blackheath that night?” McFarlane mentions later in his
narrative that he and Jonas Oldacre completed their
business “between eleven and twelve.” It is possible that
McFarlane may have thought this “very late,” but
considering the short distance to his parents’ house,
spending the night in a hotel seems like an unnecessary
exercise and expense.
14
According to Donald A. Redmond, “This was the
imprint of Hyam & Co. Ltd, tailors, etc., of 134-140
Oxford Street, and of Birmingham, Wolverhampton and
Leeds—one of what the duke of Plaza-Toro referred to as
‘those pressing prevailers, the ready-made tailors.’ A
gentleman would patronize Bond Street and Savile Row,
not Oxford Street; which tells something about the
15
character of Oldacre.”
Did Holmes, in 1894, plan that he would require the
public to be “patient” until 1903, when “The Norwood
Builder” was published?
16
17
See “Sherlock Holmes and Fingerprinting,” page 860.
Several scholars complain that it should have been a
simple matter for investigators to distinguish rabbit bones
from human bones (if, indeed, a rabbit was the animal
cast upon the fire). The report only mentioned “remains”
lying in the ashes, but a wood-pile certainly could not
have generated a fire that burned long enough or hot
enough to melt bones, human or otherwise.
18
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN1
When Hilton Cubitt hires Sherlock Holmes to discover his wife’s secret
past, Holmes must decipher the message of “The Dancing Men.” Some
would rank this case as one of Holmes’s few failures, for he is unable
to prevent tragedy; yet he does bring the criminal to justice. Although
Americans figure in numerous cases, only twice before had Watson
written of an American criminal (in A Study in Scarlet and “The Five
Orange Pips”). The case, with its mention of Holmes’s friend Wilson
Hargreave of the New York Police Bureau, hints that Holmes may
have been to America himself. Conan Doyle had travelled there for
lecture tours, and the play “Angels of Darkness” suggests that
Watson, too, spent some time in America. Here we also learn a bit
more about Watson: his friend Thurston, his fondness for billiards,
and his apparent spendthrift nature. The cipher itself has been the
subject of extensive study, by professional and amateur cryptanalysts
as well as Sherlockians, and its ingenuity and originality make Dr.
Watson’s tale a perennial favourite.
HOLMES HAD BEEN seated for some hours in silence with his long, thin back
curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly
malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my
point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull gray plumage and a black topknot.
“So, Watson,” said he suddenly, “you do not propose to invest in South
African securities?”2
I gave a start of astonishment. Accustomed as I was to Holmes’s curious
faculties, this sudden intrusion into my most intimate thoughts was utterly
inexplicable.
“How on earth do you know that?” I asked.
He wheeled round upon his stool, with a steaming test-tube in his hand and a
gleam of amusement in his deep-set eyes.
“Now, Watson, confess yourself utterly taken aback,” said he.
“I am.”
“I ought to make you sign a paper to that effect.”
“Why?”
“Because in five minutes you will say that it is all so absurdly simple.”
“I am sure that I shall say nothing of the kind.”
“You see, my dear Watson”—he propped his test-tube in the rack, and began
to lecture with the air of a professor addressing his class—“it is not really
difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor
and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central
inferences and presents one’s audience with the starting-point and the
conclusion, one may produce a startling, though possibly a meretricious, effect.
Now, it was not really difficult, by an inspection of the groove between your left
forefinger and thumb, to feel sure that you did not propose to invest your small
capital in the gold fields.”
“I see no connection.”
“Very likely not; but I can quickly show you a close connection. Here are the
missing links of the very simple chain: 1. You had chalk between your left finger
and thumb3 when you returned from the club4 last night. 2. You put chalk there
when you play billiards to steady the cue. 3. You never play billiards except with
Thurston.5 4. You told me four weeks ago that Thurston had an option on some
South African property which would expire in a month, and which he desired
you to share with him. 5. Your cheque book is locked in my drawer,6 and you
have not asked for the key. 6. You do not propose to invest your money in this
manner.”
“How absurdly simple!” I cried.
“Quite so!” said he, a little nettled. “Every problem becomes very childish
when once it is explained to you. Here is an unexplained one. See what you can
make of that, friend Watson.” He tossed a sheet of paper upon the table, and
turned once more to his chemical analysis.
I looked with amazement at the absurd hieroglyphics upon the paper.
“Why, Holmes, it is a child’s drawing,” I cried.
“Oh, that’s your idea!”
“What else should it be?”
“That is what Mr. Hilton Cubitt,7 of Ridling Thorpe Manor,8 Norfolk, is very
anxious to know. This little conundrum came by the first post, and he was to
follow by the next train. There’s a ring at the bell, Watson. I should not be very
much surprised if this were he.”
The United Service Club.
Queen’s London (1897)
A heavy step was heard upon the stairs, and an instant later there entered a
tall, ruddy, clean-shaven gentleman, whose clear eyes and florid cheeks told of a
life led far from the fogs of Baker Street. He seemed to bring a whiff of his
strong, fresh, bracing, east-coast air with him as he entered. Having shaken
hands with each of us, he was about to sit down, when his eye rested upon the
paper with the curious markings, which I had just examined and left upon the
table.
“Well, Mr. Holmes, what do you make of these?” he cried. “They told me that
you were fond of queer mysteries, and I don’t think you can find a queerer one
than that. I sent the paper on ahead so that you might have time to study it before
I came.”
“What do you make of these?”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“Holmes held up the paper.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“It is certainly rather a curious production,” said Holmes. “At first sight it
would appear to be some childish prank. It consists of a number of absurd little
figures dancing across the paper upon which they are drawn. Why should you
attribute any importance to so grotesque an object?”
“I never should, Mr. Holmes. But my wife does. It is frightening her to death.
She says nothing, but I can see terror in her eyes. That’s why I want to sift the
matter to the bottom.”
Holmes held up the paper so that the sunlight shone full upon it. It was a page
torn from a notebook. The markings were done in pencil, and ran in this way:
Holmes examined it for some time, and then, folding it carefully up, he placed it
in his pocketbook.
“This promises to be a most interesting and unusual case,” said he. “You gave
me a few particulars in your letter, Mr. Hilton Cubitt, but I should be very much
obliged if you would kindly go over it all again for the benefit of my friend, Dr.
Watson.”
“I’m not much of a story-teller,” said our visitor, nervously clasping and
unclasping his great, strong hands. “You’ll just ask me anything that I don’t
make clear. I’ll begin at the time of my marriage last year; but I want to say first
of all that, though I’m not a rich man, my people have been at Ridling Thorpe
for a matter of five centuries, and there is no better known family in the County
of Norfolk. Last year I came up to London for the Jubilee,9 and I stopped at a
boarding-house in Russell Square, because Parker, the vicar of our parish, was
staying in it. There was an American young lady there—Patrick was the name—
Elsie Patrick. In some way we became friends, until before my month was up I
was as much in love as a man could be. We were quietly married at a registry
office, and we returned to Norfolk a wedded couple. You’ll think it very mad,
Mr. Holmes, that a man of a good old family should marry a wife in this fashion,
knowing nothing of her past or of her people; but if you saw her and knew her, it
would help you to understand.
The Queen’s carriage leaving the Quadrangle,
Buckingham Palace,as the Jubilee procession commences
(1897).
Queen’s London (1897)
Russell Square.
Queen’s London (1897)
“She was very straight about it, was Elsie. I can’t say that she did not give me
every chance of getting out of it if I wished to do so. ‘I have had some very
disagreeable associations in my life,’ said she; ‘I wish to forget all about them. I
would rather never allude to the past, for it is very painful to me. If you take me,
Hilton,10 you will take a woman who has nothing that she need be personally
ashamed of; but you will have to be content with my word for it, and to allow me
to be silent as to all that passed up to the time when I became yours. If these
conditions are too hard, then go back to Norfolk and leave me to the lonely life
in which you found me.’ It was only the day before our wedding that she said
those very words to me. I told her that I was content to take her on her own
terms, and I have been as good as my word.
“Well, we have been married now for a year, and very happy we have been.
But about a month ago, at the end of June, I saw for the first time signs of
trouble. One day my wife received a letter from America. I saw the American
stamp. She turned deadly white, read the letter, and threw it into the fire. She
made no allusion to it afterwards, and I made none, for a promise is a promise;
but she has never known an easy hour from that moment. There is always a look
of fear upon her face—a look as if she were waiting and expecting. She would
do better to trust me. She would find that I was her best friend. But until she
speaks I can say nothing. Mind you, she is a truthful woman, Mr. Holmes, and
whatever trouble there may have been in her past life it has been no fault of hers.
I am only a simple Norfolk squire, but there is not a man in England who ranks
his family honour more highly than I do. She knows it well, and she knew it well
before she married me. She would never bring any stain upon it—of that I am
sure.
“Well, now I come to the queer part of my story. About a week ago—it was
the Tuesday of last week—I found on one of the window-sills a number of
absurd little dancing figures, like these upon the paper. They were scrawled with
chalk. I thought that it was the stable-boy who had drawn them, but the lad
swore he knew nothing about it. Anyhow, they had come there during the night.
I had them washed out, and I only mentioned the matter to my wife afterwards.
To my surprise she took it very seriously, and begged me if any more came to let
her see them. None did come for a week, and then yesterday morning I found
this paper lying on the sundial in the garden. I showed it to Elsie, and down she
dropped in a dead faint. Since then she has looked like a woman in a dream, half
dazed, and with terror always lurking in her eyes. It was then that I wrote and
sent the paper to you, Mr. Holmes. It was not a thing that I could take to the
police, for they would have laughed at me, but you will tell me what to do. I am
not a rich man; but if there is any danger threatening my little woman, I would
spend my last copper to shield her.”
He was a fine creature, this man of the old English soil—simple, straight, and
gentle, with his great, earnest blue eyes and broad, comely face. His love for his
wife and his trust in her shone in his features. Holmes had listened to his story
with the utmost attention, and now he sat for some time in silent thought.
“Don’t you think, Mr. Cubitt,” said he, at last, “that your best plan would be to
make a direct appeal to your wife, and to ask her to share her secret with you?”
Hilton Cubitt shook his massive head.
“A promise is a promise, Mr. Holmes. If Elsie wished to tell me, she would. If
not, it is not for me to force her confidence. But I am justified in taking my own
line—and I will.”
“Then I will help you with all my heart. In the first place, have you heard of
any strangers being seen in your neighbourhood?”
“No.”
“I presume that it is a very quiet place. Any fresh face would cause
comment?”
“In the immediate neighbourhood, yes. But we have several small wateringplaces not very far away. And the farmers take in lodgers.”
“These hieroglyphics have evidently a meaning. If it is a purely arbitrary one,
it may be impossible for us to solve it. If, on the other hand, it is systematic, I
have no doubt that we shall get to the bottom of it. But this particular sample is
so short that I can do nothing, and the facts which you have brought me are so
indefinite that we have no basis for an investigation. I would suggest that you
return to Norfolk, that you keep a keen lookout, and that you take an exact copy
of any fresh dancing men which may appear. It is a thousand pities that we have
not a reproduction of those which were done in chalk upon the window-sill.
Make a discreet inquiry, also, as to any strangers in the neighbourhood. When
you have collected some fresh evidence, come to me again. That is the best
advice which I can give you, Mr. Hilton Cubitt. If there are any pressing fresh
developments, I shall be always ready to run down and see you in your Norfolk
home.”
The interview left Sherlock Holmes very thoughtful, and several times in the
next few days I saw him take his slip of paper from his notebook and look long
and earnestly at the curious figures inscribed upon it. He made no allusion to the
affair, however, until one afternoon a fortnight or so later. I was going out, when
he called me back.
“You had better stay here, Watson.”
“Why?”
“Because I had a wire from Hilton Cubitt this morning—you remember Hilton
Cubitt, of the dancing men? He was to reach Liverpool Street at one-twenty. He
may be here at any moment. I gather from his wire that there have been some
new incidents of importance.”
We had not long to wait, for our Norfolk squire came straight from the station
as fast as a hansom could bring him. He was looking worried and depressed,
with tired eyes and a lined forehead.
“It’s getting on my nerves, this business, Mr. Holmes,” said he, as he sank,
like a wearied man, into an arm-chair. “It’s bad enough to feel that you are
surrounded by unseen, unknown folk, who have some kind of design upon you,
but when, in addition to that, you know that it is just killing your wife by inches,
then it becomes as much as flesh and blood can endure. She’s wearing away
under it—just wearing away before my eyes.”
“Has she said anything yet?”
“No, Mr. Holmes, she has not. And yet there have been times when the poor
girl has wanted to speak, and yet could not quite bring herself to take the plunge.
I have tried to help her; but I daresay I did it clumsily, and scared her from it.
She has spoken about my old family, and our reputation in the county, and our
pride in our unsullied honour, and I always felt it was leading to the point; but
somehow it turned off before we got there.”
“But you have found out something for yourself?”
“A good deal, Mr. Holmes. I have several fresh dancing men pictures for you
to examine, and, what is more important, I have seen the fellow.”
“What—the man who draws them?”
“Yes, I saw him at his work. But I will tell you everything in order. When I
got back after my visit to you, the very first thing I saw next morning was a fresh
crop of dancing men. They had been drawn in chalk upon the black wooden door
of the tool-house, which stands beside the lawn in full view of the front
windows. I took an exact copy, and here it is.” He unfolded a paper and laid it
upon the table. Here is a copy of the hieroglyphics:
“Excellent!” said Holmes. “Excellent! Pray continue.”
“When I had taken the copy I rubbed out the marks, but two mornings later a
fresh inscription had appeared. I have a copy of it here”:
Holmes rubbed his hands and chuckled with delight.
“Our material is rapidly accumulating,” said he.
“Three days later a message was left scrawled upon paper, and placed under a
pebble upon the sundial. Here it is. The characters are, as you see, exactly the
same as the last one. After that I determined to lie in wait; so I got out my
revolver and I sat up in my study, which overlooks the lawn and garden. About
two in the morning I was seated by the window, all being dark save for the
moonlight outside, when I heard steps behind me, and there was my wife in her
dressing-gown. She implored me to come to bed. I told her frankly that I wished
to see who it was who played such absurd tricks upon us. She answered that it
was some senseless practical joke, and that I should not take any notice of it.
“ ‘If it really annoys you, Hilton, we might go and travel, you and I, and so
avoid this nuisance.’
“ ‘What, be driven out of our own house by a practical joker?’ said I. ‘Why,
we should have the whole county laughing at us!’
“ ‘Well, come to bed,’ said she, ‘and we can discuss it in the morning.’
“Suddenly, as she spoke, I saw her white face grow whiter yet in the
moonlight, and her hand tightened upon my shoulder. Something was moving in
the shadow of the tool-house. I saw a dark, creeping figure which crawled round
the corner and squatted in front of the door. Seizing my pistol I was rushing out,
when my wife threw her arms round me and held me with convulsive strength. I
tried to throw her off, but she clung to me most desperately. At last I got clear,
but by the time I had opened the door and reached the house the creature was
gone. He had left a trace of his presence, however, for there on the door was the
very same arrangement of dancing men which had already twice appeared, and
which I have copied on that paper. There was no other sign of the fellow
anywhere, though I ran all over the grounds. And yet the amazing thing is that he
must have been there all the time, for when I examined the door again in the
morning he had scrawled some more of his pictures under the line which I had
already seen.”
“Three days later a message was left under a pebble upon
the sundial.”
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
“Have you that fresh drawing?”
“Yes; it is very short, but I made a copy of it, and here it is.”
Again he produced a paper. The new dance was in this form:
“My wife threw her arms round me.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“Tell me,” said Holmes—and I could see by his eyes that he was much
excited—“was this a mere addition to the first, or did it appear to be entirely
separate?”
“It was on a different panel of the door.”
“Excellent! This is by far the most important of all for our purpose. It fills me
with hopes. Now, Mr. Hilton Cubitt, please continue your most interesting
statement.”
“I have nothing more to say, Mr. Holmes, except that I was angry with my
wife that night for having held me back when I might have caught the skulking
rascal. She said that she feared that I might come to harm. For an instant it had
crossed my mind that perhaps what she really feared was that he might come to
harm, for I could not doubt that she knew who this man was and what he meant
by these strange signals. But there is a tone in my wife’s voice, Mr. Holmes, and
a look in her eyes which forbid doubt, and I am sure that it was indeed my own
safety that was in her mind. There’s the whole case, and now I want your advice
as to what I ought to do. My own inclination is to put half a dozen of my farm
lads in the shrubbery, and when this fellow comes again to give him such a
hiding that he will leave us in peace for the future.”
“I fear it is too deep a case for such simple remedies,” said Holmes. “How
long can you stop in London?”
“I must go back to-day. I would not leave my wife alone at night for anything.
She is very nervous and begged me to come back.”
“I daresay you are right. But if you could have stopped I might possibly have
been able to return with you in a day or two. Meanwhile, you will leave me these
papers, and I think that it is very likely that I shall be able to pay you a visit
shortly and to throw some light upon your case.”
Sherlock Holmes preserved his calm professional manner until our visitor had
left us, although it was easy for me, who knew him so well, to see that he was
profoundly excited. The moment that Hilton Cubitt’s broad back had
disappeared through the door my comrade rushed to the table, laid out all the
slips of paper containing dancing men in front of him, and threw himself into an
intricate and elaborate calculation. For two hours I watched him as he covered
sheet after sheet of paper with figures and letters, so completely absorbed in his
task that he had evidently forgotten my presence. Sometimes he was making
progress, and whistled and sang at his work; sometimes he was puzzled, and
would sit for long spells with a furrowed brow and a vacant eye. Finally he
sprang from his chair with a cry of satisfaction, and walked up and down the
room rubbing his hands together. Then he wrote a long telegram upon a cable
form. “If my answer to this is as I hope, you will have a very pretty case to add
to your collection, Watson,” said he. “I expect that we shall be able to go down
to Norfolk to-morrow, and to take our friend some very definite news as to the
secret of his annoyance.”
I confess that I was filled with curiosity, but I was aware that Holmes liked to
make his disclosures at his own time and in his own way; so I waited until it
should suit him to take me into his confidence. But there was a delay in that
answering telegram, and two days of impatience followed, during which Holmes
pricked up his ears at every ring of the bell. On the evening of the second there
came a letter from Hilton Cubitt. All was quiet with him, save that a long
inscription had appeared that morning upon the pedestal of the sundial. He
inclosed a copy of it, which is here reproduced:
Holmes bent over this grotesque frieze for some minutes, and then suddenly
sprang to his feet with an exclamation of surprise and dismay. His face was
haggard with anxiety.
“We have let this affair go far enough,” said he. “Is there a train to North
Walsham to-night?”
I turned up the time-table. The last had just gone.
“Then we shall breakfast early and take the very first in the morning,” said
Holmes.11 “Our presence is most urgently needed. Ah! here is our expected
cablegram. One moment, Mrs. Hudson, there may be an answer. No, that is quite
as I expected. This message makes it even more essential that we should not lose
an hour in letting Hilton Cubitt know how matters stand, for it is a singular and a
dangerous web in which our simple Norfolk squire is entangled.”
So, indeed, it proved, and as I come to the dark conclusion of a story which
had seemed to me to be only childish and bizarre, I experience once again the
dismay and horror with which I was filled. Would that I had some brighter
ending to communicate to my readers; but these are the chronicles of fact, and I
must follow to their dark crisis the strange chain of events which for some days
made Ridling Thorpe Manor a household word through the length and breadth of
England.
We had hardly alighted at North Walsham, and mentioned the name of our
destination, when the station-master hurried towards us. “I suppose that you are
the detectives from London?” said he.
A look of annoyance passed over Holmes’s face.
“What makes you think such a thing?”
“Because Inspector Martin from Norwich has just passed through. But maybe
you are the surgeons. She’s not dead—or wasn’t by last accounts. You may be in
time to save her yet—though it be for the gallows.”
“‘I suppose that you are the detectives from London?’
said he.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
Holmes’s brow was dark with anxiety.
“We are going to Ridling Thorpe Manor,” said he, “but we have heard nothing
of what has passed there.”
“It’s a terrible business,” said the station-master. “They are shot, both Mr.
Hilton Cubitt and his wife. She shot him and then herself—so the servants say.
He’s dead, and her life is despaired of. Dear, dear, one of the oldest families in
the county of Norfolk, and one of the most honoured.”
Without a word Holmes hurried to a carriage, and during the long seven-miles
drive he never opened his mouth.12 Seldom have I seen him so utterly
despondent. He had been uneasy during all our journey from town, and I had
observed that he had turned over the morning papers with anxious attention; but
now this sudden realization of his worst fears left him in a blank13 melancholy.
He leaned back in his seat, lost in gloomy speculation. Yet there was much
around to interest us, for we were passing through as singular a countryside as
any in England, where a few scattered cottages represented the population of to-
day, while on every hand enormous square-towered churches bristled up from
the flat, green landscape and told of the glory and prosperity of old East
Anglia.14 At last the violet rim of the German Ocean appeared over the green
edge of the Norfolk coast,15 and the driver pointed with his whip to two old
brick-and-timber gables which projected from a grove of trees. “That’s Ridling
Thorpe Manor,” said he.
As we drove up to the porticoed16 front door, I observed in front of it, beside
the tennis lawn,17 the black tool-house and the pedestalled sundial with which
we had such strange associations. A dapper little man, with a quick, alert manner
and a waxed moustache, had just descended from a high dog-cart. He introduced
himself as Inspector Martin, of the Norfolk Constabulary, and he was
considerably astonished when he heard the name of my companion.
“Why, Mr. Holmes, the crime was only committed at three this morning! How
could you hear of it in London and get to the spot as soon as I?”
“I anticipated it. I came in the hope of preventing it.”
“Then you must have important evidence of which we are ignorant, for they
were said to be a most united couple.”
“I have only the evidence of the dancing men,” said Holmes. “I will explain
the matter to you later. Meanwhile, since it is too late to prevent this tragedy, I
am very anxious that I should use the knowledge which I possess in order to
insure that justice be done. Will you associate me in your investigation, or will
you prefer that I should act independently?”
“I should be proud to feel that we were acting together, Mr. Holmes,” said the
Inspector, earnestly.
“In that case I should be glad to hear the evidence and to examine the
premises without an instant of unnecessary delay.”
Inspector Martin had the good sense to allow my friend to do things in his
own fashion, and contented himself with carefully noting the results. The local
surgeon, an old, white-haired man, had just come down from Mrs. Hilton
Cubitt’s room, and he reported that her injuries were serious, but not necessarily
fatal. The bullet had passed through the front of her brain, and it would probably
be some time before she could regain consciousness. On the question of whether
she had been shot or had shot herself he would not venture to express any
decided opinion. Certainly the bullet had been discharged at very close quarters.
There was only the one pistol found in the room, two barrels of which had been
emptied. Mr. Hilton Cubitt had been shot through the heart. It was equally
conceivable that he had shot her and then himself, or that she had been the
criminal, for the revolver lay upon the floor midway between them.
“Has he been moved?” asked Holmes.
“We have moved nothing except the lady. We could not leave her lying
wounded upon the floor.”
“How long have you been here, Doctor?”
“Since four o’clock.”
“Anyone else?”
“Yes, the constable here.”
“And you have touched nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“You have acted with great discretion. Who sent for you?”
“The housemaid, Saunders.”
“Was it she who gave the alarm?”
“She and Mrs. King, the cook.”
“Where are they now?”
“In the kitchen, I believe.”
“Then I think we had better hear their story at once.”
The old hall, oak-panelled and high-windowed, had been turned into a court of
investigation. Holmes sat in a great, old-fashioned chair, his inexorable eyes
gleaming out of his haggard face. I could read in them a set purpose to devote
his life to this quest until the client whom he had failed to save should at last be
avenged. The trim inspector Martin, the old, grey-headed country doctor, myself,
and a stolid village policeman made up the rest of that strange company.
The two women told their story clearly enough. They had been aroused from
their sleep by the sound of an explosion, which had been followed a minute later
by a second one. They slept in adjoining rooms, and Mrs. King had rushed in to
Saunders. Together they had descended the stairs. The door of the study was
open and a candle was burning upon the table. Their master lay upon his face in
the centre of the room. He was quite dead. Near the window his wife was
crouching, her head leaning against the wall. She was horribly wounded, and the
side of the face was red with blood. She breathed heavily, but was incapable of
saying anything. The passage, as well as the room, was full of smoke and the
smell of powder. The window was certainly shut and fastened upon the inside.
Both women were positive upon the point. They had at once sent for the doctor
and for the constable. Then, with the aid of the groom and the stable-boy, they
had conveyed their injured mistress to her room. Both she and her husband had
occupied the bed. She was clad in her dress—he in his dressing-gown, over his
night-clothes. Nothing had been moved in the study. So far as they knew, there
had never been any quarrel between husband and wife. They had always looked
upon them as a very united couple.
These were the main points of the servants’ evidence. In answer to Inspector
Martin they were clear that every door was fastened upon the inside and that no
one could have escaped from the house. In answer to Holmes, they both
remembered that they were conscious of the smell of powder from the moment
that they ran out of their rooms upon the top floor. “I commend that fact very
carefully to your attention,” said Holmes to his professional colleague. “And
now I think that we are in a position to undertake a thorough examination of the
room.”
“They both remembered that they were conscious of the
smell of powder.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
Our first attention was given to the body of the
unfortunate squire.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
The study proved to be a small chamber, lined on three sides with books, and
with a writing-table facing an ordinary window, which looked out upon the
garden. Our first attention was given to the body of the unfortunate squire,
whose huge frame lay stretched across the room. His disordered dress showed
that he had been hastily aroused from sleep. The bullet had been fired at him
from the front, and had remained in his body after penetrating the heart. His
death had certainly been instantaneous and painless. There was no powdermarking either upon his dressing-gown or on his hands. According to the
country surgeon, the lady had stains upon her face, but none upon her hand.
“The absence of the latter means nothing, though its presence may mean
everything,” said Holmes. “Unless the powder from a badly fitting cartridge
happens to spurt backwards, one may fire many shots without leaving a sign. I
would suggest that Mr. Cubitt’s body may now be removed. I suppose, Doctor,
you have not recovered the bullet which wounded the lady?”
“A serious operation will be necessary before that can be done. But there are
still four cartridges in the revolver. Two have been fired and two wounds
inflicted, so that each bullet can be accounted for.”
“So it would seem,” said Holmes. “Perhaps you can account also for the bullet
which has so obviously struck the edge of the window?”
He had turned suddenly, and his long, thin finger was pointing to a hole which
had been drilled right through the lower window-sash about an inch above the
bottom.
“By George!” cried the Inspector.
“How ever did you see that?”
“Because I looked for it.”
“Wonderful!” said the country doctor. “You are certainly right, sir. Then a
third shot has been fired, and therefore a third person must have been present.
But who could that have been, and how could he have got away?”
“That is the problem which we are now about to solve,” said Sherlock
Holmes. “You remember, Inspector Martin, when the servants said that on
leaving their room they were at once conscious of a smell of powder, I remarked
that the point was an extremely important one?”
“Yes, sir; but I confess I did not quite follow you.”
“It suggested that at the time of the firing the window as well as the door of
the room had been open. Otherwise the fumes of powder could not have been
blown so rapidly through the house. A draught in the room was necessary for
that. Both door and window were only open for a very short time, however.”
“How do you prove that?”
“Because the candle has not guttered.”
“Capital!” cried the Inspector. “Capital!”
“Feeling sure that the window had been open at the time of the tragedy, I
conceived that there might have been a third person in the affair, who stood
outside this opening and fired through it. Any shot directed at this person might
hit the sash. I looked, and there, sure enough, was the bullet mark!”
“But how came the window to be shut and fastened?”
“The woman’s first instinct would be to shut and fasten the window. But,
halloa! what is this?”
It was a lady’s hand-bag which stood upon the study table—a trim little handbag of crocodile-skin and silver. Holmes opened it and turned the contents out.
There were twenty fifty-pound notes of the Bank of England, held together by an
india-rubber band—nothing else.
“This must be preserved, for it will figure in the trial,” said Holmes, as he
handed the bag with its contents to the Inspector. “It is now necessary that we
should try to throw some light upon this third bullet, which has clearly, from the
splintering of the wood, been fired from inside the room. I should like to see
Mrs. King, the cook, again. . . . You said, Mrs. King, that you were awakened by
a loud explosion. When you said that, did you mean that it seemed to you to be
louder than the second one?”
“Well, sir, it wakened me from my sleep, and so it is hard to judge. But it did
seem very loud.”
“You don’t think that it might have been two shots fired almost at the same
instant?”
“I am sure I couldn’t say, sir.”
“I believe that it was undoubtedly so. I rather think, Inspector Martin, that we
have now exhausted all that this room can teach us. If you will kindly step round
with me we shall see what fresh evidence the garden has to offer.”
A flower-bed extended up to the study window, and we all broke into an
exclamation as we approached it. The flowers were trampled down, and the soft
soil was imprinted all over with footmarks. Large, masculine feet they were,
with peculiarly long, sharp toes. Holmes hunted about among the grass and
leaves like a retriever after a wounded bird. Then, with a cry of satisfaction, he
bent forward and picked up a little brazen cylinder.
“I thought so,” said he; “the revolver had an ejector, and here is the third
cartridge. I really think, Inspector Martin, that our case is almost complete.”
The country inspector’s face had shown his intense amazement at the rapid
and masterful progress of Holmes’s investigations. At first he had shown some
disposition to assert his own position, but now he was overcome with
admiration, and ready to follow without question wherever Holmes led.
“He bent forward and picked up a little brazen cylinder.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“Whom do you suspect?” he asked.
“I’ll go into that later. There are several points in this problem which I have
not been able to explain to you yet. Now that I have got so far I had best proceed
on my own lines, and then clear the whole matter up once and for all.”
“Just as you wish, Mr. Holmes, so long as we get our man.”
“I have no desire to make mysteries, but it is impossible at the moment of
action to enter into long and complex explanations. I have the threads of this
affair all in my hand. Even if this lady should never recover consciousness we
can still reconstruct the events of last night and insure that justice be done. First
of all, I wish to know whether there is any inn in this neighbourhood known as
‘Elrige’s’?”
The servants were cross-questioned, but none of them had heard of such a
place. The stable-boy threw a light upon the matter by remembering that a
farmer of that name lived some miles off, in the direction of East Ruston.
“Is it a lonely farm?”
“Very lonely, sir.”
“Perhaps they have not heard yet of all that happened here during the night?”
“Maybe not, sir.”
Holmes thought for a little, and then a curious smile played over his face.
“Saddle a horse, my lad,” said he. “I shall wish you to take a note to Elrige’s
Farm.”
He took from his pocket the various slips of the dancing men. With these in
front of him he worked for some time at the study table. Finally he handed a note
to the boy, with directions to put it into the hands of the person to whom it was
addressed, and especially to answer no questions of any sort which might be put
to him. I saw the outside of the note, addressed in straggling, irregular
characters, very unlike Holmes’s usual precise hand. It was consigned to Mr.
Abe Slaney, Elrige’s Farm, East Ruston, Norfolk.
“I think, Inspector,” Holmes remarked, “that you would do well to telegraph
for an escort, as, if my calculations prove to be correct, you may have a
particularly dangerous prisoner to convey to the county gaol. The boy who takes
this note could no doubt forward your telegram. If there is an afternoon train to
town, Watson, I think we should do well to take it, as I have a chemical analysis
of some interest to finish, and this investigation draws rapidly to a close.”
When the youth had been despatched with the note, Sherlock Holmes gave his
instructions to the servants. If any visitor were to call asking for Mrs. Hilton
Cubitt no information should be given as to her condition, but he was to be
shown at once into the drawing-room. He impressed these points upon them with
the utmost earnestness. Finally he led the way into the drawing-room, with the
remark that the business was now out of our bands, and that we must while away
the time as best we might until we could see what was in store for us. The doctor
had departed to his patients, and only the Inspector and myself remained.
“I think that I can help you to pass an hour in an interesting and profitable
manner,” said Holmes, drawing his chair up to the table and spreading out in
front of him the various papers upon which were recorded the antics of the
dancing men. “As to you, friend Watson, I owe you every atonement for having
allowed your natural curiosity to remain so long unsatisfied. To you, Inspector,
the whole incident may appeal as a remarkable professional study. I must tell
you first of all the interesting circumstances connected with the previous
consultations which Mr. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in Baker Street.” He then
shortly recapitulated the facts which have already been recorded.
“I have here in front of me these singular productions, at which one might
smile, had they not proved themselves to be the forerunners of so terrible a
tragedy. I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and am myself the
author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyze one hundred
and sixty separate ciphers; but I confess that this is entirely new to me. The
object of those who invented the system has apparently been to conceal that
these characters convey a message, and to give the idea that they are the mere
random sketches of children.
“Having once recognised, however, that the symbols stood for letters, and
having applied the rules which guide us in all forms of secret writings, the
solution was easy enough. The first message submitted to me was so short that it
was impossible for me to do more than to say with some confidence that the
symbol
stood for E. As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the
English alphabet and it predominates to so marked an extent that even in a short
sentence one would expect to find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the
first message four were the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is
true that in some cases the figure was bearing a flag, and in some cases not, but
it was probable from the way in which the flags were distributed that they were
used to break the sentence up into words. I accepted this as a hypothesis, and
noted that E was represented by
“But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of the English
letters after E is by no means well-marked, and any preponderance which may
be shown in an average of a printed sheet may be reversed in a single short
sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical
order in which letters occur; but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each
other, and it would be an endless task to try each combination until a meaning
was arrived at.18 I, therefore, waited for fresh material. In my second interview
with Mr. Hilton Cubitt he was able to give me two other short sentences and one
message, which appeared—since there was no flag—to be a single word. Here
are the symbols. Now, in the single word I have already got the two E’s coming
second and fourth in a word of five letters. It might be ‘sever,’ or ‘lever,’ or
‘never.’19 There can be no question that the latter as a reply to an appeal is far
the most probable, and the circumstances pointed to its being a reply written by
the lady. Accepting it as correct, we are now able to say that the symbols
stand respectively for N, V, and R.
“Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy thought put me in
possession of several other letters. It occurred to me that if these appeals came,
as I expected, from someone who had been intimate with the lady in her early
life, a combination which contained two E’s with three letters between might
very well stand for the name ‘ELSIE.’ On examination I found that such a
combination formed the termination of the message which was three times
repeated. It was certainly some appeal to ‘Elsie.’ In this way I had got my L, S,
and I. But what appeal could it be? There were only four letters in the word
which preceded ‘Elsie,’ and it ended in E. Surely the word must be ‘COME.’ I
tried all other four letters ending in E, but could find none to fit the case. So now
I was in possession of C, O, and M, and I was in a position to attack the first
message once more, dividing it into words and putting dots for each symbol
which was still unknown. So treated it worked out in this fashion:
.M .ERE . .E SL.NE.
“Now, the first letter can only be A, which is a most useful discovery, since it
occurs no fewer than three times in this short sentence, and the H is also
apparent in the second word. Now it becomes:
AM HERE A.E SLANE.
Or, filling in the obvious vacancies in the name:
AM HERE ABE SLANEY.
I had so many letters now that I could proceed with considerable confidence
to the second message, which worked out in this fashion:
A. ELRI.ES.
Here I could only make sense by putting T and G for the missing letters, and
supposing that the name was that of some house or inn at which the writer was
staying.”
Inspector Martin and I had listened with the utmost interest to the full and
clear account of how my friend had produced results which had led to so
complete a command over our difficulties.
“What did you do then, sir?” asked the Inspector.
“I had every reason to suppose that this Abe Slaney was an American, since
Abe is an American contraction, and since a letter from America had been the
starting-point of all the trouble. I had also every cause to think that there was
some criminal secret in the matter. The lady’s allusions to her past and her
refusal to take her husband into her confidence, both pointed in that direction. I
therefore cabled to my friend, Wilson Hargreave,20 of the New York Police
Bureau,21 who has more than once made use of my knowledge of London crime.
I asked him whether the name of Abe Slaney was known to him. Here is his
reply: ‘The most dangerous crook in Chicago.’ On the very evening upon which
I had his answer Hilton Cubitt sent me the last message from Slaney. Working
with known letters, it took this form:
ELSIE .RE.ARE TO MEET THY GO.
“The addition of a P and a D completed a message which showed me that the
rascal was proceeding from persuasion to threats, and my knowledge of the
crooks of Chicago prepared me to find that he might very rapidly put his words
into action. I at once came to Norfolk with my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson,
but, unhappily, only in time to find that the worst had already occurred.”
“It is a privilege to be associated with you in the handling of a case,” said the
Inspector, warmly. “You will excuse me, however, if I speak frankly to you. You
are only answerable to yourself, but I have to answer to my superiors. If this Abe
Slaney, living at Elrige’s, is indeed the murderer, and if he has made his escape
while I am seated here, I should certainly get into serious trouble.”
“You need not be uneasy. He will not try to escape.”
“How do you know?”
“To fly would be a confession of guilt.”
“Then let us go to arrest him.”
“I expect him here every instant.”
“But why should he come?”
“Because I have written and asked him.”
“But this is incredible, Mr. Holmes! Why should he come because you have
asked him? Would not such a request rather rouse his suspicions and cause him
to fly?”
“I think I have known how to frame the letter,” said Sherlock Holmes. “In
fact, if I am not very much mistaken, here is the gentleman himself coming up
the drive.”
A man was striding up the path which led to the door. He was a tall,
handsome, swarthy fellow, clad in a suit of gray flannel, with a Panama hat, a
bristling black beard, and a great, aggressive hooked nose, and flourishing a cane
as he walked. He swaggered up the path as if the place belonged to him, and we
heard his loud, confident peal at the bell.
“I think, gentlemen,” said Holmes, quietly, “that we had best take up our
position behind the door. Every precaution is necessary when dealing with such
a fellow. You will need your handcuffs, Inspector. You can leave the talking to
me.”
We waited in silence for a minute—one of those minutes which one can never
forget. Then the door opened, and the man stepped in. In an instant Holmes
clapped a pistol to his head, and Martin slipped the handcuffs over his wrists. It
was all done so swiftly and deftly that the fellow was helpless before he knew
that he was attacked. He glared from one to the other of us with a pair of blazing
black eyes. Then he burst into a bitter laugh.
“Well, gentlemen, you have the drop on me this time. I seem to have knocked
up against something hard. But I came here in answer to a letter from Mrs.
Hilton Cubitt. Don’t tell me that she is in this? Don’t tell me that she helped to
set a trap for me?”
“Mrs. Hilton Cubitt was seriously injured, and is at death’s door.”
“Holmes clapped a pistol to his head and Martin slipped
the handcuffs over his wrists.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
The man gave a hoarse cry of grief which rang through the house.
“You’re crazy!” he cried, fiercely. “It was he that was hurt, not she. Who
would have hurt little Elsie? I may have threatened her, God forgive me, but I
would not have touched a hair of her pretty head. Take it back—you! Say that
she is not hurt!”
“She was found badly wounded by the side of her dead husband.”
He sank with a deep groan on to the settee, and buried his face in his
manacled hands. For five minutes he was silent. Then he raised his face once
more, and spoke with the cold composure of despair.
“I have nothing to hide from you, gentlemen,” said he. “If I shot the man he
had his shot at me, and there’s no murder in that. But if you think I could have
hurt that woman, then you don’t know either me or her. I tell you there was
never a man in this world loved a woman more than I loved her. I had a right to
her. She was pledged to me years ago. Who was this Englishman that he should
come between us? I tell you that I had the first right to her, and that I was only
claiming my own.”
“She broke away from your influence when she found the man that you are,”
said Holmes, sternly. “She fled from America to avoid you, and she married an
honourable gentleman in England. You dogged her and followed her, and made
her life a misery to her, in order to induce her to abandon the husband whom she
loved and respected in order to fly with you, whom she feared and hated. You
have ended by bringing about the death of a noble man and driving his wife to
suicide. That is your record in this business, Mr. Abe Slaney, and you will
answer for it to the law.”
“Well, gentlemen, you have the drop on me this time.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“He buried his face in his manacled hands.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“If Elsie dies I care nothing what becomes of me,” said the American. He
opened one of his hands and looked at a note crumpled up in his palm. “See
here, mister,” he cried, with a gleam of suspicion in his eyes, “you’re not trying
to scare me over this, are you? If the lady is hurt as bad as you say, who was it
that wrote this note?” He tossed it forward on to the table.
“I wrote it to bring you here.”
“You wrote it? There was no one on earth outside the Joint who knew the
secret of the dancing men. How came you to write it?”
“What one man can invent another can discover,” said Holmes. “There is a
cab coming to convey you to Norwich, Mr. Slaney. But, meanwhile, you have
time to make some small reparation for the injury you have wrought. Are you
aware that Mrs. Hilton Cubitt has herself lain under grave suspicion of the
murder of her husband, and that it was only my presence here and the knowledge
which I happened to possess, which has saved her from the accusation? The least
that you owe her is to make it clear to the whole world that she was in no way
directly or indirectly responsible for his tragic end.”
“I ask nothing better,” said the American. “I guess the very best case I can
make for myself is the absolute naked truth.”
“It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,” cried the
Inspector, with the magnificent fair-play of the British criminal law.22
Slaney shrugged his shoulders.
The composure of despair.
Frederic Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“I’ll chance that,” said he. “First of all, I want you gentlemen to understand
that I have known this lady since she was a child. There were seven of us in a
gang in Chicago, and Elsie’s father was the boss of the Joint.23 He was a clever
man, was old Patrick. It was he who invented that writing,24 which would pass
as a child’s scrawl unless you just happened to have the key to it. Well, Elsie
learned some of our ways; but she couldn’t stand the business, and she had a bit
of honest money of her own, so she gave us all the slip and got away to London.
She had been engaged to me, and she would have married me, I believe, if I had
taken over another profession; but she would have nothing to do with anything
on the cross. It was only after her marriage to this Englishman that I was able to
find out where she was. I wrote to her, but got no answer. After that I came over,
and, as letters were no use, I put my messages where she could read them.
“Well, I have been here a month now. I lived in that farm, where I had a room
down below, and could get in and out every night, and no one the wiser. I tried
all I could to coax Elsie away. I knew that she read the messages, for once she
wrote an answer under one of them. Then my temper got the better of me, and I
began to threaten her. She sent me a letter then, imploring me to go away, and
saying that it would break her heart if any scandal should come upon her
husband. She said that she would come down when her husband was asleep at
three in the morning, and speak with me through the end window, if I would go
away afterwards and leave her in peace. She came down and brought money
with her, trying to bribe me to go.25 This made me mad, and I caught her arm
and tried to pull her through the window. At that moment in rushed the husband
with his revolver in his hand. Elsie had sunk down upon the floor, and we were
face to face. I was heeled26 also, and I held up my gun to scare him off and let
me get away. He fired and missed me. I pulled off almost at the same instant,
and down he dropped. I made away across the garden, and as I went I heard the
window shut behind me.27 That’s God’s truth, gentlemen, every word of it, and I
heard no more about it until that lad came riding up with a note which made me
walk in here, like a jay,28 and give myself into your hands.”
A cab had driven up whilst the American had been talking. Two uniformed
policemen sat inside. Inspector Martin rose and touched his prisoner on the
shoulder.
“It is time for us to go.”
“Can I see her first?”
“No, she is not conscious. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I only hope that if ever again
I have an important case I shall have the good fortune to have you by my side.”
We stood at the window and watched the cab drive away. As I turned back my
eye caught the pellet of paper which the prisoner had tossed upon the table. It
was the note with which Holmes had decoyed him. “See if you can read it,
Watson,” said he, with a smile.
It contained no word, but this little line of dancing men:
“If you use the code which I have explained,” said Holmes, “you will find that
it simply means ‘Come here at once.’29 I was convinced that it was an invitation
which he would not refuse, since he could never imagine that it could come from
anyone but the lady. And so, my dear Watson, we have ended by turning the
dancing men to good when they have so often been the agents of evil, and I think
that I have fulfilled my promise of giving you something unusual for your
notebook. Three-forty is our train, and I fancy we should be back in Baker Street
for dinner.”
Only one word of epilogue. The American, Abe Slaney, was condemned to
death at the winter assizes at Norwich; but his penalty was changed to penal
servitude in consideration of mitigating circumstances,30 and the certainty that
Hilton Cubitt had fired the first shot. Of Mrs. Hilton Cubitt I only know that I
have heard she recovered entirely, and that she still remains a widow, devoting
her whole life to the care of the poor and to the administration of her husband’s
estate.
THE DANCING MEN ALPHABET
“THE FACT that a code of such transparent simplicity baffled the Master for such
a time has long been a matter of wonder,” Ed. S. Woodhead notes in “In Defense
of Dr. Watson.” Woodhead’s explanation? That the “dancing men” cipher was in
fact far more complex than the one presented by Watson, and that Watson, in
writing up the story, vastly simplified the code, substituting it with one that was
just difficult enough to stump the reader but not too difficult to explain.
Fletcher Pratt agrees with this view, calling the dancing men cipher “far too
simple for practical use, with its single unvarying character for each letter, [and]
it is also far too complex for a simple substitution cipher.” In fact, in the figures
of the dancing men themselves—and the ways in which they might be positioned
—he sees myriad cryptic opportunities that are never utilised or discussed.
Looking more closely at the code shown in Slaney’s various messages, Pratt
considers the “various leg possibilities” and the “various arm possibilities” and
comes up with 784 versions of dancing men that might have been used as
components of the cipher. In addition, he observes, “D, G and T show the little
figures standing on their heads, and T is simply an E in reverse. Obviously the
meaning of any one of the 784 characters can be changed by turning it upside
down, which doubles the total, giving 1,568 characters.”
By stunning coincidence, writes Pratt, the seventeenth-century cryptographers
Antoine and Bonaventure Rossignol created for Louis XIV a “Great Cipher”
which, after the Rossignols’ deaths, remained unsolved until Étienne Bazeries
cracked it in the 1890s. (Pratt suggests that Holmes may have given Bazeries
assistance on one of his trips to France.) The “Great Cipher,” was a
“homophonic substitution cipher,” in which substitutions of strings of numbers
were made for syllables, not letters. When all the permutations of the Great
Cipher’s characters were added up, according to Pratt, the total was precisely
1,568.
Certainly the two codes must have been related in some way, if not in every
way. “We have good reason to believe,” writes Pratt, “that it [the similarity of
combinations] was not accidental; that with the connivance of Holmes, Watson
deliberately eliminated from the record the cipher used by Abe Slaney . . . and
inserted in its place this other.”
The completion of the alphabet of the “dancing men” has been attempted by
numerous cryptologists and enthusiasts. The definitive work, however, is likely
that of Michael J. Sare, who brilliantly devised a simple method for constructing
and memorising a “dancing men” grid to encode and decode messages. Sare
argues that if the code was to be used by a rough bunch of criminals, it needed to
be easily constructed on principles readily memorised, requiring no codebooks
or “cribs.” Sare’s “grid” follows:
1
“The Dancing Men” was published in the Strand
Magazine in December 1903 and in Collier’s Weekly on
December 5, 1903.
The 1886 discovery of a phenomenally rich, forty-mile
vein of gold in the Transvaal’s Witwatersrand (or the
Rand, the area of land between the Vaal and Olifants
Rivers) brought to South Africa a rapidly expanding
economy and hundreds of thousands of foreign white
settlers, known as Uitlanders (outlanders). By 1898,
according to A. N. Wilson, a staggering £15 million
worth of gold was being taken from the mines every year.
In the previous few decades, Britain had annexed much
of South Africa, including the Transvaal in 1877, though
in 1881 the province’s independence had been restored.
Still, British Uitlanders made up a large portion of the
Rand’s population, earning higher wages and garnering
greater power than did the unskilled African migrant
workers. British speculators, eager to cash in on the
boom, traded enthusiastically in South African securities;
the British government, meanwhile, was keen to claim
the Transvaal for its own. Continued tension between
Great Britain and the resistant Transvaal government—
which, despite collecting enormous amounts of taxes
from the Uitlanders, began depriving them of the vote,
public education, and other political rights—led to the
onset of the Boer War in 1899, one year after this
conversation between Watson and Holmes is thought to
2
have occurred. Britain would claim victory in the Boer
War in 1902. See “The Blanched Soldier” for further
discussion of the conflict.
The placement of the chalk mark is consistent with
Watson’s right-handedness (see “The Yellow Face”).
However, it is remarkable that a man who holds his left
arm in a “stiff, unnatural manner” (A Study in Scarlet)
has sufficient flexibility to manipulate a billiard cue.
3
It is tempting to consider this to be Watson’s club, for
Watson was an eminently “clubbable” man, and to
identify it as the United Service Club, founded in May
1831 as the general military club for naval and military
officers. Ralph Nevill, in his London Clubs: Their
History and Treasures, observes that the club had the
nickname of “Cripplegate”—“from the prevailing
advanced years and infirmity of its members . . . The
United Service contains many interesting pictures,
[including a portrait of] Major-General Charles G.
Gordon, by Dickinson, from a photograph. . . . In the
upper billiard-room is a picture of the Battle of Trafalgar,
the frame of which is wood from the timbers of the
Victory.” The United Service Club faces Pall Mall, and
Watson must have joined it after the events of “The
Greek Interpreter,” for he would surely otherwise have
mentioned the proximity of “his” club to that of Mycroft.
Was Thurston also a military man? Or was the “club”
4
Thurston’s?
Ralph Hodgson, in a long letter to Christopher Morley,
reprinted in the Baker Street Journal, reports that John
Thurston of 78 Margaret Street, Cavendish Square,
started making “superior” billiard tables sometime prior
to 1814. A few years later he moved to 14 Catherine
Street, The Strand. In 1869, Messrs. Thurston & Coy, still
on Catherine Street, were one of the chief table-makers in
England.
5
That Watson was, apparently, not to be trusted with his
own money may have been rooted in his family’s
profligate tendencies, according to S. C. Roberts’s Doctor
Watson. Watson himself tells Holmes in “Shoscombe Old
Place” that he spends half of his army pension betting on
racing. In addition, writes Roberts, “Watson père had
gambled on his luck as an Australian prospector—and
won; his elder son gambled on life—and lost. . . . It is
evident, however, that Holmes kept the watchful eye of
an elder brother upon Watson’s gambling propensities.”
Roberts’s familial observations can hardly be accepted as
fact, however, for all that is definitely known of the
brother is that he died of drink, and all that is known of
the father is that he left a gold watch as a legacy (The
Sign of Four). Indeed, rejecting the image of Watson as a
man reckless with his funds, D. Martin Dakin suggests
instead that the doctor may have temporarily broken the
6
lock or mislaid his own desk key, or that his desk simply
wasn’t the kind that locked.
In searching out the geographical locations mentioned
in the case, numerous writers identify various residences
belonging to various members of the Cubitt family in
Norfolk, where the last name is prevalent. Philip Weller,
however, points out in “The Norfolk Dance Hall and
Other Locations: The Geography of ‘The Dancing Men,’
” that it is illogical to accept (as almost all scholars do)
that while Watson routinely changed the names of
Holmes’s clients, Watson did not do so here. “It is more
logical to accept that Watson, or his agent, used the name
of Cubitt as a means of disguise precisely because it was,
and still is, so common in Norfolk.”
7
Riding Thorpe in the first mention in the Strand
Magazine; in other texts, Ridling Thorp or plain Ridling.
It appears from the English book edition that the text
given is the correct one.
8
Victoria asssumed the throne in 1837, celebrating her
Golden Jubilee in 1887 and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
Most chronologists accept Cubitt’s reference as being to
the latter event (see Chronological Table). Not just a
commemoration of Victoria’s reign, the Diamond Jubilee
was a final, grand tribute to the dominance of the British
Empire, which at that time spanned over a fifth of the
9
globe and seemed nearly invincible. Of the festivities
themselves, Simon Schama writes that 50,000 troops—
Gurkhas, Canadians, Jamaicans—paraded through
London in tribute to the queen: “The tabloid imperialist
press (above all, the Daily Mail) had been ecstatic; the
crowds drunk with top-nation elation. Up and down the
country, on 22 June schoolchildren were given the day
off, herded into parks and, courtesy of the queen, given
two buns and an orange. . . . The queen, now very lame,
conceded just enough to the delirium to decorate her
black satin with Cape ostrich feathers.”
The name “Hilton” is replaced with “John” in Collier’s
Weekly. Shades of the “James/John” slip of “The Man
with the Twisted Lip”!
10
“Holmes and Watson do not seem to have appreciated
the urgency involved,” chides Philip Weller in The
Company Canon: The Adventure of the Dancing Men.
Weller suggests that a mail train could have taken them to
Norwich, depositing them there at 2:00 in the morning,
after which they might have ridden a carriage to the
manor.
11
Despite Holmes’s evident dismay at having been too
late to save his client, scholars such as Ian McQueen say
that Holmes has no one but himself to blame. McQueen
calls Holmes’s demeanour the previous evening
12
“lackadaisacal,” especially considering that the detective
claimed to have “expected” the alarming contents of
Cubitt’s message (and later, upon arrival at the manor,
admits to having “anticipated” the unfortunate turn of
events). “If Holmes had been honest with himself . . . ,”
McQueen sternly declares, “he might have confessed
with some justification that he had suffered the greatest
blow to have befallen him in his career. It was
unquestionably a blow for which, owing to his gross
negligence, he was personally responsible.” “The Five
Orange Pips” is a similar case in which Holmes failed to
warn his client adequately, to the client’s fatal detriment.
Although the word is “blank” in all other published
texts, the word “black” seems more likely to be correct.
13
This historical region, encompassing the counties of
Norfolk, Suffolk, and parts of Essex, has deep AngloSaxon roots; it was settled in the late fifth century by
immigrants from northern Germany and Scandinavia.
The wealth and power of the East Anglian kings was
demonstrated with the 1939 discovery at Sutton Hoo (in
Suffolk) of a seventh-century burial ship, intended to
carry its “owner” to the afterlife. Laden with treasures
including forty-one pieces of solid gold, the ship is
thought to have been meant for the East Anglian king
Raedwald, who died in 624.
14
The German Ocean, before the First World War, was
an alternative name for the North Sea, and on maps of
this period “The North Sea or German Ocean” was
generally given.
15
16
A portico is an archway supported by columns.
That is, a lawn devoted to the play of lawn tennis, socalled to distinguish it from “real tennis,” a twelfthcentury, racquetball-type game of French origin that was
played indoors. Lawn tennis, a product of the Victorian
age, gained rapidly in popularity among the fashionable
set after Major Walter Winfield created an outdoor
version of real tennis in 1874, utilising a new rubber ball
that could bounce on grass. He introduced his new game
at a lawn party in Wales and dubbed it “sphairistike”
(from spaira, the Greek word for ball), but, as no one
could remember—let alone pronounce!—such a name,
the alternative of “lawn tennis” was suggested, and it
stuck. The All England Croquet Club at Wimbledon held
its first lawn tennis championship, restricted to men only,
in 1877. (Women got their first Wimbledon tournament
in 1884). Its inaugural champion was Spencer Gore, a
surveyor, cricket aficionado, and skilled athlete, who,
despite his newly won laurels, described tennis as “a
monotonous game compared with others.” The Lawn
Tennis Association was founded in 1888.
17
Encyclopædia Britannica (9th Ed.) provides additional
assistance to budding cryptographers: “All the single
letters must be a, I, or O. Letters occurring together are
ee, oo, ff, ll, ss, &c [which stands for “etc.”]. The
commonest words of two letters are (roughly arranged in
the order of their frequency) of, to, in, it, is, be, he, by, or,
as, at, an, so, &c. The commonest words of three letters
are the and and (in great excess), for, are, but, all, not,
&c.” For a further tutorial, Britannica points readers to
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 story “The Gold-Bug,” in which
William Legrand, after deconstructing a complicated
cipher, is able to unearth a fortune in buried treasure.
18
“This dictum implies that the five-letter word must be
one of these alternatives,” Colin Prestige writes in
“Agents of Evil.” “Never! A simple mental exercise
reveals more than 30 alternatives, some possible and
some improbable.” For example, such disparate words as
“seven,” “repel,” “renew,” “jewel,” “sewer,” and “deter”
all fit the requirements.
19
Richard Warshauer identifies “Hargreave” as Thomas
Byrnes, superintendent of the New York Police
Department in 1892, who, from 1882 to 1892, was the
renowned (and first) chief of the brand-new Detective
Bureau of the NYPD. In 1898, Byrnes retired from the
police department amidst charges of corruption (though
none against Byrnes himself) and went to work for an
20
insurance company. “There can be little doubt that in
1898 he was still as knowledgeable about the world of
crime as he was in 1886 when he wrote [the classic
Professional Criminals of America]. What could be more
natural than for Holmes to have consulted a man so well
acquainted with ‘the annals of crime’?” During the height
of the Whitechapel murders that terrorized London in
1888, Byrnes was quoted in the British paper, The Star,
on the “commonsense way” in which he would pursue
Jack the Ripper, criticising the work of Scotland Yard.
He concluded with the brag that if he had conducted the
investigation, “[t]he murderer would have been caught
long ago.”
Correctly, the New York Police Department or the
New York Police Detective Bureau.
21
The Police Code (12th Ed., 1904) makes it clear that
the arresting officer must not induce a confession: “A
confession must be entirely voluntary. This will not be
the case if it appears to the Judge to have been caused by
any inducement, threat, or promise, proceeding from a
person in authority . . .”
22
Two decades before Al Capone arrived in Chicago and
became king of the city’s organised crime scene, Chicago
was already a rough, industrial town overcrowded with
newly arrived working-class European immigrants and
23
their children. In many ways proud of its reputation for
rowdiness and even corruption, Chicago was ripe for the
kind of gang warfare that employed Abe Slaney and
Elsie’s father and that paved the way for the rise of
Capone. Rudyard Kipling was appalled by the city’s
grime, writing in his American Notes (1891), “Having
seen it [Chicago], I urgently desire never to see it again.
It is inhabited by savages. . . . I looked down interminable
vistas flanked with nine, ten, and fifteen-storied houses,
and crowded with men and women, and the show
impressed me with a great horror. Except in London—
and I have forgotten what London was like—I had never
seen so many white people together, and never such a
collection of miserables.”
Several theories exist as to what Elsie’s father used as
the basis for his unique alphabet (presuming that the
system was not entirely his own original creation).
William Smith concludes that the cipher was likely
derived from one used by the Army Signal Corps,
published by Major Albert J. Myer in his A Manual of
Signals (1864), which involved men using flags.
Renowned cryptographer David Shulman puts forward a
remarkably similar cipher published in the United Service
Magazine, a British publication, in 1832, also using flags.
Irving Kamil points out the similarities of the cipher to
the Easter Island and Indus Valley scripts discussed by
24
Charles Berlitz in his Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds
(1972). And an article in The Bookman by Lyndon Orr
(April 1910) suggests that the cipher was based on that
detailed in “The Language of the Restless Imps” using
stick-figures, which appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine in
June 1874.
Recall that in Elsie’s purse were found “twenty fiftypound notes of the Bank of England, held together by an
india-rubber band.” Where did Elsie get this enormous
sum of money? Was it part of the “bit of honest money”
with which, Slaney tells us, she left Chicago? Or savings
from household expenses? Or did she steal it from her
husband? John B. Koelle finds the entire notion
improbable, surmising instead that Elsie and Slaney
together killed Cubitt, stole his money, and then
quarrelled over a division of the spoils. Alternatively,
Slaney may have been blackmailing the Cubitts, and they
brought the money to a meeting with him, where they
intended to kill him.
John Hall, in Sidelights on Holmes, also finds
Slaney’s account dubious. Surely Slaney would have
realised that his efforts to woo Elsie were doomed, in
light of the strength of character she had already shown in
refusing to marry a criminal. “[T]hen why should he
imagine for one moment,” marvels Hall, “that, having
settled down to a happy enough life in the English
25
countryside, she would agree to commit adultery? It
makes no sense at all.” Naturally, Slaney must have been
half-mad with jealousy and rejection, which leads to the
inevitable conclusion that he came to Ridling Thorpe
Manor with revenge, not reconciliation, on his mind.
“The only explanation that does make any sort of sense,”
continues Hall, “is surely that Slaney had intended all
along to kill Mr. Cubitt, and very probably Elsie as well,
as revenge for what he saw as her desertion of him.”
26
Armed. The term is also used in The Valley of Fear.
That Elsie would take the time to close the window
before shooting herself seems like an unnecessary bit of
business. Clifton R. Andrew suggests that Elsie, still in
love with Abe Slaney, closed the window in order to
protect him, so that a third party’s involvement in the
shooting would not be discovered.
27
According to E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of
Phrase and Fable, “A plunger; one who spends his
money recklessly; a simpleton. This is simply the letter J,
the initial letter of Juggins, who, in 1887, made a fool of
himself by losses on the turf.”
28
29
The six messages (in translation) are:
1 AM HERE ABE SLANEY
2 AT ELRIGES
3 COME ELSIE
4 NEVER
5 ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD
6 COME HERE AT ONCE
William S. Baring-Gould notes that the symbol used for
“V” in message #4 is the same as that used for “P” in
message #5 in virtually every published text. In addition,
in some texts, the symbol used for “C” in message #6 is
the same as that used for “M” throughout, and different
from that used for “C” in message #3. Whether these
mistakes resulted from Watson’s careless copying or the
printer’s errors cannot be determined at this time.
The nature of those “mitigating circumstances” that led
to the commutation of Slaney’s sentence is unclear. Harry
Ober argues righteously that “Threatening a woman with
death, coming to her house armed, probably flourishing a
gun, and mortally wounding her husband who was
defending his wife properly, all constitute to me a chain
of criminal acts, which add up to murder in the first
degree.” However, a British court may have concluded
that there was little evidence that Slaney intended to kill
anyone (only the ambiguous advice “PREPARE TO
MEET THY GOD”) and that he was merely acting in
self-defence when he fired the shot that killed Cubitt.
30
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY
CYCLIST1
In “The Solitary Cyclist,” we glimpse one of the British “frontiers,”
the mines of South Africa, which are the source of unexpected danger
to yet another Violet (there are four damsels in distress with that name
in the Canon). Bicycles, the great fad of the late Victorian era, play a
central rôle in the case, which is set in 1895. Although Watson records
in A Study in Scarlet that Holmes is an expert boxer, we have only two
instances of his pugilistic skills, “The Naval Treaty” and here. While
the case has very little mystery about it, scholars raise interesting
questions about the marriage laws of England and the irrational
behaviour of the villains.
FROM THE YEARS 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy
man.2 It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he
was not consulted during those eight years, and there were hundreds of private
cases, some of them of the most intricate and extraordinary character, in which
he played a prominent part. Many startling successes and a few unavoidable
failures were the outcome of this long period of continuous work. As I have
preserved very full notes of all these cases, and was myself personally engaged
in many of them, it may be imagined that it is no easy task to know which I
should select to lay before the public. I shall, however, preserve my former rule,
and give the preference to those cases which derive their interest not so much
from the brutality of the crime as from the ingenuity and dramatic quality of the
solution. For this reason I will now lay before the reader the facts connected with
Miss Violet Smith, the solitary cyclist3 of Charlington, and the curious sequel of
our investigation, which culminated in unexpected tragedy. It is true that the
circumstance did not permit4 any striking illustration of those powers for which
my friend was famous, but there were some points about the case which made it
stand out in those long records of crime from which I gather the material for
these little narratives.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
On referring to my notebook for the year 1895,5 I find that it was upon
Saturday, April 23,6 that we first heard of Miss Violet Smith. Her visit was, I
remember, extremely unwelcome to Holmes, for he was immersed at the
moment in a very abstruse and complicated problem concerning the peculiar
persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well-known tobacco millionaire,
had been subjected. My friend, who loved above all things precision and
concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from
the matter in hand. And yet without a harshness which was foreign to his nature
it was impossible to refuse to listen to the story of the young and beautiful
woman, tall, graceful, and queenly, who presented herself at Baker Street late in
the evening and implored his assistance and advice. It was vain to urge that his
time was already fully occupied, for the young lady had come with the
determination to tell her story, and it was evident that nothing short of force
could get her out of the room until she had done so. With a resigned air and a
somewhat weary smile, Holmes begged the beautiful intruder to take a seat and
to inform us what it was that was troubling her.
“At least it cannot be your health,” said he, as his keen eyes darted over her;
“so ardent a bicyclist must be full of energy.”7
She glanced down in surprise at her own feet, and I observed the slight
roughening of the side of the sole caused by the friction of the edge of the pedal.
Miss Violet Smith, teacher of music.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“Yes, I bicycle a good deal, Mr. Holmes, and that has something to do with
my visit to you to-day.”
My friend took the lady’s ungloved hand and examined it with as close an
attention and as little sentiment as a scientist would show to a specimen.
“You will excuse me, I am sure. It is my business,” said he, as he dropped it.
“I nearly fell into the error of supposing that you were typewriting. Of course, it
is obvious that it is music. You observe the spatulate finger-end, Watson, which
is common to both professions? There is a spirituality about the face,
however”—he8 gently turned it towards the light—“which the typewriter does
not generate. This lady is a musician.”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, I teach music.”
“In the country, I presume, from your complexion.”
“Yes, sir; near Farnham, on the borders of Surrey.”
“My friend took the lady’s ungloved hand and examined
it.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“A beautiful neighbourhood, and full of the most interesting associations. You
remember, Watson, that it was near there that we took Archie Stamford, the
forger.9 Now, Miss Violet, what has happened to you near Farnham, on the
borders of Surrey?”
The young lady, with great clearness and composure, made the following
curious statement:
“My father is dead, Mr. Holmes. He was James Smith, who conducted the
orchestra at the old Imperial Theatre.10 My mother and I were left without a
relation in the world except one uncle, Ralph Smith, who went to Africa twentyfive years ago, and we have never had a word from him since. When father died
we were left very poor, but one day we were told that there was an advertisement
in the Times inquiring for our whereabouts. You can imagine how excited we
were, for we thought that someone had left us a fortune. We went at once to the
lawyer whose name was given in the paper. There we met two gentlemen, Mr.
Carruthers and Mr. Woodley, who were home on a visit from South Africa. They
said that my uncle was a friend of theirs, that he had died some months before in
poverty11 in Johannesburg,12 and that he had asked them with his last breath to
hunt up his relations and see that they were in no want. It seemed strange to us
that Uncle Ralph, who took no notice of us when he was alive, should be so
careful to look after us when he was dead; but Mr. Carruthers explained that the
reason was that my uncle had just heard of the death of his brother, and so felt
responsible for our fate.”
“Excuse me,” said Holmes; “when was this interview?”
“Last December—four months ago.”
“Pray proceed.”
“Mr. Woodley seemed to me to be a most odious person. He was for ever
making eyes at me—a coarse, puffy-faced, red-moustached young man, with his
hair plastered down on each side of his forehead. I thought that he was perfectly
hateful—and I was sure that Cyril would not wish me to know such a person.”
“Oh! Cyril is his name!” said Holmes, smiling.
The young lady blushed and laughed.
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, Cyril Morton, an electrical engineer, and we hope to be
married at the end of the summer. Dear me, how did I get talking about him?
What I wished to say was that Mr. Woodley was perfectly odious, but that Mr.
Carruthers, who was a much older man, was more agreeable. He was a dark,
sallow, clean-shaven, silent person; but he had polite manners and a pleasant
smile. He inquired how we were left, and on finding that we were very poor he
suggested that I should come and teach music to his only daughter, aged ten. I
said that I did not like to leave my mother, on which he suggested that I should
go home to her every weekend, and he offered me a hundred a year, which was
certainly splendid pay. So it ended by my accepting, and I went down to Chiltern
Grange,13 about six miles from Farnham. Mr. Carruthers was a widower, but he
had engaged a lady-housekeeper, a very respectable, elderly person, called Mrs.
Dixon, to look after his establishment. The child was a dear, and everything
promised well. Mr. Carruthers was very kind and very musical, and we had most
pleasant evenings together. Every weekend I went home to my mother in town.
“The first flaw in my happiness was the arrival of the red-moustached Mr.
Woodley. He came for a visit of a week, and oh, it seemed three months to me.
He was a dreadful person, a bully to everyone else, but to me something
infinitely worse. He made odious love to me, boasted of his wealth, said that if I
married him I could have the finest diamonds in London, and finally, when I
would have nothing to do with him, he seized me in his arms one day after
dinner—he was hideously strong—and he swore that he would not let me go
until I had kissed him. Mr. Carruthers came in, and tore him from me, on which
he turned upon his own host, knocking him down and cutting his face open. That
was the end of his visit, as you can imagine. Mr. Carruthers apologized to me
next day, and assured me that I should never be exposed to such an insult again.
I have not seen Mr. Woodley since.
“And now, Mr. Holmes, I come at last to the special thing which has caused
me to ask your advice to-day. You must know that every Saturday forenoon I
ride on my bicycle to Farnham Station in order to get the 12:22 to town. The
road from Chiltern Grange is a lonely one, and at one spot it is particularly so,
for it lies for over a mile between Charlington Heath upon one side and the
woods which lie round Charlington Hall upon the other. You could not find a
more lonely tract of road anywhere, and it is quite rare to meet so much as a cart,
or a peasant, until you reach the high-road near Crooksbury Hill.14 Two weeks
ago I was passing this place, when I chanced to look back over my shoulder, and
about two hundred yards behind me I saw a man, also on a bicycle. He seemed
to be a middle-aged man, with a short, dark beard. I looked back before I
reached Farnham, but the man was gone, so I thought no more about it. But you
can imagine how surprised I was, Mr. Holmes, when on my return on the
Monday I saw the same man on the same stretch of road. My astonishment was
increased when the incident occurred again, exactly as before, on the following
Saturday and Monday. He always kept his distance, and did not molest me in
any way, but still it certainly was very odd. I mentioned it to Mr. Carruthers,
who seemed interested in what I said, and told me that he had ordered a horse
and trap, so that in future I should not pass over these lonely roads without some
companion.
“The horse and trap were to have come this week, but for some reason they
were not delivered, and again I had to cycle to the station. That was this
morning. You can think that I looked out when I came to Charlington Heath, and
there, sure enough, was the man, exactly as he had been the two weeks before.
He always kept so far from me that I could not clearly see his face, but it was
certainly someone whom I did not know. He was dressed in a dark suit with a
cloth cap. The only thing about his face that I could clearly see was his dark
beard. To-day I was not alarmed, but I was filled with curiosity, and I
determined to find out who he was and what he wanted. I slowed down my
machine, but he slowed down his. Then I stopped altogether, but he stopped
also. Then I laid a trap for him. There is a sharp turning of the road, and I
pedalled very quickly round this, and then I stopped and waited. I expected him
to shoot round and pass me before he could stop. But he never appeared. Then I
went back and looked round the corner. I could see a mile of road, but he was
not on it. To make it the more extraordinary there was no side road at this point
down which he could have gone.”
“He always kept so far from me that I could not clearly
see his face.”
Anonymous, Portland Oregonian, July 23, 1911
Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands.
“This case certainly presents some features of its own,” said he. “How much
time elapsed between your turning the corner and your discovery that the road
was clear?”
“Two or three minutes.”
“Then he could not have retreated down the road, and you say that there are
no side roads?”
“None.”
“Then he certainly took a footpath on one side or the other.”
“It could not have been on the side of the heath or I should have seen him.”
“So, by the process of exclusion we arrive at the fact that he made his way
toward Charlington Hall, which, as I understand, is situated in its own grounds
on one side of the road.15 Anything else?”
“Nothing, Mr. Holmes, save that I was so perplexed that I felt I should not be
happy until I had seen you and had your advice.”
Holmes sat in silence for some little time.
“Where is the gentleman to whom you are engaged?” he asked at last.
“He is in the Midland Electric16 Company, at Coventry.”
“I slowed down my machine.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“He would not pay you a surprise visit?”
“Oh, Mr. Holmes! As if I should not know him!”
“Have you had any other admirers?”
“Several before I knew Cyril.”
“And since?”
“There was this dreadful man, Woodley, if you can call him an admirer.”
“No one else?”
Our fair client seemed a little confused.
“Who was he?” asked Holmes.
“Oh, it may be a mere fancy of mine; but it has seemed to me sometimes that
my employer, Mr. Carruthers, takes a great deal of interest in me. We are thrown
rather together. I play his accompaniments in the evening. He has never said
anything. He is a perfect gentleman. But a girl always knows.”
“Ha!” Holmes looked grave. “What does he do for a living?”
“He is a rich man.”
“No carriages or horses?”
“Well, at least he is fairly well-to-do. But he goes into the city two or three
times a week. He is deeply interested in South African gold shares.”
“You will let me know any fresh development, Miss Smith. I am very busy
just now, but I will find time to make some inquiries into your case. In the
meantime, take no step without letting me know. Good-bye, and I trust that we
shall have nothing but good news from you.”
“It is part of the settled order of Nature that such a girl should have
followers,” said Holmes, as he pulled at his meditative pipe, “but for choice not
on bicycles in lonely country roads. Some secretive lover, beyond all doubt. But
there are curious and suggestive details about the case, Watson.”
“That he should appear only at that point?”
“Exactly. Our first effort must be to find who are the tenants of Charlington
Hall. Then, again, how about the connection between Carruthers and Woodley,
since they appear to be men of such different types? How came they both to be
so keen upon looking up Ralph Smith’s relations? One more point. What sort of
a ménage is it which pays double the market price for a governess,17 but does
not keep a horse, although six miles from the station? Odd, Watson—very odd!”
“You will go down?”
“No, my dear fellow, you will go down. This may be some trifling intrigue,
and I cannot break my other important research for the sake of it. On Monday
you will arrive early at Farnham; you will conceal yourself near Charlington
Heath; you will observe these facts for yourself, and act as your own judgment
advises. Then, having inquired as to the occupants of the Hall, you will come
back to me and report. And now, Watson, not another word of the matter until
we have a few solid stepping-stones on which we may hope to get across to our
solution.”
We had ascertained from the lady that she went down upon the Monday by the
train which leaves Waterloo at 9.50, so I started early and caught the 9.13. At
Farnham Station I had no difficulty in being directed to Charlington Heath. It
was impossible to mistake the scene of the young lady’s adventure, for the road
runs between the open heath on one side, and an old yew hedge upon the other,
surrounding a park which is studded with magnificent trees. There was a main
gateway of lichen-studded stone, each side-pillar surmounted by mouldering
heraldic emblems, but besides this central carriage drive I observed several
points where there were gaps in the hedge and paths leading through them. The
house was invisible from the road, but the surroundings all spoke of gloom and
decay.
The heath was covered with golden patches of flowering gorse, gleaming
magnificently in the light of the bright spring sunshine. Behind one of these
clumps I took up my position, so as to command both the gateway of the Hall
and a long stretch of the road upon either side. It had been deserted when I left it,
but now I saw a cyclist riding down it from the opposite direction to that in
which I had come. He was clad in a dark suit, and I saw that he had a black
beard. On reaching the end of the Charlington grounds he sprang from his
machine and led it through a gap in the hedge, disappearing from my view.
A quarter of an hour passed and then a second cyclist appeared. This time it
was the young lady coming from the station. I saw her look about her as she
came to the Charlington hedge. An instant later the man emerged from his
hiding-place, sprang upon his cycle, and followed her. In all the broad landscape
those were the only moving figures, the graceful girl sitting very straight upon
her machine,18 and the man behind her bending low over his handle-bar, with a
curiously furtive suggestion in every movement. She looked back at him and
slowed her pace. He slowed also. She stopped. He at once stopped, too, keeping
two hundred yards behind her. Her next movement was as unexpected as it was
spirited. She suddenly whisked her wheels round and dashed straight at him! He
was as quick as she, however, and darted off in desperate flight. Presently she
came back up the road again, her head haughtily in the air, not deigning to take
further notice of her silent attendant. He had turned also, and still kept his
distance until the curve of the road hid them from my sight.
I remained in my hiding-place, and it was well that I did so, for presently the
man reappeared cycling slowly back. He turned in at the Hall gates, and
dismounted from his machine. For some few minutes I could see him standing
among the trees. His hands were raised, and he seemed to be settling his necktie.
Then he mounted his bicycle, and rode away from me down the drive towards
the Hall. I ran across the heath and peered through the trees. Far away I could
catch glimpses of the old grey building with its bristling Tudor chimneys, but the
drive ran through a dense shrubbery, and I saw no more of my man.
However, it seemed to me that I had done a fairly good morning’s work, and I
walked back in high spirits to Farnham. The local house agent could tell me
nothing about Charlington Hall, and referred me to a well-known firm in Pall
Mall. There I halted on my way home, and met with courtesy from the
representative. No, I could not have Charlington Hall for the summer. I was just
too late. It had been let about a month ago. Mr. Williamson was the name of the
tenant. He was a respectable elderly gentleman. The polite agent was afraid he
could say no more, as the affairs of his clients were not matters which he could
discuss.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes listened with attention to the long report which I was
able to present to him that evening, but it did not elicit that word of curt praise
which I had hoped for and should have valued. On the contrary, his austere face
was even more severe than usual as he commented upon the things that I had
done and the things that I had not.
“Your hiding-place, my dear Watson, was very faulty. You should have been
behind the hedge; then you would have had a close view of this interesting
person. As it is, you were some hundreds of yards away, and can tell me even
less than Miss Smith. She thinks she does not know the man; I am convinced she
does. Why, otherwise, should he be so desperately anxious that she should not
get so near him as to see his features? You describe him as bending over the
handle-bar. Concealment again, you see. You really have done remarkably
badly. He returns to the house, and you want to find out who he is. You come to
a London house agent!”
“What should I have done?” I cried, with some heat.
“Gone to the nearest public-house. That is the centre of country gossip. They
would have told you every name, from the master to the scullery-maid.
Williamson! It conveys nothing to my mind. If he is an elderly man he is not this
active cyclist who sprints away from that athletic young lady’s pursuit. What
have we gained by your expedition? The knowledge that the girl’s story is true. I
never doubted it. That there is a connection between the cyclist and the Hall. I
never doubted that either. That the Hall is tenanted by Williamson. Who’s the
better for that? Well, well, my dear sir, don’t look so depressed, we can do little
more until next Saturday, and in the meantime I may make one or two inquiries
myself.”
Next morning we had a note from Miss Smith, recounting shortly and
accurately the very incidents which I had seen, but the pith of the letter lay in the
postscript:
I am sure that you will respect my confidence, Mr. Holmes, when I tell you
that my place here has become difficult owing to the fact that my employer
has proposed marriage to me. I am convinced that his feelings are most
deep and most honourable. At the same time my promise is of course given.
He took my refusal very seriously, but also very gently. You can
understand, however, that the situation is a little strained.
“Our young friend seems to be getting into deep waters,” said Holmes
thoughtfully, as he finished the letter. “The case certainly presents more features
of interest and more possibility of development than I had originally thought. I
should be none the worse for a quiet, peaceful day in the country, and I am
inclined to run down this afternoon and test one or two theories which I have
formed.”
Holmes’s quiet day in the country had a singular termination, for he arrived at
Baker Street late in the evening with a cut lip and a discoloured lump upon his
forehead, besides a general air of dissipation which would have made his own
person the fitting object of a Scotland Yard investigation. He was immensely
tickled by his own adventures, and laughed heartily as he recounted them.
“I get so little active exercise that it is always a treat,” said he. “You are aware
that I have some proficiency in the good old British sport of boxing.19
Occasionally it is of service. To-day, for example, I should have come to very
ignominious grief without it.”
I begged him to tell me what had occurred.
“A straight left against a slogging ruffian.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“I found that country pub which I had already recommended to your notice,
and there I made my discreet inquiries. I was in the bar, and a garrulous landlord
was giving me all that I wanted. Williamson is a white-bearded man, and he
lives alone with a small staff of servants at the Hall. There is some rumour that
he is or has been a clergyman; but one or two incidents of his short residence at
the Hall struck me as peculiarly unecclesiastical. I have already made some
inquiries at a clerical agency, and they tell me that there was a man of that name
in orders whose career has been a singularly dark one. The landlord further
informed me that there are usually weekend visitors—‘a warm20 lot, sir’—at the
Hall, and especially one gentleman with a red moustache, Mr. Woodley by
name, who was always there. We had got as far as this when who should walk in
but the gentleman himself, who had been drinking his beer in the tap-room, and
had heard the whole conversation. Who was I? What did I want? What did I
mean by asking questions? He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives
were very vigorous. He ended a string of abuse by a vicious backhander, which I
failed to entirely avoid. The next few minutes were delicious. It was a straight
left against a slogging ruffian. I emerged as you see me. Mr. Woodley went
home in a cart. So ended my country trip, and it must be confessed that, however
enjoyable, my day on the Surrey border has not been much more profitable than
your own.”
The Thursday brought us another letter from our client.
You will not be surprised, Mr. Holmes to hear that I am leaving Mr.
Carruthers’s employment. Even the high pay cannot reconcile me to the
discomforts of my situation. On Saturday I come up to town, and I do not
intend to return. Mr. Carruthers has got a trap, and so the dangers of the
lonely road, if there ever were any dangers, are now over.
“It was a straight left against a slogging ruffian.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
As to the special cause of my leaving, it is not merely the strained
situation with Mr. Carruthers, but it is the reappearance of that odious man,
Mr. Woodley. He was always hideous, but he looks more awful than ever
now, for he appears to have had an accident and he is much disfigured. I
saw him out of the window, but I am glad to say I did not meet him. He had
a long talk with Mr. Carruthers, who seemed much excited afterwards.
Woodley must be staying in the neighbourhood, for he did not sleep here,
and yet I caught a glimpse of him again this morning slinking about in the
shrubbery. I would sooner have a savage wild animal loose about the place.
I loathe and fear him more than I can say. How can Mr. Carruthers endure
such a creature for a moment? However, all my troubles will be over on
Saturday.
“So I trust, Watson, so I trust,” said Holmes gravely. “There is some deep
intrigue going on round that little woman,21 and it is our duty to see that no one
molests her upon that last journey. I think, Watson, that we must spare time to
run down together on Saturday morning and make sure that this curious and
inclusive investigation has no untoward ending.”
I confess that I had not up to now taken a very serious view of the case, which
had seemed to me rather grotesque and bizarre than dangerous. That a man
should lie in wait for and follow a very handsome woman is no unheard-of thing,
and if he has so little audacity that he not only dared not address her, but even
fled from her approach, he was not a very formidable assailant. The ruffian
Woodley was a very different person, but, except on one occasion, he had not
molested our client, and now he visited the house of Carruthers without
intruding upon her presence. The man on the bicycle was doubtless a member of
those weekend parties at the Hall of which the publican had spoken, but who he
was, or what he wanted, was as obscure as ever. It was the severity of Holmes’s
manner and the fact that he slipped a revolver into his pocket before leaving our
rooms which impressed me with the feeling that tragedy might prove to lurk
behind this curious train of events.
A rainy night had been followed by a glorious morning, and the heath-covered
country-side, with the glowing dumps of flowering gorse, seemed all the more
beautiful to eyes which were weary of the duns and drabs and slate-greys of
London. Holmes and I walked along the broad, sandy road inhaling the fresh
morning air, and rejoicing in the music of the birds and the fresh breath of the
spring. From a rise of the road on the shoulder of Crooksbury Hill we could see
the grim Hall bristling out from amidst the ancient oaks, which, old as they were,
were still younger than the building which they surrounded. Holmes pointed
down the long tract of road which wound, a reddish yellow band, between the
brown of the heath and the budding green of the woods. Far away, a black dot,
we could see a vehicle moving in our direction. Holmes gave an exclamation of
impatience.
“I had given a margin of half an hour,” said he. “If that is her trap she must be
making for the earlier train. I fear, Watson, that she will be past Charlington
before we can possibly meet her.”
From the instant that we passed the rise we could no longer see the vehicle,
but we hastened onward at such a pace that my sedentary life began to tell upon
me, and I was compelled to fall behind.22 Holmes, however, was always in
training, for he had inexhaustible stores of nervous energy upon which to draw.
His springy step never slowed, until suddenly, when he was a hundred yards in
front of me, he halted, and I saw him throw up his hand with a gesture of grief
and despair. At the same instant an empty dog-cart, the horse cantering, the reins
trailing, appeared round the curve of the road and rattled swiftly towards us.
“Too late, Watson; too late!” cried Holmes, as I ran panting to his side. “Fool
that I was not to allow for the earlier train! It’s abduction, Watson—abduction!
Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That’s right. Now
jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder.”
We had sprung into the dog-cart, and Holmes, after turning the horse, gave it a
sharp cut with the whip, and we flew back along the road. As we turned the
curve the whole stretch of road between the Hall and the heath was opened up. I
grasped Holmes’s arm.
“That’s the man!” I gasped.
A solitary cyclist was coming towards us. His head was down and his
shoulders rounded as he put every ounce of energy that he possessed on to the
pedals. He was flying like a racer.23 Suddenly he raised his bearded face, saw us
close to him, and pulled up, springing from his machine. That coal-black beard
was in singular contrast to the pallor of his face, and his eyes were as bright as if
he had a fever. He stared at us and at the dog-cart. Then a look of amazement
came over his face.
“‘Too late, Watson; too late!’ cried Holmes.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Halloa! Stop there!” he shouted, holding his bicycle to block our road.
“Where did you get that dog-cart? Pull up, man!” he yelled, drawing a pistol
from his side pocket. “Pull up, I say, or, by George, I’ll put a bullet into your
horse.”
Holmes threw the reins into my lap and sprang down from the cart.
“You’re the man we want to see. Where is Miss Violet Smith?” he said in his
quick, clear way.
“That’s what I’m asking you. You’re in her dog-cart. You ought to know
where she is.”
“We met the dog-cart on the road. There was no one in it. We drove back to
help the young lady.”
“Good Lord! Good Lord! What shall I do?” cried the stranger, in an ecstasy of
despair. “They’ve got her, that hell-hound Woodley and the blackguard parson.
Come, man, come, if you really are her friend. Stand by me and we’ll save her, if
I have to leave my carcass in Charlington Wood.”
He ran distractedly, his pistol in his hand, towards a gap in the hedge. Holmes
followed him, and I, leaving the horse grazing beside the road, followed Holmes.
“This is where they came through,” said he, pointing to the marks of several
feet upon the muddy path. “Halloa! Stop a minute! Who’s this in the bush?”
It was a young fellow about seventeen, dressed like an ostler, with leather
cords24 and gaiters. He lay upon his back, his knees drawn up, a terrible cut upon
his head. He was insensible, but alive. A glance at his wound told me that it had
not penetrated the bone.
A solitary cyclist was coming toward us.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
“That’s Peter, the groom,” cried the stranger. “He drove her. The beasts have
pulled him off and clubbed him. Let him lie; we can’t do him any good, but we
may save her from the worst fate that can befall a woman.”
We ran frantically down the path, which wound among the trees. We had
reached the shrubbery which surrounded the house when Holmes pulled up.
“They didn’t go to the house. Here are their marks on the left—here, beside
the laurel bushes! Ah, I said so.”
As he spoke a woman’s shrill scream—a scream which vibrated with a frenzy
of horror—burst from the thick green clump of bushes in front of us. It ended
suddenly on its highest note with a choke and a gurgle.
“This way! This way! They are in the bowling alley,”25 cried the stranger,
darting through the bushes. “Ah, the cowardly dogs! Follow me, gentlemen! Too
late! too late! by the living Jingo!”
We had broken suddenly into a lovely glade of greensward surrounded by
ancient trees. On the farther side of it, under the shadow of a mighty oak, there
stood a singular group of three people. One was a woman, our client, drooping
and faint, a handkerchief round her mouth. Opposite her stood a brutal, heavyfaced, red-moustached young man, his gaitered legs parted wide, one arm
akimbo, the other waving a riding crop, his whole attitude suggestive of
triumphant bravado. Between them an elderly, grey-bearded man, wearing a
short surplice over a light tweed suit, had evidently just completed the wedding
service, for he pocketed his Prayer Book as we appeared and slapped the sinister
bridegroom upon the back in jovial congratulation.
“They’re married?” I gasped.
“Come on!” cried our guide; “come on!” He rushed across the glade, Holmes
and I at his heels. As we approached, the lady staggered against the trunk of the
tree for support. Williamson, the ex-clergyman, bowed to us with mock
politeness, and the bully Woodley advanced with a shout of brutal and exultant
laughter.
“You can take your beard off, Bob,” said he. “I know you right enough. Well,
you and your pals have just come in time for me to be able to introduce you to
Mrs. Woodley.”
“As we approached, the lady staggered against the trunk
of the tree.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Our guide’s answer was a singular one. He snatched off the dark beard which
had disguised him and threw it on the ground, disclosing a long, sallow, cleanshaven face below it. Then he raised his revolver and covered the young ruffian,
who was advancing upon him with his dangerous riding crop swinging in his
hand.
“Yes,” said our ally, “I am Bob Carruthers, and I’ll see this woman righted if I
have to swing for it. I told you what I’d do if you molested her, and, by the Lord!
I’ll be as good as my word.”
“You’re too late. She’s my wife!”
“No, she’s your widow.”
His revolver cracked, and I saw the blood spurt from the front of Woodley’s
waistcoat. He spun round with a scream and fell upon his back, his hideous red
face turning suddenly to a dreadful mottled pallor. The old man, still clad in his
surplice, burst into such a string of foul oaths as I have never heard, and pulled
out a revolver of his own, but, before he could raise it, he was looking down the
barrel of Holmes’s weapon.
“No, she’s your widow.”
Anonymous, Portland Oregonian, July 23, 1911
“Enough of this,” said my friend, coldly. “Drop that pistol! Watson, pick it
up! Hold it to his head! Thank you. You, Carruthers, give me that revolver.
We’ll have no more violence. Come, hand it over!”
“Who are you, then?”
“My name is Sherlock Holmes.”
“Good Lord!”
“You have heard of me, I see. I will represent the official police until their
arrival. Here, you!” he shouted to the frightened groom,26 who had appeared at
the edge of the glade. “Come here. Take this note as hard as you can ride to
Farnham.” He scribbled a few words upon a leaf from his notebook. “Give it to
the superintendent at the police-station. Until he comes, I must detain you all
under my personal custody.”
The strong, masterful personality of Holmes dominated the tragic scene, and
all were equally puppets in his hands. Williamson and Carruthers found
themselves carrying the wounded Woodley into the house, and I gave my arm to
the frightened girl. The injured man was laid on his bed, and at Holmes’s request
I examined him. I carried my report to where he sat in the old tapestry-hung
dining-room with his two prisoners before him.
“He spun round with a scream and fell upon his back.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“He will live,” said I.
“What!” cried Carruthers, springing out of his chair. “I’ll go upstairs and
finish him first. Do you tell me that that girl, that angel, is to be tied to Roaring
Jack Woodley for life?”
“You need not concern yourself about that,” said Holmes. “There are two very
good reasons why she should, under no circumstances, be his wife. In the first
place, we are very safe in questioning Mr. Williamson’s right to solemnize a
marriage.”
“I have been ordained,” cried the old rascal.
“And also unfrocked.”
“Once a clergyman, always a clergyman.”
“I think not. How about the licence?”
“We had a licence for the marriage. I have it here in my pocket.”
“Then you got it by a trick. But, in any case a forced marriage is no marriage,
but it is a very serious felony,27 as you will discover before you have finished.
You’ll have time to think the point out during the next ten years or so, unless I
am mistaken. As to you, Carruthers, you would have done better to keep your
pistol in your pocket.”
“I begin to think so, Mr. Holmes; but when I thought of all the precaution I
had taken to shield this girl—for I loved her, Mr. Holmes, and it is the only time
that ever I knew what love was—it fairly drove me mad to think that she was in
the power of the greatest brute and bully in South Africa, a man whose name is a
holy terror from Kimberley28 to Johannesburg. Why, Mr. Holmes, you’ll hardly
believe it, but ever since that girl has been in my employment I never once let
her go past this house, where I knew these rascals were lurking, without
following her on my bicycle just to see that she came to no harm. I kept my
distance from her, and I wore a beard, so that she should not recognise me, for
she is a good and high-spirited girl, and she wouldn’t have stayed in my
employment long if she had thought that I was following her about the country
roads.”
“Why didn’t you tell her of her danger?”
“Because then, again, she would have left me, and I couldn’t bear to face that.
Even if she couldn’t love me it was a great deal to me just to see her dainty form
about the house, and to hear the sound of her voice.”
“Well,” said I, “you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it
selfishness.”
“Maybe the two things go together. Anyhow, I couldn’t let her go. Besides,
with this crowd about, it was well that she should have someone near to look
after her. Then when the cable came I knew they were bound to make a move.”
“What cable?”
Carruthers took a telegram from his pocket.
“That’s it,” said he.
It was short and concise:
THE OLD MAN IS DEAD.
“Hum!” said Holmes. “I think I see how things worked, and I can understand
how this message would, as you say, bring them to a head. But while you wait
you might tell me what you can.”
The old reprobate with the surplice burst into a volley of bad language.
“By heaven!” said he, “if you squeal on us, Bob Carruthers, I’ll serve you as
you served Jack Woodley. You can bleat about the girl to your heart’s content,
for that’s your own affair, but if you round on your pals to this plain-clothes
copper it will be the worst day’s work that ever you did.”
“Your reverence need not be excited,” said Holmes, lighting a cigarette. “The
case is clear enough against you, and all I ask is a few details for my private
curiosity. However, if there’s any difficulty in your telling me I’ll do the talking,
and then you will see how far you have a chance of holding back your secrets. In
the first place, three of you came from South Africa on this game—you,
Williamson, you, Carruthers, and Woodley.”
“Lie number one,” said the old man; “I never saw either of them until two
months ago, and I have never been in Africa in my life, so you can put that in
your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Busybody Holmes!”
“What he says is true,” said Carruthers.
“Well, well, two of you came over. His reverence is our own home-made
article. You had known Ralph Smith in South Africa. You had reason to believe
he would not live long. You found out that his niece would inherit his fortune.
How’s that—eh?”
Carruthers nodded, and Williamson swore.
“She was next of kin, no doubt, and you were aware that the old fellow would
make no will.”
“Couldn’t read or write,” said Carruthers.
“So you came over, the two of you, and hunted up the girl. The idea was that
one of you was to marry her, and the other have a share of the plunder. For some
reason Woodley was chosen as the husband. Why was that?”
“We played cards for her on the voyage. He won.”
“I see. You got the young lady into your service, and there Woodley was to do
the courting. She recognised the drunken brute that he was, and would have
nothing to do with him. Meanwhile your arrangement was rather upset by the
fact that you had yourself fallen in love with the lady. You could no longer bear
the idea of this ruffian owning her.”
“No, by George, I couldn’t!”
“There was a quarrel between you. He left you in a rage, and began to make
his own plans independently of you.”
“It strikes me, Williamson, there isn’t very much that we can tell this
gentleman,” cried Carruthers, with a bitter laugh. “Yes, we quarrelled, and he
knocked me down. I am level with him on that, anyhow. Then I lost sight of him.
That was when he picked up with this cast padre29 here. I found that they had set
up housekeeping together at this place on the line that she had to pass for the
station. I kept my eye on her after that, for I knew there was some devilry in the
wind. I saw them from time to time, for I was anxious to know what they were
after. Two days ago Woodley came up to my house with this cable, which
showed that Ralph Smith was dead. He asked me if I would stand by the bargain.
I said I would not. He asked me if I would marry the girl myself and give him a
share. I said I would willingly do so, but that she would not have me. He said,
‘Let us get her married first, and after a week or two she may see things a bit
different.’ I said I would have nothing to do with violence. So he went off
cursing, like the foul-mouthed blackguard that he was, and swearing that he
would have her yet. She was leaving me this weekend, and I had got a trap to
take her to the station, but I was so uneasy in my mind that I followed her on my
bicycle. She had got a start, however, and before I could catch her the mischief
was done. The first thing I knew about it was when I saw you two gentlemen
driving back in her dog-cart.”
Holmes rose and tossed the end of his cigarette into the grate. “I have been
very obtuse, Watson,” said he. “When in your report you said that you had seen
the cyclist as you thought arrange his necktie in the shrubbery, that alone should
have told me all. However, we may congratulate ourselves upon a curious and,
in some respects, a unique case. I perceive three of the country constabulary in
the drive, and I am glad to see that the little ostler is able to keep pace with them;
so it is likely that neither he nor the interesting bridegroom will be permanently
damaged by their morning’s adventures. I think, Watson, that in your medical
capacity you might wait upon Miss Smith and tell her that if she is sufficiently
recovered, we shall be happy to escort her to her mother’s home. If she is not
quite convalescent you will find that a hint that we were about to telegraph to a
young electrician in the Midlands would probably complete the cure.30 As to
you, Mr. Carruthers, I think that you have done what you could to make amends
for your share in an evil plot. There is my card, sir, and if my evidence can be of
help in your trial it shall be at your disposal.”
“Holmes tossed the end of his cigarette into the grate.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
In the whirl of our incessant activity it has often been difficult for me, as the
reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those final
details which the curious might expect. Each case has been the prelude to
another, and the crisis once over, the actors have passed for ever out of our busy
lives. I find, however, a short note at the end of my manuscripts dealing with this
case, in which I have put it upon record that Miss Violet Smith did indeed inherit
a large fortune, and that she is now the wife of Cyril Morton, the senior partner
of Morton & Kennedy, the famous Westminster electricians. Williamson and
Woodley were both tried for abduction and assault, the former getting seven
years and the latter ten. Of the fate of Carruthers I have no record, but I am sure
that his assault was not viewed very gravely by the Court, since Woodley had
the reputation of being a most dangerous ruffian, and I think that a few months
were sufficient to satisfy the demands of justice.
BICYCLING IN THE TIME OF SHERLOCK
HOLMES
IN THE century following the 1819 introduction of the first two-wheeled vehicle,
a wooden contraption (invented by Baron Karl Drais von Sauerbronn) that the
rider moved by pushing his feet along the ground, the bicycle went through
numerous incarnations on its way to its current form. There was the first selfpropelled two-wheeler, which was invented by Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick
Macmillan in 1839 and made use of swinging foot cranks that were moved back
and forth; the first popular two-wheeler, invented by the French Pierre and
Ernest Michaux—father and son—in 1861 and propelled by rotating pedals
attached to the front wheel; and the ordinary or “penny-farthing” model invented
in 1870 by James Starley of the Coventry Sewing Machine Company.
Incorporating a large front wheel and smaller back wheel (the penny and the
farthing were England’s largest and smallest coins) and weighing far less than
previous versions of the vehicle, Starley’s bicycle remained fashionable for
twenty years until the arrival of the chain-driven “safety” bicycle, which boasted
two wheels of equal size and was far less likely to tip over. First manufactured in
1885 by Starley’s nephew John, the safety bicycle had supplanted the ordinary
bicycle by the early 1890s.
Cycling in London.
Queen’s London (1897)
Cycling’s popularity spread rapidly in the 1880s; clubs were founded, and
both men and women enjoyed taking leisurely bicycle rides in the country, either
separately or in tandem. But the bicycle’s importance extended beyond mere
novelty and sport. As a means of transportation, this new vehicle vastly
expanded employment opportunities for working people who, unable to afford
carriages or train fare, had previously been forced to work only as far away as
they could walk. According to M. Haddon-MacRoberts’s “The Mystery of the
Missing Bicycles,” millions of bicycles were being used between 1870 and
1890. Brand-new bicycles were expensive, naturally, but cheaper second-and
third-hand models were always available for rent or sale as newer, more
innovative models were continually being introduced and snapped up by
enthusiasts. Victorians, once sedentary, became gloriously mobile. “It apparently
was truly a sight,” writes Haddon-MacRoberts, “to see the thousands of cyclists
pouring out of the cities on weekends to escape the smog-congested haunts
where they lived and worked, and to experience, for a few hours at least, an
individual freedom never before known to so many people.”
Some, by contrast, viewed the phenomenon with alarm, fearing the
implications of this newfound emancipation, particularly in regard to young
women. In 1897, Mrs. F. Harcourt Williamson, in “The Cycle in Society,”
moralised, “The beginning of cycling was the end of the chaperon in England,
and now women, even young girls, ride alone or attended only by some casual
man friend for miles together through deserted country roads. The danger of this
is apparent; but parents and guardians will probably only become wise after the
event. Given a lonely road, and a tramp desperate with hunger or naturally
vicious, and it stands to reason that a girl, or indeed any woman riding alone
must be in some considerable peril.” There seems little doubt that Mrs.
Williamson would have greeted Violet Smith’s predicament with a knowing, “I
told you so.”
It is easy, then, to picture Miss Smith as a member of this new, bicyling
society, taking advantage of a liberty—as well as the consequences of that
liberty—largely unavailable to her a mere two decades before. It is even easier to
picture her in light of the surprising discovery of the apparent origin of her
bicycle. The Raleigh Bicycle Company was founded in 1890 by an Englishman
named Frank Bowden, who, told by doctors he had six months to live, began
bicycling and became not only healthy but also a cycling champion. Of the many
bicycles manufactured by Bowden’s company, one may have been delivered for
the use of Violet Smith. The Catalogue of an Exhibition on Sherlock Holmes
Held at Abbey House Baker Street, London NW1, May-September 1951 sets
forth (without comment) a letter from Mr. George H. B. Wilson, the managing
director of Raleigh Industries Limited, Nottingham, which accompanied a
bicycle lent to the exhibition by Raleigh. It reads:
Dear Lord Donegall,
Referring to your letter of the 20th April, in which you inform me of your
present researches into the whereabouts of the cycle belonging to Miss
Violet Smith . . . , I am pleased to be able to tell you that on looking back
through our files for 1895 and 1896 we have been able to trace a Humber
bicycle which we delivered to Miss Smith’s father at Charlington Hall. As
you recall in your letter, Miss Smith married and having no further use for
the vehicle sold it back to us. Many years later when it became apparent
that our earliest products would be of historical interest, it was placed
among other examples of this firm’s craftsmanship. It was not, however,
until your letter called attention to the fact, that Raleigh Industries Limited
realised the very special value of this bicycle, in view of its association with
the immortal detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
The company records are obviously in error, however, for Charlington Hall
was, at the time of the events recounted by Miss Smith, occupied by Williamson,
who lived there alone, and Miss Smith’s father was deceased. It is possible that
when the delivery person discovered the distance to Chiltern Grange from the
station, the bicycle was negligently presented to Williamson, who was thought to
be Miss Smith’s father.
“The Solitary Cyclist” was published in Collier’s
Weekly on December 26, 1903, and in the Strand
Magazine in January 1904.
1
Contrast this with Holmes’s remark in “The Norwood
Builder” about how “uninteresting” London has become
since the death of Moriarty.
2
That the “solitary cyclist” does not refer to Miss Smith
is evident from the manuscript, the greater part of which
is owned by Maurice F. Neville of Santa Barbara,
California. The manuscript bears the title “The Adventure
of the Solitary Man,” and the phrase here reads “the facts
connected with the solitary man of Charlington
Common.”
3
4
“Admit” in the Strand Magazine and American editions.
Watson kept a series of year-books concerning
Holmes’s cases (“The Veiled Lodger”), and mentions
specifically his records for 1887 (“The Five Orange
Pips”), for 1890 (“The Final Problem”), for 1894 (“The
Golden Pince-Nez”), and for 1895 (“The Solitary
Cyclist”).
5
April 23, 1895, was a Tuesday. As may be expected, the
chronologists are in some disagreement regarding the
correct date of “The Solitary Cyclist.” See Chronological
Table.
6
See “Bicycling in the Time of Sherlock Holmes,” page
928.
7
The word is “she” in various American editions, but the
manuscript version of the story clearly states “he.”
8
In “The Sad Case of Young Stamford,” Jerry Neal
Williamson speculates that he was the “Archie” of “The
Red-Headed League” and also the young Stamford who
introduced Holmes to Watson. The manuscript of “The
Solitary Cyclist” continues here: “Hughes, the poisoner,
also came from there.” Apparently Watson was not then
ready to reveal the facts of the Hughes case.
9
The Imperial Theatre, part of the Royal Aquarium in
Westminster, presented music hall-type entertainment or,
as Baedeker reported in 1896, “[c]omedies, burlesques,
and farces.” After it closed in 1899, the Imperial fell
under the care of three popular actors: Lillie Langtry
(“the Jersey Lily”), who had appeared there in 1882 and
who reopened the theatre on April 22, 1901; Ellen Terry,
who served as the Imperial’s manager in 1903, producing
and starring in Ibsen’s The Vikings under the direction of
her son, Edward Gordon Craig; and Lewis Waller, who
from 1903 to 1906 presented a series of romantic plays
there, one of the most successful of which was Brigadier
Gerard in 1906, from the pen of Arthur Conan Doyle.
The last play performed at the Imperial was Dix and
10
Sutherland’s Boy O’Carrol, in 1906. The theatre was
dismantled the following year; thus, in 1895, the Imperial
had not yet closed. Miss Smith must have been thinking
of the theatre’s incarnation prior to 1901 as the “old”
Imperial Theatre, or else perhaps Watson himself made
that distinction, inserting the word “old” here to clarify
the difference for his readers.
It is “great poverty” in the Strand Magazine and
American editions.
11
Johannesburg was founded in 1886 as the
administrative centre for the goldmines that flourished in
the Witwatersrand (see “The Adventure of the Dancing
Men,” note 2). A true boomtown, the city swelled as
prospectors arrived from all over the world to seek their
fortunes; by the turn of the century, Johannesburg had
100,000 residents, with the mines worked mostly by
black Africans under short-term contract. Almost
inevitably, the sudden influx of humanity combined with
the stimulus of greed led to an environment in which
debauchery flourished; prostitution, heavy drinking, and
crime-world activities linked to New York and London
were a part of Johannesburg’s daily life. A journalist
named Pratt, writing in 1913 to warn incoming English
and Australian workers, summed up the young city’s
atmosphere: “Ancient Nineveh and Babylon have been
revived. . . . Johannesburg is their twentieth century
12
prototype. It is a city of unbridled squalor and
unfathomable squander.”
13
A “grange” is a farmhouse with outbuildings.
Scholars seize upon Miss Smith’s description here for
clues as to the real locations of Chiltern Grange,
Crooksbury Hill, Charlington Heath, and Charlington
Hall. Michael Harrison, in In the Footsteps of Sherlock
Holmes, declares that one district fits all of the proper
distance and direction qualifications and also has a “hill”
located between it and Farnham. He names the Surrey
district of Charleshill and ventures, “ ‘Crooksbury Hill’
may be either Crooksbury Heath, which could be called a
hill, or it may be that part of Crooksbury Common known
as Monk’s Hill. I feel that the latter is more likely.”
Bernard Davies, in “Three Distressed Gentlewomen,”
goes on to identify Chiltern Grange as Lascombe, a house
built in 1894 and situated about six miles from Farnham
station and 6 1/2 miles from Godalming.
14
Geoffrey Stavert, in “In the Wheelmarks of Violet
Smith,” identifies Charlington Hall as Hampton Lodge,
on the Hampton Estate.
15
“Electrical” in the Strand Magazine and American
editions. There is a company named “Midland Electrical
Factors, Ltd.,” in Coventry, which may be a “descendant”
16
of the firm.
A reminder of the economics of 1895—the “going
rate” for a governess was £50 per year (the modern
equivalent of £3,200, or about U.S.$5,200), plus room
and board. See also “The Copper Beeches,” note 8,
regarding the position of governesses; Violet Hunter, the
reader will recall, had been paid £4 per month in her
position previous to the Rucastle household.
17
Proper Victorian women were expected to ride bicycles
while wearing ankle-length skirts, petticoats, a jacket, and
a hat. This created a pretty picture but did not provide
much in the way of comfort. “There were some so-called
liberated women,” writes Richard Warner, “who chose to
dress for comfort instead of propriety and wore those
instruments of the Devil, the bifurcated attire. These
could be bloomers, knickerbockers, or even, Heaven
forbid, the convertible dress.” The skirt of this last outfit
could be unbuttoned in the front and then re-fastened
around the legs, forming a rudimentary pair of pants. The
upright manner in which Violent Smith rides her bike
suggests that she is, indeed, a proper woman. Warner also
points out that she must have been conventionally
dressed, since Watson makes no particular mention of her
attire: “If she had been wearing bifurcated costume, he as
a ladies’ man would have made some comment. After all,
her limbs would have been revealed.”
18
Holmes’s collegiate boxing is mentioned in “The
‘Gloria Scott.’” In “The Yellow Face,” “The Five Orange
Pips,” and A Study in Scarlet, Watson comments on his
prowess, and Holmes himself recounts using his skill in
encounters with a street tough (“The Final Problem”) and
Joseph Harrison (“The Naval Treaty”). In The Sign of
Four, McMurdo, a professional boxer, compliments
Holmes on his boxing talents, and Holmes reminds him
that they fought against each other in a benefit match. See
also “The Yellow Face,” note 4.
19
20
In the sense of enthusiastic or exuberant.
This is pure Victorian sexism (or Holmesian
misogyny), for Watson has earlier described Miss Smith
as “tall, graceful and queenly.”
21
Also as a result of his wounded leg? Compare
Watson’s statement in The Hound of the Baskervilles:
“[Sir Henry and I] were both swift runners and in fairly
good training . . .”
22
Cycling as sport was becoming increasingly popular in
Europe in the 1890s, with city-to-city races that lasted up
to a full day and beyond. France, which had hosted the
first official road race on May 31, 1868 (a 12,000-meter
affair near Paris), and the first city-to-city race on
November 7, 1869 (from Paris to Rouen), was the leader
23
in this field, establishing the one-day Paris-Roubaix race
in 1896 and the twenty-one-day Tour de France in 1903.
Road races in Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands
were also being founded around this time. In England,
however, the poor condition of the roads meant that most
bicycle racing was limited to specially constructed tracks,
such as the ones located at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham,
or the Alexandra Palace, Muswell Hill, in greater
London. Watson’s remark here suggests that he may well
have attended the London races, which were held
regularly on Saturday afternoons during the summer.
24
Leather corduroy breeches.
A long lawn or turf upon which lawn bowling, also
known as lawn bowls, was played. Possibly played in
ancient Egypt and popularised throughout Europe in the
Middle Ages, lawn bowling was banned for commoners
by Henry VIII in the sixteenth century because it
distracted them from the practice of archery. Yet
noblemen continued to play the game, and the Scots
introduced a formal code of rules in 1849. The English
Bowling Association was established in 1903.
25
The Strand Magazine and American editions strangely
refer to “a” frightened groom, as if there were more than
one.
26
Holmes offers two reasons that the marriage might be
invalid: the illegitimacy of Williamson’s status as a
clergyman, and Violet Smith’s lack of consent to being
married. Rev. Otis Rice contends that Holmes is right in
one instance, but not the other. “The sacraments and
sacramentals administered by a priest are valid whether
he is inhibited, deposed, or not,” Rice explains. “In this
respect Williamson’s flippant remark, ‘Once a
clergyman, always a clergyman’ was in a sense true.”
Williamson might have faced disciplinary action—from
the church or the state—for conducting a ceremony after
being deposed, but nonetheless the marriage itself would
have stood up under scrutiny.
Where Holmes is correct is in pointing out that Violet
Smith had never intended nor wanted to marry—being
gagged is a sure sign of proof—and this condition
therefore renders the marriage itself invalid. Rice clarifies
further: The Church of England stipulates that in a
wedding, the bride and groom are actually the ministers
of the ceremony, not the priest. The priest is merely a sort
of witness who is present to bless and affirm the union in
the eyes of the church. If either the bride or groom is
unwilling to perform the marriage rites, then naturally the
ceremony itself cannot be properly administered. “One
wonders why Williamson did not know this,” muses
Rice. “Possibly his theological education had been as
fragmentary as had been his liturgical training. What
27
informed Anglican clergyman would have believed he
was ‘solemnizing a marriage’ while wearing ‘a short
surplice over a light tweed suit?’ ”
It is doubtful that performance of a forced marriage is
a “very serious felony”; however, Williamson’s
complicity in the matter made him equally guilty of the
“abduction” and “assault” committed by Woodley, and
Holmes’s remark here should be taken to refer to
Williamson’s overall conduct.
Kimberley was founded in 1871 after an intensely rich
diamond mine was found at that site in 1870. South
Africa, previously an agricultural nation, was transformed
by the discovery of diamonds (and later, in the
Witwatersrand, of gold). When individual digging gave
way to organised mining, not only was the South African
economy rerouted toward one of industrialisation, but the
workforce also began to skew along racial lines, with
black African migrant workers performing most of the
manual labour and whites assuming supervisory and
skilled-labour positions. In 1888, Kimberley’s diamond
fields were taken over by De Beers Consolidated Mines,
under the control of Cecil Rhodes. As prime minister of
Cape Colony (of which Kimberley was a part) and an
Uitlander sympathiser, Rhodes would lead an
unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Paul Kruger’s
Transvaal government in 1895. (See “The Adventure of
28
the Dancing Men,” note 2. For a detailed discussion of
the upheavals in South Africa, see “The Blanched
Soldier.”) Rhodes’s legacy upon his death in 1902 made
possible the Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford.
29
Some editions have “outcast padre.”
What is Holmes driving at here? Is he suggesting that
Miss Smith planned to keep the matter a secret from Mr.
Morton, but that he, Holmes, would reveal it? This seems
unlikely in light of the forthcoming trials. Perhaps he is
suggesting that Miss Smith would not want her fiancé to
see her so dishevelled.
30
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL1
“The Priory School” begins comically enough, with the preposterous
figure of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc., lying prostrate on
the bearskin rug at 221 Baker Street. The case soon darkens, however,
when Holmes learns that he must save a kidnapped boy from great
danger. Even Holmes is surprised by the revelation of the kidnapper.
Scholars argue over the true identity of the “Duke of Holdernesse,”
Watson’s pseudonym for the boy’s father, and Holmes’s bold
deductions from bicycle tracks (and his acceptance of an enormous
fee) are questioned by many.
WE HAVE HAD some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small stage at Baker
Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first
appearance of Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc. His card, which
seemed too small to carry the weight of his academic distinctions, preceded him
by a few seconds, and then he entered himself—so large, so pompous, and so
dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And
yet his first action, when the door had closed behind him, was to stagger against
the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic
figure prostrate and insensible upon our bearskin hearthrug.
We had sprung to our feet, and for a few moments we stared in silent
amazement at this ponderous piece of wreckage, which told of some sudden and
fatal storm far out on the ocean of life. Then Holmes hurried with a cushion for
his head, and I with brandy for his lips. The heavy white face was seamed with
lines of trouble, the hanging pouches under the closed eyes were leaden in
colour, the loose mouth drooped dolorously at the corners, the rolling chins were
unshaven. Collar and shirt bore the grime of a long journey, and the hair bristled
unkempt from the well-shaped head. It was a sorely stricken man who lay before
us.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“What is it, Watson?” asked Holmes.
“Absolute exhaustion—possibly mere hunger and fatigue,” said I, with my
finger on the thready pulse, where the stream of life trickled thin and small.
“Return ticket from Mackleton, in the North of England,”2 said Holmes,
drawing it from the watch-pocket. “It is not twelve o’clock yet. He has certainly
been an early starter.”
The puckered eyelids had begun to quiver, and now a pair of vacant grey eyes
looked up at us. An instant later the man had scrambled on to his feet, his face
crimson with shame.
“Forgive this weakness, Mr. Holmes; I have been a little overwrought. Thank
you, if I might have a glass of milk and a biscuit I have no doubt that I should be
better. I came personally, Mr. Holmes, in order to insure that you would return
with me. I feared that no telegram would convince you of the absolute urgency
of the case.”
“The heavy white face was seamed with lines of trouble.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“When you are quite restored—”
“I am quite well again. I cannot imagine how I came to be so weak. I wish
you, Mr. Holmes, to come to Mackleton with me by the next train.”
My friend shook his head.
“My colleague, Dr. Watson, could tell you that we are very busy at present. I
am retained in this case of the Ferrers Documents, and the Abergavenny murder
is coming up for trial. Only a very important issue could call me from London at
present.”
“Important!” Our visitor threw up his hands. “Have you heard nothing of the
abduction of the only son of the Duke of Holdernesse?”3
“What! the late Cabinet Minister?”4
“Exactly. We had tried to keep it out of the papers, but there was some rumour
in the Globe last night. I thought it might have reached your ears.”
Holmes shot out his long, thin arm and picked out Volume “H” in his
encyclopaedia of reference.
“ ‘Holdernesse, Sixth Duke, K.G.,5 P.C.6’—half the alphabet! ‘Baron Beverley,
Earl of Carston’—dear me, what a list! ‘Lord Lieutenant7 of Hallamshire,8 since
1900. Married Edith, daughter of Sir Charles Appledore,9 1888. Heir and only
child, Lord Saltire. Owns about two hundred and fifty thousand acres. Minerals
in Lancashire and Wales. Address: Carlton House Terrace; Holdernesse Hall,
Hallamshire; Carston Castle, Bangor, Wales. Lord of the Admiralty, 1872; Chief
Secretary of State for—’10 Well, well, this man is certainly one of the greatest
subjects of the Crown!”11
“The greatest and perhaps the wealthiest. I am aware, Mr. Holmes, that you
take a very high line in professional matters, and that you are prepared to work
for the work’s sake. I may tell you, however, that his Grace has already
intimated that a cheque for five thousand pounds12 will be handed over to the
person who can tell him where his son is and another thousand to him who can
name the man, or men, who have taken him.”
“I can not imagine how I came to be so weak.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“It is a princely offer,” said Holmes.13 “Watson, I think that we shall
accompany Dr. Huxtable back to the North of England. And now, Dr. Huxtable,
when you have consumed that milk you will kindly tell me what has happened,
when it happened, how it happened, and, finally, what Dr. Thorneycroft
Huxtable, of the Priory School, near Mackleton, has to do with the matter, and
why he comes three days after an event—the state of your chin gives the date—
to ask for my humble services.”
Our visitor had consumed his milk and biscuits. The light had come back to
his eyes and the colour to his cheeks as he set himself with great vigour and
lucidity to explain the situation.
“I must inform you, gentlemen, that the Priory is a preparatory school, of
which I am the founder and principal. Huxtable’s Sidelights on Horace may
possibly recall my name to your memories. The Priory is, without exception, the
best and most select preparatory school in England.14 Lord Leverstoke, the Earl
of Blackwater, Sir Cathcart Soames—they all have intrusted their sons to me.
But I felt that my school had reached its zenith when, three weeks ago, the Duke
of Holdernesse sent Mr. James Wilder, his secretary, with the intimation that
young Lord Saltire, ten years old, his only son and heir, was about to be
committed to my charge. Little did I think that this would be the prelude to the
most crushing misfortune of my life.
“On May 1 the boy arrived, that being the beginning of the summer term. He
was a charming youth, and he soon fell into our ways. I may tell you—I trust
that I am not indiscreet; but half-confidences are absurd in such a case—that he
was not entirely happy at home. It is an open secret that the Duke’s married life
had not been a peaceful one, and the matter had ended in a separation by mutual
consent, the Duchess taking up her residence in the south of France. This had
occurred very shortly before, and the boy’s sympathies are known to have been
strongly with his mother. He moped after her departure from Holdernesse Hall,
and it was for this reason that the Duke desired to send him to my establishment.
In a fortnight the boy was quite at home with us, and was apparently absolutely
happy.
“He was last seen on the night of May 13th—that is, the night of last Monday.
His room was on the second floor, and was approached through another larger
room, in which two boys were sleeping. These boys saw and heard nothing, so
that it is certain that young Saltire did not pass out that way. His window was
open, and there is a stout ivy plant leading to the ground. We could trace no
footmarks below, but it is sure that this is the only possible exit.
“His absence was discovered at seven o’clock on Tuesday morning. His bed
had been slept in. He had dressed himself fully, before going off, in his usual
school suit of black Eton jacket15 and dark grey trousers. There were no signs
that anyone had entered the room, and it is quite certain that anything in the
nature of cries or a struggle would have been heard, since Caunter, the elder boy
in the inner room, is a very light sleeper.
“When Lord Saltire’s disappearance was discovered I at once called a roll of
the whole establishment—boys, masters, and servants. It was then that we
ascertained that Lord Saltire had not been alone in his flight. Heidegger, the
German master, was missing. His room was on the second floor, at the farther
end of the building, facing the same way as Lord Saltire’s. His bed had also been
slept in; but he had apparently gone away partly dressed, since his shirt and
socks were lying on the floor. He had undoubtedly let himself down by the ivy,
for we could see the marks of his feet where he had landed on the lawn. His
bicycle was kept in a small shed beside this lawn, and it also was gone.
“He had been with me for two years, and came with the best references; but he
was a silent, morose man, not very popular either with masters or boys. No trace
could be found of the fugitives, and now, on Thursday morning, we are as
ignorant as we were on Tuesday. Inquiry was, of course, made at once at
Holdernesse Hall. It is only a few miles away, and we imagined that, in some
sudden attack of homesickness, he had gone back to his father, but nothing had
been heard of him. The Duke is greatly agitated—and, as to me, you have seen
yourselves the state of nervous prostration to which the suspense and the
responsibility have reduced me. Mr. Holmes, if ever you put forward your full
powers, I implore you to do so now, for never in your life could you have a case
which is more worthy of them.”
Sherlock Holmes had listened with the utmost intentness to the statement of
the unhappy schoolmaster. His drawn brows and the deep furrow between them
showed that he needed no exhortation to concentrate all his attention upon a
problem which, apart from the tremendous interests involved, must appeal so
directly to his love of the complex and the unusual. He now drew out his
notebook and jotted down one or two memoranda.
“You have been very remiss in not coming to me sooner,” said he severely.
“You start me on my investigation with a very serious handicap. It is
inconceivable, for example, that this ivy and this lawn would have yielded
nothing to an expert observer.”
“I am not to blame, Mr. Holmes. His Grace was extremely desirous to avoid
all public scandal. He was afraid of his family unhappiness being dragged before
the world. He has a deep horror of anything of the kind.”
“But there has been some official investigation?”
“Yes, sir, and it has proved most disappointing. An apparent clue was at once
obtained, since a boy and a young man were reported to have been seen leaving
a neighbouring station by an early train. Only last night we had news that the
couple had been hunted down in Liverpool, and they prove to have no
connection whatever with the matter in hand. Then it was that in my despair and
disappointment, after a sleepless night, I came straight to you by the early train.”
“I suppose the local investigation was relaxed while this false clue was being
followed up?”
“It was entirely dropped.”
“So that three days have been wasted. The affair has been most deplorably
handled.”16
“I feel it and admit it.”
“And yet the problem should be capable of ultimate solution. I shall be very
happy to look into it. Have you been able to trace any connection between the
missing boy and this German master?”
“None at all.”
“Was he in the master’s class?”
“No; he never exchanged a word with him, so far as I know.”
“That is certainly very singular. Had the boy a bicycle?”
“No.”
“Was any other bicycle missing?”
“No.”
“Is that certain?”
“Quite.”
“Well, now, you do not mean to seriously suggest that this German rode off
upon a bicycle in the dead of the night bearing the boy in his arms?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then what is the theory in your mind?”
“The bicycle may have been a blind. It may have been hidden somewhere, and
the pair gone off on foot.”
“Quite so; but it seems rather an absurd blind, does it not? Were there other
bicycles in this shed?”
“Several.”
“Would he not have hidden a couple, had he desired to give the idea that they
had gone off upon them?”
“I suppose he would.”
“What is the theory in your mind?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Of course he would. The blind theory won’t do. But the incident is an
admirable starting-point for an investigation. After all, a bicycle is not an easy
thing to conceal or to destroy. One other question. Did anyone call to see the boy
on the day before he disappeared?”
“No.”
“Did he get any letters?”
“Yes; one letter.”
“From whom?”
“From his father.”
“Do you open the boys’ letters?”
“No.”
“How do you know it was from the father?”
“The coat of arms was on the envelope, and it was addressed in the Duke’s
peculiar stiff hand. Besides, the Duke remembers having written.”
“When had he a letter before that?”
“Not for several days.”
“Had he ever one from France?”
“No; never.”
“You see the point of my questions, of course. Either the boy was carried off
by force or he went of his own free will. In the latter case, you would expect that
some prompting from outside would be needed to make so young a lad do such a
thing. If he has had no visitors, that prompting must have come in letters. Hence
I try to find out who were his correspondents.”
“I fear I cannot help you much. His only correspondent, so far as I know, was
his own father.”
“Who wrote to him on the very day of his disappearance. Were the relations
between father and son very friendly?”
“His Grace is never very friendly with anyone. He is completely immersed in
large public questions, and is rather inaccessible to all ordinary emotions. But he
was always kind to the boy in his own way.”
“But the sympathies of the latter were with the mother?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say so?”
“No.”
“The Duke, then?”
“Good heavens, no!”
“Then how could you know?”
“I have had some confidential talk with Mr. James Wilder, his Grace’s
secretary.17 It was he who gave me the information about Lord Saltire’s
feelings.”
“I see. By the way, that last letter of the Duke’s—was it found in the boy’s
room after he was gone?”
“No; he had taken it with him. I think, Mr. Holmes, it is time that we were
leaving for Euston.”18
“I will order a four-wheeler. In a quarter of an hour we shall be at your
service. If you are telegraphing home, Mr. Huxtable, it would be well to allow
the people in your neighbourhood to imagine that the inquiry is still going on in
Liverpool, or wherever else that red herring led your pack. In the meantime, I
will do a little quiet work at your own doors, and perhaps the scent is not so cold
but that two old hounds like Watson and myself19 may get a sniff of it.”
That evening found us in the cold, bracing atmosphere of the Peak country, in
which Dr. Huxtable’s famous school is situated. It was already dark when we
reached it. A card was lying on the hall table, and the butler whispered
something to his master, who turned to us with agitation in every heavy feature.
The Duke and his secretary.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“The Duke is here,” said he. “The Duke and Mr. Wilder are in the study.
Come, gentlemen, and I will introduce you.”
I was, of course, familiar with the pictures of the famous statesman, but the
man himself was very different from his representation. He was a tall and stately
person, scrupulously dressed, with a drawn, thin face, and a nose which was
grotesquely curved and long. His complexion was of a dead pallor, which was
more startling by contrast with a long, dwindling beard of vivid red, which
flowed down over his white waistcoat, with his watch-chain gleaming through
its fringe. Such was the stately presence who looked stonily at us from the centre
of Dr. Huxtable’s hearthrug. Beside him stood a very young man, whom I
understood to be Wilder, the private secretary. He was small, nervous, alert, with
intelligent light-blue eyes and mobile features.20 It was he who at once, in an
incisive and positive tone, opened the conversation.
“I called this morning, Dr. Huxtable, too late to prevent you from starting for
London. I learned that your object was to invite Mr. Sherlock Holmes to
undertake the conduct of this case. His Grace is surprised, Dr. Huxtable, that you
should have taken such a step without consulting him.”
“When I learned that the police had failed—”
“His Grace is by no means convinced that the police have failed.”
“But surely, Mr. Wilder—”
“You are well aware, Dr. Huxtable, that his Grace is particularly anxious to
avoid all public scandal. He prefers to take as few people as possible into his
confidence.”
“The matter can be easily remedied,” said the browbeaten doctor; “Mr.
Sherlock Holmes can return to London by the morning train.”
“Hardly that, Doctor, hardly that,” said Holmes, in his blandest voice. “This
northern air is invigorating and pleasant, so I propose to spend a few days upon
your moors, and to occupy my mind as best I may. Whether I have the shelter of
your roof or of the village inn is, of course, for you to decide.”
I could see that the unfortunate doctor was in the last stage of indecision, from
which he was rescued by the deep, sonorous voice of the red-bearded Duke,
which boomed out like a dinner-gong.
“Beside him stood a very young man.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“I agree with Mr. Wilder, Dr. Huxtable, that you would have done wisely to
consult me. But since Mr. Holmes has already been taken into your confidence,
it would indeed be absurd that we should not avail ourselves of his services. Far
from going to the inn, Mr. Holmes, I should be pleased if you would come and
stay with me at Holdernesse Hall.”
“I thank your Grace. For the purposes of my investigation, I think that it
would be wiser for me to remain at the scene of the mystery.”
“Just as you like, Mr. Holmes. Any information which Mr. Wilder or I can
give you is, of course, at your disposal.”
“It will probably be necessary for me to see you at the Hall,” said Holmes. “I
would only ask you now, sir, whether you have formed any explanation in your
own mind as to the mysterious disappearance of your son?”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“Excuse me if I allude to that which is painful to you, but I have no
alternative. Do you think that the Duchess had anything to do with the matter?”
The great minister showed perceptible hesitation.
“I do not think so,” he said, at last.
“The other most obvious explanation is that the child has been kidnapped for
the purpose of levying ransom. You have not had any demand of the sort?”
“No, sir.”
“One more question, your Grace. I understand that you wrote to your son
upon the day when this incident occurred.”
“No, I wrote upon the day before.”
“Exactly. But he received it on that day?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anything in your letter which might have unbalanced him or
induced him to take such a step?”
“No, sir, certainly not.”
“Did you post that letter yourself?”
The nobleman’s reply was interrupted by his secretary, who broke in with
some heat.
“His Grace is not in the habit of posting letters himself,” said he. “This letter
was laid with others upon the study table, and I myself put them in the postbag.”
“You are sure this one was among them?”
“Yes, I observed it.”
“How many letters did your Grace write that day?”
“Twenty or thirty. I have a large correspondence. But surely this—is
somewhat irrelevant?”
“Not entirely,” said Holmes.
“For my own part,” the Duke continued, “I have advised the police to turn
their attention to the South of France. I have already said that I do not believe
that the Duchess would encourage so monstrous an action, but the lad had the
most wrong-headed opinions, and it is possible that he may have fled to her,
aided and abetted by this German. I think, Dr. Huxtable, that we will now return
to the Hall.”
I could see that there were other questions which Holmes would have wished
to put but the nobleman’s abrupt manner showed that the interview was at an
end. It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his
intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest
every fresh question would throw a fiercer light into the discreetly shadowed
corners of his ducal history.
When the nobleman and his secretary had left, my friend flung himself at once
with characteristic eagerness into the investigation.
The boy’s chamber was carefully examined, and yielded nothing save the
absolute conviction that it was only through the window that he could have
escaped. The German master’s room and effects gave no further clue. In his case
a trailer of ivy had given way under his weight, and we saw by the light of a
lantern the mark on the lawn where his heels had come down. That one dint in
the short, green grass was the only material witness left of this inexplicable
nocturnal flight.
Sherlock Holmes left the house alone, and only returned after eleven. He had
obtained a large ordnance map of the neighbourhood, and this he brought into
my room, where he laid it out on the bed, and, having balanced the lamp in the
middle of it, he began to smoke over it, and occasionally to point out objects of
interest with the reeking amber of his pipe.
“This case grows upon me, Watson,” said he. “There are decidedly some
points of interest in connection with it. In this early stage, I want you to realize
those geographical features which may have a good deal to do with our
investigation.
“Look at this map. This dark square is the Priory School. I’ll put a pin in it.
Now, this line is the main road.21 You see that it runs east and west past the
school, and you see also that there is no side road for a mile either way. If these
two folk passed away by road, it was this road.”
“Exactly.”
“By a singular and happy chance, we are able to some extent to check what
passed along this road during the night in question. At this point, where my pipe
is now resting, a county constable was on duty from twelve to six. It is, as you
perceive, the first cross-road on the east side. This man declares that he was not
absent from his post for an instant,22 and he is positive that neither boy nor man
could have gone that way unseen. I have spoken with this policeman to-night,
and he appears to me to be a perfectly reliable person. That blocks this end. We
have now to deal with the other. There is an inn here, the ‘Red Bull’, the
landlady of which was ill. She had sent to Mackleton for a doctor, but he did not
arrive until morning, being absent at another case. The people at the inn were
alert all night, awaiting his coming, and one or other of them seems to have
continually had an eye upon the road. They declare that no one passed. If their
evidence is good, then we are fortunate enough to be able to block the west, and
also to be able to say that the fugitives did not use the road at all.”
“But the bicycle?” I objected.
“Quite so. We will come to the bicycle presently.23 To continue our
reasoning: if these people did not go by the road, they must have traversed the
country to the north of the house or to the south of the house. That is certain. Let
us weigh the one against the other. On the south of the house is, as you perceive,
a large district of arable land, cut up into small fields, with stone walls between
them. There, I admit that a bicycle is impossible. We can dismiss the idea. We
turn to the country on the north. Here there lies a grove of trees, marked as the
‘Ragged Shaw,’ and on the farther side stretches a great rolling moor, Lower
Gill Moor, extending for ten miles and sloping gradually upward.24 Here, at one
side of this wilderness, is Holdernesse Hall, ten miles25 by road, but only six
across the moor. It is a peculiarly desolate plain. A few moor farmers have small
holdings, where they rear sheep and cattle.26 Except these, the plover and the
curlew are the only inhabitants until you come to the Chesterfield high road.
There is a church there, you see, a few cottages, and an inn. Beyond that the hills
become precipitous. Surely it is here to the north that our quest must lie.”
“But the bicycle?” I persisted.
“Well, well!” said Holmes impatiently. “A good cyclist does not need a high
road. The moor is intersected with paths, and the moon was at the full. Halloa!
what is this?”
There was an agitated knock at the door, and an instant afterwards Dr.
Huxtable was in the room. In his hand he held a blue cricket-cap, with a white
chevron on the peak.
“At last we have a clue!” he cried. “Thank heaven! at last we are on the dear
boy’s track! It is his cap.”
“Where was it found?”
“In the van of the gipsies who camped on the moor. They left on Tuesday. Today the police traced them down and examined their caravan. This was found.”
“How do they account for it?”
“They shuffled and lied—said that they found it on the moor on Tuesday
morning. They know where he is, the rascals! Thank goodness, they are all safe
under lock and key. Either the fear of the law or the Duke’s purse will certainly
get out of them all that they know.”
“So far, so good,” said Holmes, when the doctor had at last left the room. “It
at least bears out the theory that it is on the side of the Lower Gill Moor that we
must hope for results. The police have really done nothing locally, save the
arrest of these gipsies. Look here, Watson! There is a watercourse across the
moor. You see it marked here in the map. In some parts it widens into a morass.
This is particularly so in the region between Holdernesse Hall and the school. It
is vain to look elsewhere for tracks in this dry weather; but at that point there is
certainly a chance of some record being left. I will call you early to-morrow
morning, and you and I will try if we can throw some little light upon the
mystery.”
The day was just breaking when I woke to find the long, thin form of Holmes
by my bedside. He was fully dressed, and had apparently already been out.
“I have done the lawn and the bicycle shed,” said he. “I have also had a
ramble through the Ragged Shaw. Now, Watson, there is cocoa ready in the next
room. I must beg you to hurry, for we have a great day before us.”
His eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master
workman who sees his work lie ready before him.27 A very different Holmes,
this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street.
I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was
indeed a strenuous day that awaited us.
And yet it opened in the blackest disappointment. With high hopes we struck
across the peaty, russet moor, intersected with a thousand sheep paths, until we
came to the broad, light-green belt which marked the morass between us and
Holdernesse. Certainly, if the lad had gone homeward, he must have passed this,
and he could not pass it without leaving his traces. But no sign of him or the
German could be seen. With a darkening face my friend strode along the margin,
eagerly observant of every muddy stain upon the mossy surface. Sheep-marks
there were in profusion, and at one place, some miles down, cows had left their
tracks. Nothing more.28
“Check number one,” said Holmes, looking gloomily over the rolling expanse
of the moor, “There is another morass down yonder, and a narrow neck between.
Halloa! halloa! halloa! what have we here?”
We had come on a small black ribbon of pathway. In the middle of it, clearly
marked on the sodden soil was the track of a bicycle.
“Hurrah!” I cried. “We have it.”
But Holmes was shaking his head, and his face was puzzled and expectant
rather than joyous.
“A bicycle, certainly, but not the bicycle,” said he. “I am familiar with fortytwo different impressions left by tyres.29 This, as you perceive, is a Dunlop,30
with a patch upon the outer cover. Heidegger’s tyres were Palmer’s, leaving
longitudinal stripes.31 Aveling, the mathematical master, was sure upon the
point. Therefore, it is not Heidegger’s track.”
“The boy’s, then?”
“Possibly, if we could prove a bicycle to have been in his possession. But this
we have utterly failed to do. This track, as you perceive, was made by a rider
who was going from the direction of the school.”
“Or towards it?”
“No, no, my dear Watson. The more deeply sunk impression is, of course, the
hind wheel, upon which the weight rests. You perceive several places where it
has passed across and obliterated the more shallow mark of the front one. It was
undoubtedly heading away from the school.32 It may or may not be connected
with our inquiry, but we will follow it backwards before we go any farther.”
We did so, and at the end of a few hundred yards lost the tracks as we
emerged from the boggy portion of the moor. Following the path backwards, we
picked out another spot, where a spring trickled across it. Here, once again, was
the mark of the bicycle, though nearly obliterated by the hoofs of cows. After
that there was no sign, but the path ran right on into Ragged Shaw, the wood
which backed on to the school. From this wood the cycle must have emerged.
Holmes sat down on a boulder and rested his chin in his hands. I had smoked
two cigarettes before he moved.33
Tread of Palmer tyre.
Tread of Dunlop tyre.
“Well, well,” said he, at last. “It is, of course, possible that a cunning man
might change the tyres of his bicycle in order to leave unfamiliar tracks. A
criminal who was capable of such a thought is a man whom I should be proud to
do business with. We will leave this question undecided and hark back to our
morass again, for we have left a good deal unexplored.”
We continued our systematic survey of the edge of the sodden portion of the
moor, and soon our perseverance was gloriously rewarded. Right across the
lower part of the bog lay a miry path. Holmes gave a cry of delight as he
approached it. An impression like a fine bundle of telegraph wires ran down the
centre of it. It was the Palmer tyre.
“Here is Herr Heidegger, sure enough!” cried Holmes exultantly. “My
reasoning seems to have been pretty sound, Watson.”
“I congratulate you.”
“But we have a long way still to go. Kindly walk clear of the path. Now let us
follow the trail. I fear that it will not lead very far.”
We found, however, as we advanced, that this portion of the moor is
intersected with soft patches, and, though we frequently lost sight of the track,
we always succeeded in picking it up once more.
“Do you observe,” said Holmes, “that the rider is now undoubtedly forcing the
pace? There can be no doubt of it. Look at this impression, where you get both
tyres clear. The one is as deep as the other. That can only mean that the rider is
throwing his weight on to the handle-bar, as a man does when he is sprinting. By
Jove! he has had a fall.”
There was a broad, irregular smudge covering some yards of the track. Then
there were a few footmarks, and the tyres reappeared once more.
“A side-slip,” I suggested.
Holmes held up a crumpled branch of flowering gorse. To my horror I
perceived that the yellow blossoms were all dabbled with crimson. On the path,
too, and among the heather were dark stains of clotted blood.
“An impression like a fine bundle of telegraph wires ran
down the centre of it.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Bad!” said Holmes. “Bad! Stand clear, Watson! Not an unnecessary footstep!
What do I read here? He fell wounded—he stood up—he remounted—he
proceeded. But there is no other track. Cattle on this side path. He was surely not
gored by a bull? Impossible! But I see no traces of anyone else. We must push
on, Watson. Surely, with stains as well as the track to guide us, he cannot escape
us now.”
Our search was not a very long one. The tracks of the tyre began to curve
fantastically upon the wet and shining path. Suddenly, as I looked ahead, the
gleam of metal caught my eye from amid the thick gorse-bushes. Out of them we
dragged a bicycle, Palmer-tyred, one pedal bent, and the whole front of it
horribly smeared and slobbered with blood. On the other side of the bushes, a
shoe was projecting. We ran round, and there lay the unfortunate rider. He was a
tall man, full-bearded, with spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked out.
The cause of his death was a frightful blow upon the head, which had crushed in
part of his skull. That he could have gone on after receiving such an injury said
much for the vitality and courage of the man. He wore shoes, but no socks, and
his open coat disclosed a nightshirt beneath it. It was undoubtedly the German
master.
Holmes turned the body over reverently, and examined it with great attention.
He then sat in deep thought for a time, and I could see by his ruffled brow that
this grim discovery had not, in his opinion, advanced us much in our inquiry.
“It is a little difficult to know what to do, Watson,” said he, at last. “My own
inclinations are to push this inquiry on, for we have already lost so much time
that we cannot afford to waste another hour. On the other hand, we are bound to
inform the police of the discovery, and to see that this poor fellow’s body is
looked after.”
“I could take a note back.”
“But I need your company and assistance. Wait a bit! There is a fellow cutting
peat up yonder. Bring him over here, and he will guide the police.”
I brought the peasant across, and Holmes despatched the frightened man with
a note to Dr. Huxtable.
“Now, Watson,” said he, “we have picked up two clues this morning. One is
the bicycle with the Palmer tyre, and we see what that has led to. The other is the
bicycle with the patched Dunlop. Before we start to investigate that, let us try to
realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the
essential from the accidental.
“First of all, I wish to impress upon you that the boy certainly left of his own
free will. He got down from his window and he went off, either alone or with
someone.34 That is sure.”
I assented.
“Well, now, let us turn to this unfortunate German master. The boy was fully
dressed when he fled. Therefore, he foresaw what he would do. But the German
went without his socks. He certainly acted on very short notice.”
“There lay the unfortunate rider.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Undoubtedly.”
“Why did he go? Because, from his bedroom window, he saw the flight of the
boy. Because he wished to overtake him and bring him back. He seized his
bicycle, pursued the lad, and in pursuing him met his death.”
“So it would seem.”
“Now I come to the critical part of my argument. The natural action of a man
in pursuing a little boy would be to run after him. He would know that he could
overtake him. But the German does not do so. He turns to his bicycle. I am told
that he was an excellent cyclist. He would not do this if he did not see that the
boy had some swift means of escape.”
“The other bicycle.”
“Let us continue our reconstruction. He meets his death five miles from the
school—not by a bullet, mark you, which even a lad might conceivably
discharge, but by a savage blow dealt by a vigorous arm. The lad, then, had a
companion in his flight. And the flight was a swift one, since it took five miles
before an expert cyclist could overtake them. Yet we survey the ground round
the scene of the tragedy. What do we find? A few cattle-tracks, nothing more. I
took a wide sweep round, and there is no path within fifty yards. Another cyclist
could have had nothing to do with the actual murder, nor were there any human
footmarks.”
“Holmes,” I cried, “this is impossible.”
“Admirable!” he said. “A most illuminating remark. It is impossible as I state
it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for
yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?”
“He could not have fractured his skull in a fall?”
“In a morass, Watson?”
“I am at my wit’s end.”
“Tut, tut; we have solved some worse problems. At least we have plenty of
material, if we can only use it. Come, then, and, having exhausted the Palmer, let
us see what the Dunlop with the patched cover has to offer us.”
We picked up the track and followed it onwards for some distance; but soon
the moor rose into a long, heather-tufted curve, and we left the watercourse
behind us. No further help from tracks could be hoped for. At the spot where we
saw the last of the Dunlop tyre it might equally have led to Holdernesse Hall, the
stately towers of which rose some miles to our left, or to a low, grey village
which lay in front of us and marked the position of the Chesterfield high-road.
As we approached the forbidding and squalid inn, with the sign of a gamecock above the door, Holmes gave a sudden groan, and clutched me by the
shoulder to save himself from falling. He had had one of those violent strains of
the ankle which leave a man helpless. With difficulty he limped up to the door,
where a squat, dark, elderly man was smoking a black clay pipe.
“How are you, Mr. Reuben Hayes?” said Holmes.
“Who are you, and how do you get my name so pat?” the countryman
answered, with a suspicious flash of a pair of cunning eyes.
“With difficulty he limped up to the door.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Well, it’s printed on the board above your head. It’s easy to see a man who is
master of his own house. I suppose you haven’t such a thing as a carriage in your
stables?”
“No, I have not.”
“I can hardly put my foot to the ground.”
“Don’t put it to the ground.”
“But I can’t walk.”
“Well, then, hop.”
Mr. Reuben Hayes’s manner was far from gracious, but Holmes took it with
admirable good-humour.
“Look here, my man,” said he. “This is really rather an awkward fix for me. I
don’t mind how I get on.”
“Neither do I,” said the morose landlord.
“The matter is very important. I would offer you a sovereign for the use of a
bicycle.”
The landlord pricked up his ears.
“Where do you want to go?”
“To Holdernesse Hall.”
“Pals of the Dook, I suppose?” said the landlord, surveying our mud-stained
garments with ironical eyes.
Holmes laughed good-naturedly.
“He’ll be glad to see us, anyhow.”
“Why?”
“Because we bring him news of his lost son.”
The landlord gave a very visible start.
“What, you’re on his track?”
“He has been heard of in Liverpool. They expect to get him every hour.”
Again a swift change passed over the heavy, unshaven face. His manner was
suddenly genial.
“I’ve less reason to wish the Dook well than most men,” said he, “for I was
his head coachman once, and cruel bad he treated me. It was him that sacked me
without a character on the word of a lying corn-chandler.35 But I’m glad to hear
that the young lord was heard of in Liverpool, and I’ll help you to take the news
to the Hall.”
“Thank you,” said Holmes. “We’ll have some food first. Then you can bring
round the bicycle.”
“I haven’t got a bicycle.”
Holmes held up a sovereign.
“I tell you, man, that I haven’t got one. I’ll let you have two horses as far as
the Hall.”
“Well, well,” said Holmes, “we’ll talk about it when we’ve had something to
eat.”
When we were left alone in the stone-flagged kitchen, it was astonishing how
rapidly that sprained ankle recovered. It was nearly nightfall, and we had eaten
nothing since early morning, so that we spent some time over our meal. Holmes
was lost in thought, and once or twice he walked over to the window and stared
earnestly out. It opened on to a squalid courtyard. In the far corner was a smithy,
where a grimy lad was at work. On the other side were the stables. Holmes had
sat down again after one of these excursions, when he suddenly sprang out of his
chair with a loud exclamation.
“By heaven, Watson, I believe that I’ve got it!” he cried. “Yes, yes, it must be
so. Watson, do you remember seeing any cow-tracks to-day?”
“Yes, several.”
“Where?”
“Well, everywhere. They were at the morass, and again on the path, and again
near where poor Heidegger met his death.”
“Exactly. Well, now, Watson, how many cows did you see on the moor?”
“I don’t remember seeing any.”
“Strange, Watson, that we should see tracks all along our line, but never a cow
on the whole moor; very strange, Watson, eh?”
“Yes, it is strange.”
“Now, Watson, make an effort, throw your mind back. Can you see those
tracks upon the path?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Can you recall that the tracks were sometimes like that, Watson”—he
arranged a number of bread-crumbs in this fashion—: : : : :—“and sometimes
like this”—: . : . : . : .—“and occasionally like this”—. . . . . . “Can you
remember that?”
“No, I cannot.”
“But I can. I could swear to it. However, we will go back at our leisure and
verify it. What a blind beetle I have been not to draw my conclusion.”
“And what is your conclusion?”
“Only that it is a remarkable cow which walks, canters, and gallops.36 By
George, Watson, it was no brain of a country publican that thought out such a
blind as that. The coast seems to be clear, save for that lad in the smithy. Let us
slip out and see what we can see.”
There were two rough-haired, unkempt horses in the tumble-down stable.
Holmes raised the hind-leg of one of them and laughed aloud.
“Old shoes, but newly shod—old shoes, but new nails. This case deserves to
be a classic. Let us go across to the smithy.”
The lad continued his work without regarding us. I saw Holmes’s eye darting
to right and left among the litter of iron and wood which was scattered about the
floor. Suddenly, however, we heard a step behind us, and there was the landlord,
his heavy eyebrows drawn down over his savage eyes, his swarthy features
convulsed with passion. He held a short, metal-headed stick in his hand, and he
advanced in so menacing a fashion that I was right glad to feel the revolver in
my pocket.
“You infernal spies!” the man cried. “What are you doing there?”
“Why, Mr. Reuben Hayes,” said Holmes, coolly, “one might think that you
were afraid of our finding something out.”
“You infernal spies!” the man cried.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
The man mastered himself with a violent effort, and his grim mouth loosened
into a false laugh, which was more menacing than his frown.
“You’re welcome to all you can find out in my smithy,” said he. “But look
here, mister, I don’t care for folk poking about my place without my leave, so
the sooner you pay your score and get out of this the better I shall be pleased.”
“All right, Mr. Hayes—no harm meant,” said Holmes. “We have been having
a look at your horses, but I think I’ll walk, after all. It’s not far, I believe.”
“Not more than two miles to the Hall gates. That’s the road to the left.” He
watched us with sullen eyes until we had left his premises.
We did not go very far along the road, for Holmes stopped the instant that the
curve hid us from the landlord’s view.
“We were warm, as the children say, at that inn,” said he. “I seem to grow
colder every step that I take away from it. No, no, I can’t possibly leave it.”
“I am convinced,” said I, “that this Reuben Hayes knows all about it. A more
self-evident villain I never saw.”
“Oh! he impressed you in that way, did he? There are the horses, there is the
smithy. Yes, it is an interesting place, this ‘Fighting Cock’. I think we shall have
another look at it in an unobtrusive way.”
A long, sloping hillside, dotted with grey limestone boulders, stretched behind
us. We had turned off the road, and were making our way up the hill, when,
looking in the direction of Holdernesse Hall, I saw a cyclist coming swiftly
along.
“Get down, Watson!” cried Holmes, with a heavy hand upon my shoulder. We
had hardly sunk from view when the man flew past us on the road. Amid a
rolling cloud of dust, I caught a glimpse of a pale, agitated face—a face with
horror in every lineament, the mouth open, the eyes staring wildly in front. It
was like some strange caricature of the dapper James Wilder whom we had seen
the night before.
“The Duke’s secretary!” cried Holmes. “Come, Watson, let us see what he
does.”
We scrambled from rock to rock, until in a few moments we had made our
way to a point from which we could see the front door of the inn. Wilder’s
bicycle was leaning against the wall beside it. No one was moving about the
house, nor could we catch a glimpse of any faces at the windows. Slowly the
twilight crept down as the sun sank behind the high towers of Holdernesse Hall.
Then, in the gloom, we saw the two sidelamps of a trap light up in the stableyard of the inn, and shortly afterwards heard the rattle of hoofs, as it wheeled out
into the road and tore off at a furious pace in the direction of Chesterfield.
“The man flew past us on the road.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“What do you make of that, Watson?” Holmes whispered.
“It looks like a flight.”
“A single man in a dogcart, so far as I could see.37 Well, it certainly was not
Mr. James Wilder, for there he is at the door.”
A red square of light had sprung out of the darkness. In the middle of it was
the black figure of the secretary, his head advanced, peering out into the night. It
was evident that he was expecting someone. Then at last there were steps in the
road, a second figure was visible for an instant against the light, the door shut,
and all was black once more. Five minutes later a lamp was lit in a room upon
the first floor.
“It seems to be a curious class of custom that is done by the ‘Fighting Cock’,”
said Holmes.
“The bar is on the other side.”
“Quite so. These are what one may call the private guests. Now, what in the
world is Mr. James Wilder doing in that den at this hour of night, and who is the
companion who comes to meet him there? Come, Watson, we must really take a
risk and try to investigate this a little more closely.”
Together we stole down to the road and crept across to the door of the inn.
The bicycle still leaned against the wall. Holmes struck a match and held it to the
back wheel,38 and I heard him chuckle as the light fell upon a patched Dunlop
tyre. Up above us was the lighted window.
“I must have a peep through that, Watson. If you bend your back and support
yourself upon the wall, I think that I can manage.”
An instant later, his feet were on my shoulders, but he was hardly up before he
was down again.
“Come, my friend,” said he, “our day’s work has been quite long enough. I
think that we have gathered all that we can. It’s a long walk to the school, and
the sooner we get started the better.”
He hardly opened his lips during that weary trudge across the moor, nor would
he enter the school when he reached it, but went on to Mackleton Station,
whence he could send some telegrams. Late at night I heard him consoling Dr.
Huxtable, prostrated by the tragedy of his master’s death, and later still he
entered my room as alert and vigorous as he had been when he started in the
morning. “All goes well, my friend,” said he. “I promise that before to-morrow
evening we shall have reached the solution of the mystery.”
At eleven o’clock next morning my friend and I were walking up the famous
yew avenue of Holdernesse Hall. We were ushered through the magnificent
Elizabethan doorway and into his Grace’s study. There we found Mr. James
Wilder, demure and courtly, but with some trace of that wild terror of the night
before still lurking in his furtive eyes and in his twitching features.
“I heard him chuckle as the light fell upon a patched
Dunlop tyre.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“You have come to see his Grace? I am sorry; but the fact is that the Duke is
far from well. He has been very much upset by the tragic news. We received a
telegram from Dr. Huxtable yesterday afternoon, which told us of your
discovery.”
“I must see the Duke, Mr. Wilder.”
“But he is in his room.”
“Then I must go to his room.”
“I believe he is in his bed.”
“I will see him there.”
Holmes’s cold and inexorable manner showed the secretary that it was useless
to argue with him.
“Very good, Mr. Holmes, I will tell him that you are here.”
After half an hour’s delay, the great nobleman appeared. His face was more
cadaverous than ever, his shoulders had rounded, and he seemed to me to be an
altogether older man than he had been the morning before. He greeted us with a
stately courtesy and seated himself at his desk, his red beard streaming down on
the table.
“Well, Mr. Holmes?” said he.
An instant later, his feet were on my shoulder.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
But my friend’s eyes were fixed upon the secretary, who stood by his master’s
chair.
“I think, your Grace, that I could speak more freely in Mr. Wilder’s absence.”
The man turned a shade paler and cast a malignant glance at Holmes.
“If your Grace wishes—”
“Yes, yes; you had better go. Now, Mr. Holmes, what have you to say?”
My friend waited until the door had closed behind the retreating secretary.
“The fact is, your Grace,” said he, “that my colleague, Dr. Watson, and myself
had an assurance from Dr. Huxtable that a reward had been offered in this case. I
should like to have this confirmed from your own lips.”
“Certainly, Mr. Holmes.”
“It amounted, if I am correctly informed, to five thousand pounds to anyone
who will tell you where your son is?”
“Exactly.”
“And another thousand to the man who will name the person or persons who
keep him in custody?”
“Exactly.”
“Under the latter heading is included, no doubt, not only those who may have
taken him away, but also those who conspire to keep him in his present
position?”
“Yes, yes,” cried the Duke, impatiently. “If you do your work well, Mr.
Sherlock Holmes, you will have no reason to complain of niggardly treatment.”
My friend rubbed his thin hands together with an appearance of avidity which
was a surprise to me, who knew his frugal tastes.
“I fancy that I see your Grace’s cheque-book upon the table,” said he. “I
should be glad if you would make me out a cheque for six thousand pounds. It
would be as well, perhaps, for you to cross it.39 The Capital and Counties Bank,
Oxford Street branch40 are my agents.”
His Grace sat very stern and upright in his chair and looked stonily at my
friend.
“Is this a joke, Mr. Holmes? It is hardly a subject for pleasantry.”
“Not at all, your Grace. I was never more earnest in my life.”
“What do you mean, then?”
“I mean that I have earned the reward. I know where your son is, and I know
some, at least, of those who are holding him.”
The Duke’s beard had turned more aggressively red than ever against his
ghastly white face.
“Where is he?” he gasped.
“He is, or was last night, at the Fighting Cock Inn, about two miles from your
park gate.”
The Duke fell back in his chair.
“And whom do you accuse?”
Sherlock Holmes’s answer was an astounding one. He stepped swiftly forward
and touched the Duke upon the shoulder.
“I accuse you,” said he. “And now, your Grace, I’ll trouble you for that
cheque.”
Never shall I forget the Duke’s appearance as he sprang up and clawed with
his hand, like one who is sinking into an abyss. Then, with an extraordinary
effort of aristocratic self-command, he sat down and sank his face in his hands. It
was some minutes before he spoke.
“How much do you know?” he asked at last, without raising his head.
“I saw you together last night.”
“Does anyone else beside your friend know?”
“I have spoken to no one.”
The Duke took a pen in his quivering fingers and opened his cheque-book.
“I shall be as good as my word, Mr. Holmes. I am about to write your cheque,
however unwelcome the information which you have gained may be to me.
When the offer was first made I little thought the turn which events might take.
But you and your friend are men of discretion, Mr. Holmes?”
“I hardly understand your Grace.”
“I must put it plainly, Mr. Holmes. If only you two know of the incident, there
is no reason why it should go any farther. I think twelve thousand pounds41 is
the sum that I owe you, is it not?”
But Holmes smiled and shook his head.
“I fear, your Grace, that matters can hardly be arranged so easily. There is the
death of this schoolmaster to be accounted for.”
“But James knew nothing of that. You cannot hold him responsible for that. It
was the work of this brutal ruffian whom he had the misfortune to employ.”
“I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime, he
is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.”
“Morally, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right. But surely not in the eyes of
the law. A man cannot be condemned for a murder at which he was not
present,42 and which he loathes and abhors as much as you do. The instant that
he heard of it he made a complete confession to me, so filled was he with horror
and remorse. He lost not an hour in breaking entirely with the murderer. Oh, Mr.
Holmes, you must save him—you must save him! I tell you that you must save
him!” The Duke had dropped the last attempt at self-command, and was pacing
the room with a convulsed face and with his clenched hands raving in the air. At
last he mastered himself and sat down once more at his desk. “I appreciate your
conduct in coming here before you spoke to anyone else,” said he. “At least we
may take counsel how far we can minimize this hideous scandal.”
“Exactly,” said Holmes. “I think, your Grace, that this can only be done by
absolute frankness between us. I am disposed to help your Grace to the best of
my ability; but, in order to do so, I must understand to the last detail how the
matter stands. I realize that your words applied to Mr. James Wilder, and that he
is not the murderer.”
“No; the murderer has escaped.”
Sherlock Holmes smiled demurely.
“Your Grace can hardly have heard of any small reputation which I possess,
or you would not imagine that it is so easy to escape me. Mr. Reuben Hayes was
arrested at Chesterfield on my information at eleven o’clock last night. I had a
telegram from the head of the local police before I left the school this morning.”
The Duke leaned back in his chair and stared with amazement at my friend.
“You seem to have powers that are hardly human,” said he. “So Reuben
Hayes is taken? I am right glad to hear it, if it will not react upon the fate of
James.”
“Your secretary?”
“No, sir; my son.”
“The murderer has escaped.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
It was Holmes’s turn to look astonished.
“I confess that this is entirely new to me, your Grace. I must beg you to be
more explicit.”
“I will conceal nothing from you. I agree with you that complete frankness,
however painful it may be to me, is the best policy in this desperate situation to
which James’s folly and jealousy have reduced us. When I was a very young
man, Mr. Holmes, I loved with such a love as comes only once in a lifetime. I
offered the lady marriage, but she refused it on the grounds that such a match
might mar my career. Had she lived, I would certainly never have married
anyone else. She died, and left this one child, whom for her sake I have
cherished and cared for. I could not acknowledge the paternity to the world, but I
gave him the best of educations, and since he came to manhood I have kept him
near my person. He surprised my secret, and has presumed ever since upon the
claim which he has upon me, and upon his power of provoking a scandal which
would be abhorrent to me. His presence had something to do with the unhappy
issue of my marriage. Above all, he hated my young legitimate heir from the
first with a persistent hatred. You may well ask me why, under these
circumstances, I still kept James under my roof. I answer that it was because I
could see his mother’s face in his, and that for her dear sake there was no end to
my long-suffering. All her pretty ways, too—there was not one of them which he
could not suggest and bring back to my memory. I could not send him away. But
I feared so much lest he should do Arthur—that is, Lord Saltire—a mischief that
I despatched him for safety to Dr. Huxtable’s school.
“James came into contact with this fellow Hayes because the man was a
tenant of mine, and James acted as agent. The fellow was a rascal from the
beginning; but, in some extraordinary way, James became intimate with him. He
had always a taste for low company. When James determined to kidnap Lord
Saltire, it was of this man’s service that he availed himself. You remember that I
wrote to Arthur upon that last day. Well, James opened the letter and inserted a
note asking Arthur to meet him in a little wood called the Ragged Shaw, which
is near to the school. He used the Duchess’s name, and in that way got the boy to
come. That evening James cycled over—I am telling you what he has himself
confessed to me—and he told Arthur, whom he met in the wood, that his mother
longed to see him, that she was awaiting him on the moor, and that if he would
come back into the wood at midnight he would find a man with a horse, who
would take him to her. Poor Arthur fell into the trap. He came to the
appointment and found this fellow Hayes with a led pony. Arthur mounted, and
they set off together. It appears—though this James only heard yesterday—that
they were pursued, that Hayes struck the pursuer with his stick, and that the man
died of his injuries. Hayes brought Arthur to his public-house, the ‘Fighting
Cock,’ where he was confined in an upper room, under the care of Mrs. Hayes,
who is a kindly woman, but entirely under the control of her brutal husband.
“Well, Mr. Holmes, that was the state of affairs when I first saw you two days
ago. I had no more idea of the truth than you. You will ask me what was James’s
motive in doing such a deed. I answer that there was a great deal which was
unreasoning and fanatical in the hatred which he bore my heir. In his view he
should himself have been heir of all my estates, and he deeply resented those
social laws which made it impossible.43 At the same time, he had a definite
motive also. He was eager that I should break the entail,44 and he was of opinion
that it lay in my power to do so. He intended to make a bargain with me—to
restore Arthur if I would break the entail, and so make it possible for the estate
to be left to him by will. He knew well that I should never willingly invoke the
aid of the police against him. I say that he would have proposed such a bargain
to me; but he did not actually do so, for events moved too quickly for him, and
he had not time to put his plans into practice.
“What brought all his wicked scheme to wreck was your discovery of this
man Heidegger’s dead body. James was seized with horror at the news. It came
to us yesterday, as we sat together in this study. Dr. Huxtable had sent a
telegram. James was so overwhelmed with grief and agitation that my
suspicions, which had never been entirely absent, rose instantly to a certainty,
and I taxed him with the deed.45 He made a complete voluntary confession.46
Then he implored me to keep his secret for three days longer, so as to give his
wretched accomplice a chance of saving his guilty life. I yielded—as I have
always yielded—to his prayers, and instantly James hurried off to the ‘Fighting
Cock’ to warn Hayes and give him the means of flight. I could not go there by
daylight without provoking comment, but as soon as night fell I hurried off to
see my dear Arthur. I found him safe and well, but horrified beyond expression
by the dreadful deed he had witnessed. In deference to my promise, and much
against my will, I consented to leave him there for three days, under the charge
of Mrs. Hayes, since it was evident that it was impossible to inform the police
where he was without telling them also who was the murderer, and I could not
see how that murderer could be punished without ruin to my unfortunate James.
You asked for frankness, Mr. Holmes, and I have taken you at your word, for I
have now told you everything without an attempt at circumlocution or
concealment. Do you in your turn be as frank with me.”
“I will,” said Holmes. “In the first place, your Grace, I am bound to tell you
that you have placed yourself in a most serious position in the eyes of the law.
You have condoned a felony, and you have aided the escape of a murderer; for I
cannot doubt that any money which was taken by James Wilder to aid his
accomplice in his flight came from your Grace’s purse.”
The Duke bowed his assent.
“This is, indeed, a most serious matter. Even more culpable in my opinion,
your Grace, is your attitude towards your younger son. You leave him in this den
for three days.”
“Under solemn promises—”
“What are promises to such people as these? You have no guarantee that he
will not be spirited away again. To humour your guilty elder son you have
exposed your innocent younger son to imminent and unnecessary danger. It was
a most unjustifiable action.”
The proud lord of Holdernesse was not accustomed to be so rated in his own
ducal hall. The blood flushed into his high forehead, but his conscience held him
dumb.
“I will help you, but on one condition only. It is that you ring for the footman
and let me give such orders as I like.”
Without a word, the Duke pressed the electric bell. A servant entered.
“You will be glad to hear,” said Holmes, “that your young master is found. It
is the Duke’s desire that the carriage shall go at once to the Fighting Cock Inn to
bring Lord Saltire home.
“Now,” said Holmes, when the rejoicing lackey had disappeared, “having
secured the future, we can afford to be more lenient with the past. I am not in an
official position, and there is no reason, so long as the ends of justice are served,
why I should disclose all that I know. As to Hayes, I say nothing. The gallows
awaits him, and I would do nothing to save him from it. What he will divulge I
cannot tell, but I have no doubt that your Grace could make him understand that
it is to his interest to be silent.47 From the police point of view he will have
kidnapped the boy for the purpose of ransom. If they do not themselves find it
out, I see no reason why I should prompt them to take a broader point of view. I
would warn your Grace, however, that the continued presence of Mr. James
Wilder in your household can only lead to misfortune.”
“I understand that, Mr. Holmes, and it is already settled that he shall leave me
forever, and go to seek his fortune in Australia.”
“In that case, your Grace, since you have yourself stated that any unhappiness
in your married life was caused by his presence, I would suggest that you make
such amends as you can to the Duchess, and that you try to resume those
relations which have been so unhappily interrupted.”
“That also I have arranged, Mr. Holmes. I wrote to the Duchess this morning.”
“In that case,” said Holmes, rising, “I think that my friend and I can
congratulate ourselves upon several most happy results from our little visit to the
North. There is one other small point upon which I desire some light. This fellow
Hayes had shod his horses with shoes which counterfeited the tracks of cows.
Was it from Mr. Wilder that he learned so extraordinary a device?”
The Duke stood in thought for a moment, with a look of intense surprise on
his face. Then he opened a door and showed us into a large room furnished as a
museum. He led the way to a glass case in a corner, and pointed to the
inscription.
“These shoes,” it ran, “were dug up in the moat of Holdernesse Hall. They are
for the use of horses, but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron,48 so
as to throw pursuers off the track. They are supposed to have belonged to some
of the marauding Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages.”
Holmes opened the case, and moistening his finger he passed it along the
shoe. A thin film of recent mud was left upon his skin.
“Thank you,” said he, as he replaced the glass. “It is the second most
interesting object that I have seen in the North.”
“And the first?”
Holmes folded up his cheque, and placed it carefully in his notebook. “I am a
poor man,”49 said he, as he patted it affectionately, and thrust it into the depths
of his inner pocket.
THE DUKE OF HOLDERNESSE
WATSON’S attempts to conceal the Duke of Holdernesse’s real identity are
deemed “somewhat clumsy” by Michael Harrison, who points out in his In the
Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes that the dukes of Norfolk similarly owned a great
deal of land in the north of England (in Sheffield) and that Watson’s description
of the Duke of Holdernesse, with his “long, dwindling beard of vivid red,” calls
to mind the Duke of Norfolk who served as postmaster-general toward the end
of the Victorian era.
Several other scholars seek to pierce the veil of the duke’s identity, though
they come to different conclusions than does Harrison. Julian Wolff, in his
Practical Handbook of Sherlockian Heraldry, proposes that the duke could have
been a member of the Neville family, whose coat of arms features a saltire (a
cross honoring St. Andrew), which in turn may have given Watson the idea to
name the duke’s son Lord Saltire; yet several other inconsistencies lead Wolff
ultimately to discard the Neville family in favor of Spencer Compton Cavendish,
the 8th Duke of Devonshire, K.G., P.C. (1833–1908). Among several other points
of comparison, the Duke of Devonshire’s residence, Hardwick Hall, appears to
match up well with Holdernesse Hall.
While T. H. B. Symons concurs that the 8th Duke of Devonshire seems a
likely choice, he notes that the character description provided by Watson does
not seem to match that of the estimable political figure who was “courteous and
honest” and who, despite being leading the Liberal opposition, enjoyed the
favour of both Disraeli—who nicknamed the duke (who also bore the title of
Marquis of Hartington) “Harty-Tarty”—and Queen Victoria. The Duke of
Holdernesse, by contrast, is depicted by Watson as being cold and abrupt, wary
of Holmes’s assistance in the disappearance of his son. “Similarly,” Symons
continues, “it is difficult to recognize in Watson’s duke, who went to pieces on
learning of the murder of Herr Heidegger by Reuben Hayes, the great
Devonshire who had in 1882 to cope with the wretched murder of his brother by
Fenian assassins, and who had the firmness to insist that Gladstone send an army
to the relief of General Gordon.” Symons also looks at the figure of Lord Saltire,
who appears to throw another wrench into the equation. According to Symons,
the Duke of Devonshire had a son, the 9th Duke of Devonshire, who was born in
1868 and would have been around thirty-three years old at the time of “The
Priory School”—not ten years old. (“The Priory School” is thought to have
occurred in 1901. Looking at it in the reverse manner, Symons points out that the
9th Duke became governor-general of Canada in 1916, at which point Lord
Saltire would have been only twenty-five and hardly prepared to assume such an
important post.) But Symons’s grasp of the Cavendishes is a bit confused. Sir
Victor Christian William Cavendish, the 9th Duke of Devonshire, was in fact the
8th Duke’s nephew, the son of his younger brother, Lord Edward Cavendish
(1838–1891). The 8th Duke himself actually had no children at all, and the title
was passed down to his nephew upon the 8th Duke’s death in 1908.
Richard Lancelyn Green notes that the 8th Duke of Devonshire was Lord
Lieutenant of Derbyshire, a Lord of the Admiralty, and Secretary of State for
India, a title given to the Duke of Holdernesse in the original manuscript version
of “The Priory School.” Bernard Davies points out that the only “Chief
Secretary” title then extant was Chief Secretary of State for Ireland, a title also
held by the 8th Duke of Devonshire. His detailed examination of the correlations
between the curriculum vitæ of “Holdernesse” and “Devonshire” is compelling
and seems to represent the consensus of opinion.
Nonetheless, there remains room for debate: Marshall S. Berdan, in “The
Great Derbyshire Duke-Out,” nominates the second Baron Newton, who, while
lacking many of the requisite characteristics, fit Berdan’s geographical
conclusions. In short, it may be said that no single figure matches all of the
geographical, political, and personal characteristics of “one of the greatest
subjects of the Crown”—a testament to Watson’s obfuscatory powers.
WHICH WAY DID THE BICYCLE TRAVEL?
CRUCIAL to Holmes’s investigation of “The Priory School” is his deduction
concerning the direction of travel of the fleeing bicycle, based solely on the tyre
tracks. William S. Baring-Gould complains, “Much, perhaps too much, has been
written about these tyre tracks.” Holmes’s deduction respecting the direction in
which the bicycle was travelling is challenged by A. D. Galbraith in “The Real
Moriarty,” who, typical of the critics, says, “But it is clear that the tracks would
look the same both ways, unless the tread had some lack of symmetry, or other
peculiarity, and the manner of mounting it on the wheel were known.”
But there are numerous defenders of the Master’s conclusion. T. S. Blakeney
points readers toward an article in a 1917 issue of the Strand Magazine, which
states that the rear wheel of a bicycle would sink more deeply on an upward
slope than a downward one. “In any case,” writes Blakeney, covering his bases,
“Holmes probably had a dozen other small indications to guide him; though he
might mention only one factor, he usually had others in reserve as evidenced by
the twenty-three additional points of difference in the joint letter of the
Cunninghams [‘The Reigate Squires’].”
Even Arthur Conan Doyle, in his autobiography Memories and Adventures,
comments on the problem: “I had so many remonstrances upon this point,
varying from pity to anger, that I took out my bicycle and tried. I had imagined
that the observations of the way in which the track of the hind wheel overlaid the
track of the front one when the machine was not running dead straight would
show the direction. I found that my correspondents were right and I was wrong,
for this would be the same whichever way the cycle was moving. On the other
hand the real solution was much simpler, for on an undulating moor the wheels
make a much deeper impression uphill and a more shallow one downhill, so
Holmes was justified of his wisdom after all.”
Several writers suggest that the very nature of bicycle manufacture—with a
stationary rear wheel and a mobile front wheel—necessarily produces distinct
tracks. Others pursue Blakeney’s notion that other indications would have
guided the conclusion. For example, M. Haddon-MacRoberts conducted his own
experiments, riding a bicycle through mud, on which he reports in “On
Determining the Direction of Travel of a Bicycle from Its Tracks.” He
discovered that in order to keep upright, he had to make extensive side-to-side
movements of the front wheel, leaving a track much as that described by
Holmes. These tracks, he found, also allowed him to determine the direction of
travel. Perhaps the most fascinating study is the discovery by Hirayama Yuichi
(which he announces in “The More Deeply Sunk Impression”) of a Japanese
textbook written by Sanekita Masayoshi, published in 1940, entitled Hanzai
Sousa Gijuturon (The Techniques of Crime Detection). Sanekita provides a
detailed chapter on “How to Know the Direction from Wheel Impressions,” with
seven concrete indicators.
Peter Coleman, in “Sherlock Holmes and the Bicycle,” reports on his own
experiments, riding a bicycle over good ground and difficult ground. He
observed that on more difficult terrain, the front wheel had to be turned more to
stay erect and left distinctive tracks. If one could distinguish front tracks from
rear, one could form an opinion about the direction of travel. He concludes that
“when writing the adventure for publication Watson decided that a complicated
explanation would interrupt the flow of his narrative and he settled for a more
simplified version. This has proved unfortunate for Holmes’s reputation as some
sceptics have tended to dismiss his claims regarding bicycle tracks.”
The most authoritative word is from the mathematical text Which Way Did the
Bicycle Go? . . . and Other Intriguing Mathematical Mysteries, by Joseph D. E.
Konhauser, Dan Velleman, and Stan Wagon. The authors provide an elegant
solution involving analysis of tangent segments to the curving bicycle tracks,
demonstrating that the direction can be determined purely from the shape of the
curving tracks. As to Holmes’s explanation: “Balderdash!” they write. “As
observed by Dennis Thron (Dartmouth Medical School), it is true that the rear
wheel would obliterate the track of the front wheel at the crossings, but this
would be true no matter which direction the bicyclist was going. This
information, by itself, does not solve the problem. We could, perhaps, give
Holmes the benefit of the doubt and assume that he carried out the proper
solution in his head. But we cannot believe that he would have expected Watson
to grasp it from his comments alone.”
“The Priory School” appeared in Collier’s Weekly on
January 30, 1904, and in the Strand Magazine in
February 1904.
1
The manuscript, published in facsimile in 1985, reveals
that the fictional town of “Mackleton” was substituted for
“Castleton, in Derbyshire,” a real village ten miles northeast of Buxton, in the north of England.
2
3
Watson mentions this case in “The Blanched Soldier,”
but strangely refers to the “Abbey School” and the “Duke
of Greyminster” when he does so. Both sets of names—
Priory/Holdernesse
and
Abbey/Greyminster—are
patently false. June Thomson suggests that Watson may
have originally chosen the Abbey School and the Duke of
Greyminster as his pseudonyms, meaning to protect the
identities of the participants involved; his publisher might
have then pointed out that such names were similar to
those of the Abbey Grange case and the real Duke of
Westminster. Not wanting to confuse his readers, Watson
would have obligingly altered the pseudonyms to “the
Priory School” and the “Duke of Holdernesse” yet
forgotten to register the change when writing up “The
Blanched Soldier.”
4
The “Foreign Secretary” in the manuscript.
The K.G. stands for “Knight Garter.” The Most Noble
Order of the Garter, as it is officially known, was founded
in 1348 by Edward III and is the highest and most
exclusive level of knighthood. Its origins are murky, but
legend has it that Edward was dancing with a lady of his
court when a blue garter fell off her leg and onto the
floor. Seeking to make light of a mortifying (for the lady)
situation, Edward picked the garter up and placed it on
his own leg, subsequently establishing the Order of the
Garter to commemorate the incident. One of the many
distinguished persons to become a Knight Garter was
5
Winston Churchill, who in fact refused the honour when
it was first offered him in 1945; his party having just
been voted out of office, the prime minister declared, “I
can hardly accept the Order of the Garter from the king
after the people have given me the Order of the Boot.” He
later changed his mind, accepting the knighthood when
he was back in office in 1953.
The P.C. stands for “Privy Councillor.” Having advised
the king on diplomatic matters in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the Privy Council was stripped of
most of its formal authority in the eighteenth century,
when the cabinet officially assumed most advisory duties.
The Privy Council became a largely symbolic body, with
political officers of particularly high ranking (including
the cabinet ministers, the archbishops of Canterbury and
York, and the speaker of the House of Commons) earning
membership as well as the title “the Right Honourable.”
6
As the principal official of an English county, the lord
lieutenant (who is appointed by the Crown) controls the
appointment of justices of the peace and issues
commissions in the local military organisations.
7
Here Watson’s disguise of the location slips a bit: The
ancient lordship of Hallamshire embraced parts of
Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and this historic place name is
preserved in the community of West Hallam, which still
8
remains in Derbyshire.
There is no apparent connection to “Appledore
Towers,” the home of the worst man in London (“Charles
Augustus Milverton”).
9
The manuscript description—perhaps closer to the
truth—reads: “Holdernesse. 6th Duke. K.G., P.C., . . . Baron
Beverley, Earl of Carston. . . . Lord Lieutenant of
Hallamshire since 1900. Married Edith, daughter of Sir
Charles Appleby, 1888. Heir and only child Lord Saltire.
Owns about 250,000 acres. Minerals in Lancashire and
Wales. Address Carlton House Terrace, Holdernesse
Hall, Lancashire. Carson Castle, Bangor, Wales. Lord of
the Admiralty 1871. Chief Secretary of State for India.
Foreign Secretary.”
10
See “The Duke of Holdernesse,” page 972, for a
discussion of the identity of the duke.
11
“Ten thousand pounds” in the manuscript. These are
enormous amounts, even for the era—in today’s
economics, £1,000 is the equivalent of almost £63,000, or
over $100,000.
12
Anne Jordan argues that Holmes did not take the case
out of concern for his own fame or pocket, but that the
substantial reward money offered, along with the duke’s
seeming desire to deal with the matter quietly, gave the
13
detective pause—in other words, Holmes surmised that
the situation “was suggestive of a father who had a guilty
secret; a secret which he was prepared to keep hidden
even if it meant putting his own son’s life at risk.”
Holmes, Jordan guesses, felt an imperative to investigate
if he was to save the life of Holdernesse’s son.
See “The Naval Treaty,” note 35, for a discussion of
the state of preparatory education in England in Victorian
times.
14
A short jacket cut above the waist, first worn by pupils
of Eton College and later adopted by other schools for
their uniforms.
15
Watson here tones down Holmes’s original cutting
remark; the manuscript reads, “Had the object been to
lose the heir instead of to find him, you could have hardly
acted with greater indiscretion.”
16
Watson has suppressed Huxtable’s full and revealingly
sycophantic statement, set forth in the manuscript: “He is
an excellent person—indeed I may tell you that it was
through his good offices that the boy came to my school.
He has the interest of the family very much at heart and
he came to the conclusion that Holdernesse Hall was an
unhealthy atmosphere for a young lad.”
17
18
E. P. Greenwood comments that such a trip would have
been “no mean feat,” as the Derbyshire Peak District,
where the Priory School was likely situated, was only
serviced by the Midland Railway, which left from St.
Pancras Station, not Euston Station.
Watson, anxious to emphasise his rôle, added himself;
the manuscript reads, “one old hound like myself.”
19
Watson modestly suppresses his own observations, to
heighten the drama of Holmes’s later detection: “I
remember that it crossed my mind as I looked at him that
it was impossible to imagine anyone more unlike the man
of affairs whom one would expect to find as the agent of
such a man as the Duke, a powerful nobleman.” Perhaps
he realised that his observations were the result of
hindsight.
20
Another excision made by Watson to conceal the
location: The manuscript reads, “the main road between
Manchester and Buxton.”
21
Surely, as D. Martin Dakin comments, this constable’s
job was a peculiar (if not pointless) one. “[W]hat was the
idea of having a policeman on duty all night on a lonely
road in the heart of the country,” marvels Dakin, “where
apparently no one was likely to pass? It seems an
extraordinary waste of the poor man’s time and energy.
What was he supposed to be doing? He wasn’t even
22
patrolling the roads, just standing still in an isolated spot
for six hours at night!”
Watson has deleted an uncharacteristic remark of
concern expressed by Holmes; the manuscript continues
here: “That unfortunate Dr. Huxtable will be seriously ill,
I fear. Do you hear him pacing up and down the
passage?”
23
Described in the manuscript as “to the Black Gill
Hills.”
24
25
“Twelve miles” in the manuscript.
Omitted from the manuscript is “Here eight miles north
is a simple house, Lower Gill House, now untenanted.”
26
Watson has deleted from the manuscript an artistic
allusion, “the artist whose pigments are set out, and who
has only to blend them into the expression of his own
soul.”
27
Rosemary Michaud, in an article entitled “Who Dung
It? A Trifling Manure-graph,” suggests that “sheepmarks” was Watson’s polite way of referring to sheep
dung. Holmes, the scion of country squires, Michaud
argues, surely could distinguish horse droppings from
cow manure. When Holmes later called himself a “blind
beetle,” he was referring to his overlooking the obvious
28
lack of cow manure where there were “cattle-tracks”—
and perhaps the presence of horse droppings?
Not surprisingly, there were dozens of tyre
manufacturers producing a variety of tyres at the time of
“The Priory School.” Holmes obviously limited his
knowledge to the most popular brands and models.
29
Although the first patent for a pneumatic (air-filled)
tyre was taken out by Robert William Thomson in
England in 1845, it was not until Scottish veterinarian
John Boyd Dunlop sought to improve the performance of
his son’s tricycle—patenting the first pneumatic bicycle
tyre in 1888—that air-filled tyres began to supersede
solid rubber tyres in practicality and popularity. In 1889
Dunlop began manufacturing and marketing his
invention, registering his company as Byrne Brothers
India Rubber Company, Ltd., in 1896, and the Dunlop
Rubber Company, Ltd., in 1900. He began manufacturing
automobile tyres in 1906.
30
The first pneumatic tyres had no treads. As tyres
become fully moulded, plain circumferential ribs were
added to prevent lateral skidding. The Palmer tyre had
such a tread.
Dunlop historian Eric Tompkins reports that by 1891,
marketing departments had seen a prime opportunity
presenting itself on the surface of the tyre, and they began
31
adding the maker’s name as a central feature of the tread.
The logo was typically surrounded by the ribs. Therefore,
“the cyclist had the joy of leaving a trail of DUNLOP
DUNLOP DUNLOP along the road, in the soft mud on
wet days and in the dust on dry ones. . . . And so,”
Tompkins remarks, “an era of fancy tread patterns
started.” Could it be that Holmes differentiated the two
types of tyres not by their treads, but by their logos? No
wonder that he was “familiar with forty-two different
impressions”!
For a discussion of the problem of the tyre-tracks, see
“Which Way Did the Bicycle Travel?” page 973.
32
Curiously, Watson records himself smoking cigarettes
only in one other adventure, namely, The Hound of the
Baskervilles, generally dated in the twentieth century
along with “The Priory School” (see Chronological
Table). Was cigarette smoking a late-acquired and shortlived vice for Watson? Or was the doctor instead unable
to embrace the rebellious image that cigarettes conveyed?
(Holmes, ever the bohemian, smoked cigars, cigarettes,
and various pipes.) According to Iain Gately’s Tobacco:
A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced
Civilization, those who smoked cigarettes once fared
poorly when compared with those who favoured pipes
and cigars; as Gately puts it, “cigarette smokers were
naturally inferior specimens and best shunned.” Oscar
33
Wilde, who smoked cigarettes in order to shock people,
played upon this image of perversity in The Picture of
Dorian Gray (1891), drawling, “A cigarette is the perfect
type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves me
satisfied. What more can one want?” See also “The
Golden Pince-Nez,” note 15, for a discussion of the
history of cigarette smoking in Victorian England.
Watson cuts Holmes’s refreshingly naive statement
that follows in the manuscript: “If it were with someone
then it was probably with someone whom he knew and
trusted. A lad of that age does not willingly set out alone
in the dark with a stranger.”
34
35
A dealer in corn, wheat, and other grains.
In “The Hoof-Marks in ‘The Priory School’ ” S.
Tupper Bigelow contends that the walk of a horse is more
correctly depicted in dots as:
........
........
36
the canter as
....
. . . .
and the gallop more or less as above.
Curiously, the manuscript reads, “Two men in the
dogcart, so far as I could see. Wilder and Hayes—a
curious couple to run together.” Is this evidence of
Holmes’s failing vision? He obviously corrected himself
when he turned and saw Wilder behind him.
37
Watson apparently concluded that a struck match was
more dramatic, for the manuscript reads, “The lamp still
gleamed from the bicycle. Holmes slipped it off, and
turned it towards the machine. I heard him chuckle in the
darkness as the narrow tunnel of vivid light fell upon the
patch of a Dunlop tyre.”
38
Holmes meant that the duke should write the name of
his banking company across the face of the cheque
between two lines provided for that purpose, thereby
limiting deposit to the particular bank (similar to a
limiting endorsement).
39
This was also the bank of Neville St. Clair (“The Man
with the Twisted Lip”) and Arthur Cadogan West (“The
Bruce-Partington Plans”), as well as that of Arthur Conan
Doyle. In 1918 it merged into Lloyds Bank, now Lloyds
40
TSB Bank.
Why £12,000 and not the previously mentioned
£6,000? T. S. Blakeney suggests that the duke might have
felt Watson deserved a reward as well, whereas most
other commentators regard this view as naive and argue
that the duke intended to bribe Holmes into silence.
41
Most American statutes and, until 1957, British law
proscribed “felony murder,” a killing committed while a
felony or “serious crime of violence” is being
perpetrated. Because Wilder was clearly an accessory to
the felony, he would be guilty of the murder as well.
42
Earlier, in a remark eventually cut by Watson from the
manuscript, the duke remarks, “The estates are all
entailed and he was aware that even if I wished I could
not divert them from the direct succession.”
43
A restricted course of descent or inheritance—for
example, a restriction that property could only be left to
the eldest child.
44
To “tax,” in this sense, meaning to call to account or
take to task, to accuse.
45
One may wonder how “voluntary” a confession may be
said to be when one is “taxed . . . with the deed” by one’s
father.
46
One might argue that, no matter how persuasive the
duke was, Reuben Hayes would believe it in his best
interest not to keep quiet. As T. S. Blakeney observes, a
man facing the gallows would be inclined to bring others
down with him; in particular, the duke, whom Hayes
disliked extremely, would certainly not escape unscathed.
“We presume,” writes Blakeney, “that the Crown so
presented their case as to leave out all possible mention
of the Duke, though one hardly sees how they could
avoid bringing in Mr. Wilder’s complicity in the
abduction of Lord Saltire.”
47
In the “Curiosities” section of the Strand Magazine in
May 1903, accompanying a photograph, appeared:
“These false horseshoes were found in the moat at
Birtsmorton Court, near Tewkesbury. It is supposed that
they were used in the time of the Civil Wars, so as to
deceive any person tracking the marks. The one on the
left is supposed to leave the mark of a cow’s hoof, the
one on the right that of a child’s foot.”
48
D. Martin Dakin expresses the view that Holmes’s
statement here is made sarcastically—“in contrast with
the enormous wealth of the duke”—because “The
Adventure of the Priory School” occurs near the end of
Holmes’s career, by which time the detective had
prospered financially.
49
THE ADVENTURE OF BLACK PETER1
It is hard to decide whether the criminal in “Black Peter” is worse
than his victim. This tale of mistaken identity and murder begins with
Holmes returning from the butcher’s, where he has been busy
mysteriously harpooning pigs. We follow Holmes to one of the few
undisguised locations in the Canon, the Brambletye Hotel in Forest
Row, which now sports a Black Peter Bar. There Holmes saves his
client by clearing up a twelve-year-old mystery. Dr. Watson’s account
also includes tantalising references to two more unpublished cases, the
“death of Cardinal Tosca” (explored by J. Regis O’Connor in The
Sacred Seal, 1998), and “the notorious canary-trainer,” revealed in
The Canary Trainer by Nicholas Meyer (author of the highly successful
Seven-Per-Cent Solution, 1974) to be a story of Holmes and the
Phantom of the Opera.
I HAVE NEVER known my friend to be in better form, both mental and physical,
than in the year ’95.2 His increasing fame had brought with it an immense
practice, and I should be guilty of an indiscretion if I were even to hint at the
identity of some of the illustrious clients who crossed our humble threshold in
Baker Street. Holmes, however, like all great artists, lived for his art’s sake, and,
save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse,3 I have seldom known him claim
any large reward for his inestimable services. So unworldly was he—or so
capricious—that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy
where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote
weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose
case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which appealed to his
imagination and challenged his ingenuity.
In this memorable year ’95, a curious and incongruous succession of cases
had engaged his attention, ranging from his famous investigation of the sudden
death of Cardinal Tosca4—an inquiry which was carried out by him at the
express desire of his Holiness the Pope5—down to his arrest of Wilson, the
notorious canary-trainer,6 which removed a plague-spot from the East End of
London. Close on the heels of these two famous cases came the tragedy of
Woodman’s Lee,7 and the very obscure circumstances which surrounded the
death of Captain Peter Carey. No record of the doings of Mr. Sherlock Holmes
would be complete which did not include some account of this very unusual
affair.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
During the first week of July my friend had been absent so often and so long
from our lodgings that I knew he had something on hand. The fact that several
rough-looking men called during that time and inquired for Captain Basil made
me understand that Holmes was working somewhere under one of the numerous
disguises and names with which he concealed his own formidable identity.8 He
had at least five small refuges9 in different parts of London in which he was able
to change his personality. He said nothing of his business to me, and it was not
my habit to force a confidence. The first positive sign which he gave me of the
direction which his investigation was taking was an extraordinary one. He had
gone out before breakfast,10 and I had sat down to mine, when he strode into the
room, his hat upon his head and a huge, barbed-headed spear tucked like an
umbrella under his arm.
“Good gracious, Holmes!” I cried. “You don’t mean to say that you have been
walking about London with that thing?”
“I drove to the butcher’s and back.”
“The butcher’s?”
“And I return with an excellent appetite. There can be no question, my dear
Watson, of the value of exercise before breakfast. But I am prepared to bet that
you will not guess the form that my exercise has taken.”
“‘Good gracious, Holmes!’ I cried. ‘You don’t mean to
say that you have been walking about London with that
thing?’”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“I will not attempt it.”
He chuckled as he poured out the coffee.
“If you could have looked into Allardyce’s back shop you would have seen a
dead pig swung from a hook in the ceiling, and a gentleman in his shirt-sleeves
furiously stabbing at it with this weapon. I was that energetic person, and I have
satisfied myself that by no exertion of my strength can I transfix the pig with a
single blow. Perhaps you would care to try?”
“Not for worlds. But why were you doing this?”
“Because it seemed to me to have an indirect bearing upon the mystery of
Woodman’s Lee. Ah, Hopkins, I got your wire last night, and I have been
expecting you. Come and join us.”
Our visitor was an exceedingly alert man, thirty years of age, dressed in a
quiet tweed suit, but retaining the erect bearing of one who was accustomed to
official uniform. I recognised him at once as Stanley Hopkins, a young police
inspector, for whose future Holmes had high hopes, while he in turn professed
the admiration and respect of a pupil for the scientific methods of the famous
amateur. Hopkins’s brow was clouded and he sat down with an air of deep
dejection.
“No, thank you, sir. I breakfasted before I came round. I spent the night in
town, for I came up yesterday to report.”
“And what had you to report?”
“Failure, sir—absolute failure.”
“You have made no progress?”
“None.”
“Dear me! I must have a look at the matter.”
“I wish to heavens that you would, Mr. Holmes. It’s my first big chance, and I
am at my wit’s end. For goodness’ sake, come down and lend me a hand.”
“Well, well, it just happens that I have already read all the available evidence,
including the report of the inquest, with some care. By the way, what do you
make of that tobacco-pouch, found on the scene of the crime? Is there no clue
there?”
Hopkins looked surprised.
“It was the man’s own pouch, sir. His initials were inside it. And it was of
sealskin—and he an old sealer.”
“But he had no pipe.”
“No, sir, we could find no pipe; indeed, he smoked very little, and yet he
might have kept some tobacco for his friends.”
“No doubt. I only mention it because if I had been handling the case I should
have been inclined to make that the starting-point of my investigation. However,
my friend, Dr. Watson, knows nothing of this matter, and I should be none the
worse for hearing the sequence of events once more. Just give us some short
sketch of the essentials.”
Stanley Hopkins drew a slip of paper from his pocket.
“I have a few dates here which will give you the career of the dead man,
Captain Peter Carey. He was born in ’45—fifty years of age. He was a most
daring and successful seal and whale fisher. In 1883 he commanded the steam
sealer Sea Unicorn, of Dundee. He had then had several successful voyages in
succession, and in the following year, 1884, he retired. After that he travelled for
some years, and finally he bought a small place called Woodman’s Lee, near
Forest Row, in Sussex. There he has lived for six years, and there he died just a
week ago to-day.
“There were some most singular points about the man. In ordinary life he was
a strict Puritan—a silent, gloomy fellow. His household consisted of his wife, his
daughter, aged twenty, and two female servants. These last were continually
changing, for it was never a very cheery situation, and sometimes it became past
all bearing. The man was an intermittent drunkard, and when he had the fit on
him he was a perfect fiend. He has been known to drive his wife and daughter
out of doors in the middle of the night and flog them through the park until the
whole village outside the gates was aroused by their screams.
“He was summoned once for a savage assault upon the old vicar, who had
called upon him to remonstrate with him upon his conduct. In short, Mr.
Holmes, you would go far before you found a more dangerous man than Peter
Carey, and I have heard that he bore the same character when he commanded his
ship. He was known in the trade as Black Peter, and the name was given him,
not only on account of his swarthy features and the colour of his huge beard, but
for the humours which were the terror of all around him. I need not say that he
was loathed and avoided by every one of his neighbours, and that I have not
heard one single word of sorrow about his terrible end.
“You must have read in the account of the inquest about the man’s cabin, Mr.
Holmes, but perhaps your friend here has not heard of it. He had built himself a
wooden outhouse—he always called it ‘the cabin’—a few hundred yards from
his house, and it was here that he slept every night. It was a little, single-roomed
hut, sixteen feet by ten. He kept the key in his pocket, made his own bed,
cleaned it himself, and allowed no other foot to cross the threshold. There are
small windows on each side, which were covered by curtains, and never opened.
One of these windows was turned towards the high-road, and when the light
burned in it at night the folk used to point it out to each other, and wonder what
Black Peter was doing in there. That’s the window, Mr. Holmes, which gave us
one of the few bits of positive evidence that came out at the inquest.
“You remember that a stonemason, named Slater, walking from Forest Row
about one o’clock in the morning—two days before the murder—stopped as he
passed the grounds and looked at the square of light still shining among the
trees. He swears that the shadow of a man’s head turned sideways was clearly
visible on the blind, and that this shadow was certainly not that of Peter Carey,
whom he knew well. It was that of a bearded man, but the beard was short and
bristled forward in a way very different from that of the captain. So he says, but
he had been two hours in the public-house, and it is some distance from the road
to the window. Besides, this refers to the Monday, and the crime was done upon
the Wednesday.
“On the Tuesday Peter Carey was in one of his blackest moods, flushed with
drink and as savage as a dangerous wild beast. He roamed about the house, and
the women ran for it when they heard him coming. Late in the evening he went
down to his own hut. About two o’clock the following morning, his daughter,
who slept with her window open, heard a most fearful yell from that direction,
but it was no unusual thing for him to bawl and shout when he was in drink, so
no notice was taken. On rising at seven one of the maids noticed that the door of
the hut was open, but so great was the terror which the man caused that it was
midday before anyone would venture down to see what had become of him.
Peeping into the open door, they saw a sight which sent them flying, with white
faces, into the village. Within an hour I was on the spot, and had taken over the
case.
“Well, I have fairly steady nerves, as you know, Mr. Holmes, but I give you
my word that I got a shake when I put my head into that little house. It was
droning like a harmonium with the flies and bluebottles, and the floor and walls
were like a slaughter-house. He had called it a cabin, and a cabin it was, sure
enough, for you would have thought that you were in a ship. There was a bunk at
one end, a sea-chest, maps and charts, a picture of the Sea Unicorn, a line of
logbooks on a shelf, all exactly as one would expect to find it in a captain’s
room. And there, in the middle of it was the man himself—his face twisted like a
lost soul in torment, and his great brindled11 beard stuck upwards in his agony.
Right through his broad breast a steel harpoon had been driven, and it had sunk
deep into the wood of the wall behind him. He was pinned like a beetle on a
card. Of course, he was quite dead, and had been so from the instant that he had
uttered that last yell of agony.
“I got a shake when I put my head into that little house”
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
He was pinned like a beetle on a card.
G. A. Dowling, Portland Oregonian, July 30, 1911
“I know your methods, sir, and I applied them. Before I permitted anything to
be moved I examined most carefully the ground outside, and also the floor of the
room. There were no footmarks.”
“Meaning that you saw none?”
“I assure you, sir, that there were none.”
“My good Hopkins, I have investigated many crimes, but I have never yet
seen one which was committed by a flying creature. As long as the criminal
remains upon two legs so long must there be some indentation, some abrasion,
some trifling displacement which can be detected by the scientific searcher. It is
incredible that this blood-bespattered room contained no trace which could have
aided us. I understand, however, from the inquest that there were some objects
which you failed to overlook?”
The young inspector winced at my companion’s ironical comments.
“I was a fool not to call you in at the time, Mr. Holmes. However, that’s past
praying for now. Yes, there were several objects in the room which called for
special attention. One was the harpoon with which the deed was committed. It
had been snatched down from a rack on the wall. Two others remained there,
and there was a vacant place for the third. On the stock was engraved ‘SS. Sea
Unicorn, Dundee.’ This seemed to establish that the crime had been done in a
moment of fury, and that the murderer had seized the first weapon which came
in his way. The fact that the crime was committed at two in the morning, and yet
Peter Carey was fully dressed, suggested that he had an appointment with the
murderer, which is borne out by the fact that a bottle of rum and two dirty
glasses stood upon the table.”
“Yes,” said Holmes; “I think that both inferences are permissible. Was there
any other spirit but rum in the room?”
“Yes, there was a tantalus12 containing brandy and whisky on the sea-chest. It
is of no importance to us, however, since the decanters were full and it had
therefore not been used.”
“For all that, its presence has some significance,” said Holmes. “However, let
us hear some more about the objects which do seem to you to bear upon the
case.”
“There was this tobacco-pouch upon the table.”
“What part of the table?”
“It lay in the middle. It was of coarse sealskin—the straight-haired skin, with
a leather thong to bind it. Inside was ‘P. C.’ on the flap. There was half an ounce
of strong ship’s tobacco13 in it.”
“Excellent! What more?”
Stanley Hopkins drew from his pocket a drab-covered notebook. The outside
was rough and worn, the leaves discoloured. On the first page were written the
initials “J. H. N.” and the date “1883.” Holmes laid it on the table and examined
it in his minute way, while Hopkins and I gazed over each shoulder. On the
second page were the printed letters “C. P. R.,” and then came several sheets of
numbers. Another heading was “Argentine,” another “Costa Rica,” and another
“San Paulo,”14 each with pages of signs and figures after it.
“Holmes examined it in his minute way.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“What do you make of these?” asked Holmes.
“They appear to be lists of Stock Exchange securities. I thought that ‘J. H. N.’
were the initials of a broker, and that ‘C. P. R.’ may have been his client.”
“Try Canadian Pacific Railway,”15 said Holmes.
Stanley Hopkins swore between his teeth, and struck his thigh with his
clenched hand.
“What a fool I have been!” he cried. “Of course it is as you say. Then ‘J. H.
N.’ are the only initials we have to solve. I have already examined the old Stock
Exchange lists, and I can find no one in 1883, either in the House16 or among the
outside brokers, whose initials correspond with these. Yet I feel that the clue is
the most important one that I hold. You will admit, Mr. Holmes, that there is a
possibility that these initials are those of the second person who was present—in
other words, of the murderer. I would also urge that the introduction into the
case of a document relating to large masses of valuable securities gives us for the
first time some indication of a motive for the crime.”
Sherlock Holmes’s face showed that he was thoroughly taken aback by this
new development.
“I must admit both your points,” said he. “I confess that the notebook, which
did not appear at the inquest, modifies any views which I may have formed. I
had come to a theory of the crime in which I can find no place for this. Have you
endeavoured to trace any of the securities here mentioned?”
“Inquiries are now being made at the offices, but I fear that the complete
register of the stockholders of these South American concerns is in South
America, and that some weeks must elapse before we can trace the shares.”
Holmes had been examining the cover of the notebook with his magnifying lens.
“Surely there is some discolouration here,” said he.
“Yes, sir, it is a blood-stain. I told you that I picked the book off the floor.”
“Was the blood-stain above or below?”
“On the side next the boards.”
“Which proves, of course, that the book was dropped after the crime was
committed.”
“Exactly, Mr. Holmes. I appreciated that point, and I conjectured that it was
dropped by the murderer in his hurried flight. It lay near the door.”
“I suppose that none of these securities have been found among the property
of the dead man?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you any reason to suspect robbery?”
“No, sir. Nothing seemed to have been touched.”
“Dear me, it is certainly a very interesting case. Then there was a knife, was
there not?”
“A sheath-knife, still in its sheath. It lay at the feet of the dead man. Mrs.
Carey has identified it as being her husband’s property.”
Holmes was lost in thought for some time.
“Well,” said he, at last. “I suppose I shall have to come out and have a look at
it.”
Stanley Hopkins gave a cry of joy.
“Thank you, sir. That will, indeed, be a weight off my mind.”
Holmes shook his finger at the Inspector.
“It would have been an easier task a week ago,” said he. “But even now my
visit may not be entirely fruitless. Watson, if you can spare the time, I should be
very glad of your company. If you will call a four-wheeler, Hopkins, we shall be
ready to start for Forest Row in a quarter of an hour.”
Alighting at the small wayside station, we drove for some miles through the
remains of widespread woods, which were once part of that great forest which
for so long held the Saxon invaders at bay—the impenetrable “weald,”17 for
sixty years the bulwark of Britain. Vast sections of it have been cleared, for this
is the seat of the first ironworks of the country, and the trees have been felled to
smelt the ore. Now the richer fields of the North have absorbed the trade, and
nothing save these ravaged groves and great scars in the earth show the work of
the past. Here in a clearing upon the green slope of a hill, stood a long, low,
stone house, approached by a curving drive running through the fields. Nearer
the road, and surrounded on three sides by bushes, was a small outhouse, one
window and the door facing in our direction. It was the scene of the murder.
Stanley Hopkins led us first to the house, where he introduced us to a haggard,
grey-haired woman, the widow of the murdered man, whose gaunt and deeplined face, with the furtive look of terror in the depths of her red-rimmed eyes,
told of the years of hardship and ill-usage which she had endured. With her was
her daughter, a pale, fair-haired girl, whose eyes blazed defiantly at us as she
told us that she was glad that her father was dead, and that she blessed the hand
which had struck him down. It was a terrible household that Black Peter Carey
had made for himself, and it was with a sense of relief that we found ourselves in
the sunlight again and making our way along a path which had been worn across
the fields by the feet of the dead man.
The outhouse was the simplest of dwellings, wooden walled, shingle-roofed,
one window beside the door, and one on the farther side. Stanley Hopkins drew
the key from his pocket, and had stooped to the lock, when he paused with a
look of attention and surprise upon his face.
“Someone has been tampering with it,” he said. There could be no doubt of
the fact. The woodwork was cut, and the scratches showed white through the
paint, as if they had been that instant done. Holmes had been examining the
window.
“Someone has tried to force this also. Whoever it was has failed to make his
way in. He must have been a very poor burglar.”
“This is a most extraordinary thing,” said the Inspector, “I could swear that
these marks were not here yesterday evening.”
“‘Someone has been tampering with it,’ he said.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Some curious person from the village, perhaps,” I suggested.
“Very unlikely. Few of them would dare to set foot in the grounds, far less try
to force their way into the cabin. What do you think of it, Mr. Holmes?”
“I think that fortune is very kind to us.”
“You mean that the person will come again?”
“It is very probable. He came expecting to find the door open. He tried to get
in with the blade of a very small penknife.18 He could not manage it. What
would he do?”
“Come again next night with a more useful tool.”
“So I should say. It will be our fault if we are not there to receive him.
Meanwhile, let me see the inside of the cabin.”
The traces of the tragedy had been removed, but the furniture of the little
room still stood as it had been on the night of the crime. For two hours, with
most intense concentration, Holmes examined every object in turn, but his face
showed that his quest was not a successful one. Once only he paused in his
patient investigation.
“Have you taken anything off this shelf, Hopkins?”
“No, I have moved nothing.”
“Something has been taken. There is less dust in this corner of the shelf than
elsewhere. It may have been a book lying on its side. It may have been a box.
Well, well, I can do nothing more. Let us walk in these beautiful woods, Watson,
and give a few hours to the birds and the flowers.19 We shall meet you here later,
Hopkins, and see if we can come to closer quarters with the gentleman who has
paid this visit in the night.”
It was past eleven o’clock when we formed our little ambuscade. Hopkins was
for leaving the door of the hut open, but Holmes was of the opinion that this
would rouse the suspicions of the stranger. The lock was a perfectly simple one,
and only a strong blade was needed to push it back. Holmes also suggested that
we should wait, not inside the hut, but outside it, among the bushes which grew
round the farther window. In this way we should be able to watch our man if he
struck a light, and see what his object was in this stealthy nocturnal visit.
It was a long and melancholy vigil, and yet brought with it something of the
thrill which the hunter feels when he lies beside the water-pool, and waits for the
coming of the thirsty beast of prey. What savage creature was it which might
steal upon us out of the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which could
only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw,20 or would it prove to
be some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the weak and unguarded?
In absolute silence we crouched amongst the bushes, waiting for whatever
might come. At first the steps of a few belated villagers, or the sound of voices
from the village, lightened our vigil, but one by one these interruptions died
away, and an absolute stillness fell upon us, save for the chimes of the distant
church, which told us of the progress of the night, and for the rustle and whisper
of a fine rain falling amid the foliage which roofed us in.
Half-past two had chimed,21 and it was the darkest hour which precedes the
dawn, when we all started as a low but sharp click came from the direction of the
gate. Someone had entered the drive. Again there was a long silence, and I had
begun to fear that it was a false alarm, when a stealthy step was heard upon the
other side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping and clinking. The
man was trying to force the lock! This time his skill was greater or his tool was
better, for there was a sudden snap and the creak of the hinges. Then a match
was struck, and next instant the steady light from a candle filled the interior of
the hut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted upon the scene
within.
The nocturnal visitor was a young man, frail and thin, with a black moustache,
which intensified the deadly pallor of his face. He could not have been much
above twenty years of age. I have never seen any human being who appeared to
be in such a pitiable fright, for his teeth were visibly chattering, and he was
shaking in every limb. He was dressed like a gentleman, in Norfolk jacket22 and
knickerbocker,23 with a cloth cap upon his head. We watched him staring round
with frightened eyes. Then he laid the candle-end upon the table and disappeared
from our view into one of the corners. He returned with a large book, one of the
logbooks which formed a line upon the shelves. Leaning on the table, he rapidly
turned over the leaves of this volume until he came to the entry which he sought.
Then, with an angry gesture of his clenched hand, he closed the book, replaced it
in the corner, and put out the light. He had hardly turned to leave the hut when
Hopkins’s hand was on the fellow’s collar, and I heard his loud gasp of terror as
he understood that he was taken. The candle was relit, and there was our
wretched captive, shivering and cowering in the grasp of the detective. He sank
down upon the sea-chest, and looked helplessly from one of us to the other.
Golfers at their sport.
We watched him. . . . He returned with a large book.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“Now, my fine fellow,” said Stanley Hopkins, “who are you, and what do you
want here?”
The man pulled himself together, and faced us with an effort at selfcomposure.
“You are detectives, I suppose?” said he. “You imagine I am connected with
the death of Captain Peter Carey. I assure you that I am innocent.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Hopkins. “First of all, what is your name?”
“It is John Hopley Neligan.”
I saw Holmes and Hopkins exchange a quick glance.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can I speak confidentially?”
“No, certainly not.”
“Why should I tell you?”
“If you have no answer, it may go badly with you at the trial.”
The young man winced.
“Well, I will tell you,” he said. “Why should I not? And yet I hate to think of
this old scandal gaining a new lease of life. Did you ever hear of Dawson &
Neligan?”
“He rapidly turned over the leaves of this volume.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
I could see, from Hopkins’s face, that he never had; but Holmes was keenly
interested.
“You mean the West Country bankers,” said he. “They failed for a million,
ruined half the county families of Cornwall, and Neligan disappeared.”
“Exactly. Neligan was my father.”
At last we were getting something positive, and yet it seemed a long gap
between an absconding banker and Captain Peter Carey pinned against the wall
with one of his own harpoons. We all listened intently to the young man’s
words.
“It was my father who was really concerned. Dawson had retired. I was only
ten years of age at the time, but I was old enough to feel the shame and horror of
it all. It has always been said that my father stole all the securities and fled. It is
not true. It was his belief that if he were given time in which to realize them, all
would be well and every creditor paid in full. He started in his little yacht for
Norway just before the warrant was issued for his arrest. I can remember that
last night, when he bade farewell to my mother. He left us a list of the securities
he was taking, and he swore that he would come back with his honour cleared,
and that none who had trusted him would suffer. Well, no word was ever heard
from him again. Both the yacht and he vanished utterly. We believed, my mother
and I, that he and it, with the securities that he had taken with him, were at the
bottom of the sea. We had a faithful friend, however, who is a business man, and
it was he who discovered some time ago that some of the securities which my
father had with him have reappeared on the London market. You can imagine
our amazement. I spent months in trying to trace them, and at last, after many
doubtings and difficulties, I discovered that the original seller had been Captain
Peter Carey, the owner of this hut.24
“He sank down upon the sea-chest, and looked helplessly
from one of us to the other.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Naturally I made some inquiries about the man. I found that he had been in
command of a whaler which was due to return from the Arctic seas at the very
time when my father was crossing to Norway. The autumn of that year was a
stormy one, and there was a long succession of southerly gales. My father’s
yacht may well have been blown to the north, and there met by Captain Peter
Carey’s ship. If that were so, what had become of my father? In any case, if I
could prove from Peter Carey’s evidence how these securities came on the
market it would be a proof that my father had not sold them, and that he had no
view to personal profit when he took them.
“I came down to Sussex with the intention of seeing the captain, but it was at
this moment that his terrible death occurred. I read at the inquest a description of
his cabin, in which it stated that the old logbooks of his vessel were preserved in
it. It struck me that if I could see what occurred in the month of August, 1883, on
board the Sea Unicorn, I might settle the mystery of my father’s fate. I tried last
night to get at these logbooks, but was unable to open the door. To-night I tried
again and succeeded; but I find that the pages which deal with that month have
been torn from the book. It was at that moment I found myself a prisoner in your
hands.”
“Is that all?” asked Hopkins.
“Yes, that is all.” His eyes shifted as he said it.
“You have nothing else to tell us?”
He hesitated.
“No, there is nothing.”
“You have not been here before last night?”
“No.”
“Then how do you account for that?” cried Hopkins, as he held up the
damning notebook, with the initials of our prisoner on the first leaf, and the
blood-stain on the cover.
The wretched man collapsed. He sank his face in his hands and trembled all
over.
“Where did you get it?” he groaned. “I did not know. I thought I had lost it at
the hotel.”
“That is enough,” said Hopkins sternly. “Whatever else you have to say, you
must say in court. You will walk down with me now to the police-station. Well,
Mr. Holmes, I am very much obliged to you and to your friend for coming down
to help me. As it turns out your presence was unnecessary, and I would have
brought the case to this successful issue without you; but none the less, I am
grateful. Rooms have been reserved for you at the Brambletye Hotel,25 so we
can all walk down to the village together.”
“Well, Watson, what do you think of it?” asked Holmes, as we travelled back
next morning.
“I can see that you are not satisfied.”
“Oh, yes, my dear Watson, I am perfectly satisfied. At the same time, Stanley
Hopkins’s methods do not commend themselves to me. I am disappointed in
Stanley Hopkins. I had hoped for better things from him. One should always
look for a possible alternative and provide against it. It is the first rule of
criminal investigation.”
“Then how do you account for that?” cried Hopkins.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“What, then, is the alternative?”
“The line of investigation which I have myself been pursuing. It may give
nothing. I cannot tell. But at least I shall follow it to the end.” Several letters
were waiting for Holmes at Baker Street. He snatched one of them up, opened it,
and burst out into a triumphant chuckle of laughter.
“Excellent, Watson. The alternative develops. Have you telegraph forms? Just
write a couple of messages for me: ‘Sumner, Shipping Agent, Ratcliff
Highway.26 Send three men on, to arrive ten to-morrow morning.—Basil.’
That’s my name in those parts. The other is ‘Inspector Stanley Hopkins, 46 Lord
Street, Brixton. Come breakfast to-morrow at nine-thirty. Important. Wire if
unable to come.—Sherlock Holmes.’ There, Watson, this infernal case has
haunted me for ten days. I hereby banish it completely from my presence. Tomorrow, I trust that we shall hear the last of it forever.”
Ratcliff Highway.
Queen’s London (1897)
Sharp at the hour named Inspector Stanley Hopkins appeared, and we sat
down together to the excellent breakfast which Mrs. Hudson had prepared. The
young detective was in high spirits at his success.
“You really think that your solution must be correct?” asked Holmes.
“I could not imagine a more complete case.”
“It did not seem to me conclusive.”
“You astonish me, Mr. Holmes. What more could one ask for?”
“Does your explanation cover every point?”
“Undoubtedly. I find that young Neligan arrived at the Brambletye Hotel on
the very day of the crime. He came on the pretence of playing golf. His room
was on the ground floor, and he could get out when he liked. That very night he
went down to Woodman’s Lee, saw Peter Carey at the hut, quarrelled with him,
and killed him with the harpoon. Then, horrified by what he had done, he fled
out of the hut, dropping the notebook which he had brought with him in order to
question Peter Carey about these different securities. You may have observed
that some of them were marked with ticks, and the others—the great majority—
were not. Those which are ticked have been traced on the London market; but
the others, presumably, were still in the possession of Carey, and young Neligan,
according to his own account, was anxious to recover them in order to do the
right thing by his father’s creditors. After his flight he did not dare to approach
the hut again for some time, but at last he forced himself to do so in order to
obtain the information which he needed. Surely that is all simple and obvious?”
Holmes smiled and shook his head.
“It seems to me to have only one drawback, Hopkins, and that is that it is
intrinsically impossible. Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? No?
Tut, tut, my dear sir, you must really pay attention to these details. My friend
Watson could tell you that I spent a whole morning in that exercise. It is no easy
matter, and requires a strong and practised arm. But this blow was delivered with
such violence that the head of the weapon sank deep into the wall. Do you
imagine that this anaemic youth was capable of so frightful an assault? Is he the
man who hobnobbed in rum and water with Black Peter in the dead of the night?
Was it his profile that was seen on the blind two nights before? No, no, Hopkins;
it is another and more formidable person for whom we must seek.”
The detective’s face had grown longer and longer during Holmes’s speech.
His hopes and his ambitions were all crumbling about him. But he would not
abandon his position without a struggle.
“You can’t deny that Neligan was present that night, Mr. Holmes. The book
will prove that. I fancy that I have evidence enough to satisfy a jury, even if you
are able to pick a hole in it. Besides, Mr. Holmes, I have laid my hand upon my
man. As to this terrible person of yours, where is he?”
“I rather fancy that he is on the stair,” said Holmes serenely. “I think, Watson,
that you would do well to put that revolver where you can reach it.” He rose and
laid a written paper upon a side-table. “Now we are ready,” said he.
There had been some talking in gruff voices outside, and now Mrs. Hudson
opened the door to say that there were three men inquiring for Captain Basil.
“Show them in one by one,” said Holmes.
The first who entered was a little ribston-pippin27 of a man, with ruddy cheeks
and fluffy white side-whiskers. Holmes had drawn a letter from his pocket.
“What name?” he asked.
“James Lancaster.”
“I am sorry, Lancaster, but the berth is full. Here is half a sovereign for your
trouble. Just step into this room28 and wait there for a few minutes.”
The second man was a long, dried-up creature, with lank hair and sallow
cheeks. His name was Hugh Pattins. He also received his dismissal, his halfsovereign, and the order to wait.
The third applicant was a man of remarkable appearance. A fierce bull-dog
face was framed in a tangle of hair and beard, and two bold, dark eyes gleamed
behind the cover of thick, tufted, overhung eyebrows. He saluted and stood
sailor-fashion, turning his cap round in his hands.
The third applicant was a man of remarkable appearance.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, (1904)
“Your name?” asked Holmes.
“Patrick Cairns.”
“Harpooner?”
“Yes, sir. Twenty-six voyages.”
“Dundee, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And ready to start with an exploring ship?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What wages?”
“Eight pounds a month.”
“Could you start at once?”
“As soon as I get my kit.”
“Have you your papers?”
“Yes, sir.” He took a sheaf of worn and greasy forms from his pocket. Holmes
glanced over them and returned them.
“You are just the man I want,” said he. “Here’s the agreement on the sidetable. If you sign it the whole matter will be settled.”
The seaman lurched across the room and took up the pen.
“Shall I sign here?” he asked, stooping over the table.
Holmes leaned over his shoulder and passed both hands over his neck.
“This will do,” said he.
I heard a click of steel and a bellow like an enraged bull. The next instant
Holmes and the seaman were rolling on the ground together. He was a man of
such gigantic strength that, even with the handcuffs which Holmes had so deftly
fastened upon his wrists, he would have very quickly overpowered my friend
had Hopkins and I not rushed to his rescue. Only when I pressed the cold muzzle
of the revolver to his temple did he at last understand that resistance was vain.
We lashed his ankles with cord and rose breathless from the struggle.
“I must really apologize, Hopkins,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I fear that the
scrambled eggs are cold. However, you will enjoy the rest of your breakfast all
the better, will you not, for the thought that you have brought your case to a
triumphant conclusion?”
Stanley Hopkins was speechless with amazement.
“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Holmes,” he blurted out at last, with a very red
face. “It seems to me that I have been making a fool of myself from the
beginning. I understand now, what I should never have forgotten, that I am the
pupil and you are the master. Even now I see what you have done, but I don’t
know how you did it or what it signifies.”
“‘Shall I sign here?’ he asked.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Well, well,” said Holmes, good-humouredly. “We all learn by experience,
and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative.
You were so absorbed in young Neligan that you could not spare a thought to
Patrick Cairns, the true murderer of Peter Carey.”
The hoarse voice of the seaman broke in on our conversation.
“See here, mister,” said he, “I make no complaint of being man-handled in
this fashion, but I would have you call things by their right names. You say I
murdered Peter Carey; I say I killed Peter Carey, and there’s all the difference.
Maybe you don’t believe what I say. Maybe you think I am just slinging you a
yarn.”
“Not at all,” said Holmes. “Let us hear what you have to say.”
“It’s soon told, and, by the Lord, every word of it is truth. I knew Black Peter,
and when he pulled out his knife I whipped a harpoon through him sharp, for I
knew that it was him or me. That’s how he died. You can call it murder.
Anyhow, I’d as soon die with a rope round my neck as with Black Peter’s knife
in my heart.”
“How came you there?” asked Holmes.
“I’ll tell it you from the beginning. Just sit me up a little so as I can speak
easy. It was in ’83 that it happened—August of that year. Peter Carey was
master of the Sea Unicorn, and I was spare harpooner. We were coming out of
the ice-pack on our way home, with head winds and a week’s southerly gale,
when we picked up a little craft that had been blown north. There was one man
on her—a landsman. The crew had thought she would founder, and had made for
the Norwegian coast in the dinghy. I guess they were all drowned. Well, we took
him on board, this man, and he and the skipper had some long talks in the cabin.
All the baggage we took off with him was one tin box. So far as I know, the
man’s name was never mentioned, and on the second night he disappeared as if
he had never been. It was given out that he had either thrown himself overboard
or fallen overboard in the heavy weather that we were having. Only one man
knew what had happened to him, and that was me, for with my own eyes I saw
the skipper tip up his heels and put him over the rail in the middle watch of a
dark night, two days before we sighted the Shetland Lights.
“Well, I kept my knowledge to myself, and waited to see what would come of
it. When we got back to Scotland it was easily hushed up, and nobody asked any
questions. A stranger died by accident, and it was nobody’s business to inquire.
Shortly after Peter Carey gave up the sea, and it was long years before I could
find where he was. I guessed that he had done the deed for the sake of what was
in that tin box, and that he could afford now to pay me well for keeping my
mouth shut.
“I found out where he was through a sailor man that had met him in London,
and down I went to squeeze him. The first night he was reasonable enough, and
was ready to give me what would make me free of the sea for life. We were to
fix it all two nights later. When I came I found him three-parts drunk and in a
vile temper. We sat down and we drank and we yarned about old times, but the
more he drank the less I liked the look on his face. I spotted that harpoon upon
the wall, and I thought I might need it before I was through. Then at last he
broke out at me, spitting and cursing, with murder in his eyes and a great claspknife in his hand. He had not time to get it from the sheath before I had the
harpoon through him.29 Heavens! what a yell he gave; and his face gets between
me and my sleep! I stood there, with his blood splashing round me, and I waited
for a bit, but all was quiet, so I took heart once more. I looked round, and there
was the tin box on a shelf. I had as much right to it as Peter Carey, anyhow, so I
took it with me and left the hut. Like a fool I left my baccy-pouch upon the table.
“We sat down and we drank and we yarned about old
times.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Now I’ll tell you the queerest part of the whole story. I had hardly got outside
the hut when I heard someone coming, and I hid among the bushes. A man came
slinking along, went into the hut, gave a cry as if he had seen a ghost, and legged
it as hard as he could run until he was out of sight.30 Who he was or what he
wanted is more than I can tell. For my part, I walked ten miles, got a train at
Tunbridge Wells, and so reached London, and no one the wiser.
“Well, when I came to examine the box I found there was no money in it, and
nothing but papers that I would not dare to sell. I had lost my hold on Black
Peter, and was stranded in London without a shilling. There was only my trade
left. I saw these advertisements about harpooners and high wages, so I went to
the shipping agents, and they sent me here. That’s all I know, and I say again
that if I killed Black Peter, the law should give me thanks, for I saved them the
price of a hempen rope.”
“A very clear statement,” said Holmes, rising and lighting his pipe. “I think,
Hopkins, that you should lose no time in conveying your prisoner to a place of
safety. This room is not well adapted for a cell, and Mr. Patrick Cairns occupies
too large a portion of our carpet.”31
“Mr. Holmes,” said Hopkins, “I do not know how to express my gratitude.
Even now I do not understand how you attained this result.”
“Simply by having the good fortune to get the right clue from the beginning. It
is very possible if I had known about this notebook it might have led away my
thoughts, as it did yours. But all I heard pointed in the one direction. The
amazing strength, the skill in the use of the harpoon, the rum and water, the
sealskin tobacco-pouch with the coarse tobacco—all these pointed to a seaman,
and one who had been a whaler. I was convinced that the initials ‘P. C.’ upon the
pouch were a coincidence, and not those of Peter Carey, since he seldom
smoked, and no pipe was found in his cabin. You remember that I asked whether
whisky and brandy were in the cabin. You said they were. How many landsmen
are there who would drink rum when they could get these other spirits? Yes, I
was certain it was a seaman.”
“And how did you find him?”
“My dear sir, the problem had become a very simple one. If it were a seaman,
it could only be a seaman who had been with him on the Sea Unicorn. So far as I
could learn, he had sailed in no other ship. I spent three days in wiring to
Dundee,32 and at the end of that time I had ascertained the names of the crew of
the Sea Unicorn in 1883. When I found Patrick Cairns among the harpooners,
my research was nearing its end. I argued that the man was probably in London,
and that he would desire to leave the country for a time. I therefore spent some
days in the East End, devised an Arctic expedition, put forth tempting terms for
harpooners who would serve under Captain Basil—and behold the result!”
“Wonderful!” cried Hopkins. “Wonderful!”
“You must obtain the release of young Neligan as soon as possible,” said
Holmes. “I confess that I think you owe him some apology. The tin box must be
returned to him, but, of course, the securities which Peter Carey has sold are lost
forever. There’s the cab, Hopkins, and you can remove your man. If you want
me for the trial, my address and that of Watson will be somewhere in Norway—
I’ll send particulars later.”33
“Black Peter” was published in Collier’s Weekly on
February 27, 1904, and in the Strand Magazine in March
1904.
1
A mere two years later, in “The Devil’s Foot,” Holmes
seems a far different man than the one described here, as
Ian McQueen observes in his Sherlock Holmes Detected.
Although Holmes is not yet fifty years old, his doctor
forces him in that case to vacation in Cornwall so as to
rest and “avert a complete mental breakdown.” One
wonders whether Holmes’s health takes a drastic
downturn in the intervening two years, or whether
Watson’s observation here is misguided.
2
Watson refers to “The Priory School,” published the
previous month.
3
Cardinal “Tosca” is identified by Francis Albert Young
as Cardinal Luigi Ruffo-Scilla, whose collapse and death
at the age of fifty-five in Rome on May 29, 1895, came as
a great surprise to many. A different churchman is
suggested by Mark E. Levitt, namely, the Monsignor
Isidoro Carini, who was a significant part of the effort to
4
bring the church and the Italian government to a
rapprochement in the 1890s and who died in 1895 in a
“sudden and mysterious” way (according to the London
Times of February 1, 1895).
Leo XIII was elected pope on February 20, 1878, and
held the office until his death on July 20, 1903. An
intellectual devoted to the philosophy of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Leo XIII insisted that there was no conflict
between faith and scientific advancement, and his papacy
was marked by a new spirit of openness between the
church and the rest of the world. In The Hound of the
Baskervilles, Holmes obliged the same pope in
connection with “that little affair of the Vatican cameos.”
5
The meaning of Watson’s allusion here is murky.
According to E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase
and Fable, a canary can be slang for a guinea or
sovereign—gold coins are yellow in colour. So, too, does
the dictionary list “canary-bird” as a convict: Certain
“desperate” prisoners once wore yellow uniforms, and the
jail was considered their cage. Donald A. Redmond adds
that “The Old Canaries” was the nickname given to the
Third Dragoon Guards, after their yellow facings
(although there were no Third Dragoon officers named
Wilson). Redmond continues that “canary” could be
taken to mean any soldier sporting a yellow armband, or
“an instructor at a gas school, or one of the Sanitary
6
Corps of the R.A.M.C.; battalion Sanitary Orderlies.’ ”
Some dismiss the idea that the “canary” of Wilson’s
infamy is anything but a bird. “There is absolutely
nothing whatsoever in any way, shape, or form notorious
about canaries,” declares “Red” Smith in “The Nefarious
Holmes.” “However, a bird trainer can branch out, as
Hirsch Jacobs has demonstrated in our day; Mr. Jacobs
began with pigeons and went on to become America’s
leading horse-trainer in eleven of twelve consecutive
years. It stands to reason that Holmes’s man, Wilson,
followed a similar course. . . .”
Numerous contradictory theories abound. New York
Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, in “Sherlock
and Malocchio!,” argues that the case may have been
connected with threats against the life of the famous
soprano Adelina Patti. David Roberts proposes that
Wilson was in the business of training informants, or
“stool-pigeons.” Carol Paul Woods suggests that Wilson
was a trainer of prizefighters, and that he and his fighter
protégé hailed from the Canary Islands.
“Woodman’s Lee” is generally believed to be
Coleman’s Hatch, near Forest Row in Sussex.
7
Although there may be numerous unreported disguises,
Watson records the following in addition to “Captain
Basil”: “a common loafer” (“The Beryl Coronet”), a
rakish young plumber named Escott (“Charles Augustus
8
Milverton”), a venerable Italian priest (“The Final
Problem”), an elderly, deformed bibliophile (“The Empty
House”), a French ouvrier (“The Disappearance of Lady
Frances Carfax”), a workman looking for a job, described
as “an old sporting man” (“The Mazarin Stone”), an old
woman (“The Mazarin Stone”), a “drunken-looking
groom” (“A Scandal in Bohemia”), an “amiable and
simple-minded” Nonconformist clergyman (“A Scandal
in Bohemia”), a sailor (The Sign of Four), an asthmatic
old master mariner (The Sign of Four), a doddering
opium smoker (“The Man with the Twisted Lip”), Mr.
Harris, an accountant (“The Stock-Broker’s Clerk”), a
registration agent (“The Crooked Man”), a Norwegian
explorer named “Sigerson” (“The Empty House”), and an
Irish-American spy named Altamont (“His Last Bow”).
“The reference is tantalizing and obscure,” Vincent
Starrett writes in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
“The rooms of Mycroft Holmes, opposite the Diogenes
Club, would certainly be one of them; but it would be
satisfying to know the others. . . . It may be assumed that
in all of his five refuges he stored the materials of
deception, as well as quantities of shag tobacco.”
9
This appears to be another example of Holmes’s wildly
erratic morning routine, examined in depth by Ian
McQueen. In “The Engineer’s Thumb,” for example,
Watson expects to discover Holmes taking his breakfast
10
soon after seven o’clock.
11
Brownish or tawny with streaks of other colour.
A stand containing decanters that in some fashion
locks the decanters in place. Reference is made to what
may be one on the premises of 221B Baker Street (in “A
Scandal in Bohemia”) as the “spirit-case.”
12
Watson also smoked “ship’s,” as mentioned in A Study
in Scarlet.
13
This appears to be a misspelling (or Anglicisation) of
São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and the capital of the
province of the same name. A boom in the cultivation of
coffee in the 1880s brought the region economic
prosperity, as well as a wave of European immigrants.
14
Established under terms of the agreement that brought
British Columbia into the confederation in 1871, the
privately owned Canadian Pacific Railway was North
America’s first transcontinental railroad. Construction on
the main line, from Montreal to Port Moody (in
Vancouver), was completed in 1885.
15
“The House” here refers to the London Stock
Exchange. See “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk,” note 22.
16
The ancient stretch of forest known as the Weald (from
the Old English wald, or weald, meaning forest) is nearly
17
forty miles wide and rests between the chalk hills of the
North and South Downs. It was once part of the much
larger forest of Andredsweald (“the wood or forest
without habitations”). As Watson notes, the Weald was
heavily forested and once served as a centre for the iron
industry, but the area remains one of England’s most
wooded places.
The manuscript originally continued, “He has left half
of it, which you would do well to secure, in the slit of the
sash of . . .” The evidence turned out to be meaningless,
perhaps explaining why Watson suppressed this false
clue.
18
Contrast this action with Watson’s obviously erroneous
statement in “The Cardboard Box”: “Appreciation of
nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only
change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer
of the town to track down his brother of the country.”
19
Obviously Watson is thinking of Colonel Sebastian
Moran, the big-game hunter captured on a similar
nighttime vigil in “The Empty House” and described with
similar metaphors. (“This empty house is my tree,”
Holmes says to him, “and you are my tiger.”)
20
Curiously, in the manuscript and in the Collier’s
Weekly version, the time is given as “three o’clock.”
21
22
A loose pleated coat with a waistband.
”Knickerbockers,” knee-length breeches, were worn by
sportsmen. The short pants got their name from George
Cruikshank’s illustrations in Washington Irving’s A
History of New York from the Beginning of the World to
the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), whose fictional
author was named Diedrich Knickerbocker. In the book,
Dutch people were pictured wearing loose-fitting
breeches that stopped at the knee. Eventually,
“knickerbocker” also came to mean anyone of Dutch
origin.
According to Holmes’s later comments, the young
nocturnal visitor did in fact play golf, hence his wearing
of knickerbockers; or else he obtained the outfit to
complete his disguise.
23
Humfrey Michell, in a “Letter to Baker Street,”
questions why the banker’s son should have been so
involved in—and so distraught over—tracking down the
missing securities. Under English law, normally a person
would have been appointed by the courts to handle such
matters in the course of the bankruptcy. “It would have
been a simple matter for him [the bankruptcy ‘receiver’]
to obtain the record of the missing securities from the
family,” explains Michell, “and take the appropriate steps
to obtain title to them for the benefit of the creditors. The
only explanation I can think of, and I admit it is very
24
improbable, is that young Neligan was a liar and was
after something else than share certificates. If so, he was
a very successful one, because he bamboozled Sherlock
Holmes.” Indeed, in modern commerce, someone who
has had securities stolen need only post a bond and may
have the securities replaced. This is not so, however, if
the securities are bearer securities, that is, not issued to a
named owner.
David L. Hammer, in The Game is Afoot, writes that
the Brambletye Hotel “probably takes its name from the
establishment mentioned in Black Peter rather than the
other way around.” The hotel features the Black Peter
Bar.
25
The “Ratcliff Highway Murders” are one of a number
of topics on which Holmes extemporaneously spoke to
Watson in A Study in Scarlet. These gruesome crimes
were described by Thomas De Quincey in his seminal
essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
(1827).
Ratcliff Highway, a thoroughfare running parallel to
the Thames, was a bustling hub of shops, lodging houses,
and saloons catering to sailors and others involved in the
shipping trade. Montagu Williams, writing in Round
London: Down East and Up West (1894) about the
street’s rough-and-tumble reputation in the 1860s,
disdainfully called this section of town “a terrible
26
disgrace to London. . . . [I]t would have been madness for
any respectable woman, or, for the matter of that, for any
well-dressed man, to proceed thither alone. The police
themselves seldom ventured there save in twos and
threes, and brutal assaults upon them were of frequent
occurrence.” Williams did concede that conditions at
Ratcliff Highway had improved by the 1890s, citing a
decline in maritime prosperity, the transfer of shipping
activity to new docks lower down on the Thames, and the
fact that ocean liners were being helmed by “a better
class of men.” Yet, ultimately, Williams opined that
“though it gives me great satisfaction to record that
Ratcliff Highway is better than it was, I confess I could
wish to see it better than it is.”
A variety of winter apple with a red skin. It was highly
prized as a dessert apple in Victorian England.
27
28
Presumably Holmes’s bedroom.
Steve Clarkson, in a “Letter to Baker Street,” takes
issue with Cairns’s story, doubting that Cairns’s blow
would be capable not only of stopping Carey’s rapid
forward motion but also of throwing the captain
backward and pinning him securely against the wall. “I
wonder whether even Arnold Schwarzenegger’s arm
would contain such power.” As an alternate scenario,
Clarkson envisions Carey in retreat, having backed up
29
toward the wall when Cairns decided to harpoon him in
order both to forestall Carey’s taking action against him
and to gain access to the tin box. The sailor’s story of
self-defence would earn him leniency during trial, but in
Clarkson’s opinion, “Cairns should have swung for it.”
James A. Coffin proposes that Carey, repentant over
the killing of Neligan and the theft of the securities,
planned to goad Cairns into killing him, thus
accomplishing a suicide and perhaps revenge on Cairns
as well.
Are we really expected to believe that twelve years
after the disappearance of Neligan’s father, Neligan
chooses to visit Peter Carey on the very same night that
Carey is visited by the only other man who knows what
happened on that fateful night in 1883? This seems to
stretch the limits of coincidence and suggests that
Neligan and Cairns acted in concert—perhaps Cairns had
confessed to young Neligan and was then used by
Neligan as the “muscle” of an effort to force information
from Carey. However, when Carey and Cairns confronted
each other, Cairns was goaded into an impulsive act of
violence, and Neligan decided to dissociate himself from
Cairns.
30
This is a far different conclusion than Holmes reaches
in the case of the killer of another wife-beater, Captain
Croker in “The Abbey Grange.” However, most
31
commentators assume that Cairns would quickly have
gained his freedom on a plea of self-defence.
Apparently, it did not occur to Holmes to pick up a
telephone, which would have been far quicker. Colonel
E. Ennalls Berl considers Holmes’s extremely limited and
reluctant use of the phone throughout his career, noting
that in this case Holmes uses a telegram to invite Hopkins
to breakfast and requests that he wire if he is unable to
attend. Whether or not Holmes was a telephone
subscriber, in The Sign of Four it is revealed that there
was a telephone across the road; surely Holmes could
have phoned the Brixton Police Station and either spoken
to Hopkins or left him a message. Even more inefficient,
Berl chides, was Holmes’s wasting three days wiring
Dundee for crew lists when “it seems almost certain that
a much shorter telephone struggle through the Dundee
police would have given him the information.” It seems
odd that Holmes, always on the cutting edge of his own
field, would shy away from the use of the telephone,
which was spreading rapidly through England. See “The
Man with the Twisted Lip,” note 39. Whatever the
reason, Holmes has apparently overcome his unexplained
aversion by the time of “The Three Garridebs” (likely set
in 1898).
32
Holmes’s casual mention of a trip to Norway, where
Neligan’s father was headed before meeting his demise,
33
is bafflingly oblique. D. Martin Dakin struggles to make
some concrete connection to the case, coming up largely
empty-handed. “He cannot have been after some of
Neligan’s securities, for, even if it had been any business
of his, neither he nor they ever got as far as Norway.
(What did Neligan senior hope to do there anyway?)”
Howard Brody, in “That Trip to Norway,” suggests that
Holmes and Watson were off to investigate whether
Neligan’s dinghy had been swept into the maelstrom off
the Norwegian coast that Edgar Allan Poe wrote about in
“A Descent into the Maelstrom.” In “Somewhere in
Norway,” Chris Redmond makes the even more
tantalising suggestion that Neligan was not, in fact,
murdered, but instead bribed Carey to report his death,
and that Holmes went to Norway to attempt to trace his
whereabouts (and the whereabouts of the missing
securities).
THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS
MILVERTON1
After threats and subtleties fail, Holmes and Watson turn lawbreakers
in the case of Charles Augustus Milverton as they seek to foil the
blackmail plot of “the worst man in London.” The two men find
themselves unwilling witnesses to murder, and some question the
ethics of their behaviour and wonder how the murderer got away.
Whether the case occurred before or after Holmes’s Great Hiatus from
1891 to 1894 is unclear, but Watson withheld publication until 1904.
He may have done so solely out of concern for those victims whose
reputations might still be damaged by Watson’s revelations, or
possibly out of concern that the police might still be chasing him!
IT IS YEARS since the incidents of which I speak took place,2 and yet it is with
diffidence that I allude to them. For a long time, even with the utmost discretion
and reticence, it would have been impossible to make the facts public; but now
the principal person concerned is beyond the reach of human law, and with due
suppression the story may be told in such fashion as to injure no one. It records
an absolutely unique experience in the career both of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and
of myself. The reader will excuse me if I conceal the date or any other fact by
which he might trace the actual occurrence.
We had been out for one of our evening rambles, Holmes and I, and had
returned about six o’clock on a cold, frosty winter’s evening. As Holmes turned
up the lamp the light fell upon a card on the table. He glanced at it, and then,
with an ejaculation of disgust, threw it on the floor. I picked it up and read:
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
Charles Augustus Milverton,
Appledore3 Towers,
Hampstead.4
Agent.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“The worst man in London,” Holmes answered, as he sat down and stretched
his legs before the fire. “Is anything on the back of the card?”
I turned it over.
“Will call at 6.30.—C. A. M.,” I read.
“Hum! He’s about due. Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson,
when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo5 and see the slithery, gliding,
venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well,
that’s how Milverton impresses me. I’ve had to do with fifty murderers in my
career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this
fellow. And yet I can’t get out of doing business with him—indeed, he is here at
my invitation.”
Royal Zoological Garden.
Queen’s London (1897)
“Charles Augustus Milverton.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“But who is he?”
“I’ll tell you, Watson. He is the king of all the blackmailers. Heaven help the
man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power
of Milverton. With a smiling face and a heart of marble he will squeeze and
squeeze until he has drained them dry. The fellow is a genius in his way, and
would have made his mark in some more savoury trade. His method is as
follows: He allows it to be known that he is prepared to pay very high sums for
letters which compromise people of wealth or position. He receives these wares
not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians,
who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with
no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a
footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the
result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are
hundreds in this great city who turn white at his name. No one knows where his
grip may fall, for he is far too rich and far too cunning to work from hand to
mouth. He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when
the stake is best worth winning. I have said that he is the worst man in London,
and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian who in hot blood
bludgeons his mate with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures
the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen moneybags?”
I had seldom heard my friend speak with such intensity of feeling.
“But surely,” said I, “the fellow must be within the grasp of the law?”
“Technically, no doubt, but practically not. What would it profit a woman, for
example, to get him a few months’ imprisonment if her own ruin must
immediately follow? His victims dare not hit back. If ever he blackmailed an
innocent person, then, indeed, we should have him; but he is as cunning as the
Evil One. No, no; we must find other ways to fight him.”
Staff artists “Cargs” and E. S. Morris,
Chicago Sunday Tribune, August 20, 1911
“And why is he here?”
“Because an illustrious client6 has placed her piteous case in my hands. It is
the Lady Eva Brackwell,7 the most beautiful débutante of last season. She is to
be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt. This fiend has several
imprudent letters—imprudent, Watson, nothing worse—which were written to
an impecunious young squire in the country. They would suffice to break off the
match. Milverton will send the letters to the Earl unless a large sum of money is
paid him. I have been commissioned to meet him, and—to make the best terms I
can.”
At that instant there was a clatter and a rattle in the street below. Looking
down I saw a stately carriage and pair, the brilliant lamps gleaming on the glossy
haunches of the noble chestnuts. A footman opened the door, and a small, stout
man in a shaggy astrakhan overcoat descended. A minute later he was in the
room.
Charles Augustus Milverton was a man of fifty, with a large, intellectual head,
a round, plump, hairless face, a perpetual frozen smile, and two keen gray eyes,
which gleamed brightly from behind broad, golden-rimmed glasses. There was
something of Mr. Pickwick’s benevolence8 in his appearance, marred only by
the insincerity of the fixed smile and by the hard glitter of those restless and
penetrating eyes. His voice was as smooth and suave as his countenance, as he
advanced with a plump little hand extended, murmuring his regret for having
missed us at his first visit. Holmes disregarded the outstretched hand and looked
at him with a face of granite. Milverton’s smile broadened; he shrugged his
shoulders, removed his overcoat, folded it with great deliberation over the back
of a chair, and then took a seat.
“This gentleman?” said he, with a wave in my direction. “Is it discreet? Is it
right?”
“Dr. Watson is my friend and partner.”
“Very good, Mr. Holmes. It is only in your client’s interests that I protested.
The matter is so very delicate—”
There was something of Mr. Pickwick’s benevolence in
his looks.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“Dr. Watson has already heard of it.”
“Then we can proceed to business. You say that you are acting for Lady Eva.
Has she empowered you to accept my terms?”
“What are your terms?”
“Seven thousand pounds.”
“And the alternative?”
“My dear sir, it is painful to me to discuss it, but if the money is not paid on
the 14th, there certainly will be no marriage on the 18th.” His insufferable smile
was more complacent than ever.
Holmes thought for a little.
“You appear to me,” he said, at last, “to be taking matters too much for
granted. I am, of course, familiar with the contents of these letters. My client will
certainly do what I may advise. I shall counsel her to tell her future husband the
whole story and to trust to his generosity.”
Milverton chuckled.
“You evidently do not know the Earl,” said he.
From the baffled look upon Holmes’s face, I could see clearly that he did.9
“What harm is there in the letters?” he asked.
“They are sprightly—very sprightly,” Milverton answered. “The lady was a
charming correspondent. But I can assure you that the Earl of Dovercourt would
fail to appreciate them. However, since you think otherwise, we will let it rest at
that. It is purely a matter of business. If you think that it is in the best interests of
your client that these letters should be placed in the hands of the Earl, then you
would indeed be foolish to pay so large a sum of money to regain them.” He rose
and seized his astrakhan coat.
Holmes was gray with anger and mortification.
“Wait a little,” he said. “You go too fast. We would certainly make every
effort to avoid scandal in so delicate a matter.”
Milverton relapsed into his chair.
“I was sure that you would see it in that light,” he purred.
“At the same time,” Holmes continued, “Lady Eva is not a wealthy woman. I
assure you that two thousand pounds would be a drain upon her resources, and
that the sum you name is utterly beyond her power. I beg, therefore, that you will
moderate your demands, and that you will return the letters at the price I
indicate, which is, I assure you, the highest that you can get.”
Milverton’s smile broadened and his eyes twinkled humorously.
“I am aware that what you say is true about the lady’s resources,” said he. “At
the same time, you must admit that the occasion of a lady’s marriage is a very
suitable time for her friends and relatives to make some little effort upon her
behalf. They may hesitate as to an acceptable wedding present. Let me assure
them that this little bundle of letters would give more joy than all the candelabra
and butter-dishes in London.”
“It is impossible,” said Holmes.
“Dear me, dear me, how unfortunate!” cried Milverton, taking out a bulky
pocketbook. “I cannot help thinking that ladies are ill-advised in not making an
effort. Look at this!” He held up a little note with a coat-of-arms upon the
envelope. “That belongs to—well, perhaps it is hardly fair to tell the name until
to-morrow morning. But at that time it will be in the hands of the lady’s
husband. And all because she will not find a beggarly sum which she could get
in an hour by turning her diamonds into paste. It is such a pity. Now, you
remember the sudden end of the engagement between the Honourable Miss
Miles and Colonel Dorking? Only two days before the wedding there was a
paragraph in the Morning Post to say that it was all off. And why? It is almost
incredible, but the absurd sum of twelve hundred pounds would have settled the
whole question. Is it not pitiful? And here I find you, a man of sense, boggling
about terms when your client’s future and honour are at stake. You surprise me,
Mr. Holmes.”
“What I say is true,” Holmes answered. “The money cannot be found. Surely
it is better for you to take the substantial sum which I offer than to ruin this
woman’s career, which can profit you in no way?”
“There you make a mistake, Mr. Holmes. An exposure would profit me
indirectly to a considerable extent. I have eight or ten similar cases maturing.10 If
it was circulated among them that I had made a severe example of the Lady Eva,
I should find all of them much more open to reason. You see my point?”
Holmes sprang from his chair.
“Get behind him, Watson! Don’t let him out! Now, sir, let us see the contents
of that notebook.”
Milverton had glided as quick as a rat to the side of the room and stood with
his back against the wall.
“Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes!” he said, turning the front of his coat and
exhibiting the butt of a large revolver, which projected from the inside pocket. “I
have been expecting you to do something original. This has been done so often,
and what good has ever come from it? I assure you that I am armed to the teeth,
and I am perfectly prepared to use my weapon, knowing that the law will
support me. Besides, your supposition that I would bring the letters here in a
notebook is entirely mistaken. I would do nothing so foolish. And now,
gentlemen, I have one or two little interviews this evening, and it is a long drive
to Hampstead.” He stepped forward, took up his coat, laid his hand on his
revolver, and turned to the door. I picked up a chair, but Holmes shook his head,
and I laid it down again. With a bow, a smile, and a twinkle, Milverton was out
of the room, and a few moments after we heard the slam of the carriage door and
the rattle of the wheels as he drove away.
“Exhibiting the butt of a large revolver, which projected
from the inside pocket.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Holmes sat motionless by the fire, his hands buried deep in his trouser
pockets, his chin sunk upon his breast, his eyes fixed upon the glowing embers.
For half an hour he was silent and still. Then, with the gesture of a man who has
taken his decision, he sprang to his feet and passed into his bedroom. A little
later a rakish young workman with a goatee beard and a swagger lit his clay pipe
at the lamp before descending into the street. “I’ll be back some time, Watson,”
said he, and vanished into the night. I understood that he had opened his
campaign against Charles Augustus Milverton; but I little dreamed the strange
shape which that campaign was destined to take.
For some days Holmes came and went at all hours in this attire, but beyond a
remark that his time was spent at Hampstead, and that it was not wasted, I knew
nothing of what he was doing. At last, however, on a wild, tempestuous evening,
when the wind screamed and rattled against the windows, he returned from his
last expedition, and, having removed his disguise, he sat before the fire and
laughed heartily in his silent, inward fashion.
“You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?”
“No, indeed!”
“You’ll be interested to hear that I’m engaged.”
“My dear fellow! I congrat—”
“To Milverton’s housemaid.”
“Good heavens, Holmes!”
“I wanted information, Watson.”
Sherlock Holmes in disguise.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“Surely you have gone too far?”
“It was a most necessary step. I am a plumber with a rising business, Escott by
name. I have walked out with her each evening,11 and I have talked with her.
Good heavens, those talks!12 However, I have got all I wanted. I know
Milverton’s house as I know the palm of my hand.”
“But the girl, Holmes?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You can’t help it, my dear Watson. You must play your cards as best you can
when such a stake is on the table.13 However, I rejoice to say that I have a hated
rival, who will certainly cut me out the instant that my back is turned. What a
splendid night it is!”
“You like this weather?”
“It suits my purpose. Watson, I mean to burgle Milverton’s house to-night.”
I had a catching of the breath, and my skin went cold at the words, which were
slowly uttered in a tone of concentrated resolution. As a flash of lightning in the
night shows up in an instant every detail of a wild landscape, so at one glance I
seemed to see every possible result of such an action—the detection, the capture,
the honoured career ending in irreparable failure and disgrace, my friend himself
lying at the mercy of the odious Milverton.
“For heaven’s sake, Holmes, think what you are doing,” I cried.14
“My dear fellow, I have given it every consideration. I am never precipitate in
my actions, nor would I adopt so energetic and, indeed, so dangerous a course if
any other were possible. Let us look at the matter clearly and fairly. I suppose
that you will admit that the action is morally justifiable, though technically
criminal. To burgle his house is no more than to forcibly take his pocketbook—
an action in which you were prepared to aid me.”
I turned it over in my mind.
“Yes,” I said, “it is morally justifiable so long as our object is to take no
articles save those which are used for an illegal purpose.”
“Exactly. Since it is morally justifiable, I have only to consider the question of
personal risk. Surely a gentleman should not lay much stress upon this, when a
lady is in most desperate need of his help?”
“You will be in such a false position.”
“Well, that is part of the risk. There is no other possible way of regaining
these letters. The unfortunate lady has not the money, and there are none of her
people in whom she could confide. To-morrow is the last day of grace, and
unless we can get the letters to-night, this villain will be as good as his word and
will bring about her ruin. I must, therefore, abandon my client to her fate, or I
must play this last card. Between ourselves, Watson, it’s a sporting duel between
this fellow Milverton and me. He had, as you saw, the best of the first
exchanges; but my self-respect and my reputation are concerned to fight it to a
finish.”
“Well, I don’t like it, but I suppose it must be,” said I. “When do we start?”
“You are not coming.”
“Then you are not going,” said I. “I give you my word of honour—and I never
broke it in my life—that I will take a cab straight to the police-station and give
you away unless you let me share this adventure with you.”
“You can’t help me.”
“How do you know that? You can’t tell what may happen. Anyway, my
resolution is taken. Other people besides you have self-respect, and even
reputations.”
Holmes had looked annoyed, but his brow cleared, and he clapped me on the
shoulder.
“Well, well, my dear fellow, be it so. We have shared the same room for some
years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell. You know,
Watson, I don’t mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I
would have made a highly efficient criminal. This is the chance of my lifetime in
that direction. See here!” He took a neat little leather case out of a drawer, and
opening it he exhibited a number of shining instruments. “This is a first-class,
up-to-date burgling kit, with nickel-plated jemmy, diamond-tipped glass cutter,
adaptable keys, and every modern improvement which the march of civilization
demands. Here, too, is my dark lantern.15 Everything is in order. Have you a pair
of silent shoes?”
“I have rubber-soled tennis shoes.”16
“Excellent! And a mask?”
“I can make a couple out of black silk.”
“I can see that you have a strong natural turn for this sort of thing. Very good;
do you make the masks. We shall have some cold supper before we start. It is
now nine-thirty. At eleven we shall drive as far as Church Row. It is a quarter of
an hour’s walk from there to Appledore Towers. We shall be at work before
midnight. Milverton is a heavy sleeper, and retires punctually at ten-thirty. With
any luck we should be back here by two, with the Lady Eva’s letters in my
pocket.”
Holmes and I put on our dress-clothes, so that we might appear to be two
theatre-goers homeward bound. In Oxford Street we picked up a hansom and
drove to an address in Hampstead. Here we paid off our cab, and with our great
coats buttoned up—for it was bitterly cold, and the wind seemed to blow through
us—we walked along the edge of the heath.
“It’s a business that needs delicate treatment,” said Holmes. “These
documents are contained in a safe in the fellow’s study, and the study is the anteroom of his bed chamber. On the other hand, like all these stout, little men who
do themselves well, he is a plethoric17 sleeper. Agatha—that’s my fiancée—says
it is a joke in the servants’ hall that it’s impossible to wake the master. He has a
secretary who is devoted to his interests, and never budges from the study all
day. That’s why we are going at night. Then he has a beast of a dog which roams
the garden. I met Agatha late the last two evenings, and she locks the brute up so
as to give me a clear run. This is the house, this big one in its own grounds.18
Through the gate—now to the right among the laurels. We might put on our
masks here, I think. You see, there is not a glimmer of light in any of the
windows, and everything is working splendidly.”
Hampstead Road, joining Euston Road (1904).
Victorian and Edwardian London
With our black silk face-coverings, which turned us into two of the most
truculent figures in London, we stole up to the silent, gloomy house. A sort of
tiled veranda extended along one side of it, lined by several windows and two
doors.
“That’s his bedroom,” Holmes whispered. “This door opens straight into the
study. It would suit us best, but it is bolted as well as locked, and we should
make too much noise getting in. Come round here. There’s a greenhouse which
opens into the drawing-room.”
The place was locked, but Holmes removed a circle of glass and turned the
key from the inside. An instant afterwards he had closed the door behind us, and
we had become felons in the eyes of the law. The thick warm air of the
conservatory and the rich choking fragrance of exotic plants took us by the
throat. He seized my hand in the darkness and led me swiftly past banks of
shrubs which brushed against our faces. Holmes had remarkable powers,
carefully cultivated, of seeing in the dark. Still holding my hand in one of his, he
opened a door, and I was vaguely conscious that we had entered a large room in
which a cigar had been smoked not long before. He felt his way among the
furniture, opened another door, and closed it behind us. Putting out my hand I
felt several coats hanging from the wall, and I understood that I was in a
passage. We passed along it, and Holmes very gently opened a door upon the
right-hand side. Something rushed out at us, and my heart sprang into my mouth,
but I could have laughed when I realized that it was the cat. A fire was burning
in this new room, and again the air was heavy with tobacco smoke. Holmes
entered on tiptoe, waited for me to follow, and then very gently closed the door.
We were in Milverton’s study, and a portière19 at the farther side showed the
entrance to his bedroom.
It was a good fire, and the room was illuminated by it. Near the door I saw the
gleam of an electric switch, but it was unnecessary, even if it had been safe, to
turn it on. At one side of the fireplace was a heavy curtain, which covered the
bay window we had seen from outside. On the other side was the door which
communicated with the veranda. A desk stood in the centre, with a turning chair
of shining red leather. Opposite was a large bookcase, with a marble bust of
Athene on the top. In the corner between the bookcase and the wall there stood a
tall, green safe, the firelight flashing back from the polished brass knobs upon its
face. Holmes stole across and looked at it. Then he crept to the door of the
bedroom, and stood with slanting head listening intently. No sound came from
within. Meanwhile it had struck me that it would be wise to secure our retreat
through the outer door, so I examined it. To my amazement it was neither locked
nor bolted. I touched Holmes on the arm, and he turned his masked face in that
direction. I saw him start, and he was evidently as surprised as I.
“He stood with slanting head listening intently.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“I don’t like it,” he whispered, putting his lips to my very ear. “I can’t quite
make it out. Anyhow, we have no time to lose.”
“Can I do anything?”
“Yes; stand by the door. If you hear anyone come, bolt it on the inside, and we
can get away as we came. If they come the other way, we can get through the
door if our job is done, or hide behind these window curtains if it is not. Do you
understand?”
I nodded and stood by the door. My first feeling of fear had passed away, and
I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the
defenders of the law instead of its defiers. The high object of our mission, the
consciousness that it was unselfish and chivalrous, the villainous character of our
opponent, all added to the sporting interest of the adventure. Far from feeling
guilty, I rejoiced and exulted in our dangers. With a glow of admiration I
watched Holmes unrolling his case of instruments and choosing his tool with the
calm, scientific accuracy of a surgeon who performs a delicate operation. I knew
that the opening of safes was a particular hobby with him, and I understood the
joy which it gave him to be confronted with this green and gold monster, the
dragon which held in its maw the reputations of many fair ladies. Turning up the
cuffs of his dress coat—he had placed his overcoat on a chair—Holmes laid out
two drills, a jemmy, and several skeleton keys. I stood at the centre door with my
eyes glancing at each of the others, ready for any emergency; though, indeed, my
plans were somewhat vague as to what I should do if we were interrupted. For
half an hour Holmes worked with concentrated energy, laying down one tool,
picking up another, handling each with the strength and delicacy of the trained
mechanic. Finally I heard a click, the broad green door swung open, and inside I
had a glimpse of a number of paper packets, each tied, sealed, and inscribed.
Holmes picked one out, but it was hard to read by the flickering fire, and he
drew out his little dark lantern, for it was too dangerous, with Milverton in the
next room, to switch on the electric light. Suddenly I saw him halt, listen
intently, and then in an instant he had swung the door of the safe to, picked up
his coat, stuffed his tools into the pockets, and darted behind the window curtain,
motioning me to do the same.
It was only when I had joined him there that I heard what had alarmed his
quicker senses. There was a noise somewhere within the house. A door slammed
in the distance. Then a confused, dull murmur broke itself into the measured
thud of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching. They were in the passage outside
the room. They paused at the door. The door opened. There was a sharp snick20
as the electric light was turned on. The door closed once more, and the pungent
reek of a strong cigar was borne to our nostrils. Then the footsteps continued
backward and forwards, backward and forwards, within a few yards of us.
Finally there was a creak from a chair, and the footsteps ceased. Then a key
clicked in a lock, and I heard the rustle of papers.
So far I had not dared to look out, but now I gently parted the division of the
curtains in front of me and peeped through. From the pressure of Holmes’s
shoulder against mine I knew that he was sharing my observations. Right in front
of us, and almost within our reach, was the broad, rounded back of Milverton. It
was evident that we had entirely miscalculated his movements, that he had never
been to his bedroom, but that he had been sitting up in some smoking-or billiardroom in the farther wing of the house, the windows of which we had not seen.
His broad, grizzled head, with its shining patch of baldness, was in the
immediate foreground of our vision. He was leaning far back in the red leather
chair, his legs outstretched, a long black cigar projecting at an angle from his
mouth. He wore a semi-military smoking jacket, claret-coloured, with a black
velvet collar. In his hand he held a long legal document which he was reading in
an indolent fashion, blowing rings of tobacco smoke from his lips as he did so.
There was no promise of a speedy departure in his composed bearing and his
comfortable attitude.
I felt Holmes’s hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake, as if to
say that the situation was within his powers, and that he was easy in his mind. I
was not sure whether he had seen what was only too obvious from my position,
that the door of the safe was imperfectly closed, and that Milverton might at any
moment observe it. In my own mind I had determined that if I were sure, from
the rigidity of his gaze, that it had caught his eye, I would at once spring out,
throw my great coat over his head, pinion him, and leave the rest to Holmes. But
Milverton never looked up. He was languidly interested by the papers in his
hand, and page after page was turned as he followed the argument of the lawyer.
At least, I thought, when he has finished the document and the cigar he will go to
his room but before he had reached the end of either, there came a remarkable
development, which turned our thoughts into quite another channel.
Several times I had observed that Milverton looked at his watch, and once he
had risen and sat down again with a gesture of impatience. The idea, however,
that he might have an appointment at so strange an hour never occurred to me
until a faint sound reached my ears from the veranda outside. Milverton dropped
his papers and sat rigid in his chair. The sound was repeated, and then there
came a gentle tap at the door. Milverton rose and opened it.
“Well,” said he curtly, “you are nearly half an hour late.”
So this was the explanation of the unlocked door and of the nocturnal vigil of
Milverton. There was the gentle rustle of a woman’s dress. I had closed the slit
between the curtains as Milverton’s face turned in our direction, but now I
ventured very carefully to open it once more. He had resumed his seat, the cigar
still projecting at an insolent angle from the corner of his mouth. In front of him,
in the full glare of the electric light, there stood a tall, slim, dark woman, a veil
over her face, a mantle drawn round her chin. Her breath came quick and fast,
and every inch of the lithe figure was quivering with strong emotion.
“Well,” said Milverton, “you made me lose a good night’s rest, my dear. I
hope you’ll prove worth it. You couldn’t come any other time—eh?”
The woman shook her head.
“Well, if you couldn’t you couldn’t. If the Countess is a hard mistress, you
have your chance to get level with her now. Bless the girl, what are you
shivering about? That’s right! Pull yourself together! Now, let us get down to
business.” He took a notebook from the drawer of his desk. “You say that you
have five letters which compromise the Countess d’Albert. You want to sell
them. I want to buy them. So far so good. It only remains to fix a price. I should
want to inspect the letters, of course. If they are really good specimens—Great
heavens, is it you?”
“You couldn’t come any other time—eh?”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
The woman without a word had raised her veil and dropped the mantle from
her chin. It was a dark, handsome, clear-cut face which confronted Milverton, a
face with a curved nose, strong, dark eyebrows, shading hard, glittering eyes,
and a straight, thin-lipped mouth set in a dangerous smile.
“It is I,” she said, “the woman whose life you have ruined.”
Milverton laughed, but fear vibrated in his voice. “You were so very
obstinate,” said he. “Why did you drive me to such extremities? I assure you I
wouldn’t hurt a fly of my own accord, but every man has his business, and what
was I to do? I put the price well within your means. You would not pay.”
“So you sent the letters to my husband, and he—the noblest gentleman that
ever lived, a man whose boots I was never worthy to lace—he broke his gallant
heart and died. You remember that last night, when I came through that door, I
begged and prayed you for mercy, and you laughed in my face as you are trying
to laugh now, only your coward heart cannot keep your lips from twitching?
Yes; you never thought to see me here again, but it was that night which taught
me how I could meet you face to face, and alone. Well, Charles Milverton, what
have you to say?”
“Don’t imagine that you can bully me,” said he, rising to his feet. “I have only
to raise my voice, and I could call my servants and have you arrested. But I will
make allowance for your natural anger. Leave the room at once as you came, and
I will say no more.”
The woman stood with her hand buried in her bosom, and the same deadly
smile on her thin lips.
“You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more
hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that,
you hound, and that!—and that!—and that!—and that!”
She had drawn a little gleaming revolver, and emptied barrel after barrel into
Milverton’s body, the muzzle within two feet of his shirt front. He shrank away
and then fell forward upon the table, coughing furiously and clawing among the
papers. Then he staggered to his feet, received another shot, and rolled upon the
floor. “You’ve done me,” he cried, and lay still. The woman looked at him
intently and ground her heel into his upturned face. She looked again, but there
was no sound or movement. I heard a sharp rustle, the night air blew into the
heated room, and the avenger was gone.21
“You couldn’t come any other time—eh?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
He fell forward upon the table, coughing furiously and
clawing among the papers.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
No interference upon our part could have saved the man from his fate; but, as
the woman poured bullet after bullet into Milverton’s shrinking body I was about
to spring out, when I felt Holmes’s cold, strong grasp upon my wrist. I
understood the whole argument of that firm, restraining grip—that it was no
affair of ours; that justice had overtaken a villain; that we had our own duties
and our own objects which were not to be lost sight of. But hardly had the
woman rushed from the room when Holmes, with swift, silent steps, was over at
the other door. He turned the key in the lock. At the same instant we heard
voices in the house and the sound of hurrying feet. The revolver shots had
roused the household. With perfect coolness Holmes slipped across to the safe,
filled his two arms with bundles of letters, and poured them all into the fire.
Again and again he did it, until the safe was empty. Someone turned the handle
and beat upon the outside of the door. Holmes looked swiftly round. The letter
which had been the messenger of death for Milverton lay, all mottled with his
blood, upon the table. Holmes tossed it in among the blazing papers. Then he
drew the key from the outer door, passed through after me, and locked it on the
outside. “This way, Watson,” said he, “we can scale the garden wall in this
direction.”
“Then he staggered to his feet and received another shot.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
I could not have believed that an alarm could have spread so swiftly. Looking
back, the huge house was one blaze of light. The front door was open, and
figures were rushing down the drive. The whole garden was alive with people,
and one fellow raised a view-halloa22 as we emerged from the veranda and
followed hard at our heels. Holmes seemed to know the grounds perfectly, and
he threaded his way swiftly among a plantation of small trees, I close at his
heels, and our foremost pursuer panting behind us. It was a six-foot wall which
barred our path, but he sprang to the top and over. As I did the same I felt the
hand of the man behind me grab at my ankle; but I kicked myself free and
scrambled over a glass-strewn coping. I fell upon my face among some bushes;
but Holmes had me on my feet in an instant, and together we dashed away across
the huge expanse of Hampstead Heath. We had run two miles, I suppose, before
Holmes at last halted and listened intently.23 All was absolute silence behind us.
We had shaken off our pursuers and were safe.
We had breakfasted and were smoking our morning pipe on the day after the
remarkable experience which I have recorded, when Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland
Yard, very solemn and impressive, was ushered into our modest sitting-room.
Hampstead Heath.
Queen’s London (1897)
“Good-morning, Mr. Holmes,” said he; “good-morning. May I ask if you are
very busy just now?”
“Not too busy to listen to you.”
“I thought that, perhaps, if you had nothing particular on hand, you might care
to assist us in a most remarkable case, which occurred only last night at
Hampstead.”
“Dear me!” said Holmes. “What was that?”
“A murder—a most dramatic and remarkable murder. I know how keen you
are upon these things, and I would take it as a great favour if you would step
down to Appledore Towers and give us the benefit of your advice. It is no
ordinary crime. We have had our eyes upon this Mr. Milverton for some time,
and, between ourselves, he was a bit of a villain. He is known to have held
papers which he used for blackmailing purposes. These papers have all been
burned by the murderers. No article of value was taken, as it is probable that the
criminals were men of good position, whose sole object was to prevent social
exposure.”
“Criminals!” said Holmes. “Plural!”
“Yes, there were two of them. They were, as nearly as possible, captured redhanded. We have their footmarks, we have their description, it’s ten to one that
we trace them. The first fellow was a bit too active, but the second was caught
by the under-gardener, and only got away after a struggle. He was a middlesized, strongly built man—square jaw, thick neck, moustache, a mask over his
eyes.”
“That’s rather vague,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Why, it might be a description
of Watson!”
“It’s true,” said the Inspector, with amusement. “It might be a description of
Watson.”
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you, Lestrade,” said Holmes. “The fact is that I
knew this fellow Milverton, that I considered him one of the most dangerous
men in London, and that I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot
touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge.24 No, it’s no
use arguing. I have made up my mind. My sympathies are with the criminals
rather than with the victim, and I will not handle this case.”
Holmes had not said one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed,
but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he
gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a
man who is striving to recall something to his memory. We were in the middle
of our lunch, when he suddenly sprang to his feet. “By Jove, Watson, I’ve got
it!”25 he cried. “Take your hat! Come with me!” He hurried at his top speed
down Baker Street and along Oxford Street, until we had almost reached Regent
Circus. Here on the left hand there stands a shop window filled with photographs
of the celebrities and beauties of the day. Holmes’s eyes fixed themselves upon
one of them, and following his gaze I saw the picture of a regal and stately lady
in Court dress, with a high diamond tiara upon her noble head. I looked at that
delicately curved nose, at the marked eyebrows, at the straight mouth, and the
strong little chin beneath it. Then I caught my breath as I read the time-honoured
title of the great nobleman and statesman whose wife she had been.26 My eyes
met those of Holmes, and he put his finger to his lips as we turned away from the
window.27
"Following his gaze I saw the picture of a regal and
stately lady in Court dress.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Charles Augustus Milverton” was published in
Collier’s Magazine on March 26, 1904, and in the Strand
Magazine in April 1904. Arthur Conan Doyle featured
Charles Augustus Milverton in his play The Speckled
Band in 1910; he was a blackmailer attempting to extort
the Duchess of Ferrers before her marriage.
1
While there is much dispute among the chronologists on
the dating of this case, most place it in 1899. The fiveyear gap between 1899 and publication does not seem to
fit the spirit of Watson’s remarks here, but there are other
clues. Two specific dates are mentioned in Watson’s
record: a wedding on the eighteenth (not a Sunday, for no
marriages could be performed on Sundays in Victorian
times) and a stroll on the fourteenth. Because Watson
remarks on looking in shop windows on the fourteenth,
scholars proclaim that that day was also not a Sunday
(when the windows would have been shuttered), nor was
the previous day, on which Holmes and Watson dressed
as theatre-goers (the theatres would have been dark). If
certain months are ruled out, because of weather and
lighting clues, a number of possible years are eliminated,
and the chronologists choose 1899 as the most likely
among the remaining.
2
The astute reader will recall that Edith, the wife of the
Duke of Holdernesse (“The Priory School”), was the
daughter of Sir Charles Appledore. See “The Priory
School.” Why Watson repeated the obvious pseudonym
is unknown.
3
A residential borough (now part of Camden) popular
with the artistic and literary crowd, Hampstead was the
home of George Du Maurier, John Keats, and Karl Marx,
among others. Hampstead’s Highgate Cemetery contains
the graves of several luminaries, including Marx, George
Eliot, Michael Faraday, Christina Rossetti, and Herbert
Spencer.
4
The London Zoo in Regent Park, with its south entrance
about three-quarters of a mile from the Baker Street
station of the Metropolitan Railway, was founded as a
scientific endeavour in 1828 by the Zoological Society.
The initial 430 animals were donated by the Royal
Menagerie at the Tower of London. For the zoo’s first
two decades, admission was granted only to members of
the Zoological Society and their guests; still, the new
attraction was immensely popular, and it became even
more so when opened up to the general public. Victorian
visitors were tickled and awed to be able to witness these
exotic animals up close for the first time, and their delight
was tinged also with the thrill that the zoo’s powerful
captives might potentially escape. Here, Holmes’s
5
fascination with the zoo’s serpentine residents is shared
by William Makepeace Thackeray, whose own
description of the London Zoo (as quoted in Peter
Ackroyd’s London: The Biography) involves “an
immense boa constrictor swallowing a live rabbit—
swallowing a live rabbit, sir, and looking as if he would
have swallowed one of my little children afterwards.”
A telling phrase, suggest many commentators, revealing
Holmes’s innate snobbery, which manifests itself most
particularly in “The Illustrious Client.” However,
Holmes’s lack of snobbery—and indeed, disdain for the
“upper classes”—is in evidence in his treatment of the
king in “A Scandal in Bohemia” and his high-handed
manner with Lord Robert St. Simon in “The Noble
Bachelor.” Charles A. Meyer suggests that Lady Eva was
involved with Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, that
Albert requested Holmes’s assistance (see L. W. Bailey’s
similar reasoning in note 27 below), and that the Crown’s
involvement justified in Holmes’s mind his
ungentlemanly treatment of Milverton’s housemaid.
6
7
Given as “Blackwell” in American editions.
Samuel Pickwick, Esq., is the protagonist of Charles
Dickens’s farcical novel The Pickwick Papers (1836–
1837), first published in serial form under Dickens’s
pseudonym, Boz. Founder of the Pickwick Club (whose
8
members travel throughout England and report on their
observations and adventures), Mr. Pickwick, a simpleminded and morally upright fellow, is bald and has eyes
that twinkle from behind his spectacles. The benevolence
Watson refers to is fully on display in Pickwick’s
opening speech to the club, wherein he informs his fellow
members that “if ever the fire of self-importance broke
out in his bosom, the desire to benefit the human race in
preference effectually quenched it. The praise of mankind
was his swing; philanthropy was his insurance office.”
This sentence makes little sense, unless Watson means
that Holmes was “baffled” as to his next step; if Watson
means that Holmes is baffled by the meaning of
Milverton’s remark, it seems more logical that the
sentence should read, “I could see clearly that he did
not.”
9
Difficult as it may be to believe that so many unfaithful
spouses would risk exposure by exchanging risqué love
letters—and would actually be caught doing so—the
realities of the time make this scenario entirely plausible.
As L. W. Bailey points out, private telephones were
unavailable, and secret lovers were often forced to send
word to each other via notes conveyed by their servants.
Naturally, should an opportunist such as Milverton come
calling with a large sum of money, many a valet or maid
might be tempted to hand the evidence over. “[T]oo
10
often,” writes Bailey, “as in other fields of human
activity, avarice proved stronger than loyalty.” At the
same time, what Milverton has in hand may not be torrid
declarations of passion, but merely straightforward
arrangements to meet at a certain location. For a married
man or woman, such a message would be considered
scandalous enough.
David Galerstein points out that it was winter and the
weather was severe; it is therefore obvious that Holmes
and Milverton’s maid would have to meet indoors, in her
bedroom. Only by sleeping with the maid, Galerstein
insists, could Holmes acquire the inside information he so
urgently needed. “We have seen cases where the Master
risked his life to help a client,” Galerstein writes
admiringly. “We now see that his profession made other
demands on him too, and marvel at the extent to which a
private detective must sometimes go to help his client.”
Judy L. Buddle expresses a similar view, although she
suggests that Holmes’s “swagger” evidences some
enthusiasm for the job. Finally, Alan Wilson spins the
fanciful theory that Holmes and Agatha eventually had a
son, one Sylvanus Escott.
11
“Is it not a tribute to Holmes’s versatility,” Richard
Asher writes admiringly in “Holmes and the Fair Sex,”
“that he, a man accustomed to discourse upon the
Chaldean roots of the ancient Cornish language and the
12
Polyphonic Motets of Lassus, should be equally capable
of love talk with a housemaid? Is it not remarkable that a
man accustomed to the company of khalifas, dukes,
headmasters and lamas should be such a success with a
servant?”
D. Martin Dakin, among others, takes Holmes to task
for his cavalier treatment of Milverton’s hapless
employee. “We may well ask if the happiness of a
housemaid was not just as important as that of a society
lady—even if she was the most beautiful débutante of the
season.” While this was decidedly not the case in
Victorian society, the detective who elsewhere shows
disdain for those placing too much importance on social
rank might be expected to show more respect for the
feelings of an innocent housemaid than he does here.
Holmes’s next comment, that his putative fiancée will be
well taken care of by a “hated rival” the instant Holmes
has departed, might seem to express some concern as to
her fate. But, admonishes Dakin, “this remark, based as it
was on the Victorian tradition that the affaires du coeur
of domestic servants were something comic and not to be
taken seriously, only adds insult to injury.”
Brad Keefauver, in Sherlock and the Ladies, rises to
Holmes’s defence, elevating the housemaid (whose name
is later revealed to be Agatha) from victim to shrewd
manipulator. “I don’t think the engagement was his
13
fault,” he argues. “What man, carefully trying to win a
girl’s heart, proposes after seeing her for only a few days,
especially if he knows his intentions aren’t sincere?
Holmes could have gained the information he needed by
simply romancing her; he needn’t have asked her to
marry him . . . unless, of course, it was Agatha who
forced the proposal out of him.”
This remark seems uncharacteristic of Watson—
contrast his courage displayed in “The Speckled Band”
and The Hound of the Baskervilles and his lack of
hesitancy to break the law in a good cause in “A Scandal
in Bohemia” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans”—and is
likely to have been inserted by him later for dramatic
effect.
14
See “The Red-Headed League,” note 63, for a
description of this device. A dark lantern would prove
extremely useful to the stealth of a burglar, observes
Bruce Kennedy: “With the shutter open only a crack, a
faint glimmer of light can shine on the subject which
would be invisible to the passer-by.”
15
Why? Was Watson’s wound so little trouble that he
could play tennis? The plague of wearing tennis shoes as
daily wear had not yet affected men’s fashions.
16
17
Technically, plethora is a medical condition in which
one’s body contains too much blood; a person who is
“plethoric” may be defined as moving slowly and having
a ruddy complexion. Holmes is likely using the more
familiar meaning of the term—“excessive”—for he has
already stated that Milverton is a heavy sleeper.
Humphrey Morton identifies Appledore Towers as the
house now known as The Logs, located at the corner of
East Heath Road and Well Walk and built in 1868. The
first existing record of the house’s occupant is Edward
Gotto, who lived there from 1873 to 1896—after which
The Logs, curiously, is said to have stood empty for two
years. “Cannot we assume,” proposes Morton, “. . . that
Milverton moved to The Logs in 1896, changed its name
to Appledore Towers and was in residence until his
timely and unlamented death a year or two later?”
Morton’s identification seems generally correct, in light
of the fugitives’ later run across the Heath. Yet this
location leaves unexplained Holmes and Watson’s drive
to Church Row, farther west than the location in question.
They were then required to walk back toward Appledore
Towers, when they could just as well have alighted at
Hampstead Heath Station and walked a short way west.
18
19
A heavy curtain hung over the doorway of a room.
The light switch, which does make a sort of sharp,
clicking noise when flipped on or off (“snick!”), was not
20
in public use when the events of “The Adventure of
Charles August Milverton” are thought to have taken
place, writes William E. Plimental in a letter to the Baker
Street Journal. Rather, prior to the light switch, one
would turn off a light by using “the little square attached
to a table lamp, and the push-button in the wall for a
chandelier, neither of which gave what might be called a
‘snick.’ ” Plimental uses that information to date “Charles
August Milverton” later than most chronologists do,
placing its occurrence in 1900 or 1901.
“Where did she go?” D. Martin Dakin astutely asks.
Holmes and Watson’s escape will require scaling a sixfoot wall, but “Victorian costume, including in this case
mantle and veil, did not encourage that form of exercise. .
. .” Instead, Dakin believes that the woman, having
infiltrated Milverton’s household as a servant, returned to
some other portion of the house to resume her duties,
providing her with the perfect cover.
21
The shout given by a fox-hunter when he sees a fox
break cover.
22
Gavin Brend (and others) doubts that the two-mile run
ever took place. “By the time a runner has travelled one
mile (let alone two) he will have a fairly accurate idea of
the pursuit behind him,” observes Brend, in a private
letter to William S. Baring-Gould. “He will know how
23
many men are following him, whether they are gaining or
losing ground and how he manages finally to shake them
off.” Since Watson makes no mention of such a chase,
Brend disabuses the notion that he and Holmes felt
compelled to run for two miles—although he does allow
that they may have travelled two miles across Hampstead
Heath, running part of the way. Even those commentators
who accept the two-mile run observe that the wound in
Watson’s leg had obviously healed considerably by the
time of this tale.
Although it seems possible that it was Holmes, not the
mystery lady, who actually killed Milverton, Bruce
Harris’s seemingly ludicrous contention that Holmes and
Milverton had a homosexual affair—and that Holmes
eliminated him to suppress the evidence—has stirred up
its share of controversy. John Linsenmeyer, who was
editor of the Baker Street Journal when Harris made his
theory public, voices his “strong conviction” that while
Holmes might have killed Milverton for “good and
sufficient reason . . . , [Harris’s] suggestion . . . is
unacceptable.”
24
The manuscript originally continued, “Yes, yes. It is
she.”
25
The identity of the lady is never revealed, but based on
Watson’s description of her, both earlier (when he notes
26
her “dark, handsome, clear-cut face . . . a face with a
curved nose, strong, dark eyebrows, shading hard,
glittering eyes, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth”) and
here, L. W. Bailey concludes that she must have been a
member of a titled Jewish family.
According to Bailey, Jews were allowed entrance into
the titled aristocracy only after the rise of the Rothschilds,
headed by patriarch Mayer Amschel Rothschild. And
even for that esteemed family, an official place in British
high society was slow in coming. The Rothschild
brothers—Amschel Mayer, Salomon, Nathan Mayer,
Karl, and James—were made barons by the emperor of
Austria in 1822; Nathan, who had established the
flourishing London branch of the family’s banking
operations, accepted the title but stated that he still
wished to be referred to as “plain Mr. Rothschild.” Yet
Lionel de Rothschild, the son of Nathan Mayer, was
denied a peerage in his father’s adopted country when
Queen Victoria said in 1869, “To make a Jew a peer is a
step the Queen could not assent to.” This despite the fact
that his father had aided the British government against
Napoleon and had essentially saved the London stock
market from collapse after the allied victory at Waterloo;
and despite the fact that Lionel had become the first Jew
elected to Parliament in 1847. (Refusing to take an oath
containing the words “in the true faith of a Christian,”
Lionel left his seat empty for eleven years until the oath
was revised.)
A decade after the queen’s snub, the social landscape
had altered significantly, with the Jewish-born Benjamin
Disraeli serving two terms as prime minister in 1868 and
1874–1880 and enjoying the queen’s particular favour. In
1876, Queen Victoria bestowed a peerage upon Disraeli,
making him the Earl of Beaconsfield, and in 1885 she
granted one to Lionel de Rothschild’s son, Nathaniel
Rothschild. Meanwhile, the queen’s eldest son, the Prince
of Wales (Albert Edward, later Edward VII), had become
great friends with the Rothschilds, blithely ignoring the
disapproval of the British elite.
Considering how long Jewish people had been
excluded from the nobility, it seems likely that the
mystery murderess acquired her aristocratic status via a
gentile husband. “If the lady was of Jewish extraction,”
Bailey concludes, “it is quite clear that her husband was
not, since he had a ‘time-honoured title.’ One may
surmise therefore that he had married into one of the
Jewish families he had met through the Prince of Wales.”
Watson has obviously taken great pains to disguise the
murdereress’s identity from the public; remember that he
begins this narrative by stating his longstanding refusal to
expose the details of Milverton’s death “even with the
utmost discretion and reticence . . . but now the principal
person concerned is beyond the reach of human law.”
27
Most readers (and scholars) assume that this means the
woman in question had recently passed away, but L. W.
Bailey has a different theory. Calculating backward from
the story’s April 1904 publication date, Bailey assumes
that Watson began writing up the events early in 1903.
“On the 26th of June, 1902, Edward VII had been
crowned King of England,” Bailey muses, “and had thus
become technically above the law and so ‘beyond its
reach.’ Is it not possible that by his choice of words
Watson was hinting at a truth he dare not reveal, and into
which even now it would be indelicate to probe any
further?”
D. Martin Dakin adopts the more mundane view that
Watson’s words must refer to the demise of the lady who
shot Milverton, but he raises some telling questions about
Watson’s publication of the tale. Why would Watson risk
confessing his and Holmes’s illegal activities (not to
mention their suppression of evidence regarding a
murder) at all? Surely he must have realised that legal
repercussions were inevitable. No, Dakin concludes,
something must have occurred to assure Watson that
there would be no risk to himself from publication of the
tale. In 1902, Holmes was involved in a case—“The
Illustrious Client” —that also involved burglary
supposedly committed for a good cause. Holmes’s
service to that client, reasons Dakin, would have put him
in such good graces with royalty that Watson deemed it
safe to reveal his and Holmes’s own previous turn at
playing Robin Hood. “But it cannot have been very
agreeable to Inspector Lestrade,” Dakin considers, “. . . to
know how he had been led up the garden path. It is
probable, however, that by then he had also retired, and
might therefore have been more inclined to look
indulgently on Holmes’s past treatment of him.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS1
A favourite of readers, “The Six Napoleons” finds Holmes on the track
of a jewel thief, just as in “The Blue Carbuncle.” However, where
Holmes sees the traces of a relentless burglar, Inspector Lestrade sees
only a madman on the loose. Set in the closing years of Holmes’s
career, the case reveals that notwithstanding Holmes’s constant
criticism of Scotland Yard, he is revered there. In perhaps the first
recorded instance of deliberate manipulation of the news, Holmes
declares, “The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you
only know how to use it.”
IT WAS NO very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, to look in
upon us of an evening, and his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes, for they
enabled him to keep in touch with all that was going on at the police
headquarters. In return for the news which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was
always ready to listen with attention to the details of any case upon which the
detective was engaged, and was able occasionally, without any active
interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from his own vast
knowledge and experience.
On this particular evening Lestrade had spoken of the weather and the
newspapers. Then he had fallen silent, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar. Holmes
looked keenly at him.
“Anything remarkable on hand?” he asked.
“Oh, no, Mr. Holmes, nothing very particular.”
“Then tell me about it.”
Lestrade laughed.
“Well, Mr. Holmes, there is no use denying that there is something on my
mind. And yet it is such an absurd business that I hesitated to bother you about
it. On the other hand, although it is trivial, it is undoubtedly queer, and I know
that you have a taste for all that is out of the common. But, in my opinion, it
comes more in Dr. Watson’s line than ours.”
“Disease?” said I.
“Madness, anyhow. And a queer madness too! You wouldn’t think there was
anyone living at this time of day who had such a hatred of Napoleon the First
that he would break any image of him that he could see.”
Holmes sank back in his chair.
“That’s no business of mine,” said he.
“Exactly. That’s what I said. But then, when the man commits burglary in
order to break images which are not his own,2 that brings it away from the
doctor and on to the policeman.”
Holmes sat up again.
“Burglary! This is more interesting. Let me hear the details.”
Lestrade took out his official notebook and refreshed his memory from its
pages.
“The first case reported was four days ago,” said he. “It was at the shop of
Morse Hudson,3 who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the
Kennington Road.4 The assistant had left the front shop for an instant, when he
heard a crash, and hurrying in he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood
with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments.
He rushed out into the road, but, although several passers-by declared that they
had noticed a man run out of the shop, he could neither see anyone nor could he
find any means of identifying the rascal. It seemed to be one of those senseless
acts of Hooliganism5 which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the
constable on the beat as such. The plaster cast was not worth more than a few
shillings, and the whole affair appeared to be too childish for any particular
investigation.
“The second case, however, was more serious, and also more singular. It
occurred only last night.
“In Kennington Road, and within a few hundred yards of Morse Hudson’s
shop, there lives a well-known medical practitioner, named Dr. Barnicot, who
has one of the largest practices upon the south side of the Thames. His residence
and principal consulting-room is at Kennington Road, but he has a branch
surgery and dispensary at Lower Brixton Road, two miles away. This Dr.
Barnicot is an enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon, and his house is full of books,
pictures, and relics of the French Emperor. Some little time ago he purchased
from Morse Hudson two duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon
by the French sculptor, Devine.6 One of these he placed in his hall in the house
at Kennington Road, and the other on the mantelpiece of the surgery at Lower
Brixton. Well, when Dr. Barnicot came down this morning he was astonished to
find that his house had been burgled during the night, but that nothing had been
taken save the plaster head from the hall. It had been carried out and had been
dashed savagely against the garden wall, under which its splintered fragments
were discovered.”
“Lestrade took out his official notebook.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Holmes rubbed his hands.
“This is certainly very novel,” said he.
“I thought it would please you. But I have not got to the end yet. Dr. Barnicot
was due at his surgery at twelve o’clock, and you can imagine his amazement
when, on arriving there, he found that the window had been opened in the night
and that the broken pieces of his second bust were strewn all over the room. It
had been smashed to atoms where it stood. In neither case were there any signs
which could give us a clue as to the criminal or lunatic who had done the
mischief. Now, Mr. Holmes, you have got the facts.”
“They are singular, not to say grotesque,” said Holmes. “May I ask whether
the two busts smashed in Dr. Barnicot’s rooms were the exact duplicates of the
one which was destroyed in Morse Hudson’s shop?”
“They were taken from the same mould.”
“Such a fact must tell against the theory that the man who breaks them is
influenced by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering how many hundreds
of statues of the great Emperor must exist in London, it is too much to suppose
such a coincidence as that a promiscuous iconoclast7 should chance to begin
upon three specimens of the same bust.”
“Well, I thought as you do,” said Lestrade. “On the other hand, this Morse
Hudson is the purveyor of busts in that part of London, and these three were the
only ones which had been in his shop for years. So, although, as you say, there
are many hundreds of statues in London, it is very probable that these three were
the only ones in that district. Therefore, a local fanatic would begin with them.
What do you think, Dr. Watson?”
“There are no limits to the possibilities of monomania,” I answered. “There is
the condition which the modern French psychologists have called the ‘idée
fixe,’8 which may be trifling in character, and accompanied by complete sanity
in every other way. A man who had read deeply about Napoleon, or who had
possibly received some hereditary family injury through the great war, might
conceivably form such an ‘idée fixe’ and under its influence be capable of any
fantastic outrage.”
“That won’t do, my dear Watson,” said Holmes, shaking his head; “for no
amount of ‘ideé fixe’ would enable your interesting monomaniac to find out
where these busts were situated.”
“Well, how do you explain it?”
“I don’t attempt to do so. I would only observe that there is a certain method
in the gentleman’s eccentric proceedings. For example, in Dr. Barnicot’s hall,
where a sound might arouse the family, the bust was taken outside before being
broken, whereas in the surgery, where there was less danger of an alarm, it was
smashed where it stood. The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call
nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the
least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful
business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth
which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.9 I can’t afford,
therefore, to smile at your three broken busts, Lestrade, and I shall be very much
obliged to you if you will let me hear of any fresh developments of so singular a
chain of events.”
The development for which my friend had asked came in a quicker and an
infinitely more tragic form than he could have imagined. I was still dressing in
my bedroom next morning, when there was a tap at the door and Holmes
entered, a telegram in his hand. He read it aloud:
Come instantly, 131 Pitt Street, Kensington.
—LESTRADE.
“What is it, then?” I asked.
“Don’t know—may be anything. But I suspect it is the sequel of the story of
the statues. In that case our friend the image-breaker has begun operations in
another quarter of London. There’s coffee on the table, Watson, and I have a cab
at the door.”
In half an hour we had reached Pitt Street, a quiet little backwater just beside
one of the briskest currents of London life. No. 131 was one of a row, all flatchested, respectable, and most unromantic dwellings. As we drove up we found
the railings in front of the house lined by a curious crowd. Holmes whistled.
“By George! it’s attempted murder at the least. Nothing less will hold the
London message boy. There’s a deed of violence indicated in that fellow’s round
shoulders10 and outstretched neck. What’s this, Watson? The top steps swilled
down and the other ones dry. Footsteps enough, anyhow! Well, well, there’s
Lestrade at the front window, and we shall soon know all about it.”
The official received us with a very grave face and showed us into a sittingroom, where an exceedingly unkempt and agitated elderly man, clad in a flannel
dressing-gown, was pacing up and down. He was introduced to us as the owner
of the house—Mr. Horace Harker, of the Central Press Syndicate.11
“It’s the Napoleon bust business again,” said Lestrade. “You seemed
interested last night, Mr. Holmes, so I thought perhaps you would be glad to be
present now that the affair has taken a very much graver turn.”
“What has it turned to, then?”
“He was introduced to us as the owner of the house—Mr.
Horace Harker.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“To murder. Mr. Harker, will you tell these gentlemen exactly what has
occurred?”
The man in the dressing-gown turned upon us with a most melancholy face.
“It’s an extraordinary thing,” said he, “that all my life I have been collecting
other people’s news, and now that a real piece of news has come my own way I
am so confused and bothered that I can’t put two words together. If I had come
in here as a journalist I should have interviewed myself and had two columns in
every evening paper. As it is, I am giving away valuable copy by telling my
story over and over to a string of different people, and I can make no use of it
myself. However, I’ve heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and if you’ll
only explain this queer business I shall be paid for my trouble in telling you the
story.”
Holmes sat down and listened.
“It all seems to centre round that bust of Napoleon which I bought for this
very room about four months ago. I picked it up cheap from Harding Brothers,12
two doors from the High Street Station. A great deal of my journalistic work is
done at night, and I often write until the early morning. So it was to-day. I was
sitting in my den, which is at the back of the top of the house, about three
o’clock, when I was convinced that I heard some sounds downstairs. I listened,
but they were not repeated, and I concluded that they came from outside. Then
suddenly, about five minutes later, there came a most horrible yell—the most
dreadful sound, Mr. Holmes, that ever I heard. It will ring in my ears as long as I
live. I sat frozen with horror for a minute or two. Then I seized the poker and
went downstairs. When I entered this room I found the window wide open, and I
at once observed that the bust was gone from the mantelpiece. Why any burglar
should take such a thing passes my understanding, for it was only a plaster cast
and of no real value whatever.
“You can see for yourself that anyone going out through that open window
could reach the front doorstep by taking a long stride. This was clearly what the
burglar had done, so I went round and opened the door. Stepping out into the
dark, I nearly fell over a dead man who was lying there. I ran back for a light,
and there was the poor fellow,13 a great gash in his throat and the whole place
swimming in blood. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up, and his mouth
horribly open.14 I shall see him in my dreams. I had just time to blow on my
police whistle, and then I must have fainted, for I knew nothing more until I
found the policeman standing over me in the hall.”
“Well, who was the murdered man?” asked Holmes.
“There’s nothing to show who he was,” said Lestrade. “You shall see the body
at the mortuary, but we have made nothing of it up to now. He is a tall man,
sunburned, very powerful, not more than thirty. He is poorly dressed, and yet
does not appear to be a labourer. A horn-handled clasp-knife was lying in a pool
of blood beside him. Whether it was the weapon which did the deed, or whether
it belonged to the dead man, I do not know. There was no name on his clothing,
and nothing in his pockets save an apple, some string, a shilling map of London,
and a photograph. Here it is.”
It was evidently taken by a snap-shot from a small camera. It represented an
alert, sharp-featured simian man with thick eyebrows and a very peculiar
projection of the lower part of the face, like the muzzle of a baboon.
“And what became of the bust?” asked Holmes, after a careful study of this
picture.
“We had news of it just before you came. It has been found in the front garden
of an empty house in Campden House Road.15 It was broken into fragments. I
am going round now to see it. Will you come?”
“Certainly. I must just take one look round.” He examined the carpet and the
window. “The fellow had either very long legs or was a most active man,” said
he. “With an area beneath, it was no mean feat to reach that window-ledge and
open that window. Getting back was comparatively simple. Are you coming
with us to see the remains of your bust, Mr. Harker?”
The disconsolate journalist had seated himself at a writing-table.
“I must try and make something of it,” said he, “though I have no doubt that
the first editions of the evening papers are out already with full details. It’s like
my luck! You remember when the stand fell at Doncaster?16 Well, I was the only
journalist in the stand, and my journal the only one that had no account of it, for
I was too shaken to write it. And now I’ll be too late with a murder done on my
own doorstep.”
As we left the room, we heard his pen travelling shrilly over the foolscap.
The spot where the fragments of the bust had been found was only a few
hundred yards away. For the first time our eyes rested upon this presentment of
the great Emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic and destructive hatred in
the mind of the unknown. It lay scattered, in splintered shards upon the grass.
Holmes picked up several of them and examined them carefully. I was
convinced, from his intent face and his purposeful manner, that at last he was
upon a clue.
“Well?” asked Lestrade.
Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
“We have a long way to go yet,” said he. “And yet—and yet—well, we have
some suggestive facts to act upon. The possession of this trifling bust was worth
more, in the eyes of this strange criminal, than a human life. That is one point.
Then there is the singular fact that he did not break it in the house, or
immediately outside the house, if to break it was his sole object.”
“He was rattled and bustled17 by meeting this other fellow. He hardly knew
what he was doing.”
“Well, that’s likely enough. But I wish to call your attention very particularly
to the position of this house in the garden of which the bust was destroyed.”
Lestrade looked about him.
“It was an empty house, and so he knew that he would not be disturbed in the
garden.”
“Yes, but there is another empty house farther up the street which he must
have passed before he came to this one. Why did he not break it there, since it is
evident that every yard that he carried it increased the risk of someone meeting
him?”
“I give it up,” said Lestrade.
Holmes pointed to the street lamp above our heads.
“He could see what he was doing here, and he could not there. That was his
reason.”
“By Jove! that’s true,” said the detective. “Now that I come to think of it, Dr.
Barnicot’s bust was broken not far from his red lamp.18 Well, Mr. Holmes, what
are we to do with that fact?”
“To remember it—to docket it. We may come on something later which will
bear upon it. What steps do you propose to take now, Lestrade?”
“Holmes pointed to the street lamp above our heads.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“The most practical way of getting at it, in my opinion, is to identify the dead
man. There should be no difficulty about that. When we have found who he is
and who his associates are, we should have a good start in learning what he was
doing in Pitt Street last night, and who it was who met him and killed him on the
doorstep of Mr. Horace Harker. Don’t you think so?”
“No doubt; and yet it is not quite the way in which I should approach the
case.”
“What would you do then?”
“Oh, you must not let me influence you in any way. I suggest that you go on
your line and I on mine. We can compare notes afterwards, and each will
supplement the other.”
“Very good,” said Lestrade.
“If you are going back to Pitt Street, you might see Mr. Horace Harker. Tell
him for me that I have quite made up my mind, and that it is certain that a
dangerous homicidal lunatic with Napoleonic delusions was in his house last
night.19 It will be useful for his article.”
Lestrade stared.
“You don’t seriously believe that?”
Holmes smiled.
“Don’t I? Well, perhaps I don’t. But I am sure that it will interest Mr. Horace
Harker and the subscribers of the Central Press Syndicate. Now, Watson, I think
that we shall find that we have a long and rather complex day’s work before us. I
should be glad, Lestrade, if you could make it convenient to meet us at Baker
Street at six o’clock this evening. Until then I should like to keep this
photograph found in the dead man’s pocket.20 It is possible that I may have to
ask your company and assistance upon a small expedition which will have to be
undertaken to-night, if my chain of reasoning should prove to be correct. Until
then good-bye and good luck.”
Sherlock Holmes and I walked together to the High Street, where we stopped
at the shop of Harding Brothers, whence the bust had been purchased. A young
assistant informed us that Mr. Harding would be absent until afternoon, and that
he was himself a new-comer, who could give us no information. Holmes’s face
showed his disappointment and annoyance.
“Well, well, we can’t expect to have it all our own way, Watson,” he said at
last. “We must come back in the afternoon, if Mr. Harding will not be here until
then. I am, as you have no doubt surmised, endeavouring to trace these busts to
their source, in order to find if there is not something peculiar which may
account for their remarkable fate. Let us make for Mr. Morse Hudson, of the
Kennington Road, and see if he can throw any light upon the problem.”
A drive of an hour brought us to the picture-dealer’s establishment. He was a
small, stout man with a red face and a peppery manner.
“Yes, sir. On my very counter, sir,” said he. “What we pay rates and taxes for
I don’t know, when any ruffian can come in and break one’s goods. Yes, sir, it
was I who sold Dr. Barnicot his two statues. Disgraceful, sir! A Nihilist plot,
that’s what I make it. No one but an Anarchist would go about breaking statues.
Red republicans21—that’s what I call ’em. Who did I get the statues from? I
don’t see what that has to do with it. Well, if you really want to know, I got them
from Gelder & Co., in Church Street, Stepney. They are a well-known house in
the trade, and have been this twenty years. How many had I? Three—two and
one are three—two of Dr. Barnicot’s, and one smashed in broad daylight on my
own counter. Do I know that photograph? No, I don’t. Yes, I do, though. Why,
it’s Beppo! He was a kind of Italian piece-work man,22 who made himself useful
in the shop. He could carve a bit, and gild and frame, and do odd jobs. The
fellow left me last week, and I’ve heard nothing of him since. No, I don’t know
where he came from nor where he went to. I had nothing against him while he
was here. He was gone two days before the bust was smashed.”
“Well, that’s all we could reasonably expect to get from Morse Hudson,” said
Holmes, as we emerged from the shop. “We have this Beppo as a common
factor, both in Kennington and in Kensington, so that is worth a ten-mile drive.
Now, Watson, let us make for Gelder & Co., of Stepney, the source and origin of
the busts. I shall be surprised if we don’t get some help down there.”
In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel
London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally,
maritime London,23 till we came to a river-side city of a hundred thousand souls,
where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe. Here,
in a broad thoroughfare, once the abode of wealthy City merchants, we found the
sculpture works for which we searched. Outside was a considerable yard full of
monumental masonry. Inside was a large room in which fifty workers were
carving or moulding. The manager, a big blond German, received us civilly, and
gave a clear answer to all Holmes’s questions. A reference to his books showed
that hundreds of casts had been taken from a marble copy of Devine’s head of
Napoleon, but that the three which had been sent to Morse Hudson a year or so
before had been half of a batch of six, the other three being sent to Harding
Brothers, of Kensington. There was no reason why those six should be different
to any of the other casts. He could suggest no possible cause why anyone should
wish to destroy them—in fact, he laughed at the idea. Their wholesale price was
six shillings, but the retailer would get twelve or more. The cast was taken in
two moulds from each side of the face, and then these two profiles of plaster of
Paris were joined together to make the complete bust. The work was usually
done by Italians in the room we were in. When finished, the busts were put on a
table in the passage to dry, and afterwards stored. That was all he could tell us.
But the production of the photograph had a remarkable effect upon the
manager. His face flushed with anger, and his brows knotted over his blue
Teutonic eyes.
“Ah, the rascal!” he cried. “Yes, indeed, I know him very well. This has
always been a respectable establishment, and the only time that we have ever
had the police in it was over this very fellow. It was more than a year ago now.
He knifed another Italian in the street, and then he came to the works with the
police on his heels, and he was taken here. Beppo was his name—his second
name I never knew. Serve me right for engaging a man with such a face. But he
was a good workman—one of the best.”
“‘Ah, the rascal!’ he cried.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“What did he get?”
“The man lived, and he got off with a year. I have no doubt he is out now; but
he has not dared to show his nose here. We have a cousin of his here, and I
daresay he could tell you where he is.”
“No, no,” cried Holmes, “not a word to the cousin—not a word, I beg of you.
The matter is very important and the farther I go with it the more important it
seems to grow. When you referred in your ledger to the sale of those casts I
observed that the date was June 3 of last year. Could you give me the date when
Beppo was arrested?”
“I could tell you roughly by the pay-list,” the manager answered. “Yes,” he
continued, after some turning over of pages,24 “he was paid last on May 20.”
“Thank you,” said Holmes. “I don’t think that I need intrude upon your time
and patience any more.” With a last word of caution that he should say nothing
as to our researches, we turned our faces westward once more.
The afternoon was far advanced before we were able to snatch a hasty
luncheon at a restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance announced “Kensington
Outrage. Murder by a Madman,” and the contents of the paper showed that Mr.
Horace Harker had got his account into print after all. Two columns were
occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident.
Holmes propped it against the cruet-stand and read it while he ate. Once or twice
he chuckled.
“This is all right, Watson,” said he. “Listen to this: ‘It is satisfactory to know
that there can be no difference of opinion upon this case, since Mr. Lestrade, one
of the most experienced members of the official force, and Mr. Sherlock
Holmes, the well-known consulting expert, have each come to the conclusion
that the grotesque series of incidents, which have ended in so tragic a fashion,
arise from lunacy rather than from deliberate crime. No explanation save mental
aberration can cover the facts.’ The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution,
if you only know how to use it. And now, if you have quite finished, we will
hark back to Kensington and see what the manager of Harding Brothers has to
say to the matter.”25
The founder of that great emporium proved to be a brisk, crisp little person,
very dapper and quick, with a clear head and a ready tongue.
“Yes, sir, I have already read the account in the evening papers. Mr. Horace
Harker is a customer of ours. We supplied him with the busts26 some months
ago. We ordered three busts of that sort from Gelder & Co., of Stepney. They are
all sold now. To whom? Oh, I daresay by consulting our sales book we could
very easily tell you. Yes, we have the entries here. One to Mr. Harker, you see,
and one to Mr. Josiah Brown, of Laburnum Lodge, Laburnum Vale, Chiswick,
and one to Mr. Sandeford, of Lower Grove Road,27 Reading. No, I have never
seen this face which you show me in the photograph. You would hardly forget it,
would you, sir—for I’ve seldom seen an uglier. Have we any Italians on the
staff? Yes, sir, we have several among our workpeople and cleaners. I daresay
they might get a peep at that sales book if they wanted to. There is no particular
reason for keeping a watch upon that book. Well, well, it’s a very strange
business, and I hope that you will let me know if anything comes of your
inquiries.”
Holmes had taken several notes during Mr. Harding’s evidence, and I could
see that he was thoroughly satisfied by the turn which affairs were taking. He
made no remark, however, save that, unless we hurried, we should be late for our
appointment with Lestrade. Sure enough, when we reached Baker Street the
detective was already there, and we found him pacing up and down in a fever of
impatience. His look of importance showed that his day’s work had not been in
vain.
“Well?” he asked. “What luck, Mr. Holmes?”
“We have had a very busy day, and not entirely a wasted one,” my friend
explained. “We have seen both the retailers and also the wholesale
manufacturers. I can trace each of the busts now from the beginning.”
“The busts!” cried Lestrade. “Well, well, you have your own methods, Mr.
Sherlock Holmes, and it is not for me to say a word against them, but I think I
have done a better day’s work than you. I have identified the dead man.”
“You don’t say so?”
“And found a cause for the crime.”
“Splendid!”
“We have an inspector who makes a specialty of Saffron Hill28 and the Italian
Quarter. Well, this dead man had some Catholic emblem round his neck, and
that, along with his colour, made me think he was from the South. Inspector Hill
knew him the moment he caught sight of him. His name is Pietro Venucci, from
Naples,29 and he is one of the greatest cut-throats in London. He is connected
with the Mafia, which, as you know, is a secret political society, enforcing its
decrees by murder.30 Now you see how the affair begins to clear up. The other
fellow is probably an Italian also, and a member of the Mafia. He has broken the
rules in some fashion. Pietro is set upon his track. Probably the photograph we
found in his pocket is the man himself, so that he may not knife the wrong
person. He dogs the fellow, he sees him enter a house, he waits outside for him,
and in the scuffle he receives his own death-wound. How is that, Mr. Sherlock
Holmes?”
“Little Italy,” Holborn.
Victorian and Edwardian London
Holmes clapped his hands approvingly.
“Excellent, Lestrade, excellent!” he cried. “But I didn’t quite follow your
explanation of the destruction of the busts.”
“The busts! You never can get those busts out of your head. After all, that is
nothing; petty larceny, six months at the most. It is the murder that we are really
investigating, and I tell you that I am gathering all the threads into my hands.”
“And the next stage?”
“Is a very simple one. I shall go down with Hill to the Italian Quarter, find the
man whose photograph we have got and arrest him on the charge of murder.
Will you come with us?”
“I think not. I fancy we can attain our end in a simpler way. I can’t say for
certain, because it all depends—well, it all depends upon a factor which is
completely outside our control. But I have great hopes—in fact, the betting is
exactly two to one31—that if you will come with us to-night, I shall be able to
help you to lay him by the heels.”
“In the Italian Quarter?”
“No; I fancy Chiswick is an address which is more likely to find him. If you
will come with me to Chiswick to-night, Lestrade, I’ll promise to go to the
Italian Quarter with you to-morrow, and no harm will be done by the delay. And
now I think that a few hours’ sleep would do us all good, for I do not propose to
leave before eleven o’clock,32 and it is unlikely that we shall be back before
morning. You’ll dine with us, Lestrade, and then you are welcome to the sofa
until it is time for us to start. In the meantime, Watson, I should be glad if you
would ring for an express messenger,33 for I have a letter to send, and it is
important that it should go at once.”
Italian ice-man.
John Thomson, Street Life in London (1877)
Holmes spent the evening in rummaging among the files of the old daily
papers with which one of our lumber-rooms34 was packed. When at last he
descended it was with triumph in his eyes, but he said nothing to either of us as
to the result of his researches. For my own part, I had followed step by step the
methods by which he had traced the various windings of this complex case, and,
though I could not yet perceive the goal which we would reach, I understood
clearly that Holmes expected this grotesque criminal to make an attempt upon
the two remaining busts, one of which, I remember, was at Chiswick. No doubt
the object of our journey was to catch him in the very act, and I could not but
admire the cunning with which my friend had inserted a wrong clue in the
evening paper so as to give the fellow the idea that he could continue his scheme
with impunity. I was not surprised when Holmes suggested that I should take my
revolver with me. He had himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop which was
his favourite weapon.35
A four-wheeler was at the door at eleven, and in it we drove to a spot at the
other side of Hammersmith Bridge. Here the cabman was directed to wait. A
short walk brought us to a secluded road fringed with pleasant houses, each
standing in its own grounds. In the light of a street lamp we read “Laburnum
Villa” upon the gate-post of one of them. The occupants had evidently retired to
rest, for all was dark save for a fanlight over the hall door, which shed a single
blurred circle on to the garden path. The wooden fence which separated the
grounds from the road threw a dense black shadow upon the inner side, and here
it was that we crouched.
“I fear that you’ll have a long wait,” Holmes whispered. “We may thank our
stars that it is not raining. I don’t think we can even venture to smoke to pass the
time. However, it’s a two to one chance that we get something to pay us for our
trouble.”
It proved, however, that our vigil was not to be so long as Holmes had led us
to fear, and it ended in a very sudden and singular fashion. In an instant, without
the least sound to warn us of his coming, the garden gate swung open, and a
lithe, dark figure, as swift and active as an ape, rushed up the garden path. We
saw it whisk past the light thrown from over the door and disappear against the
black shadow of the house. There was a long pause, during which we held our
breath, and then a very gentle creaking sound came to our ears. The window was
being opened. The noise ceased, and again there was a long silence. The fellow
was making his way into the house. We saw the sudden flash of a dark lantern
inside the room. What he sought was evidently not there, for again we saw the
flash through another blind, and then through another.
Hammersmith Bridge.
Queen’s London (1897)
“Let us get to the open window. We will nab him as he climbs out,” Lestrade
whispered.
But before we could move the man had emerged again. As he came out into
the glimmering patch of light we saw that he carried something white under his
arm. He looked stealthily all round him. The silence36 of the deserted street
reassured him. Turning his back upon us, he laid down his burden, and the next
instant there was the sound of a sharp tap, followed by a clatter and rattle. The
man was so intent upon what he was doing that he never heard our steps as we
stole across the grass plot. With the bound of a tiger Holmes was on his back,
and an instant later Lestrade and I had him by either wrist, and the handcuffs had
been fastened. As we turned him over I saw a hideous, sallow face, with
writhing, furious features glaring up at us, and I knew that it was indeed the man
of the photograph whom we had secured.
But before we could move, the man had emerged again.
Anonymous, Portland Oregonian, August 27, 1911
But it was not our prisoner to whom Holmes was giving his attention.
Squatted on the doorstep, he was engaged in most carefully examining that
which the man had brought from the house. It was a bust of Napoleon like the
one which we had seen that morning, and it had been broken into similar
fragments. Carefully Holmes held each separate shard to the light, but in no way
did it differ from any other shattered piece of plaster. He had just completed his
examination when the hall lights flew up, the door opened, and the owner of the
house, a jovial, rotund figure in shirt and trousers, presented himself.
“Mr. Josiah Brown, I suppose?” said Holmes.
“Yes, sir; and you no doubt are Mr. Sherlock Holmes? I had the note which
you sent by the express messenger, and I did exactly what you told me. We
locked every door on the inside and awaited developments. Well, I’m very glad
to see that you have got the rascal.37 I hope, gentlemen, that you will come in
and have some refreshment.”
However, Lestrade was anxious to get his man into safe quarters, so within a
few minutes our cab had been summoned and we were all four upon our way to
London. Not a word would our captive say; but he glared at us from the shadow
of his matted hair, and once, when my hand seemed within his reach, he snapped
at it like a hungry wolf. We stayed long enough at the police-station to learn that
a search of his clothing revealed nothing save a few shillings and a long sheath
knife, the handle of which bore copious traces of recent blood.
We saw that he carried something white under his arm.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
“With the bound of a tiger Holmes was on his back.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“That’s all right,” said Lestrade, as we parted. “Hill knows all these gentry,38
and he will give a name to him. You’ll find that my theory of the Mafia will
work out all right. But I’m sure I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Holmes,
for the workmanlike way in which you laid hands upon him. I don’t quite
understand it all yet.”
“I fear it is rather too late an hour for explanations,” said Holmes. “Besides,
there are one or two details which are not finished off, and it is one of those
cases which are worth working out to the very end. If you will come round once
more to my rooms at six o’clock to-morrow, I think I shall be able to show you
that even now you have not grasped the entire meaning of this business, which
presents some features which make it absolutely original in the history of crime.
If ever I permit you to chronicle any more of my little problems,39 Watson, I
foresee that you will enliven your pages by an account of the singular adventure
of the Napoleonic busts.”
When we met again next evening, Lestrade was furnished with much
information concerning our prisoner. His name, it appeared, was Beppo, second
name unknown. He was a well-known ne’er-do-well among the Italian colony.
He had once been a skilful sculptor and had earned an honest living, but he had
taken to evil courses, and had twice already been in gaol—once for a petty theft,
and once, as we had already heard, for stabbing a fellow-countryman. He could
talk English perfectly well. His reasons for destroying the busts were still
unknown, and he refused to answer any questions upon the subject; but the
police had discovered that these same busts might very well have been made by
his own hands, since he was engaged in this class of work at the establishment of
Gelder & Co. To all this information, much of which we already knew, Holmes
listened with polite attention, but I, who knew him so well, could clearly see that
his thoughts were elsewhere, and I detected a mixture of mingled uneasiness and
expectation beneath that mask which he was wont to assume. At last he started
in his chair and his eyes brightened. There had been a ring at the bell. A minute
later we heard steps upon the stairs, and an elderly, red-faced man with grizzled
side-whiskers was ushered in. In his right hand he carried an old-fashioned
carpet-bag, which he placed upon the table.
Holmes had just completed his examination when the
door opened.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“The door opened, and the owner of the house presented
himself.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?”
My friend bowed and smiled. “Mr. Sandeford, of Reading, I suppose?” said
he.
“Yes, sir. I fear that I am a little late; but the trains were awkward. You wrote
to me about a bust that is in my possession.”
“Exactly.”
“I have your letter here. You said, ‘I desire to possess a copy of Devine’s
Napoleon, and am prepared to pay you ten pounds for the one which is in your
possession.’ Is that right?”
“Certainly.”
“I was very much surprised at your letter, for I could not imagine how you
knew that I owned such a thing.”
“Of course you must have been surprised, but the explanation is very simple.
Mr. Harding, of Harding Brothers, said that they had sold you their last copy,
and he gave me your address.”
“Oh, that was it, was it? Did he tell you what I paid for it?”
He carried an old-fashioned carpet-bag.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“No, he did not.”
“Well, I am an honest man, though not a very rich one. I only gave fifteen
shillings for the bust, and I think you ought to know that before I take ten pounds
from you.”
“I am sure the scruple does you honour, Mr. Sandeford. But I have named that
price, so I intend to stick to it.”
“Well, it is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. I brought the bust up with me,
as you asked me to do. Here it is!”
He opened his bag, and at last we saw placed upon our table a complete
specimen of that bust which we had already seen more than once in fragments.
Holmes took a paper from his pocket and laid a ten-pound note upon the table.
“You will kindly sign that paper, Mr. Sandeford, in the presence of these
witnesses. It is simply to say that you transfer every possible right that you ever
had in the bust to me. I am a methodical man, you see, and you never know what
turn events might take afterwards. Thank you, Mr. Sandeford; here is your
money, and I wish you a very good evening.”
“I brought the bust up with me, as you asked me to do.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
He picked up his hunting-crop and struck Napoleon.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
When our visitor had disappeared Sherlock Holmes’s movements were such
as to rivet our attention. He began by taking a clean white cloth from a drawer
and laying it over the table. Then he placed his newly acquired bust in the centre
of the cloth. Finally he picked up his hunting-crop and struck Napoleon a sharp
blow on the top of the head. The figure broke into fragments, and Holmes bent
eagerly over the shattered remains. Next instant, with a loud shout of triumph, he
held up one splinter, in which a round, dark object was fixed like a plum in a
pudding.
“Gentlemen,” he cried, “let me introduce you to the famous black pearl of the
Borgias!”40
Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse,
we both broke out clapping as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of
colour sprang to Holmes’s pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master
dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. It was at such moments that
for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine, and betrayed his human love
for admiration and applause. The same singularly proud and reserved nature
which turned away with disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being
moved to its depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.
Finally, he picked up his hunting crop and struck
Napoleon a sharp blow on the top of the head.
Anonymous, Portland Oregonian, August 27, 1911
“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “it is the most famous pearl now existing in the
world, and it has been my good fortune, by a connected chain of inductive
reasoning, to trace it from the Prince of Colonna’s41 bedroom at the Dacre Hotel,
where it was lost, to the interior of this, the last of the six busts of Napoleon
which were manufactured by Gelder & Co., of Stepney. You will remember,
Lestrade, the sensation caused by the disappearance of this valuable jewel, and
the vain efforts of the London police to recover it. I was myself consulted upon
the case; but I was unable to throw any light upon it. Suspicion fell upon the
maid of the Princess, who was an Italian; and it was proved that she had a
brother in London, but we failed to trace any connection between them. The
maid’s name was Lucretia Venucci, and there is no doubt in my mind that this
Pietro who was murdered two nights ago was the brother. I have been looking up
the dates in the old files of the paper, and I find that the disappearance of the
pearl was exactly two days before the arrest of Beppo, for some crime of
violence—an event which took place in the factory of Gelder & Co., at the very
moment when these busts were being made. Now you clearly see the sequence
of events, though you see them, of course, in the inverse order to the way in
which they presented themselves to me. Beppo had the pearl in his possession.
He may have stolen it from Pietro, he may have been Pietro’s confederate, he
may have been the go-between of Pietro and his sister. It is of no consequence to
us which is the correct solution.
“The main fact is that he had the pearl, and at that moment, when it was on his
person, he was pursued by the police. He made for the factory in which he
worked, and he knew that he had only a few minutes in which to conceal this
enormously valuable prize, which would otherwise be found on him when he
was searched. Six plaster casts of Napoleon were drying in the passage. One of
them was still soft. In an instant Beppo, a skilful workman, made a small hole in
the wet plaster, dropped in the pearl, and with a few touches covered over the
aperture once more. It was an admirable hiding-place. No one could possibly
find it. But Beppo was condemned to a year’s imprisonment, and in the
meanwhile his six busts were scattered over London. He could not tell which
contained his treasure. Only by breaking them could he see. Even shaking would
tell him nothing for as the plaster was wet it was probable that the pearl would
adhere to it—as, in fact, it has done. Beppo did not despair, and he conducted his
search with considerable ingenuity and perseverance. Through a cousin who
works with Gelder he found out the retail firms who had bought the busts. He
managed to find employment with Morse Hudson,42 and in that way tracked
down three of them. The pearl was not there. Then with the help of some Italian
employeé he succeeded in finding out where the other three busts had gone. The
first was at Harker’s. There he was dogged by his confederate, who held Beppo
responsible for the loss of the pearl, and he stabbed him in the scuffle which
followed.”
One of the plaster casts.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“If he was his confederate, why should he carry his photograph?” I asked.
“As a means of tracing him if he wished to inquire about him from any third
person. That was the obvious reason. Well, after the murder I calculated that
Beppo would probably hurry rather than delay his movements. He would fear
that the police would read his secret, and so he hastened on before they should
get ahead of him. Of course, I could not say that he had not found the pearl in
Harker’s bust. I had not even concluded for certain that it was the pearl; but it
was evident to me that he was looking for something, since he carried the bust
past the other houses in order to break it in the garden which had a lamp
overlooking it. Since Harker’s bust was one in three, the chances were exactly as
I told you—two to one against the pearl being inside it. There remained two
busts, and it was obvious that he would go for the London one first. I warned the
inmates of the house, so as to avoid a second tragedy, and we went down, with
the happiest results. By that time, of course, I knew for certain that it was the
Borgia pearl that we were after. The name of the murdered man linked the one
event with the other. There only remained a single bust—the Reading one—and
the pearl must be there. I bought it in your presence from the owner—and there
it lies.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“Well,” said Lestrade, “I’ve seen you handle a good many cases, Mr. Holmes,
but I don’t know that I ever knew a more workmanlike one than that. We’re not
jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very43 proud of you, and if you
come down to-morrow there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the
youngest constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.”
“Thank you!” said Holmes. “Thank you!” and as he turned away it seemed to
me that he was more nearly moved by the softer human emotions than I had ever
seen him. A moment later he was the cold and practical thinker once more. “Put
the pearl in the safe, Watson,”44 said he, “and get out the papers of the ConkSingleton forgery case. Good-bye, Lestrade. If any little problem comes your
way I shall be happy, if I can, to give you a hint or two as to its solution.”
“The Six Napoleons” was published in the Strand
Magazine in May 1904 and in Collier’s Weekly on April
30, 1904.
1
The words “which are not his own” have been added in
the manuscript.
2
Manly Wade Wellman, in “The Great Man’s Great Son:
An Inquiry into the Most Private Life of Mr. Sherlock
Holmes,” identifies Morse Hudson both as the Hudson
who blackmailed Squire Trevor (“The ‘Gloria Scott’”)
and as the estranged husband of Holmes’s landlady, Mrs.
Hudson.
3
4
The location may explain Lestrade’s supposition that he
is dealing with a lunatic wrongdoer, for according to
Augustus J. C. Hare, in his Walks in London (1878), “At
the junction of Kennington Road and Lambeth Road is
the new Bethlem Hospital, best known as Bedlam. It was
called Bedlam even by Sir Thomas More, in whose time
it was already a lunatic asylum.” England’s first
institution devoted to the care of the mentally ill, the
Bethlem Royal Hospital was founded in 1247 in
Bishopsgate as the Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem, and
given over to the City of London as an insane asylum by
Henry VIII in 1547. The institution—from whose name
the word “bedlam” is derived—was more prison than
hospital: “treatment” consisted largely of shackling the
patients, and violence and anarchy were the rule rather
than the exception. For a time, visitors could pay a penny
to gawk at the chaotic spectacle, giving Bethlem more of
the air of a madhouse than ever before.
Hare’s 1878 reference to the hospital’s being “new” is
somewhat disingenuous; by then, Bethlem had been at its
Lambeth Road location (in Southwark, which already
hosted several prisons) for sixty-three years, having
moved there in 1815 from Moorfields. Of course, given
that Moorfields was Bethlem’s home for 140 years as
well as the scene of its greatest notoriety, it is
understandable that Bethlem and Moorfields would be
married in the popular imagination. Conditions
eventually improved at the Southwark location in the
mid-1800s, with occupational and drug therapy being
offered to patients in lieu of restraints. In 1930 the
hospital relocated to Beckenham; today, the Southwark
building houses the Imperial War Museum.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as
meaning “wanton acts of vandalism” and notes the
earliest recorded use in 1898. Kelvin Jones, in his
Sherlock Holmes Dictionary, gives the origin as “said to
be the name of a leader of a gang, possibly Hooley’s
gang, a family resident in the mid-1890’s in Islington (W.
Ware). The alternative theory is that the word derives
from the Houlihans, an Irish family resident in the
Borough (London).”
5
“Devine” may be Paul de Vigne (1843– 1901), a
Belgian sculptor who lived in Paris until 1882, or
possibly British sculptor James S. Deville (1776–1846).
6
The original iconoclasts were destroyers of art (from
Medieval Greek, Eikonoklasts, meaning “image
breaker”). In the Byzantine empire of the eighth and ninth
centuries, Christian sculptures and paintings were either
destroyed or banned by those who considered them
idolatrous, citing the Ten Commandments’ condemnation
of images. Another wave of iconoclasm struck during the
Protestant Reformation, and it was not until the
nineteenth century that the word took on the more secular
7
meaning of one who works to overthrow ideas or
institutions. In this instance, Holmes would be familiar
with the modern usage, but calls upon his vast historical
knowledge to invoke the more literal definition.
French: A fixed idea; a monomania, also called “partial
moral mania.”
8
Numerous pastiches and analyses of the “Abernetty
business” have been written and are surveyed in detail in
William Hyder’s “Parsley and Butter: The Abernetty
Business.” Hyder concludes, without foundation, that no
less than murder was involved. Is it not equally likely that
a business—perhaps an inn or tavern—run by the
Abernetty family was “dreadful” (that is, kept in poor
sanitation), and that that condition was first brought to
Holmes’s notice by the butter having been left out on a
hot day? The connection between this observation and the
ensuing investigation remains undetermined. A number
of scholars consider whether and how fast parsley will
sink into butter. Not surprisingly, they do not agree.
9
The observation of “round shoulders” has been added
in the manuscript.
10
While “Central Press Syndicate” is a fabricated name,
the Central News Agency was an English association for
the collection and distribution of news to newspapers
11
subscribing to its services. There were at least ten press
and telegraphic associations in London in 1888. “It was
to the Central News Agency,” observes William S.
Baring-Gould, “that Jack the Ripper mailed two horribly
jocund notes in late September and early October, 1888.”
Richard Lancelyn Green identifies this as Ponting
Brothers, a shop that was located at 123-127 Kensington
High Street and adjacent to the Metropolitan and District
Railway Station. He further suggests that Watson’s
fictional name for it was lifted from Harding’s Art
Manuals, a popular series of books on art techniques.
12
The word is “devil” in the manuscript but has been
softened to “fellow” in the Strand Magazine and book
texts, a change (one among several in “The Six
Napoleons”) that this editor discovered by using a
computer to compare a typescript of the manuscript,
prepared by William Hyder and published in “The
Napoleon Bust Business Again,” to a typescript of the
published text. The results, while not startling here, raise
the tantalising question of who made the changes noted—
Dr. Watson, the Strand Magazine editor, or perhaps
Conan Doyle?
13
The original description, deleted in the manuscript, was
“his great black beard bristling upwards.” Whether Mr.
Harker imagined the beard or whether Watson suppressed
14
the beard in order to conceal the victim’s true identity is
unknown.
In the manuscript, this is originally “Camden Road,”
amended to “Camden House Road.” However, “Campden
House Road” appears in the Strand Magazine and all
book editions. The Camden Road is a large street in
Kentishtown, while Campden House Road is in
Kensington. There is no “Camden House Road” in
London. Someone apparently noted Watson’s error and
corrected it before the manuscript was published. Newt
and Lillian Williams note, in the Annotated “Annotated,”
that this is a natural mistake, inasmuch as the “empty
house” across from 221B Baker Street was Camden
House (see “The Empty House”). H. W. Bell, in “Three
Identifications,” states that there was no Campden House
Road, but this is plainly contradicted by several Victorian
atlases, which show the road as parallel to Campden Hill
Road and adjacent to Campden House in Kensington.
15
Since 1703, the racecourse at Doncaster has been the
venue for numerous horse races, including the celebrated
St. Leger Stakes event, first held in 1776.
16
The word appears to be “hustled” in the manuscript,
which makes sense, but apparently the editor had “busts”
on his mind, and no one corrected this minor slip in either
the Strand Magazine or the book texts.
17
“ ‘You ask about the Red Lamp,’ says the postscript to
the preface of the American edition of Arthur Conan
Doyle’s Round the Red Lamp (1894): ‘It is the usual sign
of the general practitioner in England.’ ” The manuscript
originally stated that the bust was broken “right under”
the red lamp.
18
Taking Holmes’s remark to Lestrade literally, Charles
Fisher argues that Horace Harker was himself Jack the
Ripper. Or, could Mr. Harker have been related to
Jonathan Harker, solicitor and counsellor to Count
Dracula, a portion of whose correspondence was first
published in 1897?
19
20
This sentence has been added in the manuscript.
Radical leaders of the French Revolution were known
as Red Republicans, after the red “liberty caps” (or the
Bonnet Rouge) they wore to signify their support for
republicanism. There was also a London socialist
newspaper called the Red Republican. Founded by
George Julian Harney, it published the first English
translation of The Communist Manifesto in 1850. From
Hudson’s context, it is difficult to determine which
political movement he was referring to, although both
may be seen as having violent connotations.
21
22
Originally described in the manuscript as an “odd job
man.”
James Edward Holroyd, in Baker Street By-Ways,
questions this narrative. “How, in driving from
Kennington to Stepney, would you pass successively
through ‘fashionable London, hotel London, theatrical
London and literary London?’ ” he asks, pointing out that
those neighbourhoods lie north of the Thames, but that
the quickest route to Stepney would involve staying on
the south side of the river and crossing over at London
Bridge or Tower Bridge. Perhaps, suggests Holroyd,
either Watson or Conan Doyle wrote up this passage
while mistakenly envisioning the journey from
Kensington (from which the directions are correct), rather
than Kennington. “This might have been excusable in
Conan Doyle,” he writes, “but not surely in Watson who
had been in practice in Kensington for some years.”
But D. Martin Dakin rises to Watson’s defence,
imagining that Holmes had to make a stop at Scotland
Yard that, being inconsequential, was not dwelt upon by
Watson. Such a trip would involve crossing the Thames
near Westminster, which could have constituted “the
fringe of fashionable London” (if leaving from
Kensington, Dakin notes, they would have passed
through the middle of Westminster, not “the fringe”).
From there, Dakin traces their journey through “the
Embankment and Northumberland Avenue for hotel
23
London (plenty of big hotels there), and the Strand for
theatrical London; and from there on it is plain sailing.”
The manager did not know Beppo’s last name, yet he
had no trouble finding his name in the ledger, observes
James Edward Holroyd. “I should like to have seen the
index to that pay-list. How do you enter the name of a
man who has no surname? As Beppo ‘X’? Or was the
index conducted on the simple Holmesian principle of
first names first as in Victor Lynch, the forger?” (Holroyd
here refers to the entry under “V” in Holmes’s “good old
index,” mentioned in “The Sussex Vampire.”)
24
Deleted in the manuscript is the incomplete phrase “I
may tell you that it is his evidence which is I depend
upon to.”
25
In English editions of the Canon, the word is curiously
“busts.” The original Strand Magazine text reads “bust,”
as does the Doubleday edition of the Canon.
26
The street identification has been added in the
manuscript.
27
The Italian consul, Signor Silvestrelli, published a
report at Rome in February 1895 that there were two
great Italian centres in London, the oldest being in
Holborn (and known as “Saffron Hill”) and composed of
“organ-men, ice-vendors, ambulant merchants, plaster28
bust sellers, models for artists, &c [italics added].” The
other, newer centre was in Soho, where Italians with a
slightly higher class of occupation resided: artists, cooks,
hoteliers, restauranteurs, tailors, teachers, and
watchmakers. In all, Signor Silvestrelli reported, there
were about 12,000 Italians living in London at the time,
with Holborn representing “the black point, as it is mostly
composed of Southern Italians, whose reputation is not
good.”
In Street Life in London (1877), Adolphe Smith came
to something of a similar conclusion, describing Saffron
Hill as a uniquely self-enclosed society that was noisy
with the bustle of the ubiquitous “ice-men” who sold
Italian ices throughout the rest of London. Matter-offactly labelling some of these men “the worst characters
that Italy produces,” Smith charged that those who
claimed to be Neapolitan had likely never even seen
Naples, and were merely covering up for a more
unsavoury background. “As a matter of fact, a very large
number of the street ice-sellers are Calabrians, and are,
therefore, semi-barbarous mountaineers.”
Despite their purportedly mean and ignorant ways,
Smith admired the ice-men for pursuing an honest living
in their new country (“They can make more selling ices
in our thoroughfares than in cutting throats round and
about Naples”), but this sympathy was not necessarily
shared by those Italians, such as Beppo, who created
statuettes. These men, “better educated and skilful Italian
artisans,” were elevated in social rank above the
Calabrians, and tended to “express the profoundest
contempt for their fellow-countrymen who sell ices in the
streets.”
The manuscript replaces “Florence” with “Naples.”
This may be Watson’s deliberate concealment—see note
30, below.
29
The secret criminal society known as the Mafia began
as a number of private Sicilian armies, created in the late
Middle Ages to repel foreign conquerers and then hired
by landowners to protect their property from roving
bandits. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Sicilians distrustful of ineffectual (and frequently
oppressive) local governments grew to rely instead upon
the Mafia’s private form of justice, based as it was on
omerta, a strict code of silence that forbade one from
turning to the legal authorities for help. Victims and their
family members were permitted to undertake vendettas
(direct retribution) against those who had wronged them,
and punishment for breaking the code of silence was
severe. By 1900, the various Mafia families, loosely
organised, had taken control of the economy in many
parts of Sicily.
It is curious that Venucci, ostensibly from Naples,
would be connected to the Mafia, which at that time was
30
still centered in Sicily. Naples had its own criminal
society, the Camorra. In the latter half of the eighteeenth
century, the Camorra, an association that specialised in
blackmail, bribery, and smuggling, was encouraged by
the corrupt Bourbon regime to police the city and
eliminate the opposition. A crackdown was instituted in
the 1880s after the unification of Italy, and the Camorra
began to decline in power; its grip was fatally loosened in
1911, after several of its members were convicted in a
high-profile murder trial. While it is possible that
Venucci could have been linked to the Mafia through
Sicilian connections, it is equally likely that Lestrade (or
the Saffron Hill inspector) was mistaken, and that
Venucci was a member of the Camorra instead. In “The
Red Circle,” Watson deliberately conceals Gorgiano’s
membership in the “Black Hand” with a fictitious name
for the secret society—perhaps here he is also taking
steps to avoid displeasing the true organisation.
Watson originally miscounted the busts and made the
odds “three to one” in the manuscript.
31
32
Originally “midnight” in the manuscript.
A special messenger who would convey a letter at a
pre-paid or partly pre-paid rate. The Express Delivery
Service was established by the post office in 1891. It was
not until the queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 that the
33
post office established free postal service for all
households in England.
A storage room, usually at the top of a house. “Why on
earth did Holmes not simply rely on the newspapers’ own
files, or the public libraries?” wonders John Hall in
Sidelights on Holmes. “In fact as late as 1887 at the time
of The Sign of Four, that is precisely what he did do, for
after being out a couple of hours he returns to tell Watson
that he was ‘consulting the back files of the Times.’ ”
34
We see it in use as a weapon, however, only in “The
Red-Headed League” and “A Case of Identity.”
35
In the manuscript, the phrase is “utter silence” but has
been altered in the Strand Magazine and book texts.
36
Deleted in the manuscript is the phrase “and the
Burglary Insurance people will have to pay me for my
bust, so I have nothing to complain of.”
37
Lestrade is making a rare joke here. Clearly—unless
appearances are monstrously deceiving—the villain is not
a landowner whose family bears a coat of arms.
38
For reasons that may be connected with his
disappearance from 1891 to 1894, Holmes apparently
forbade Watson from publishing any post-Reichenbach
tales until 1903, when publication of the stories later
39
collected in the Return commenced in the Strand
Magazine. (The Hound of the Baskervilles, which Watson
published in serial form commencing in 1901, was likely
a pre-Reichenbach case.)
The Borgia family, originally from Spain, came to
wield considerable religious and political power in Italy,
gaining a reputation for political ruthlessness in the
process. Alfonso de Borja (1378–1458), the cardinalarchbishop of Valencia, moved to Rome when selected to
serve as Pope Callixtus III in 1455; his nephew, Rodrigo
(1431–1503), followed in his uncle’s footsteps and was
named Pope Alexander VI in 1492. He fathered several
illegitimate children, among them Cesare (1476–1507)
and Lucrezia (1480–1523).
At first, Cesare also took the religious path, becoming
the archbishop of Valencia and a cardinal. But after the
death of his older brother (in whose murder Cesare may
have had a hand), Cesare turned to politics, marrying the
Frenchwoman Charlotte d’Albret to bolster a Borgia
alliance with Louis XII. Named duke of Romagna by his
father, Cesare strengthened his rule by conquering several
territories, eliminating his enemies by luring them to a
castle and strangling them. So brutal and absolute were
Cesare’s methods that Machiavelli used him as a model
in The Prince. His power declining following the death of
Alexander, the succession of adversary Julius II, and a
40
bout with debilitating illness, Cesare lost his land (even
Louis XII turned on him, demanding the return of
territories he’d seized) and his titles, fleeing to Spain,
where he was arrested and thrown in prison. After
escaping, Cesare died fighting rebel forces for his
brother-in-law, the king of Navarre.
Lucrezia Borgia played less of an active role in her
family’s many crimes, instead functioning mainly as a
sort of pawn in forging alliances. In all, she married three
times, each marriage serving a handy political purpose
for her father and her brother. Her first marriage, to
Giovanni Sforza in 1492, was annulled when the pope
switched allegiances from Milan to Naples; Sforza left
Rome fearing for his life. Alexander then played up the
Naples angle, marrying Lucrezia off to Alfonso, the
illegitimate son to Alfonso II of the powerful Aragón
family. Yet the advantages of this marriage, too,
crumbled, when Cesare established his own alliance with
Louis XII and began amassing power in Romagna,
thereby threatening Naples. Alfonso, now expendable,
narrowly escaped death on the steps of St. Peter’s and
later, recovering from his wounds, was strangled by a
servant of Cesare’s. (A year after Alfonso’s death,
Lucrezia was seen with a three-year-old boy, whom many
allege was her son with either Cesare or Alexander.)
Lucrezia’s third union, to Alfonso d’Este, duke of
Ferrara, was intended to aid Cesare’s Romagna campaign
but also proved the balm to Lucrezia’s tumultuous life.
As duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia opened her court to
artists and poets, and in the history of the Italian
Renaissance she is renowned as a brilliant and generous
patron of the arts.
According to Donald Redmond, two princes of
Colonna were living in 1900: Don Fabrizio of Avella, a
soldier and civic official who was named senator in 1888,
and Don Prospero of Sonnino, a cavalry officer who
became senator in 1900.
41
In the manuscript, the employer is not identified, and
the phrase “one of them” appears in place of “Morse
Hudson.” Evidently, someone determined later that the
reader needed to be reminded that Holmes had already
determined that Beppo was employed by Morse Hudson,
for the Strand Magazine and book texts all read as above.
42
The word “damned” has been replaced with “very” in
the manuscript.
43
Holmes handled this and other cases (“The Reigate
Squires,” “Black Peter,” “The Golden Pince-Nez,” “The
Abbey Grange,” “The Cardboard Box,” “The Dying
Detective,” A Study in Scarlet, The Valley of Fear) solely
for the experience, that is, without a paying client. Some
scholars speculate that Holmes may have been quietly
44
compensated by the police inspectors, to enhance their
careers. While there is no evidence that Lestrade paid
Holmes (in this case, anyway), Holmes appears to turn
his experience to tangible profit. He displays no qualms
about keeping the fruits of his investigation, figuring,
perhaps, that “to the victor go the spoils.” The pearl’s
rightful owner—the Prince of Colonna—on the other
hand, still has no idea his treasure has been recovered.
“Holmes had no title to the pearl at all,” S. T. L.
Harbottle charges. “He was in fact a receiver of stolen
goods.” And yet Holmes acts as if he is merely the next
person in the line of succession to the pearl. “There was
no suggestion of returning the pearl to the Prince—far
from it,” continues Harbottle. “ ‘Put the pearl in the safe,
Watson,’ said Holmes quite unblushingly. . . .”
Not only was the pearl “enormously valuable,” but it
likely would have been heavily insured. Ian McQueen
believes that Holmes ultimately did not keep the pearl but
instead turned it in for a reward. Surely, McQueen
observes, Holmes had a dual purpose in “looking up the
dates in the old files of the paper,” as he simultaneously
would have searched for any advertisement that the loss
adjuster would have run. Note that when he received the
bust from Sandeford, he had a document of transfer
already prepared, with Watson and Lestrade conveniently
serving as his two witnesses.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE STUDENTS1
“The Three Students” provides a trove of background information for
scholars regarding Holmes’s university years. The crime presented
here—regarding a student who cheats on an exam—pales in
comparison to those of other stories, but the wealth of details
regarding college life makes for a rewarding tale. What also makes the
case memorable is that one of the first published pieces of Sherlockian
scholarship, written by editor and critic Andrew Lang, examined its
events at length. So implausible are the facts of “The Three Students”
that some suggest the entire case was a diversion, a joke created by
Watson and an old friend of Holmes to mystify the detective.
IT WAS IN THE YEAR ’95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter,
caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our
great University towns, and it was during this time that the small but instructive
adventure which I am about to relate befell us. It will be obvious that any details
which would help the reader to exactly identify the college or the criminal would
be injudicious and offensive.2 So painful a scandal may well be allowed to die
out. With due discretion the incident itself may, however, be described, since it
serves to illustrate some of those qualities for which my friend was remarkable. I
will endeavour in my statement to avoid such terms as would serve to limit the
events to any particular place, or give a clue as to the people concerned.
We were residing at the time in furnished lodgings close to a library where
Sherlock Holmes was pursuing some labourious researches in early English
charters—researches which led to results so striking that they may be the subject
of one of my future narratives.3 Here it was that one evening we received a visit
from an acquaintance, Mr. Hilton Soames, tutor4 and lecturer at the College of
St. Luke’s. Mr. Soames was a tall, spare man, of a nervous and excitable
temperament. I had always known him5 to be restless in his manner, but on this
particular occasion he was in such a state of uncontrollable agitation that it was
clear something very unusual had occurred.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“I trust, Mr. Holmes, that you can spare me a few hours of your valuable time.
We have had a very painful incident at St. Luke’s, and really, but for the happy
chance of your being in the town, I should have been at a loss what to do.”
“I am very busy just now, and I desire no distractions,” my friend answered.
“I should much prefer that you called in the aid of the police.”
“No, no, my dear sir; such a course is utterly impossible. When once the law
is evoked it cannot be stayed again, and this is just one of those cases where, for
the credit of the college, it is most essential to avoid scandal.6 Your discretion is
as well known as your powers, and you are the one man in the world who can
help me. I beg you, Mr. Holmes, to do what you can.”
“I trust, Mr. Holmes, that you can spare me a few hours.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
My friend’s temper had not improved since he had been deprived of the
congenial surroundings of Baker Street. Without his scrap-books, his chemicals,
and his homely untidiness, he was an uncomfortable man. He shrugged his
shoulders in ungracious acquiescence,7 while our visitor in hurried words and
with much excitable gesticulation poured forth his story.
“I must explain to you, Mr. Holmes, that tomorrow8 is the first day of the
examination for the Fortescue Scholarship. I am one of the examiners. My
subject is Greek, and the first of the papers consists of a large passage of Greek
translation which the candidate has not seen. This passage is printed on the
examination paper, and it would naturally be an immense advantage if the
candidate could prepare it in advance. For this reason great care is taken to keep
the paper secret.
“To-day about three o’clock the proofs of this paper arrived from the printers.
The exercise consists of half a chapter of Thucydides.9 I had to read it over
carefully, as the text must be absolutely10 correct. At four-thirty my task was not
yet completed.11 I had, however, promised to take tea in a friend’s rooms, so I
left the proof upon my desk. I was absent rather more than an hour.
“You are aware, Mr. Holmes, that our college doors are double—a green
baize12 one within and a heavy oak one without. As I approached my outer door
I was amazed to see a key in it. For an instant I imagined that I had left my own
there, but on feeling in my pocket I found that it was all right. The only duplicate
which existed, so far as I knew, was that which belonged to my servant,
Bannister, a man who has looked after my room for ten years, and whose
honesty is absolutely above suspicion. I found that the key was indeed his, that
he had entered my room to know if I wanted tea, and that he had very carelessly
left the key in the door when he came out. His visit to my room must have been
within a very few minutes of my leaving it. His forgetfulness about the key
would have mattered little upon any other occasion, but on this one day it has
produced the most deplorable consequences.
“The moment I looked at my table I was aware that some one had rummaged
among my papers. The proof was in three long slips.13 I had left them all
together. Now, I found that one of them was lying on the floor, one was on the
side-table near the window, and the third was where I had left it.”
Holmes stirred for the first time.
“The first page on the floor, the second in the window, and the third where
you left it,” said he.
“Exactly, Mr. Holmes. You amaze me. How could you possibly know that?”
“Pray continue your very interesting statement.”
“For an instant I imagined that Bannister had taken the unpardonable liberty
of examining my papers. He denied it, however, with the utmost earnestness, and
I am convinced that he was speaking the truth. The alternative was that someone
passing had observed the key in the door, had known that I was out, and had
entered to look at the papers. A large sum of money is at stake, for the
scholarship is a very valuable one, and an unscrupulous man might very well run
a risk in order to gain an advantage over his fellows.
“Bannister was very much upset by the incident. He had nearly fainted when
we found that the papers had undoubtedly been tampered with. I gave him a little
brandy and left him collapsed in a chair while I made a most careful examination
of the room. I soon saw that the intruder had left other traces of his presence
besides the rumpled papers. On the table in the window were several shreds from
a pencil which had been sharpened. A broken tip of lead was lying there also.
Evidently the rascal had copied the paper14 in a great hurry, had broken his
pencil, and had been compelled to put a fresh point to it.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Excellent!” said Holmes, who was recovering his good humour as his
attention became more engrossed by the case. “Fortune has been your friend.”
“This was not all. I have a new writing-table with a fine surface of red leather.
I am prepared to swear, and so is Bannister, that it was smooth and unstained.
Now I found a clean cut in it about three inches long—not a mere scratch, but a
positive cut. Not only this, but on the table I found a small ball of black dough,
or clay, with specks of something which looks like sawdust in it, I am convinced
that these marks were left by the man who rifled the papers. There were no foot
marks and no other evidence as to his identity. I was at my wit’s end, when
suddenly the happy thought occurred to me that you were in the town, and I
came straight round to put the matter into your hands. Do help me, Mr. Holmes!
You see my dilemma. Either I must find the man, or else the examination must
be postponed until fresh papers are prepared, and since this cannot be done
without explanation, there will ensue a hideous scandal, which will throw a
cloud not only on the college but on the University. Above all things, I desire to
settle the matter quietly and discreetly.”
“I shall be happy to look into it and to give you such advice as I can,” said
Holmes, rising and putting on his overcoat. “The case is not entirely devoid of
interest. Had anyone visited you in your room after the papers came to you?”
“Yes; young Daulat Ras, an Indian student, who lives on the same stair, came
in to ask me some particular about the examination.”
“For which he was entered?”
“Yes.”
“And the papers were on your table?”
“To the best of my belief they were rolled up.”
“But might be recognized as proofs?”
“Possibly.”
“No one else in your room?”
“No.”
“Did anyone know that these proofs would be there?”
“No one save the printer.”
“Did this man Bannister know?”
“No, certainly not. No one knew.”
“Where is Bannister now?”
“He was very ill, poor fellow! I left him collapsed in the chair. I was in such a
hurry to come to you.”
“You left your door open?”
“I locked up the papers first.”
“Then it amounts to this, Mr. Soames, that, unless the Indian student
recognised the roll as being proofs, the man who tampered with them came upon
them accidentally without knowing that they were there.”
Daulat Ras.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“So it seems to me.”
Holmes gave an enigmatic smile.
“Well,” said he, “let us go round. Not one of your cases, Watson—mental, not
physical.15 All right; come if you want to. Now, Mr. Soames—at your disposal!”
The sitting-room of our client opened by a long, low, latticed window on to
the ancient lichen-tinted court of the old college. A Gothic arched door led to a
worn stone staircase. On the ground floor was the tutor’s room. Above were
three students, one on each story. It was already twilight when we reached the
scene of our problem. Holmes halted and looked earnestly at the window. Then
he approached it, and, standing on tiptoe with his neck craned, he looked into the
room.
“He must have entered through the door. There is no opening except the one
pane,” said our learned guide.
“Dear me!” said Holmes, and he smiled in a singular way as he glanced at our
companion. “Well, if there is nothing to be learned here, we had best go inside.”
The lecturer unlocked the outer door and ushered us into his room. We stood
at the entrance while Holmes made an examination of the carpet.
“I am afraid there are no signs here,” said he. “One could hardly hope for any
upon so dry a day. Your servant seems to have quite recovered. You left him in a
chair, you say; which chair?”
“By the window there.”
“I see. Near this little table. You can come in now. I have finished with the
carpet. Let us take the little table first. Of course, what has happened is very
clear. The man entered and took the papers, sheet by sheet, from the central
table. He carried them over to the window table, because from there he could see
if you came across the courtyard, and so could effect an escape.”
“With his neck craned, he looked into the room.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“As a matter of fact, he could not,” said Soames, “for I entered by the sidedoor.”
“Ah, that’s good! Well, anyhow, that was in his mind. Let me see the three
strips. No finger impressions—no! Well, he carried over this one first, and he
copied it. How long would it take him to do that, using every possible
contraction? A quarter of an hour, not less. Then he tossed it down and seized
the next. He was in the midst of that when your return caused him to make a
very hurried retreat—very hurried, since he had not time to replace the papers
which would tell you that he had been there. You were not aware of any
hurrying feet on the stair as you entered the outer door?”
“No, I can’t say I was.”
“Well, he wrote so furiously that he broke his pencil, and had, as you observe,
to sharpen it again. This is of interest, Watson. The pencil was not an ordinary
one. It was above the usual size, with a soft lead; the outer colour was dark blue,
the maker’s name was printed in silver lettering, and the piece remaining is only
about an inch and a half long. Look for such a pencil, Mr. Soames, and you have
got your man. When I add that he possesses a large and very blunt knife, you
have an additional aid.”
Mr. Soames was somewhat overwhelmed by this flood of information. “I can
follow the other points,” said he, “but really, in this matter of the length—”
Holmes held out a small chip with the letters NN and a space of clear wood
after them.
“You see?”
“No, I fear that even now—”
“Watson, I have always done you an injustice. There are others. What could
this NN be? It is at the end of a word. You are aware that Johann Faber16 is the
most common maker’s name. Is it not clear that there is just as much of the
pencil left as usually follows the Johann?”17 He held the small table sideways to
the electric light. “I was hoping that if the paper on which he wrote was thin
some trace of it might come through upon this polished surface. No, I see
nothing. I don’t think there is anything more to be learned here. Now for the
central table. This small pellet is, I presume, the black doughy mass you spoke
of. Roughly pyramidal in shape and hollowed out, I perceive. As you say, there
appear to be grains of sawdust in it. Dear me, this is very interesting. And the cut
—a positive tear, I see. It began with a thin scratch and ended in a jagged hole. I
am much indebted to you for directing my attention to this case, Mr. Soames.
Where does that door lead to?”
“To my bedroom.”
“Have you been in it since your adventure?”
“No; I came straight away for you.”
“I should like to have a glance round. What a charming, old-fashioned room!
Perhaps you will kindly wait a minute until I have examined the floor. No, I see
nothing. What about this curtain? You hang your clothes behind it. If anyone
were forced to conceal himself in this room he must do it there, since the bed is
too low and the wardrobe too shallow. No one there, I suppose?”
As Holmes drew the curtain I was aware, from some little rigidity and
alertness of his attitude, that he was prepared for an emergency. As a matter of
fact, the drawn curtain disclosed nothing but three or four suits of clothes
hanging from a line of pegs. Holmes turned away, and stooped suddenly to the
floor.
“Halloa! What’s this?” said he.
It was a small pyramid of black, putty-like stuff, exactly like the one upon the
table of the study. Holmes held it out on his open palm in the glare of the electric
light.
“Your visitor seems to have left traces in your bedroom as well as in your
sitting-room, Mr. Soames.”
“What could he have wanted there?”
“I think it is clear enough. You came back by an unexpected way, and so he
had no warning until you were at the very door. What could he do? He caught up
everything which would betray him, and he rushed into your bedroom to conceal
himself.”
“Good gracious, Mr. Holmes, do you mean to tell me that all the time I was
talking to Bannister in this room we had the man prisoner if we had only known
it?”
“So I read it.”
“Surely there is another alternative, Mr. Holmes? I don’t know whether you
observed my bedroom window?”
“Lattice-paned, lead framework, three separate windows, one swinging on
hinge, and large enough to admit a man.”
“Exactly. And it looks out on an angle of the courtyard so as to be partly
invisible. The man might have effected his entrance there, left traces as he
passed through the bedroom, and, finally, finding the door open, have escaped
that way.”
Holmes shook his head impatiently.
“Let us be practical,” said he. “I understand you to say that there are three
students who use this stair and are in the habit of passing your door?”
“Yes, there are.”
“And they are all in for this examination?”
“Yes.”
“Have you any reason to suspect any one of them more than the others?”
Soames hesitated.
“It is a very delicate question,” said he. “One hardly likes to throw suspicion
where there are no proofs.”
“Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs.”
“I will tell you, then, in a few words the character of the three men who
inhabit these rooms. The lower of the three is Gilchrist, a fine scholar and
athlete, plays in the Rugby team and the cricket team for the college, and got his
Blue for the hurdles and the long jump.18 He is a fine, manly fellow. His father
was the notorious Sir Jabez Gilchrist, who ruined himself on the turf. My scholar
has been left very poor, but he is hard-working and industrious. He will do well.
“The second floor is inhabited by Daulat Ras, the Indian. He is a quiet,
inscrutable fellow, as most of those Indians are. He is well up in his work,
though his Greek is his weak subject. He is steady and methodical.
“The top floor belongs to Miles McLaren. He is a brilliant fellow when he
chooses to work—one of the brightest intellects of the University; but he is
wayward, dissipated, and unprincipled. He was nearly expelled over a card
scandal in his first year. He has been idling all this term, and he must look
forward with dread to the examination.”
“Then it is he whom you suspect?”
“I dare not go so far as that. But, of the three, he is perhaps the least unlikely.”
“Exactly. Now, Mr. Soames, let us have a look at your servant, Bannister.”
He was a little, white-faced, clean-shaven, grizzly-haired fellow of fifty. He
was still suffering from this sudden disturbance of the quiet routine of his life.
His plump face was twitching with his nervousness, and his fingers could not
keep still.
Gilchrist.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“We are investigating this unhappy business, Bannister,” said his master.
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand,” said Holmes, “that you left your key in the door?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was it not very extraordinary that you should do this on the very day when
there were these papers inside?”
“It was most unfortunate, sir. But I have occasionally done the same thing at
other times.”
“When did you enter the room?”
“It was about half-past four. That is Mr. Soames’s tea-time.”
“How long did you stay?”
“When I saw that he was absent I withdrew at once.”
“Did you look at these papers on the table?”
“No, sir; certainly not.”
Miles McLaren.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“How came you to leave the key in the door?”
“I had the tea-tray in my hand. I thought I would come back for the key. Then
I forgot.”
“Has the outer door a spring lock?”
“No, sir.”
“Then it was open all the time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any one in the room could get out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When Mr. Soames returned and called for you, you were very much
disturbed?”
“Yes, sir. Such a thing has never happened during the many19 years that I
have been here. I nearly fainted, sir.”
“So I understand. Where were you when you began to feel bad?”
“Where was I, sir? Why, here, near the door.”
“That is singular, because you sat down in that chair over yonder near the
corner. Why did you pass these other chairs?”
“I don’t know, sir, it didn’t matter to me where I sat.”
“I really don’t think he knew much about it, Mr. Holmes. He was looking very
bad—quite ghastly.”
“You stayed here when your master left?”
“Only for a minute or so. Then I locked the door and went to my room.”
“Whom do you suspect?”
“Oh, I would not venture to say, sir. I don’t believe there is any gentleman in
this University who is capable of profiting by such an action. No, sir, I’ll not
believe it.”
“Thank you; that will do,” said Holmes. “Oh, one more word. You have not
mentioned to any of the three gentlemen whom you attend that anything is
amiss?”
“No, sir; not a word.”
“You haven’t seen any of them?”
“No, sir.”
“Very good. Now, Mr. Soames, we will take a walk in the quadrangle, if you
please.”
“How came you to leave the key in the door?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Three yellow squares of light shone above us in the gathering gloom.
“Your three birds are all in their nests,” said Holmes, looking up. “Halloa!
What’s that? One of them seems restless enough.”
It was the Indian, whose dark silhouette appeared suddenly upon the blind. He
was pacing swiftly up and down his room.
“I should like to have a peep at each of them,” said Holmes. “Is it possible?”
“No difficulty in the world,” Soames answered. “This set of rooms is quite the
oldest in the college, and it is not unusual for visitors to go over them. Come
along, and I will personally conduct you.”
“No names, please!” said Holmes, as we knocked at Gilchrist’s door. A tall,
flaxen-haired, slim young fellow opened it, and made us welcome when he
understood our errand. There were some really curious pieces of mediæval
domestic architecture within. Holmes was so charmed with one of them that he
insisted on drawing it on his note-book, broke his pencil, had to borrow one from
our host, and finally borrowed a knife to sharpen his own. The same curious
accident happened to him in the rooms of the Indian—a silent, little, hook-nosed
fellow, who eyed us askance and was obviously glad when Holmes’s
architectural studies had come to an end. I could not see that in either case
Holmes had come upon the clue for which he was searching. Only at the third
did our visit prove abortive. The outer door would not open to our knock, and
nothing more substantial than a torrent of bad language came from behind it. “I
don’t care who you are. You can go to blazes!” roared the angry voice.
“Tomorrow’s the exam., and I won’t be drawn by anyone.”
Three yellow squares of light shone above us in the
gathering gloom.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
“He insisted on drawing it in his note-book.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“A rude fellow,” said our guide, flushing with anger as we withdrew down the
stair. “Of course, he did not realize that it was I who was knocking, but none the
less his conduct was very uncourteous, and, indeed, under the circumstances,
rather suspicious.”
Holmes’s response was a curious one.
“Can you tell me his exact height?” he asked.
“Really, Mr. Holmes, I cannot undertake to say. He is taller than the Indian,
not so tall as Gilchrist. I suppose five foot six would be about it.”
“That is very important,” said Holmes. “And now, Mr. Soames, I wish you
good-night.”
Our guide cried aloud in his astonishment and dismay. “Good gracious, Mr.
Holmes, you are surely not going to leave me in this abrupt fashion! You don’t
seem to realize the position. Tomorrow is the examination. I must take some
definite action to-night. I cannot allow the examination to be held if one of the
papers has been tampered with. The situation must be faced.”
“You must leave it as it is. I shall drop round early tomorrow morning and
chat the matter over. It is possible that I may be in a position then to indicate
some course of action. Meanwhile you change nothing—nothing at all.”
“Very good, Mr. Holmes.”
“You can be perfectly easy in your mind. We shall certainly find some way
out of your difficulties. I will take the black clay with me, also the pencil
cuttings. Good-bye.”
When we were out in the darkness of the quadrangle we again looked up at
the windows. The Indian still paced his room. The others were invisible.
“Well, Watson, what do you think of it?” Holmes asked as we came out into
the main street. “Quite a little parlour game—sort of three-card trick, is it not?
There are your three men. It must be one of them. You take your choice. Which
is yours?”
“The foul-mouthed fellow at the top. He is the one with the worst record. And
yet that Indian was a sly fellow also. Why should he be pacing his room all the
time?”
“There is nothing in that. Many men do it when they are trying to learn
anything by heart.”
“He looked at us in a queer way.”
“So would you if a flock of strangers came in on you when you were
preparing for an examination next day, and every moment was of value. No, I
see nothing in that. Pencils, too, and knives—all was satisfactory. But that fellow
does puzzle me.”
“Who?”
“Why, Bannister, the servant. What’s his game in the matter?”
“He impressed me as being a perfectly honest man.”
“So he did me. That’s the puzzling part. Why should a perfectly honest man—
well, well, here’s a large stationer’s. We shall begin our researches here.”
There were only four stationers of any consequences in the town, and at each
Holmes produced his pencil chips and bid high for a duplicate. All were agreed
that one could be ordered, but that it was not a usual size of pencil, and that it
was seldom kept in stock. My friend did not appear to be depressed by his
failure, but shrugged his shoulders in half-humorous resignation.
“No good, my dear Watson. This, the best and only final clue, has run to
nothing. But, indeed, I have little doubt that we can build up a sufficient case
without it. By Jove! my dear fellow, it is nearly nine, and the landlady babbled
of green peas20 at seven-thirty. What with your eternal tobacco, Watson, and
your irregularity at meals,21 I expect that you will get notice to quit, and that I
shall share your downfall—not, however, before we have solved the problem of
the nervous tutor, the careless servant, and the three enterprising students.”
Holmes made no further allusion to the matter that day, though he sat lost in
thought for a long time after our belated dinner. At eight in the morning he came
into my room just as I finished my toilet.
“Well, Watson,” said he, “it is time we went down to St. Luke’s. Can you do
without breakfast?”
“Certainly.”
“Soames will be in a dreadful fidget until we are able to tell him something
positive.”
“Have you anything positive to tell him?”
“I think so.”
“You have formed a conclusion?”
“Yes, my dear Watson; I have solved the mystery.”
“But what fresh evidence could you have got?”
“Aha! It is not for nothing that I have turned myself out of bed at the untimely
hour of six. I have put in two hours’ hard work and covered at least five miles,
with something to show for it. Look at that!”
He held out his band. On the palm were three little pyramids of black, doughy
clay.
“Why, Holmes, you had only two yesterday.”
“And one more this morning. It is a fair argument that wherever No. 3 came
from is also the source of Nos. 1 and 2. Eh, Watson? Well, come along and put
friend Soames out of his pain.”
The unfortunate tutor was certainly in a state of pitiable agitation when we found
him in his chambers. In a few hours the examinations would commence, and he
was still in the dilemma between making the facts public and allowing the
culprit to compete for the valuable scholarship. He could hardly stand still, so
great was his mental agitation, and he ran towards Holmes with two eager hands
outstretched.
“Thank heaven that you have come! I feared that you had given it up in
despair. What am I to do? Shall the examination proceed?”
“Yes; let it proceed, by all means.”
“But this rascal—?”
“He shall not compete.”
“You know him?”
“I think so. If this matter is not to become public we must give ourselves
certain powers, and resolve ourselves into a small private court-martial.22 You
there, if you please, Soames! Watson, you here! I’ll take the arm chair in the
middle. I think that we are now sufficiently imposing to strike terror into a guilty
breast. Kindly ring the bell!”
Bannister entered, and shrank back in evident surprise and fear at our judicial
appearance.
“You will kindly close the door,” said Holmes. “Now, Bannister, will you
please tell us the truth about yesterday’s incident?”
The man turned white to the roots of his hair.
“I have told you everything, sir.”
“Nothing to add?”
“Nothing at all, sir.”
“Well, then, I must make some suggestions to you. When you sat down on
that chair yesterday, did you do so in order to conceal some object which would
have shown who had been in the room?”
Bannister’s face was ghastly.
“No, sir, certainly not.”
“It is only a suggestion,” said Holmes, suavely. “I frankly admit that I am
unable to prove it. But it seems probable enough, since the moment that Mr.
Soames’s back was turned you released the man who was hiding in that
bedroom.”
Bannister explains.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
Bannister licked his dry lips.
“There was no man, sir.”
“Ah, that’s a pity, Bannister. Up to now you may have spoken the truth, but
now I know that you have lied.”
The man’s face set in sullen defiance.
“There was no man, sir.”
“Come, come, Bannister!”
“No, sir, there was no one.”
“In that case you can give us no further information. Would you please remain
in the room? Stand over there near the bedroom door. Now, Soames, I am going
to ask you to have the great kindness to go up to the room of young Gilchrist,
and to ask him to step down into yours.”
An instant later the tutor returned, bringing with him the student. He was a
fine figure of a man, tall, lithe, and agile, with a springy step and a pleasant,
open face. His troubled blue eyes glanced at each of us, and finally rested with
an expression of blank dismay upon Bannister in the farther comer.
“Just close the door,” said Holmes. “Now, Mr. Gilchrist, we are all quite alone
here, and no one need ever know one word of what passes between us. We can
be perfectly frank with each other. We want to know, Mr. Gilchrist, how you, an
honourable man, ever came to commit such an action as that of yesterday?”
The unfortunate young man staggered back, and cast a look full of horror and
reproach at Bannister.
“No, no, Mr. Gilchrist, sir; I never said a word—never one word!” cried the
servant.
“No, but you have now,” said Holmes. “Now, sir, you must see that after
Bannister’s words your position is hopeless, and that your only chance lies in a
frank confession.”
For a moment Gilchrist, with upraised hand, tried to control his writhing
features. The next he had thrown himself on his knees beside the table, and,
burying his face in his hands, he had burst into a storm of passionate sobbing.
“Come, come,” said Holmes kindly; “it is human to err, and at least no one
can accuse you of being a callous criminal. Perhaps it would be easier for you if
I were to tell Mr. Soames what occurred, and you can check me where I am
wrong. Shall I do so? Well, well, don’t trouble to answer. Listen, and see that I
do you no injustice.
“An instant later the tutor returned, bringing with him the
student.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“From the moment, Mr. Soames, that you said to me that no one, not even
Bannister, could have told that the papers were in your room, the case began to
take a definite shape in my mind. The printer one could, of course, dismiss. He
could examine the papers in his own office. The Indian I also thought nothing of.
If the proofs were in roll, he could not possibly know what they were. On the
other hand, it seemed an unthinkable coincidence that a man should dare to enter
the room, and that by chance on that very day the papers were on the table. I
dismissed that. The man who entered knew that the papers were there. How did
he know?
“When I approached your room I examined the window. You amused me by
supposing that I was contemplating the possibility of someone having in broad
daylight, under the eyes of all these opposite rooms, forced himself through it.
Such an idea was absurd. I was measuring how tall a man would need to be in
order to see, as he passed, what papers were on the central table. I am six feet
high, and I could do it with an effort. No one less than that would have a chance.
Already you see I had reason to think that, if one of your three students was a
man of unusual height, he was the most worth watching of the three.
“‘Come, come,’ said Holmes, kindly, ‘it is human to
err.’”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“I entered, and I took you into my confidence as to the suggestions of the sidetable. Of the centre table I could make nothing, until in your description of
Gilchrist you mentioned that he was a long-distance jumper. Then the whole
thing came to me in an instant, and I only needed certain corroborative proofs,
which I speedily obtained.
“What happened was this: This young fellow had employed his afternoon at
the athletic grounds, where he had been practising the jump. He returned
carrying his jumping-shoes, which are provided, as you are aware, with several
sharp spikes. As he passed your window he saw, by means of his great height,
these proofs upon your table, and conjectured what they were. No harm would
have been done had it not been that, as he passed your door, he perceived the key
which had been left by the carelessness of your servant. A sudden impulse came
over him to enter and see if they were indeed the proofs. It was not a dangerous
exploit, for he could always pretend that he had simply looked in to ask a
question.
“Well, when he saw that they were indeed the proofs, it was then that he
yielded to temptation. He put his shoes on the table. What was it you put on that
chair near the window?”
“Gloves,” said the young man.
Holmes looked triumphantly at Bannister. “He put his gloves on the chair, and
he took the proofs, sheet by sheet, to copy them. He thought the tutor must return
by the main gate, and that he would see him. As we know, he came back by the
side-gate. Suddenly he heard him at the very door. There was no possible escape.
He forgot his gloves, but he caught up his shoes and darted into the bedroom.
You observe that the scratch on that table is slight at one side, but deepens in the
direction of the bedroom door, That in itself is enough to show us that the shoes
had been drawn in that direction, and that the culprit had taken refuge there. The
earth round the spike had been left on the table, and a second sample was
loosened and fell in the bedroom. I may add that I walked out to the athletic
grounds this morning, saw that tenacious black clay is used in the jumping-pit,23
and carried away a specimen of it, together with some of the fine tan24 or
sawdust which is strewn over it to prevent the athlete from slipping. Have I told
the truth, Mr. Gilchrist?”
The student had drawn himself erect.
“Yes, sir, it is true,” said he.
“Good heavens! have you nothing to add?” cried Soames.
“Yes, sir, I have, but the shock of this disgraceful exposure has bewildered
me. I have a letter here, Mr. Soames, which I wrote to you early this morning in
the middle of a restless night. It was before I knew that my sin had found me out.
Here it is, sir. You will see that I have said, ‘I have determined not to go in for
the examination. I have been offered a commission in the Rhodesian Police,25
and I am going out to South Africa at once.’ ”
“I am indeed pleased to hear that you did not intend to profit by your unfair
advantage,” said Soames. “But why did you change your purpose?26
Gilchrist pointed to Bannister.
“There is the man who set me in the right path,” said he.
“Come now, Bannister,” said Holmes. “It will be clear to you, from what I
have said, that only you could have let this young man out, since you were left in
the room and must have locked the door when you went out. As to his escaping
by that window, it was incredible. Can you not clear up the last point in this
mystery, and tell us the reason for your action?”
“It was simple enough, sir, if you only had known; but, with all your
cleverness, it was impossible that you could know. Time was, sir, when I was
butler to old Sir Jabez Gilchrist, this young gentleman’s father. When he was
ruined I came to the college as servant, but I never forgot my old employer
because he was down in the world. I watched his son all I could for the sake of
the old days. Well, sir, when I came into this room yesterday, when the alarm
was given, the very first thing I saw was Mr. Gilchrist’s tan gloves a-lying in
that chair. I knew those gloves well, and I understood their message. If Mr.
Soames saw them, the game was up. I flopped down into that chair, and nothing
would budge me until Mr. Soames went for you. Then out came my poor young
master, whom I had dandled on my knee, and confessed it all to me. Wasn’t it
natural, sir, that I should save him, and wasn’t it natural also that I should try to
speak to him as his dead father would have done, and make him understand that
he could not profit by such a deed? Could you blame me, sir?”
“Here it is, sir.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“No, indeed!” said Holmes, heartily, springing to his feet. “Well, Soames, I
think we have cleared your little problem up, and our breakfast awaits us at
home. Come, Watson! As to you, sir, I trust that a bright future awaits you in
Rhodesia. For once you have fallen low. Let us see in the future how high you
can rise.”27
THE STUDY OF EARLY ENGLISH CHARTERS
WATSON’S casual remark that Holmes was conducting research into early English
charters may be a significant clue in the controversy over whether Holmes
attended Oxford or Cambridge—or at least several scholars seize upon it as
such. The first to lean heavily on this point is T. S. Blakeney, who declares in
“The Location of ‘The Three Students’ ” that Holmes’s research must have been
conducted at Oxford. As proof, he lauds Oxford’s history department, claiming
that its status was unparalleled in England at this time. In part, the department
owed its lofty reputation to the eminent William Stubbs, regius professor of
history (as well as bishop respectively of Chester and Oxford), whose published
works include the three-volume The Constitutional History of England in Its
Origin and Development (1873–78), Select Charters and Other Illustrations of
English Constitutional History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward
the First (1870) and nineteen volumes of medieval English chronicles that he
edited for the government’s ambitious Rolls series. In addition, Blakeney notes,
William H. Turner’s Calendar of Charters and Rolls was published by Oxford in
1878 and housed in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Turner’s work was “just the sort
of volume that an amateur historian, as Holmes was, would find invaluable.
Against this solidly enthroned tradition of the Oxford Medieval History School,
what had Cambridge to offer?”
Christopher Morley agrees with Blakeney and surmises that Holmes may have
been at Oxford to consult with Stubbs on the eighth edition of Select Charters,
which by this time had become a widely used textbook. Morley directs readers to
the tenth section of Dialogus de Scaccario (Dialogue on the Exchequer), an
essay, drawn up circa 1200, that comments upon the biannual meeting of the
treasurer of England, as well as other matters of taxation and revenue. The tenth
section is concerned with murder. In medieval times, apparently, murder was
defined it as “the secret death of somebody, whose slayer is not known,” on the
basis of the fact that the Old English word “murdrum” meant “hidden” or
“occult.” (Stubbs explains that Anglo-Saxons seeking vengeance frequently laid
ambushes for their Norman enemies, killing them in remote places.) Given
Holmes’s general interest in things medieval (miracle plays and medieval pottery
are mentioned in The Sign of Four, and in “The Bruce-Partington Plans” he has
made a hobby of the music of the Middle Ages) and in British criminal law
(Watson assesses him as having a “good practical knowledge” of it in A Study in
Scarlet), Morley suggests that Holmes would find this particular work especially
interesting.
Cambridge has its supporters, as well. While granting that Blakeney is
“entirely fair” in making such an “erudite review” of charters at Oxford and
Cambridge, W. S. Bristowe writes (in “Oxford or Cambridge?”) that Blakeney’s
assessment passes over the many old, valuable documents at Cambridge that
were being somewhat belatedly recognised as important. Bristowe seizes upon
M. R. James’s “Catalogues of Manuscripts” series, published at Cambridge from
1895 to 1914, and observes that Holmes could have caught up with James just as
he was at the cusp of his research. “This surely would be the very moment when
a man interested in research in the same field would be eager to meet Dr. James
and to examine documents freshly coming to light.”
A. Carson Simpson is another Cambridge supporter, writing in a letter to the
Baker Street Journal that he changed his early backing of Oxford after reading
F. E. Harmer’s Anglo-Saxon Writs (1952) and finding that most of the
documents mentioned were located in Cambridge libraries. Acknowledging that
these documents were writs and not charters, Simpson ventures that the
distinction between charters, which are legal contracts, and writs, which are
official declarations, has been established only fairly recently. Sorting out the
differences could very well have been connected to Holmes’s “striking results.”
The foregoing arguments are made without any apparent regard to Watson’s
explicit statement, in the first sentence of the case, that “a combination of events,
into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend
some weeks in one of our great university towns.” That is, Holmes did not come
to the university town solely to study charters. This point is clearly understood
by Trevor H. Hall, in “Sherlock Holmes’s University and College,” where he
states that “the opportunity to consult Early English charters was only one
ingredient in Holmes’s motive in visiting Cambridge or Oxford [italics added].”
Hall suggests that the reason for Holmes’s interest in the charters was probably
an investigation of a forged historical document. If a “combination of events”
brought Holmes to the university town, Hall concludes, the richness of the
collection of one or the other had no bearing on the matter.
“The Three Students” appeared in the Strand Magazine
in June 1904 and in Collier’s Weekly on September 24,
1904.
1
As will be seen, Watson’s cautionary words are
completely ignored by the commentators, who endeavour
to discern whether the university was Cambridge or
Oxford. Holmes’s evident familiarity with the town, the
customs, and some of its inhabitants leads many scholars
to conclude that whatever university is depicted in “The
Three Students” must be the university Holmes himself
attended. However, the clues are ambiguous, at best, and
the controversy remains unsettled.
2
See the appendix on page 1089 for a discussion of the
Oxford vs. Cambridge aspects of the study of early
English charters.
3
In this case, “tutor” is meant to describe a fellow who
instructs the undergraduates at one of Oxford or
Cambridge’s many colleges. Being a tutor is quite
prestigious—the position carries both a stipend and
permanent membership on the college’s governing board.
It is awarded on the basis of superior performance on
one’s undergraduate exams. The Encyclopædia
Britannica (11th Ed.) distinguishes the responsibilities of
4
the tutor at Oxford and the tutor at Cambridge, noting
that the former lectures and supervises undergraduates,
whereas the latter is not required to teach. Is this a point
for Oxford?
Although scholars analyse “The Three Students” in
detail considering whether it displays evidence of
Holmes’s familiarity with the University town, this
phrase implies that Watson knew Soames well before
“the year ’95.” How Watson and Soames came into
contact with each other remains a mystery, for Watson
never mentions any university career (in A Study in
Scarlet) other than his years at the University of London,
where he eventually obtained his M.D. Perhaps Soames
was earlier employed as an instructor at the public school
attended by Percy Phelps and Watson (“The Naval
Treaty”)?
5
Christopher Redmond, in A Sherlock Holmes
Handbook, finds it “improbable” that avoiding scandal
was Soames’s main goal, noting that a university (or
tutor) truly interested in keeping things quiet would try to
settle the matter internally rather than call in a famous
detective to investigate the matter.
6
“The true Holmes is never discourteous to a client,”
contends Ronald A. Knox, who, in “Studies in the
Literature of Sherlock Holmes,” rejects all of the stories
7
of Return of Sherlock Holmes as “lucubrations of
[Watson’s] unaided inventions.”
The manuscript, owned by the Houghton Library of
Harvard University, originally read “day after tomorrow.”
8
One of ancient Greece’s greatest historians, the
Athenian Thucydides (ca. 460–400 B.C.) served as a
general in the Peloponnesian War and was exiled after
failing to prevent the city of Amphipolis from falling to
the Spartans. During the twenty years he was banished
from Athens, Thucydides wrote his only work, History of
the Peloponnesian War, a military history of relations
between Athens and Sparta that incorporated a
chronological narrative as well as imagined speeches that
were inserted into the narration. (The most famous of
these is Pericles’s funeral oration.) It differed
significantly from previous historical accounts in that it
was a work meant to be read, not recited. Rather than just
recording events, Thucydides analysed their significance
and strived for factual accuracy, clearly attempting to
create a definitive history that would be studied by future
generations.
Soames’s choice of a passage from Thucydides for
students to translate strikes some as a bit of poor
judgement. Lord Donegall, in Baker Street and Beyond,
presumes that any student hoping to qualify for such a
prestigious scholarship would surely have studied
9
Thucydides rigourously and would therefore know his
work “as well as an Honours Student in English
Literature knows his Hamlet.” Any excerpt Soames used
would then not qualify as “a large passage of Greek
translation which the candidate has not seen.” However,
Tony Bird suggests that Soames could have used portions
of the less-studied speeches, not the narratives, because
the speeches generally contain few contextual clues
(personal names, places) and thus are harder to recognise.
Bird also points out that the scholarship was likely to be
an award given to a student early on in his career, before
an undergraduate would have completed his reading of
Thucydides, required only in the second part of Oxford’s
Classics course.
The manuscript originally read “grammatically,” which
is nonsense in the context of a Greek passage.
10
Ronald A. Knox is the first to comment on this
extraordinary statement: “Is it likely . . . that [only] half a
chapter should take the examiner an hour and a half to
correct for the press?”
11
A coarse woollen cloth used for curtains, door covers,
and table covers.
12
Numerous commentators, beginning with Andrew
Lang, point out that not even a whole chapter of
13
Thucydides is as long as three long slips of printers’
proofs.
Copying the entire thing may have been unnecessary,
observes Andrew Lang, who guesses that a more
expedient culprit could have gotten all the information he
would need merely by jotting down one sentence from
the beginning, one from the end, and a note on the subject
matter. This should have been enough to allow the
student to look the passage up at his leisure, in his own
rooms.
14
The first of several insulting remarks Holmes aims at
Watson in the course of “The Three Students,” evidence,
as Watson says, that “his temper had not improved” by
leaving Baker Street.
15
Johann Lothar von Faber (1817–1896) and John
Eberhard Faber (1822–1879), were German brothers who
took the family pencil business of their great-grandfather,
Kaspar Faber, and turned it into a worldwide enterprise.
After assuming control of Kaspar’s operations near
Nuremberg, Lothar expanded into the rest of Europe and
the United States, in 1856 contracting exclusive rights to
all the graphite being mined in eastern Siberia.
Meanwhile, his brother had gone to New York,
establishing America’s first significant pencil factory in
1861. Eventually, the German portion of the Faber
16
brothers’ business was sold (in 1903), but the U.S.-based
Eberhard Faber Pencil Company remained under the
family’s control and was incorporated in 1898. Most
likely, the chip that Holmes is examining originated in
Germany, where the company was known as “Johann
Faber.”
The earliest “pencils” were nothing more than lumps
of chalk or lead styluses, the latter used by ancient
Egyptians and medieval monks. It was the 1564
discovery of graphite in Borrowdale, England, that led to
the invention of the pencil as we know it today. (The
word “graphite” comes from the Greek graphein, “to
write.”) Because graphite was more pliable than lead, it
required a “holder,” or encasing, to stabilise it. String
wrapped around the graphite sticks first served this
purpose, and later the graphite came to be inserted into
hollowed-out wooden tubes. Nuremberg became the new
centre for pencil manufacturing, but its pencils—which
utilised a composite of graphite and sulfur—were inferior
to those made with high-quality graphite in England, until
French chemist Jacques Conté developed an advanced
new technique in 1795. The process, which involved
mixing powdered graphite and clay (the amount of clay
used varied depending upon the hardness desired) and
firing them in a furnace, was gradually adopted by the
German factories, and presumably capitalised upon by
the Faber brothers. The Conté technique remains the
basis of pencil manufacture today.
Ronald A. Knox astutely observes that a pencil marked
with the words JOHANN FABER would not leave the letters
“NN” near the stump, but rather “ER.” But Bruce Holmes
(no relation) suggests in a letter to the Baker Street
Journal that the initials were not on the stump but instead
on a small chip evidently cut off the pencil when
sharpened.
17
For an athlete (at either Oxford or Cambridge) to “get
his Blue” is the equivalent of earning a “letter” in
American high school or college sports. It derives from
the colour of the team caps, dark blue for Oxford and
light blue for Cambridge.
According to W. S. Bristowe, Oxford’s long-jump
team was led by C. B. Fry from 1892 to 1895, meaning
that Gilchrist was either Fry’s “second string” at Oxford
or his rival at Cambridge. Harold Abrahams, the famed
long-jumper and runner (immortalised in the film
Chariots of Fire), wrote Bristowe a letter providing
further detail in which he said, “We are told that Gilchrist
was a Blue for the long jump and hurdles. There was no
Blue at Cambridge for those two events in 1895, but it is
not without interest to note that C. B. Fry’s second string,
W. J. Oakley, was a Blue for both these events in 1895
and in fact got his Blue for them in 1894.”
18
The word “many” is “fifteen” in the original
manuscript.
19
Holmes here misquotes Shakespeare frivolously—see
Henry V, Act 2, Scene 3, where hostess Mistress Quickly
speaks of Falstaff “babbl[ing] of green fields” on his
deathbed.
20
21
The pot calling the kettle black!
The scene resembles the “trial” of Captain Croker in
“The Abbey Grange,” in which Holmes acts as
prosecutor and Watson as jury.
22
W. S. Bristowe finds the presence of this black clay
conclusive evidence that the locale of “The Three
Students” is Cambridge. The same C. B. Fry who led the
Oxford long-jump team wrote a 1902 Strand article in
which he recalled that a groundsman at Fenners (a cricket
lawn at Cambridge) had invented a type of clay that was
duplicated by the Queen’s Club in London (the site of
numerous Oxford vs. Cambridge athletic events,
although, confusingly enough, not affiliated with either
Queen’s College (Oxford) or Queens’ College
(Cambridge)). The club began using the clay in its longjump pit in 1902, thereby introducing the substance to the
world outside Cambridge. After writing a letter to Fry,
Bristowe received a reply on December 21, 1955, in
23
which the long-jumping captain confirmed that Oxford
jumpers landed in sand, not clay. “I saw no damped semiclay soil in the Long Jump pit till at Queens in 1903,”
wrote Fry. “Here, I submit,” writes Bristowe
triumphantly, “we have positive proof from this
distinguished contemporary of Gilchrist that the mud
which led to his detection was invented by the Cambridge
groundsman and was unique to Cambridge in 1895 [the
date commonly accepted for ‘The Three Students’—see
Chronological Table].”
This remarkable piece of evidence is independently
corroborated in the diary of James Agate, quoting a letter
from his friend George Lyttelton dated October 29, 1946.
Lyttelton, a member of the Cambridge Union Athletic
Club in 1895, verifies that the special clay was found
only at Cambridge and not at Oxford.
24
Oak bark or other material used for tanning.
The state of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, was founded
via the impetus of Cecil Rhodes, future prime minister of
South Africa’s Cape Colony (see “The Solitary Cyclist,”
note 28). In 1889, Rhodes was granted a charter for his
new British South Africa Company, which he had formed
with the purpose of exploring commercial, colonial,
transportation, and mining interests in the area northeast
of South Africa. His company sent settlers deep into the
region in 1890, establishing Fort Salisbury at the site of
25
the future Rhodesian capital and quickly encountering
resistance from the native Ndebele. Rhodes’s troops,
controlled by him in his capacity as the Parliamentappointed high commissioner, engaged in months of
fighting but emerged victorious. The British South Africa
Company took over administration of the territory,
officially naming it Rhodesia in 1895. The military force
Gilchrist intended to join (technically, the British South
African Police) had more action ahead, however, as the
Nbedele and the Shona tribes rose in resistance in 1896
and 1897. The police remained Rhodesia’s internal
security force until 1980, when the country became an
independent member of the Commonwealth.
And what was that purpose? Soames describes
Gilchrist as “a fine scholar . . . hard-working and
industrious. He will do well.” John Hall, in Sidelights on
Holmes, suggests, “[P]erhaps Gilchrist had been devoting
so much of his time to rugby, cricket, hurdles and the
long jump that he had rather neglected his more academic
interests?”
26
In July 1904, a mere month following publication of
“The Three Students,” famed editor and critic Andrew
Lang analysed the case in his monthly column “At the
Sign of the Ship” in Longman’s Magazine. Lang
contends that Holmes and Watson were, in this case,
made the victims of an elaborate hoax—prepared and
27
brilliantly acted by Hilton Soames, with the aid and
connivance of Gilchrist, if not of Bannister. Playing on
Holmes’s complete ignorance of Greek literature,
“Soames of St. Luke’s came to [Holmes] with a cockand-bull story, which would not have taken in a Fifth
Form boy.”
In The London Nights of Belsize, published in 1917,
Vernon Rendall suggests that Watson, Gilchrist, Soames,
and Bannister were in league together, their purpose
being to give Holmes something to do. “Watson feared
his relapse into the drug-habit . . . , and Watson got up
this pretty little case for him.” T. S. Blakeney disagrees
with this scenario, arguing that Watson was never a good
enough actor to pull off such a stunt. “We have no special
reason to think Watson was a good deceiver,” Blakeney
explains, recalling various examples from the Canon in
which Watson demonstrates a chronic facility for giving
himself away: in “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes easily
guesses Watson’s thoughts on General Gordon and Henry
Ward Beecher merely by the expression on Watson’s
face; in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Watson’s
cigarette betrays him to Holmes; in “The Crooked Man,”
it is the doctor’s habit of carrying his handkerchief in his
sleeve that identifies him as a former soldier; and in “The
Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” Watson’s
method of tying his bootlaces catches him out. Blakeney
concedes that “Watson was not averse to ‘taking a rise’
out of Holmes if he had the chance [The Valley of Fear],
[but] his straightforward character and complete honesty
do not fit him for any high degree of deception.” In any
case, Blakeney concludes that Holmes was in no need of
diversion, given the “striking” results he had evidently
obtained in his study of English charters.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCENEZ1
The period following Holmes’s return in the year 1894 was apparently
a busy one for Holmes and Watson, because in “The Golden PinceNez,” Watson notes no fewer than five unpublished cases, and at least
three other published cases occur in that year. We learn that Holmes
earned the French Order of the Legion of Honour for his capture of
“the Boulevard assassin,” leading to speculation about Holmes’s
French connections. The case is also noteworthy for its Russian
background: Although Russia and its recent violent history was much
on the public’s mind in 1904 (the Russo-Japanese War broke out in
February 1904, and in 1903, a general strike in Russia was widely
reported), this is the only Canonical reference to nihilism and the
terrors of the czarist police state.
WHEN I LOOK at the three massive manuscript volumes which contain our work
for the year 1894, I confess that it is very difficult for me, out of such a wealth of
material, to select the cases which are most interesting in themselves and at the
same time most conducive to a display of those peculiar powers for which my
friend was famous. As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon the repulsive
story of the red leech2 and the terrible death of Crosby the banker. Here also I
find an account of the Addleton tragedy and the singular contents of the ancient
British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer3 succession case comes also within
this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin4
—an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the
French President and the Order of the Legion of Honour. Each of these would
furnish a narrative, but on the whole I am of opinion that none of them unites so
many singular points of interest as the episode of Yoxley Old Place, which
includes not only the lamentable death of young Willoughby Smith, but also
those subsequent developments which threw so curious a light upon the causes
of the crime.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and
I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens
deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest,5 I deep in
a recent treatise upon surgery.6 Outside the wind howled down Baker Street,
while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very
depths of the town, with ten miles of man’s handiwork on every side of us, to
feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces
all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the
window and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on
the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its
way from the Oxford Street end.
“Well, Watson, it’s as well we have not to turn out to-night,” said Holmes,
laying aside his lens and rolling up the palimpsest. “I’ve done enough for one
sitting. It is trying work for the eyes. So far as I can make out, it is nothing more
exciting than an Abbey’s accounts dating from the second half of the fifteenth
century. Halloa! halloa! halloa! What’s this?”
Amid the droning of the wind there had come the stamping of a horse’s hoofs
and the long grind of a wheel as it rasped against the kerb. The cab which I had
seen had pulled up at our door.
“What can he want?” I ejaculated, as a man stepped out of it.
“Want! He wants us. And we, my poor Watson, want overcoats and cravats
and goloshes, and every aid that man ever invented to fight the weather. Wait a
bit, though! There’s the cab off again! There’s hope yet. He’d have kept it if he
had wanted us to come. Run down, my dear fellow, and open the door, for all
virtuous folk have been long in bed.”
When the light of the hall lamp fell upon our midnight visitor, I had no
difficulty in recognizing him. It was young Stanley Hopkins, a promising
detective, in whose career Holmes had several times shown a very practical
interest.
“Is he in?” he asked, eagerly.
“Come up, my dear sir,” said Holmes’s voice from above. “I hope you have
no designs upon us such a night as this.”
The detective mounted the stairs, and our lamp gleamed upon his shining
waterproof. I helped him out of it, while Holmes knocked a blaze out of the logs
in the grate.
“Now, my dear Hopkins, draw up and warm your toes,” said he. “Here’s a
cigar, and the doctor has a prescription containing hot water and a lemon which
is good medicine on a night like this. It must be something important which has
brought you out in such a gale.”
“It is indeed, Mr. Holmes. I’ve had a bustling afternoon, I promise you. Did
you see anything of the Yoxley case in the latest editions?”
“I’ve seen nothing later than the fifteenth century to-day.”
“Well, it was only a paragraph, and all wrong at that, so you have not missed
anything. I haven’t let the grass grow under my feet. It’s down in Kent, seven
miles from Chatham and three from the railway line. I was wired for at threefifteen, reached Yoxley Old Place at five, conducted my investigation, was back
at Charing Cross by the last train, and straight to you by cab.”
“It was young Stanley Hopkins, a promising detective.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Which means, I suppose, that you are not quite clear about your case?”
“It means that I can make neither head nor tail of it. So far as I can see, it is
just as tangled a business as ever I handled, and yet at first it seemed so simple
that one couldn’t go wrong. There’s no motive, Mr. Holmes. That’s what bothers
me—I can’t put my hand on a motive. Here’s a man dead—there’s no denying
that—but, so far as I can see, no reason on earth why anyone should wish him
harm.”
Holmes lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.
“Let us hear about it,” said he.
“Now, my dear Hopkins, draw up and warm your toes.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“I’ve got my facts pretty clear,” said Stanley Hopkins. “All I want now is to
know what they all mean. The story, so far as I can make it out, is like this.
Some years ago this country house, Yoxley Old Place, was taken by an elderly
man, who gave the name of Professor Coram. He was an invalid, keeping his
bed half the time, and the other half hobbling round the house with a stick or
being pushed about the grounds by the gardener in a Bath chair.7 He was well
liked by the few neighbours who called upon him, and he has the reputation
down there of being a very learned man. His household used to consist of an
elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Marker, and of a maid, Susan Tarlton. These have
both been with him since his arrival, and they seem to be women of excellent
character. The professor is writing a learned book, and he found it necessary
about a year ago to engage a secretary. The first two that he tried were not
successes, but the third, Mr. Willoughby Smith, a very young man straight from
the university, seems to have been just what his employer wanted. His work
consisted in writing all the morning to the professor’s dictation, and he usually
spent the evening in hunting up references and passages which bore upon the
next day’s work. This Willoughby Smith has nothing against him, either as a boy
at Uppingham8 or as a young man at Cambridge. I have seen his testimonials,
and from the first he was a decent, quiet, hard-working fellow, with no weak
spot in him at all. And yet this is the lad who has met his death this morning in
the professor’s study under circumstances which can point only to murder.”
The wind howled and screamed at the windows. Holmes and I drew closer to
the fire, while the young inspector slowly and point by point developed his
singular narrative.
“If you were to search all England,” said he, “I don’t suppose you could find a
household more self-contained or freer from outside influences. Whole weeks
would pass, and not one of them go past the garden gate. The professor was
buried in his work and existed for nothing else. Young Smith knew nobody in
the neighbourhood, and lived very much as his employer did. The two women
had nothing to take them from the house. Mortimer, the gardener, who wheels
the Bath-chair, is an Army pensioner—an old Crimean man of excellent
character. He does not live in the house, but in a three-roomed cottage at the
other end of the garden. Those are the only people that you would find within the
grounds of Yoxley Old Place. At the same time, the gate of the garden is a
hundred yards from the main London to Chatham road. It opens with a latch, and
there is nothing to prevent anyone from walking in.
“Now I will give you the evidence of Susan Tarlton, who is the only person
who can say anything positive about the matter. It was in the forenoon, between
eleven and twelve. She was engaged at the moment in hanging some curtains in
the upstairs front bedroom. Professor Coram was still in bed, for when the
weather is bad he seldom rises before midday. The housekeeper was busied with
some work in the back of the house. Willoughby Smith had been in his bedroom,
which he uses as a sitting-room; but the maid heard him at that moment pass
along the passage and descend to the study immediately below her. She did not
see him, but she says that she could not be mistaken in his quick, firm tread. She
did not hear the study door close, but a minute or so later there was a dreadful
cry in the room below. It was a wild, hoarse scream, so strange and unnatural
that it might have come either from a man or a woman. At the same instant there
was a heavy thud, which shook the whole9 house, and then all was silence. The
maid stood petrified for a moment, and then, recovering her courage, she ran
downstairs. The study door was shut, and she opened it. Inside, young Mr.
Willoughby Smith was stretched upon the floor. At first she could see no injury,
but as she tried to raise him she saw that blood was pouring from the under side
of his neck. It was pierced by a very small but very deep wound, which had
divided the carotid artery. The instrument with which the injury had been
inflicted lay upon the carpet beside him. It was one of those small sealing-wax
knives to be found on old-fashioned writing-tables, with an ivory handle and a
stiff blade. It was part of the fittings of the professor’s own desk.
“At first the maid thought that young Smith was already dead, but on pouring
some water from the carafe over his forehead, he opened his eyes for an instant.
‘The professor,’ he murmured—’it was she.’ The maid is prepared to swear that
those were the exact words. He tried desperately to say something else, and he
held his right hand up in the air. Then he fell back dead.
“In the meantime the housekeeper had also arrived upon the scene, but she
was just too late to catch the young man’s dying words. Leaving Susan with the
body, she hurried to the professor’s room. He was sitting up in bed, horribly
agitated, for he had heard enough to convince him that something terrible had
occurred. Mrs. Marker is prepared to swear that the professor was still in his
night-clothes, and, indeed, it was impossible for him to dress without the help of
Mortimer, whose orders were to come at twelve o’clock. The professor declares
that he heard the distant cry, but that he knows nothing more. He can give no
explanation of the young man’s last words, ‘The professor—it was she,’ but
imagines that they were the outcome of delirium. He believes that Willoughby
Smith had not an enemy in the world, and can give no reason for the crime. His
first action was to send Mortimer, the gardener, for the local police. A little later
the chief constable sent for me. Nothing was moved before I got there, and strict
orders were given that no one should walk upon the paths leading to the house. It
was a splendid chance of putting your theories into practice, Mr. Sherlock
Holmes. There was really nothing wanting.”
“Except Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” said my companion, with a somewhat bitter
smile. “Well, let us hear about it. What sort of a job did you make of it?”
“I must ask you first, Mr. Holmes, to glance at this rough plan, which will
give you a general idea of the position of the professor’s study and the various
points of the case. It will help you in following my investigation.”
He unfolded the rough chart, which I here reproduce, and he laid it across
Holmes’s knee. I rose and, standing behind Holmes, studied it over his shoulder.
“It is very rough, of course, and it only deals with the points which seem to
me to be essential. All the rest you will see later for yourself. Now, first of all,
presuming that the assassin entered the house, how did he or she come in?
Undoubtedly by the garden path and the back door, from which there is direct
access to the study. Any other way would have been exceedingly complicated.
The escape must have also been made along that line, for of the two other exits
from the room one was blocked by Susan as she ran downstairs and the other
leads straight to the professor’s bedroom. I therefore directed my attention at
once to the garden path, which was saturated with recent rain, and would
certainly show any footmarks.
“My examination showed me that I was dealing with a cautious and expert
criminal. No footmarks were to be found on the path. There could be no
question, however, that someone had passed along the grass border which lines
the path, and that he had done so in order to avoid leaving a track. I could not
find anything in the nature of a distinct impression, but the grass was trodden
down, and someone had undoubtedly passed. It could only have been the
murderer, since neither the gardener nor anyone else had been there that
morning, and the rain had only begun during the night.”
“One moment,” said Holmes. “Where does this path lead to?”
“To the road.”
“How long is it?”
“A hundred yards or so.”
“At the point where the path passes through the gate, you could surely pick up
the tracks?”
“Unfortunately the path was tiled at that point.”
“Well, on the road itself?”
“No; it was all trodden into mire.”
“Tut-tut! Well, then, these tracks upon the grass—were they coming or
going?”
“It was impossible to say. There was never any outline.”
“A large foot or a small?”
“You could not distinguish.”
Holmes gave an ejaculation of impatience.
“It has been pouring rain and blowing a hurricane ever since,” said he. “It will
be harder to read now than that palimpsest. Well, well, it can’t be helped. What
did you do, Hopkins, after you had made certain that you had made certain of
nothing?”
“I think I made certain of a good deal, Mr. Holmes. I knew that someone had
entered the house cautiously from without. I next examined the corridor. It is
lined with cocoanut matting and had taken no impression of any kind. This
brought me into the study itself. It is a scantily furnished room. The main article
is a large writing-table with a fixed bureau. This bureau consists of a double
column of drawers, with a central small cupboard between them. The drawers
were open, the cupboard locked. The drawers, it seems, were always open, and
nothing of value was kept in them. There were some papers of importance in the
cupboard, but there were no signs that this had been tampered with, and the
professor assures me that nothing was missing. It is certain that no robbery has
been committed.
“I come now to the body of the young man. It was found near the bureau, and
just to the left of it, as marked upon that chart. The stab was on the right side of
the neck and from behind forwards, so that it is almost impossible that it could
have been self-inflicted.”
“Unless he fell upon the knife,” said Holmes.
“Exactly. The idea crossed my mind. But we found the knife some feet away
from the body, so that seems impossible. Then, of course, there are the man’s
own dying words. And, finally, there was this very important piece of evidence
which was found clasped in the dead man’s right hand.”
From his pocket Stanley Hopkins drew a small paper packet. He unfolded it
and disclosed a golden pince-nez, with two broken ends of black silk cord
dangling from the end of it. “Willoughby Smith had excellent sight,” he added.
“There can be no question that this was snatched from the face or the person of
the assassin.”
“The body was found near the bureau, and just to the left
of it, as marked upon that chart.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Sherlock Holmes took the glasses into his hand, and examined them with the
utmost attention and interest. He held them on his nose, endeavoured to read
through them, went to the window and stared up the street with them, looked at
them most minutely in the full light of the lamp, and finally, with a chuckle,
seated himself at the table and wrote a few lines upon a sheet of paper, which he
tossed across to Stanley Hopkins.
“That’s the best I can do for you,” said he. “It may prove to be of some use.”
The astonished detective read the note aloud. It ran as follows:
Wanted, a woman of good address, attired like a lady. She has a remarkably
thick nose, with eyes which are set close upon either side of it. She has a
puckered forehead, a peering expression, and probably rounded shoulders.
There are indications that she has had recourse to an optician at least twice
during the last few months. As her glasses are of remarkable strength, and
as opticians are not very numerous, there should be no difficulty in tracing
her.
“He endeavoured to read through them.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Holmes smiled at the astonishment of Hopkins, which must have been reflected
upon my features.
“Surely my deductions are simplicity itself,” said he. “It would be difficult to
name any articles which afford a finer field for inference than a pair of glasses,
especially so remarkable a pair as these. That they belong to a woman I infer
from their delicacy, and also, of course, from the last words of the dying man.
As to her being a person of refinement and well dressed, they are, as you
perceive, handsomely mounted in solid gold, and it is inconceivable that anyone
who wore such glasses could be slatternly in other respects.10 You will find that
the clips are too wide for your nose, showing that the lady’s nose was very broad
at the base. This sort of nose is usually a short and coarse one, but there is a
sufficient number of exceptions to prevent me from being dogmatic or from
insisting upon this point in my description. My own face is a narrow one, and yet
I find that I cannot get my eyes into the centre, or near the centre, of these
glasses. Therefore, the lady’s eyes are set very near to the sides of the nose. You
will perceive, Watson, that the glasses are concave11 and of unusual strength. A
lady whose vision has been so extremely contracted all her life is sure to have
the physical characteristics of such vision, which are seen in the forehead, the
eyelids, and the shoulders.”
“Yes,” I said, “I can follow each of your arguments. I confess, however, that I
am unable to understand how you arrive at the double visit to the optician.”
Holmes took the glasses into his hand.
“You will perceive,” he said, “that the clips are lined with tiny bands of cork
to soften the pressure upon the nose. One of these is discoloured and worn to
some slight extent, but the other is new. Evidently one has fallen off and been
replaced. I should judge that the older of them has not been there more than a
few months. They exactly correspond, so I gather that the lady went back to the
same establishment for the second.”
“By George, it’s marvellous!” cried Hopkins, in an ecstasy of admiration. “To
think that I had all that evidence in my hand and never knew it! I had intended,
however, to go the round of the London opticians.”
“Of course you would. Meanwhile, have you anything more to tell us about
the case?”
“Nothing, Mr. Holmes. I think that you know as much as I do now—probably
more. We have had inquiries made as to any stranger seen on the country roads
or at the railway station. We have heard of none. What beats me is the utter want
of all object in the crime. Not a ghost of a motive can anyone suggest.”
“Ah! there I am not in a position to help you. But I suppose you want us to
come out to-morrow?”
“If it is not asking too much, Mr. Holmes. There’s a train from Charing Cross
to Chatham at six in the morning, and we should be at Yoxley Old Place
between eight and nine.”
“Then we shall take it. Your case has certainly some features of great interest,
and I shall be delighted to look into it. Well, it’s nearly one, and we had best get
a few hours’ sleep. I daresay you can manage all right on the sofa in front of the
fire. I’ll light my spirit-lamp, and give you a cup of coffee before we start.”
The gale had blown itself out next day, but it was a bitter morning when we
started upon our journey. We saw the cold winter sun rise over the dreary
marshes of the Thames and the long, sullen reaches of the river, which I shall
ever associate with our pursuit of the Andaman Islander12 in the earlier days of
our career. After a long and weary journey we alighted at a small station some
miles from Chatham. While a horse was being put into a trap at the local inn, we
snatched a hurried breakfast, and so we were all ready for business when we at
last arrived at Yoxley Old Place. A constable met us at the garden gate.
“Well, Wilson, any news?”
“No, sir, nothing.”
“No reports of any stranger seen?”
“No, sir. Down at the station they are certain that no stranger either came or
went yesterday.”
“Have you had inquiries made at inns and lodgings?”
“Yes, sir: there is no one that we cannot account for.”
“Well, it’s only a reasonable walk to Chatham. Anyone might stay there or
take a train without being observed. This is the garden path of which I spoke,
Mr. Holmes. I’ll pledge my word there was no mark on it yesterday.”
“On which side were the marks on the grass?”
“This side, sir. This narrow margin of grass between the path and the flowerbed. I can’t see the traces now, but they were clear to me then.”
“Yes, yes: someone has passed along,” said Holmes, stooping over the grass
border. “Our lady must have picked her steps carefully, must she not, since on
the one side she would leave a track on the path, and on the other an even clearer
one on the soft bed?”
“Yes, sir, she must have been a cool hand.”
I saw an intent look pass over Holmes’s face.
“You say that she must have come back this way?”
“Yes, sir; there is no other.”
“On this strip of grass?”
“Certainly, Mr. Holmes.”
“Hum! It was a very remarkable performance—very remarkable. Well, I think
we have exhausted the path. Let us go farther. This garden door is usually kept
open, I suppose? Then this visitor had nothing to do but to walk in. The idea of
murder was not in her mind, or she would have provided herself with some sort
of weapon, instead of having to pick this knife off the writing-table. She
advanced along this corridor, leaving no traces upon the cocoanut matting. Then
she found herself in this study. How long was she there? We have no means of
judging.”
“Not more than a few minutes, sir. I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Marker, the
housekeeper, had been in there tidying not very long before—about a quarter of
an hour, she says.”
“Well, that gives us a limit. Our lady enters this room, and what does she do?
She goes over to the writing-table. What for? Not for anything in the drawers. If
there had been anything worth her taking, it would surely13 have been locked up.
No, it was for something in that wooden bureau. Halloa! what is that scratch
upon the face of it? Just hold a match, Watson. Why did you not tell me of this,
Hopkins?”
The mark which he was examining began upon the brasswork on the righthand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four inches, where it had
scratched the varnish from the surface.
“I noticed it, Mr. Holmes. But you’ll always find scratches round a keyhole.”
“This is recent—quite recent. See how the brass shines where it is cut. An old
scratch would be the same colour as the surface. Look at it through my lens.
There’s the varnish, too, like earth on each side of a furrow. Is Mrs. Marker
there?”
A sad-faced, elderly woman came into the room.
“Did you dust this bureau yesterday morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you notice this scratch?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“I am sure you did not, for a duster would have swept away these shreds of
varnish. Who has the key of this bureau?”
“The professor keeps it on his watch-chain.”
“Is it a simple key?”
“No, sir; it is a Chubb’s key.”14
“Very good. Mrs. Marker, you can go. Now we are making a little progress.
Our lady enters the room, advances to the bureau, and either opens it or tries to
do so. While she is thus engaged, young Willoughby Smith enters the room. In
her hurry to withdraw the key, she makes this scratch upon the door. He seizes
her, and she, snatching up the nearest object, which happens to be this knife,
strikes at him in order to make him let go his hold. The blow is a fatal one. He
falls and she escapes, either with or without the object for which she has come.
Is Susan, the maid, there? Could anyone have got away through that door after
the time that you heard the cry, Susan?”
“No, sir; it is impossible. Before I got down the stair, I’d have seen anyone in
the passage. Besides, the door never opened, or I would have heard it.”
“That settles this exit. Then no doubt the lady went out the way she came. I
understand that this other passage leads only to the professor’s room. There is no
exit that way?”
“No, sir.”
“We shall go down it and make the acquaintance of the professor. Halloa,
Hopkins! this is very important, very important indeed. The professor’s corridor
is also lined with cocoanut matting.”
“Well, sir, what of that?”
“Don’t you see any bearing upon the case? Well, well. I don’t insist upon it.
No doubt I am wrong. And yet it seems to me to be suggestive. Come with me
and introduce me.”
“Did you dust this bureau yesterday morning?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
We passed down the passage, which was of the same length as that which led
to the garden. At the end was a short flight of steps ending in a door. Our guide
knocked, and then ushered us into the professor’s bedroom.
It was a very large chamber, lined with innumerable volumes, which had
overflowed from the shelves and lay in piles in the corners, or were stacked all
round at the base of the cases. The bed was in the centre of the room, and in it,
propped up with pillows, was the owner of the house. I have seldom seen a more
remarkable-looking person. It was a gaunt, aquiline face which was turned
towards us, with piercing dark eyes, which lurked in deep hollows under
overhung and tufted brows. His hair and beard were white, save that the latter
was curiously stained with yellow around his mouth. A cigarette glowed amid
the tangle of white hair, and the air of the room was fetid with stale tobacco
smoke. As he held out his hand to Holmes, I perceived that it was also stained
with yellow nicotine.
“A smoker, Mr. Holmes?” said he, speaking in well-chosen English, with a
curious little mincing accent. “Pray take a cigarette. And you, sir? I can
recommend them, for I have them especially prepared by Ionides of
Alexandria.15 He sends me a thousand at a time, and I grieve to say that I have to
arrange for a fresh supply every fortnight. Bad, sir, very bad, but an old man has
few pleasures. Tobacco and my work—that is all that is left to me.”
It was a gaunt, aquiline face which was turned towards
us.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
Holmes had lit a cigarette and was shooting little darting glances all over the
room.
“Tobacco and my work, but now only tobacco,” the old man exclaimed.
“Alas! what a fatal interruption! Who could have foreseen such a terrible
catastrophe? So estimable a young man! I assure you that, after a few months’
training, he was an admirable assistant. What do you think of the matter, Mr.
Holmes?”
“I have not yet made up my mind.”
“I shall indeed be indebted to you if you can throw a light where all is so dark
to us. To a poor bookworm and invalid like myself such a blow is paralysing. I
seem to have lost the faculty of thought. But you are a man of action—you are a
man of affairs. It is part of the everyday routine of your life. You can preserve
your balance in every emergency. We are fortunate, indeed, in having you at our
side.”
Holmes was pacing up and down one side of the room whilst the old professor
was talking. I observed that he was smoking with extraordinary rapidity. It was
evident that he shared our host’s liking for the fresh Alexandrian cigarettes.
“Yes, sir, it is a crushing blow,” said the old man. “That is my magnum opus
—the pile of papers on the side-table yonder. It is my analysis of the documents
found in the Coptic16 monasteries of Syria and Egypt, a work which will cut
deep at the very foundations of revealed religion. With my enfeebled health I do
not know whether I shall ever be able to complete it, now that my assistant has
been taken from me. Dear me! Mr. Holmes; why, you are even a quicker smoker
than I am myself.”
Holmes smiled.
“I am a connoisseur,” said he, taking another cigarette from the box—his
fourth—and lighting it from the stub of that which he had finished. “I will not
trouble you with any lengthy cross-examination, Professor Coram, since I gather
that you were in bed at the time of the crime, and could know nothing about it. I
would only ask this: What do you imagine that this poor fellow meant by his last
words: ‘The professor—it was she’?”
The professor shook his head.
“Yes, sir, it is a crushing blow,” said the old man.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“Susan is a country girl,” said he, “and you know the incredible stupidity of
that class. I fancy that the poor fellow murmured some incoherent, delirious
words, and that she twisted them into this meaningless message.”
“I see. You have no explanation yourself of the tragedy?”
“Possibly an accident, possibly—I only breathe it among ourselves—a
suicide. Young men have their hidden troubles—some affair of the heart,
perhaps, which we have never known. It is a more probable supposition than
murder.”
“But the eyeglasses?”
“Ah! I am only a student—a man of dreams. I cannot explain the practical
things of life. But still, we are aware, my friend, that love-gages17 may take
strange shapes. By all means take another cigarette. It is a pleasure to see anyone
appreciate them so. A fan, a glove, glasses—who knows what article may be
carried as a token or treasured when a man puts an end to his life? This
gentleman speaks of footsteps on the grass, but, after all, it is easy to be mistaken
on such a point. As to the knife, it might well be thrown far from the unfortunate
man as he fell. It is possible that I speak as a child, but to me it seems that
Willoughby Smith has met his fate by his own hand.”
Holmes seemed struck by the theory thus put forward, and he continued to
walk up and down for some time, lost in thought and consuming cigarette after
cigarette.
“Tell me, Professor Coram,” he said, at last, “what is in that cupboard in the
bureau?”
“Nothing that would help a thief. Family papers, letters from my poor wife,
diplomas of universities which have done me honour. Here is the key. You can
look for yourself.”
Holmes picked up the key and looked at it for an instant, then he handed it
back.
“No; I hardly think that it would help me,” said he. “I should prefer to go
quietly down to your garden, and turn the whole matter over in my head. There
is something to be said for the theory of suicide which you have put forward. We
must apologize for having intruded upon you, Professor Coram, and I promise
that we won’t disturb you until after lunch. At two o’clock we will come again
and report to you anything which may have happened in the interval.”
Holmes was curiously distrait, and we walked up and down the garden path
for some time in silence.
“Have you a clue?” I asked, at last.
“It depends upon those cigarettes that I smoked,” said he. “It is possible that I
am utterly mistaken. The cigarettes will show me.”
“My dear Holmes,” I exclaimed, “how on earth—”
“Well, well, you may see for yourself. If not, there’s no harm done. Of course,
we always have the optician clue to fall back upon, but I take a short cut when I
can get it. Ah, here is the good Mrs. Marker! Let us enjoy five minutes of
instructive conversation with her.”
I may have remarked before that Holmes had, when he liked, a peculiarly
ingratiating way with women, and that he very readily established terms of
confidence with them. In half the time which he had named, he had captured the
housekeeper’s goodwill and was chatting with her as if he had known her for
years.
“Holmes picked up the key and looked at it for an
instant.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, it is as you say, sir. He does smoke something terrible. All
day and sometimes all night, sir. I’ve seen that room of a morning—well, sir,
you’d have thought it was a London fog. Poor young Mr. Smith, he was a
smoker also, but not as bad as the professor. His health—well, I don’t know that
it’s better nor worse for the smoking.”
“Ah!” said Holmes, “but it kills the appetite.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, sir.”
“I suppose the professor eats hardly anything?”
“Well, he is variable. I’ll say that for him.”
“I’ll wager he took no breakfast this morning, and won’t face his lunch after
all the cigarettes I saw him consume.”
“Well, you’re out there, sir, as it happens, for he ate a remarkable big
breakfast this morning. I don’t know when I’ve known him make a better one,
and he’s ordered a good dish of cutlets for his lunch. I’m surprised myself, for
since I came into that room yesterday and saw young Mr. Smith lying there on
the floor, I couldn’t bear to look at food. Well, it takes all sorts to make a world,
and the professor hasn’t let it take his appetite away.”
We loitered the morning away in the garden. Stanley Hopkins had gone down
to the village to look into some rumours of a strange woman who had been seen
by some children on the Chatham Road the previous morning. As to my friend,
all his usual energy seemed to have deserted him. I had never known him handle
a case in such a half-hearted fashion. Even the news brought back by Hopkins
that he had found the children and that they had undoubtedly seen a woman
exactly corresponding with Holmes’s description, and wearing either spectacles
or eyeglasses, failed to rouse any sign of keen interest. He was more attentive
when Susan, who waited upon us at lunch, volunteered the information that she
believed Mr. Smith had been out for a walk yesterday morning, and that he had
only returned half an hour before the tragedy occurred. I could not myself see
the bearing of this incident, but I clearly perceived that Holmes was weaving it
into the general scheme which he had formed in his brain. Suddenly he sprang
from his chair and glanced at his watch. “Two o’clock, gentlemen,” said he. “We
must go up and have it out with our friend, the professor.”
The old man had just finished his lunch, and certainly his empty dish bore
evidence to the good appetite with which his housekeeper had credited him. He
was, indeed, a weird figure as he turned his white mane and his glowing eyes
towards us. The eternal cigarette smouldered in his mouth. He had been dressed
and was seated in an arm-chair by the fire.
“Well, Mr. Holmes, have you solved this mystery yet?” He shoved the large
tin of cigarettes which stood on a table beside him towards my companion.
Holmes stretched out his hand at the same moment, and between them they
tipped the box over the edge. For a minute or two we were all on our knees
retrieving stray cigarettes from impossible places. When we rose again I
observed Holmes’s eyes were shining and his cheeks tinged with colour. Only at
a crisis have I seen those battle-signals flying.
“Yes,” said he, “I have solved it.”
Stanley Hopkins and I stared in amazement. Something like a sneer quivered
over the gaunt features of the old professor.
“Indeed! In the garden?”
“No, here.”
The Professor was seated by the fire.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“Here! When?”
“This instant.”
“You are surely joking, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. You compel me to tell you that
this is too serious a matter to be treated in such a fashion.”
“I have forged and tested every link of my chain, Professor Coram, and I am
sure that it is sound. What your motives are, or what exact part you play in this
strange business, I am not yet able to say. In a few minutes I shall probably hear
it from your own lips. Meanwhile I will reconstruct what is past for your benefit,
so that you may know the information which I still require.
“A lady yesterday entered your study. She came with the intention of
possessing herself of certain documents which were in your bureau. She had a
key of her own. I have had an opportunity of examining yours, and I do not find
that slight discolouration which the scratch made upon the varnish would have
produced. You were not an accessory, therefore, and she came, so far as I can
read the evidence, without your knowledge to rob you.”
The professor blew a cloud from his lips. “This is most interesting and
instructive,” said he. “Have you no more to add? Surely, having traced this lady
so far, you can also say what has become of her.”
“I will endeavour to do so. In the first place, she was seized by your secretary,
and stabbed him in order to escape. This catastrophe I am inclined to regard as
an unhappy accident, for I am convinced that the lady had no intention of
inflicting so grievous an injury. An assassin does not come unarmed. Horrified
by what she had done, she rushed wildly away from the scene of the tragedy.
Unfortunately for her she had lost her glasses in the scuffle, and as she was
extremely short-sighted she was really helpless without them. She ran down a
corridor, which she imagined to be that by which she had come—both were
lined with cocoanut matting—and it was only when it was too late that she
understood that she had taken the wrong passage, and that her retreat was cut off
behind her. What was she to do? She could not go back. She could not remain
where she was. She must go on. She went on. She mounted a stair, pushed open
a door, and found herself in your room.”
The old man sat with his mouth open, staring wildly at Holmes. Amazement
and fear were stamped upon his expressive features. Now, with an effort, he
shrugged his shoulders and burst into insincere laughter.
“All very fine, Mr. Holmes,” said he. “But there is one little flaw in your
splendid theory. I was myself in my room, and I never left it during the day.”
“I am aware of that, Professor Coram.”
“And you mean to say that I could lie upon that bed and not be aware that a
woman had entered my room?”
“I never said so. You were aware of it. You spoke with her. You recognized
her. You aided her to escape.”
Again the professor burst into high-keyed laughter. He had risen to his feet,
and his eyes glowed like embers.
“You are mad!” he cried. “You are talking insanely. I helped her to escape?
Where is she now?”
“She is there,” said Holmes, and he pointed to a high bookcase in the corner
of the room.
I saw the old man throw up his arms, a terrible convulsion passed over his
grim face, and he fell back in his chair. At the same instant the bookcase at
which Holmes pointed swung round upon a hinge, and a woman rushed out into
the room. “You are right!” she cried, in a strange foreign voice. “You are right, I
am here.”
She was brown with the dust and draped with the cobwebs which had come
from the walls of her hiding-place. Her face, too, was streaked with grime, and at
the best she could never have been handsome, for she had the exact physical
characteristics which Holmes had divined, with, in addition, a long and obstinate
chin. What with her natural blindness, and what with the change from dark to
light, she stood as one dazed, blinking about her to see where and who we were.
And yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, there was a certain nobility in the
woman’s bearing—a gallantry in the defiant chin and in the upraised head,
which compelled something of respect and admiration.
“A woman rushed out into the room.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Stanley Hopkins had laid his hand upon her arm and claimed her as his
prisoner, but she waved him aside gently, and yet with an overmastering dignity
which compelled obedience. The old man lay back in his chair, with a twitching
face, and stared at her with brooding eyes.
“Yes, sir, I am your prisoner,” she said. “From where I stood I could hear
everything, and I know that you have learned the truth. I confess it all. It was I
who killed the young man. But you are right, you who say it was an accident. I
did not even know that it was a knife which I held in my hand, for in my despair
I snatched anything from the table and struck at him to make him let me go. It is
the truth that I tell.”
“Madam,” said Holmes, “I am sure that it is the truth. I fear that you are far
from well.”
She had turned a dreadful colour, the more ghastly under the dark dust-streaks
upon her face. She seated herself on the side of the bed; then she resumed.
“I have only a little time here,” she said, “but I would have you to know the
whole truth. I am this man’s wife. He is not an Englishman. He is a Russian. His
name I will not tell.”
For the first time the old man stirred. “God bless you, Anna!” he cried. “God
bless you!”
She cast a look of the deepest disdain in his direction. “Why should you cling
so hard to that wretched life of yours, Sergius?” said she.18 “It has done harm to
many and good to none—not even to yourself. However, it is not for me to cause
the frail thread to be snapped before God’s time. I have enough already upon my
soul since I crossed the threshold of this cursed house. But I must speak or I
shall be too late.
“I have said, gentlemen, that I am this man’s wife. He was fifty and I a foolish
girl of twenty when we married. It was in a city of Russia, a University—I will
not name the place.”
“God bless you, Anna!” murmured the old man again.
“We were reformers—revolutionists—Nihilists,19 you understand. He and I
and many more. Then there came a time of trouble, a police officer was killed,
many were arrested, evidence was wanted, and in order to save his own life and
to earn a great reward, my husband betrayed his own wife and his companions.
Yes; we were all arrested upon his confession. Some of us found our way to the
gallows, and some to Siberia. I was among these last, but my term was not for
life. My husband came to England with his ill-gotten gains and has lived in quiet
ever since, knowing well that if the Brotherhood knew where he was not a week
would pass before justice would be done.”
The old man reached out a trembling hand and helped himself to a cigarette.
“I am in your hands, Anna,” said he. “You were always good to me.”
“I have not yet told you the height of his villainy,” said she. “Among our
comrades of the Order, there was one who was the friend of my heart. He was
noble, unselfish, loving—all that my husband was not. He hated violence. We
were all guilty—if that is guilt—but he was not. He wrote for ever dissuading us
from such a course. These letters would have saved him. So would my diary, in
which, from day to day, I had entered both my feelings towards him and the
view which each of us had taken. My husband found and kept both diary and
letters. He hid them, and he tried hard to swear away the young man’s life. In
this he failed, but Alexis was sent a convict to Siberia, where now, at this
moment, he works in a salt mine. Think of that, you villain, you villain!—now,
now, at this very moment, Alexis, a man whose name you are not worthy to
speak, works and lives like a slave, and yet I have your life in my hands, and I
let you go.”
“‘I am in your hands, Anna,’ said he.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“You were always a noble woman, Anna,” said the old man, puffing at his
cigarette.
She had risen, but she fell back again with a little cry of pain.
“I must finish,” she said. “When my term was over I set myself to get the
diary and letters which, if sent to the Russian Government, would procure my
friend’s release. I knew that my husband had come to England. After months of
searching I discovered where he was. I knew that he still had the diary, for when
I was in Siberia I had a letter from him once, reproaching me and quoting some
passages from its pages. Yet I was sure that with his revengeful nature he would
never give it to me of his own free will. I must get it for myself. With this object
I engaged an agent from a private detective firm, who entered my husband’s
house as secretary—it was your second secretary, Sergius, the one who left you
so hurriedly. He found that papers were kept in the cupboard, and he got an
impression of the key. He would not go farther. He furnished me with a plan of
the house, and he told me that in the forenoon the study was always empty, as
the secretary was employed up here. So at last I took my courage in both hands,
and I came down to get the papers for myself. I succeeded, but at what a cost!
“I had just taken the papers and was locking the cupboard, when the young
man seized me. I had seen him already that morning. He had met me on the road
and I had asked him to tell me where Professor Coram lived, not knowing that he
was in his employ.”
“Exactly! Exactly!” said Holmes. “The secretary came back and told his
employer of the woman he had met. Then, in his last breath, he tried to send a
message that it was she—the she whom he had just discussed with him.”
“You must let me speak,” said the woman, in an imperative voice, and her
face contracted as if in pain. “When he had fallen I rushed from the room, chose
the wrong door, and found myself in my husband’s room. He spoke of giving me
up, I showed him that if he did so, his life was in my hands. If he gave me to the
law, I could give him to the Brotherhood. It was not that I wished to live for my
own sake, but it was that I desired to accomplish my purpose. He knew that I
would do what I said—that his own fate was involved in mine. For that reason,
and for no other, he shielded me. He thrust me into that dark hiding-place—a
relic of old days, known only to himself. He took his meals in his own room, and
so was able to give me part of his food. It was agreed that when the police left
the house I should slip away by night and come back no more. But in some way
you have read our plans.” She tore from the bosom of her dress a small packet.
“These are my last words,” said she; “here is the packet which will save Alexis. I
confide it to your honour and to your love of justice. Take it! You will deliver it
at the Russian Embassy. Now, I have done my duty, and—”
“Stop her!” cried Holmes. He had bounded across the room and had wrenched
a small phial from her hand.
“Too late!” she said, sinking back on the bed. “Too late! I took the poison
before I left my hiding-place. My head swims! I am going! I charge you, sir, to
remember the packet.”20
“A simple case, and yet, in some ways, an instructive one,” Holmes remarked, as
we travelled back to town. “It hinged from the outset upon the pince-nez. But for
the fortunate chance of the dying man having seized these, I am not sure that we
could ever have reached our solution. It was clear to me from the strength of the
glasses that the wearer must have been very blind and helpless when deprived of
them. When you asked me to believe that she walked along a narrow strip of
grass without once making a false step, I remarked, as you may remember, that it
was a noteworthy performance. In my mind, I set it down as an impossible
performance, save in the unlikely case that she had a second pair of glasses. I
was forced, therefore, to consider seriously the hypothesis that she had remained
within the house. On perceiving the similarity of the two corridors, it became
clear that she might very easily have made such a mistake, and, in that case, it
was evident that she must have entered the professor’s room. I was keenly on the
alert, therefore, for whatever would bear out this supposition, and I examined the
room narrowly for anything in the shape of a hiding-place. The carpet seemed
continuous and firmly nailed, so I dismissed the idea of a trap-door. There might
well be a recess behind the books. As you are aware, such devices are common
in old libraries. I observed that books were piled on the floor at all other points,
but that one bookcase was left clear. This, then, might be the door. I could see no
marks to guide me, but the carpet was of a dun colour, which lends itself very
well to examination. I therefore smoked a great number of those excellent
cigarettes, and I dropped the ash all over the space in front of the suspected
bookcase. It was a simple trick, but exceedingly effective. I then went
downstairs, and I ascertained, in your presence, Watson, without your perceiving
the drift of my remarks, that Professor Coram’s consumption of food had
increased—as one would expect when he is supplying a second person. We then
ascended to the room again, when, by upsetting the cigarette-box, I obtained a
very excellent view of the floor, and was able to see quite clearly, from the
traces upon the cigarette ash, that the prisoner had in our absence come out from
her retreat.21 Well, Hopkins, here we are at Charing Cross, and I congratulate
you on having brought your case to a successful conclusion. You are going to
headquarters, no doubt. I think, Watson, you and I will drive together to the
Russian Embassy.”
“Holmes had bounded across the room and had wrenched
a small phial from her hand.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“The Golden Pince-Nez” was published in the Strand
Magazine in July 1904 and in Collier’s Weekly on
October 29, 1904.
1
It is the rare leech that is red in colour. Most such
parasites, as Lord Gore-Booth comments in “The
Journeys of Sherlock Holmes: A Topographical
Monograph,” are olive-green or brown. A. Carson
2
Simpson gathers that Watson might have been using the
word’s more archaic meaning and making a derogatory
reference to a physician, perhaps one who had red hair
(taking a name such as “Eric the Red”), wore
predominantly red clothing (Count Amedeo VII of Savoy
was known as “il Conte Rosso”), favoured blood-letting
as a treatment, or had Communist sympathies.
Presumably there is no connection to Willoughby Smith
or Mortimer, the secretary and gardener who feature
prominently in this case.
3
“The Golden Pince-Nez” is generally thought to have
occurred in the late autumn of 1894 (see Chronological
Table). M. Jean-Paul-Pierre Casimir-Périer (1847–1907)
was the President of France from June 24, 1894 to
January 15, 1895, succeeding Marie-François SadiCarnot, who was assassinated by the Italian anarchist
Sante or Santos Caserio.
William E. Fleischauer considers which president of
France would have been the target of the “Boulevard
assassin” and which wrote the letter of thanks. He
concludes that Sadi-Carnot was the target but rejects the
identification of Huret with Caserio, for although the
assassination took place in a boulevard (old fortification)
in Paris, there was no “tracking” involved—Caserio was
arrested on the spot. Sadi-Carnot, Fleischauer suggests,
was the intended victim of another, earlier assassin,
4
supplied by the Moriarty organisation. Holmes was able
to stop that assassin (and thus won the gratitude of SadiCarnot) but failed to prevent the subsequent successful
attempt. Watson, anxious to mention Holmes’s medal but
embarrassed to lay out the facts in light of the eventual
assassination of Sadi-Carnot, obfuscated.
Michael Harrison, in The World of Sherlock Holmes,
reaches a contrary conclusion. He asserts that Holmes
tracked Huret, and that in December, using thenPresident Casimir-Périer as the “bait,” Holmes lured the
would-be assassin to Montpellier. Montpellier was of
course well known to Holmes, for he had just finished his
researches into coal-tar derivatives there before returning
to London in April 1894 (“The Final Problem”). Huret
hid himself in the old fortifications in Montpellier, but
Holmes quickly flushed and captured him, leading
Casimir-Périer to express his gratitude.
A term applied to any material from which writing has
been removed to make room for another text, and which
has thus been prepared or scraped a second time. It is
most commonly applied to ancient manuscripts that have
undergone this treatment. Figuratively, a palimpsest can
also be a metaphor for a text or situation with several
layers of meaning—as in the title of Gore Vidal’s 1995
memoir, Palimpsest, or the line from M. E. W.
Sherwood’s Epistle to Posterity (1897): “They linger,
5
each of these dinners, in our palimpsest memories, each
recorded clearly, so that it does not blot out the others.”
Watson’s medical reading in “The Golden Pince-Nez”
is not an isolated example, as evidently he is
conscientious about keeping up with the latest trends. In
The Sign of Four, he peruses the latest textbook on
pathology; in “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk” he reads the
British Medical Journal; in “The Resident Patient” he
professes familiarity with Percy Trevelyan’s monograph
Obscure Nervous Lesions.
6
Invented by James Heath of Bath circa 1750, the Bath
chair was used to transport Victorian ladies and invalids,
frequently at seaside resorts. It had three wheels: two
underneath the seat and one small, pivoting wheel that
supported the footrest and could be steered (via a
connecting rod) by the occupant.
7
Smith may have been a classmate of E. W. Hornung,
who was the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle and
attended the prestigious Uppingham School from 1880 to
1883. Hornung was the author of the popular “Raffles”
series, tales of witty gentleman thief A. J. Raffles and his
sidekick, “Bunny” Manders—“a kind of inverse Holmes
and Watson,” according to Conan Doyle’s biographer,
Daniel Stashower.
8
The word is “old” in the Strand Magazine and
American texts.
9
“The conclusion that a woman who wears gold pincenez must be well-dressed is unconvincing,” Vernon
Rendall complains. A good salesperson, after all, can
persuade a customer that she needs an expensive,
fashionable pair of spectacles—trimmed with gold, even
—before price is ever discussed. Eyeglasses, while dating
back to ancient China, were once not as ubiquitous as
they are today, and thus it stands to reason that a woman
might be willing to spend extra money on an accessory
that must be worn so prominently and so often. Perhaps
the glasses were bought during a temporary prosperity
(compare Henry Baker’s hat in “The Blue Carbuncle”)
and kept as a no longer affordable luxury.
10
“Convex” in the manuscript and Collier’s Weekly,
noted in a letter to The Bookman in July 1904.
11
That is, the police-boat pursuit of the blowgunwielding pygmy Tonga, the companion of Jonathan
Small, down the Thames —events recorded in The Sign
of Four and especially memorable to Watson for the
connection to his wooing of Mary Morstan.
12
Curiously, the English edition has the word “scarcely,”
which is plainly wrong.
13
A patent lock with tumblers, named from its inventor,
and believed at the time to be pick-proof.
14
The cigarette manufacturer Ionides & Co. was located
at 3 Swallow Street, off Regent Street, in London. The
“Alexandria” reference may be to the blend of tobacco,
which might have been sweetened with molasses, as it is
smoked in Egyptian hookahs. (Or perhaps the professor
did have a source in Alexandria, and the Ionides name is
merely a coincidence.) Cigarettes, as opposed to pipes,
cigars, or snuff, were a relatively new phenomenon in the
West, having been introduced in England only within the
previous thirty years. In his book The Victorians,
historian A. N. Wilson traces England’s cigarette craze to
the Crimean War, during which Scotsman Robert
Peacock Gloag—whose exact involvement in the war is
unknown—witnessed Turks and Russians smoking
cigarettes. He brought the curiosity back to London with
him, selling rolled, strawberry-coloured paper filled with
Latakia tobacco. Others caught on, and by the early
1860s there were a number of shops in London hawking
“Turkish
cigarettes.”
Meanwhile,
Gloag
was
experiencing considerable entrepreneurial success,
having expanded operations to six houses and founded a
factory in Walworth.
Although the health effects of tobacco were not as
well known in the nineteenth century as they are today,
15
many physicians did recognise that there were risks
associated with smoking. Cigarettes, lacking the drawingroom sophistication of pipes and cigars, came in for
particular scorn, and the habit tended to be condemned as
unsavoury and low. Surgeon Arthur E. J. Longhurst
blamed cigarettes for having brought down the Ottoman
Empire, saying, “We may also take warning from the
history of another nation, who some few centuries ago . .
. were the terror of Christendom, but who since then
having become more addicted to tobacco-smoking than
any of the European nations, are now the lazy and
lethargic Turks, held in contempt by all civilized
communities.”
But once Gloag had gotten the wheels rolling, there
was no stopping the momentum: England was hooked on
this inexpensive new addiction. The cigarette’s biggest
breakthrough came in 1883, when tobacconists W. D. and
H. O. Wills bought their first Bonsack machine, an
American invention that could manufacture two hundred
cigarettes per minute. “Between 1860 and 1900,” Wilson
writes, “Britain became a smoking nation.” Smoking,
once banned from clubs and railway cars, became
ubiquitous. Cigarettes were far more affordable than
pipes or cigars, particularly after the introduction of
“penny cigarettes” in the 1880s; and thus the vice of the
Russians and Turks became the vice of the British
working class. (See “The Priory School,” note 33, for
more on the social perception of cigarettes.)
Holmes himself was of course an inveterate smoker of
tobacco in all forms. Although Holmes is most often
associated with pipes in his public image and his storage
of his cigars in the coal scuttle is well-known (“The
Musgrave Ritual”), there are ample records of the variety
of his smoking habit. Jay Finley Christ, in “Keeping
Score on Sherlock Holmes,” from his Flashes by
Fanlight, notes twenty-nine tales in which Holmes
smokes only pipes, five only cigarettes, and three only
cigars; three tales mention pipe and cigars, two pipe and
cigarettes, and two others cigars and cigarettes. In The
Hound of the Baskervilles he indulges in all three! Only
in twelve tales does he refrain from smoking.
Copts are Egyptian Christians whose cultural roots
predate the seventh-century Arab conquest of Egypt.
While much of the rest of Egypt was converting to Islam,
the Copts remained devoted to the “Egyptian Church”
(now the Coptic Orthodox Church), which was founded
in the fifth century and adhered to the doctrine
Monophysitism—that is, the notion that Christ’s nature
was singularly divine, but not human. The Coptic
language, an early form of Egyptian, died out in the
twelfth century, and in most ways Copts seem no
different from most Egyptian Muslims. Yet through the
centuries they have remained a tight-knit community, and
16
the Coptic Orthodox Church continues to play a vital
administrative role in educational and theological
matters. The Copts’ isolationist tendencies may have
once led some to look askance at this peculiar minority.
The Encyclopædia Britannica (9th Ed.) disparaged the
Copts as “exceedingly bigoted, prone to be converted to
Islamism, sullen, as Ammianus Marcellinus describes the
Egyptians, false, faithless, and deceitful, but extremely
useful as secretaries and accountants and skilful
workmen.” Holmes was engaged in the “case of the two
Coptic Patriarchs” at the beginning of “The Retired
Colourman,” but that case is generally placed in 1898,
and Holmes had no reason to study the Copts beforehand.
A gage is an item offered as a token or a pledge. More
specifically, it used to refer to the glove offered (or
thrown down) as challenge to a duel. Here, the word is
used in its secondary sense, a “love-gage” being a sign of
the affection one lover pledges to another.
17
Oops—so much for not revealing his name! Anna
evidently thought that the matter would become public
(was she a reader of Watson’s works?) but believed that
using only Coram’s real first name would leave him
untraceable.
18
Although the term “nihilism” had been floating around
since the Middle Ages—encompassing definitions
19
ranging from scepticism to a rejection of morality (the
word comes from the Latin nihil, or “nothing”)—it was
Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel Fathers and Sons that
brought the concept into the popular imagination. In the
novel, Turgenev’s protagonist, Bazarov, embodies the
radicalism of a new generation by scorning the traditional
aristocracy. Nihilists were dedicated to the rejection of
aestheticism and the destruction of the existing social
order; they loathed ignorance and trusted only the pursuit
of scientific knowledge. Even the bonds of family were
considered suspect and undesirable. And while violence
was not an officially sanctioned aspect of nihilism, it was
not discouraged either, leaving more extremist
individuals and terrorist organisations to embark upon
campaigns that imprinted the movement with the
permanent stamp of violence. The assassination of Czar
Alexander II in 1881 was one such act, with hundreds of
nihilists being exiled or hanged in its aftermath. One
wonders whether this period was the “time of trouble”
Anna mentions.
Would Holmes have let Anna go free if she survived?
After all, the slaying of the secretary was accidental. Brad
Keefauver, in Sherlock and the Ladies, is not convinced
that Anna actually killed herself. He finds it “a little too
convenient” that Anna is the only witness to her selfpoisoning and, in a melodramatic scene, collapses “only
20
after she’s had time to tell her story in its entirety,”
complete with amateurish exclamations of “My head
swims. I am going!” It is possible, Keefauver surmises,
that a sympathetic Holmes—who had only just that year
come back from the dead himself—knowingly allowed
Anna to fake her own demise and escape with her life. “If
Anna Coram did put on a death scene that could fool both
an experienced policeman and a doctor, I think we can
rest assured that Sherlock Holmes was not taken it by it.”
Holmes’s ingenious method of detection had its
precedents. Stephen F. Crocker points out that a similar
approach is used in the story of Bel and the Dragon, one
of the Old Testament apocrypha deleted from the book of
Daniel and not considered part of the established biblical
canon. In the story, a king demands to know why Daniel
does not worship the idol Bel, and Daniel responds that
Bel is not a living god but merely a false idol made of
clay and brass. When the king points out that the great
quantities of food brought before Bel every day are
always consumed before the morning, Daniel is forced to
defend himself or suffer death. By sprinkling ashes on the
floor, Daniel is able to detect the footprints of the priests
and their families who have been entering the temple and
eating the food—and who, upon their discovery, are
immediately executed. Crocker suggests that Holmes’s
methodology was “inspired” by the biblical tale.
21
Dorothy L. Sayers, in her introduction to Omnibus of
Crime, notes a parallel to Daniel’s detective methods in
the story of Tristan and Iseult, where the king’s spy
spreads flour between their beds to show their
movements; Tristan defeats the plan by leaping from one
bed to another. Sayers, a thoughtful Sherlockian scholar,
makes no connection to “The Golden Pince-Nez.”
However, Professor Clarke Olney credits Holmes with
familiarity with the operatic tale and proposes that he
adapted it to his use.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING THREEQUARTER1
“The Missing Three-Quarter” is the only case in the Canon to involve
amateur sports directly. Conan Doyle and Watson both were active
team sportsmen, the former an avid cricket player, the latter a rugby
player (as we learn in “The Sussex Vampire”). Holmes himself
excelled at individual sports, such as fencing, singlestick, and boxing.
Here, he is called in to find a star rugby player in time for a crucial
match. Two other players in the drama draw our attention: Lord
Mount-James, perhaps the richest man in England (and the stingiest),
and one Dr. Leslie Armstrong, who bids to be a most interesting villain
only to turn out to be a friend. The Cambridge setting of the case
provides scholars with more clues to Holmes’s own university years,
adding to the hints in “The Three Students,” published two months
earlier. Here Holmes’s efforts to use a dog as a tracker prove
successful, reversing his failure with the mongrel Toby in The Sign of
Four.
WE WERE FAIRLY accustomed to receive weird telegrams at Baker Street, but I
have a particular recollection of one which reached us on a gloomy February
morning some seven or eight years ago, and gave Mr. Sherlock Holmes a
puzzled quarter of an hour. It was addressed to him, and ran thus:
Please await me. Terrible misfortune. Right wing2 three-quarter missing;
indispensable to-morrow.
Overton.
“Strand postmark, and despatched ten thirty-six,” said Holmes, reading it over
and over. “Mr. Overton was evidently considerably excited when he sent it, and
somewhat incoherent in consequence. Well, well, he will be here, I daresay, by
the time I have looked through The Times,3 and then we shall know all about it.
Even the most insignificant problem would be welcome in these stagnant days.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
Things had indeed been very slow with us, and I had learned to dread such
periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my companion’s brain was so
abnormally active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which
to work. For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had
threatened once to check his remarkable career.4 Now I knew that under ordinary
conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus; but I was well aware
that the fiend was not dead, but sleeping; and I have known that the sleep was a
light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn
look upon Holmes’s ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and
inscrutable eyes. Therefore I blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be,
since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that dangerous calm
which brought more peril to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous
life.
As we had expected, the telegram was soon followed by its sender, and the
card of Mr. Cyril Overton, of Trinity College, Cambridge, announced the arrival
of an enormous young man, sixteen stone of solid bone and muscle, who
spanned the doorway with his broad shoulders, and looked from one of us to the
other with a comely face which was haggard with anxiety.
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”
My companion bowed.
“I’ve been down to Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes. I saw Inspector Stanley
Hopkins. He advised me to come to you. He said the case, so far as he could see,
was more in your line than in that of the regular police.”
“Pray sit down, and tell me what is the matter.”
“It’s awful, Mr. Holmes, simply awful! I wonder my hair isn’t grey. Godfrey
Staunton—you’ve heard of him, of course? He’s simply the hinge that the whole
team turns on. I’d rather spare two from the pack and have Godfrey for my
three-quarter line. Whether it’s passing, or tackling, or dribbling, there’s no one
to touch him; and then, he’s got the head and can hold us all together. What am I
to do? That’s what I ask you, Mr. Holmes. There’s Moorhouse, first reserve, but
he is trained as a half, and he always edges right in on to the scrum instead of
keeping out on the touchline. He’s a fine place-kick, it’s true, but, then, he has
no judgment and he can’t sprint for nuts. Why, Morton or Johnson, the Oxford
fliers, could romp round him. Stevenson is fast enough, but he couldn’t drop
from the twenty-five line, and a three-quarter who can’t either punt or drop isn’t
worth a place for pace alone. No, Mr. Holmes, we are done unless you can help
me to find Godfrey Staunton.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
My friend had listened with amused surprise to this long speech, which was
poured forth with extraordinary vigour and earnestness, every point being driven
home by the slapping of a brawny hand upon the speaker’s knee. When our
visitor was silent Holmes stretched out his hand and took down letter “S” of his
commonplace book. For once he dug in vain into that mine of varied
information.
“There is Arthur H. Staunton, the rising young forger,”5 said he, “and there
was Henry Staunton, whom I helped to hang,6 but Godfrey Staunton is a new
name to me.”
It was our visitor’s turn to look surprised.
“Why, Mr. Holmes, I thought you knew things,” said he. “I suppose, then, if
you have never heard of Godfrey Staunton, you don’t know Cyril Overton
either?”
Holmes shook his head good-humouredly.7
“Great Scott!” cried the athlete. “Why, I was first reserve for England against
Wales, and I’ve skippered the ’Varsity8 all this year.9 But that’s nothing! I didn’t
think there was a soul in England who didn’t know Godfrey Staunton, the crack
three-quarter, Cambridge,10 Blackheath,11 and five Internationals.12 Good Lord!
Mr. Holmes, where have you lived?”13
Holmes laughed at the young giant’s naïve astonishment.
“You live in a different world to me, Mr. Overton, a sweeter and healthier
one. My ramifications stretch out into many sections of society, but never, I am
happy to say, into amateur sport, which is the best and soundest thing in
England.14 However, your unexpected visit this morning shows me that even in
that world of fresh air and fair play, there may be work for me to do; so now, my
good sir, I beg you to sit down and to tell me, slowly and quietly, exactly what it
is that has occurred, and how you desire that I should help you.”
“‘Why, Mr. Holmes, I thought you knew things,’ said
he.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Young Overton’s face assumed the bothered look of the man who is more
accustomed to using his muscles than his wits; but by degrees, with many
repetitions and obscurities which I may omit from his narrative, he laid his
strange story before us.
“It’s this way, Mr. Holmes. As I have said, I am the skipper of the Rugger15
team of Cambridge ’Varsity, and Godfrey Staunton is my best man. To-morrow
we play Oxford.16 Yesterday we all came up, and we settled at Bentley’s private
hotel. At ten o’clock I went round and saw that all the fellows had gone to roost,
for I believe in strict training and plenty of sleep to keep a team fit. I had a word
or two with Godfrey before he turned in. He seemed to me to be pale and
bothered. I asked him what was the matter. He said he was all right—just a touch
of headache. I bade him good-night and left him. Half an hour later the porter
tells me that a rough-looking man with a beard called with a note for Godfrey.
He had not gone to bed, and the note was taken to his room. Godfrey read it and
fell back in a chair as if he had been pole-axed. The porter was so scared that he
was going to fetch me, but Godfrey stopped him, had a drink of water, and
pulled himself together. Then he went downstairs, said a few words to the man
who was waiting in the hall, and the two of them went off together. The last that
the porter saw of them, they were almost running down the street in the direction
of the Strand.17 This morning Godfrey’s room was empty, his bed had never
been slept in, and his things were all just as I had seen them the night before. He
had gone off at a moment’s notice with this stranger, and no word has come
from him since. I don’t believe he will ever come back. He was a sportsman, was
Godfrey, down to his marrow, and he wouldn’t have stopped his training and let
in18 his skipper if it were not for some cause that was too strong for him. No; I
feel as if he were gone for good, and we should never see him again.”
Sherlock Holmes listened with the deepest attention to this singular narrative.
“What did you do?” he asked.
The Strand.
Queen’s London (1897)
“I wired to Cambridge to learn if anything had been heard of him there. I have
had an answer. No one has seen him.”
“Could he have got back to Cambridge?”
“Yes, there is a late train—quarter-past eleven.”
“But, so far as you can ascertain, he did not take it?”
“No, he has not been seen.”
“What did you do next?”
“I wired to Lord Mount-James.”
“Why to Lord Mount-James?”
“Godfrey is an orphan, and Lord Mount-James is his nearest relative—his
uncle, I believe.”
“Indeed. This throws new light upon the matter. Lord Mount-James is one of
the richest men in England.”
“So I’ve heard Godfrey say.”
“And your friend was closely related?”
“Yes, he was his heir, and the old boy is nearly eighty—cram full of gout, too.
They say he could chalk his billiard-cue with his knuckles.19 He never allowed
Godfrey a shilling in his life, for he is an absolute miser, but it will all come to
him right enough.”
“Have you heard from Lord Mount-James?”
“No.”
“What motive could your friend have in going to Lord Mount-James?”
“Well, something was worrying him the night before, and if it was to do with
money it is possible that he would make for his nearest relative, who had so
much of it, though from all I have heard he would not have much chance of
getting it. Godfrey was not fond of the old man. He would not go if he could
help it.”
“Well, we can soon determine that. If your friend was going to his relative
Lord Mount-James, you have then to explain the visit of this rough-looking
fellow at so late an hour, and the agitation that was caused by his coming.”
Cyril Overton pressed his hands to his head. “I can make nothing of it,” said
he.
“Well, well, I have a clear day, and I shall be happy to look into the matter,”
said Holmes. “I should strongly recommend you to make your preparations for
your match without reference to this young gentleman. It must, as you say, have
been an overpowering necessity which tore him away in such a fashion, and the
same necessity is likely to hold him away. Let us step round together to this
hotel, and see if the porter can throw any fresh light upon the matter.”
Sherlock Holmes was a past master in the art of putting a humble witness at
his ease, and very soon, in the privacy of Godfrey Staunton’s abandoned room,
he had extracted all that the porter had to tell. The visitor of the night before was
not a gentleman, neither was he a workingman. He was simply what the porter
described as a “medium-looking chap;” a man of fifty, beard grizzled, pale face,
quietly dressed. He seemed himself to be agitated. The porter had observed his
hand trembling when he had held out the note. Godfrey Staunton had crammed
the note into his pocket. Staunton had not shaken hands with the man in the hall.
They had exchanged a few sentences, of which the porter had only distinguished
the one word “time.” Then they had hurried off in the manner described. It was
just half-past ten by the hall clock.
“Let me see,” said Holmes, seating himself on Staunton’s bed. “You are the
day porter, are you not?”
“Yes, sir, I go off duty at eleven.”
“The night porter saw nothing, I suppose?”
“No, sir; one theatre party came in late. No one else.”
“Were you on duty all day yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you take any message to Mr. Staunton?”
“Yes, sir; one telegram.”
“Ah! that is interesting. What o’clock was this?”
“About six.”
“Where was Mr. Staunton when he received it?”
“Here in his room.”
“Were you present when he opened it?”
“Yes, sir; I waited to see if there was an answer.”
“Well, was there?”
“Yes, sir, he wrote an answer.”
“Did you take it?”
“No, he took it himself.”
“But he wrote it in your presence?”
“Yes, sir. I was standing by the door, and he with his back turned to that table.
When he had written it, he said, ‘All right, porter, I will take this myself.’ ”
“What did he write it with?”
“Did you take any messages to Mr. Staunton?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“A pen, sir.”
“Was the telegraphic form one of these on the table?”
“Yes, sir; it was the top one.”
Holmes rose. Taking the forms, he carried them over to the window and
carefully examined that which was uppermost.
“It is a pity he did not write in pencil,” said he, throwing them down again
with a shrug of disappointment. “As you have no doubt frequently observed,
Watson, the impression usually goes through—a fact which has dissolved many
a happy marriage. However, I can find no trace here. I rejoice, however, to
perceive that he wrote with a broad-pointed quill pen, and I can hardly doubt that
we will find some impression upon this blotting-pad. Ah, yes, surely this is the
very thing!”
He tore off a strip of the blotting-paper and turned towards us the following
hieroglyphic:
Cyril Overton was much excited. “Hold it to the glass!” he cried.
“That is unnecessary,” said Holmes. “The paper is thin, and the reverse will
give the message. Here it is.” He turned it over, and we read:
“So that is the tail end of the telegram which Godfrey Staunton despatched
within a few hours of his disappearance. There are at least six words of the
message which have escaped us; but what remain—‘Stand by us for God’s
sake!’—proves that this young man saw a formidable danger which approached
him, and from which someone else could protect him. ‘Us,’ mark you! Another
person was involved. Who should it be but the pale-faced, bearded man, who
seemed himself in so nervous a state? What, then, is the connection between
Godfrey Staunton and the bearded man? And what is the third source from
which each of them sought for help against pressing danger? Our inquiry has
already narrowed down to that.”
“We have only to find to whom that telegram is addressed,” I suggested.
“Exactly, my dear Watson. Your reflection, though profound, had already
crossed my mind. But I daresay it may have come to your notice that if you walk
into a post-office and demand to see the counterfoil of another man’s message,
there may be some disinclination on the part of the officials to oblige you. There
is so much red tape in these matters! However, I have no doubt that with a little
delicacy and finesse the end may be attained. Meanwhile, I should like in your
presence, Mr. Overton, to go through these papers which have been left upon the
table.”
There were a number of letters, bills, and notebooks, which Holmes turned
over and examined with quick, nervous fingers and darting, penetrating eyes.
“Nothing here,” he said, at last. “By the way, I suppose your friend was a
healthy young fellow—nothing amiss with him?”
“Sound as a bell.”
“Have you ever known him ill?”
“Not a day. He has been laid up with a hack,20 and once he slipped his kneecap, but that was nothing.”
“Perhaps he was not so strong as you suppose. I should think he may have had
some secret trouble. With your assent, I will put one or two of these papers in
my pocket, in case they should bear upon our future inquiry.”
“One moment—one moment!” cried a querulous voice, and we looked up to
find a queer little old man, jerking and twitching in the doorway. He was dressed
in rusty black, with a very broad-brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie—
the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker’s mute.21
Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, his voice had a sharp
crackle, and his manner a quick intensity which commanded attention.
“Who are you, sir, and by what right do you touch this gentleman’s papers?”
he asked.
“I am a private detective, and I am endeavouring to explain his
disappearance.”
“Oh, you are, are you? And who instructed you, eh?”
“This gentleman, Mr. Staunton’s friend, was referred to me by Scotland
Yard.”
“Who are you, sir?”
“I am Cyril Overton.”
“Then it is you who sent me a telegram. My name is Lord Mount-James. I
came round as quickly as the Bayswater bus22 would bring me. So you have
instructed a detective?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And are you prepared to meet the cost?”
“I have no doubt, sir, that my friend Godfrey, when we find him, will be
prepared to do that.”
We looked up to find a queer little old man, jerking and
twitching in the doorway.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“But if he is never found, eh? Answer me that!”
“In that case, no doubt his family—”
“Nothing of the sort, sir!” screamed the little man. “Don’t look to me for a
penny—not a penny! You understand that, Mr. Detective! I am all the family
that this young man has got, and I tell you that I am not responsible. If he has
any expectations it is due to the fact that I have never wasted money,23 and I do
not propose to begin to do so now. As to those papers with which you are
making so free, I may tell you that in case there should be anything of any value
among them, you will be held strictly to account for what you do with them.”
“Very good, sir,” said Sherlock Holmes. “May I ask in the meanwhile whether
you have yourself any theory to account for this young man’s disappearance?”
“No, sir, I have not. He is big enough and old enough to look after himself,
and if he is so foolish as to lose himself I entirely refuse to accept the
responsibility of hunting for him.”
“‘One moment, one moment!’ cried a querulous voice.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“I quite understand your position,” said Holmes, with a mischievous twinkle
in his eyes. “Perhaps you don’t quite understand mine. Godfrey Staunton
appears to have been a poor man. If he has been kidnapped it could not have
been for anything which he himself possesses. The fame of your wealth has gone
abroad, Lord Mount-James, and it is entirely possible that a gang of thieves have
secured your nephew in order to gain from him some information as to your
house, your habits, and your treasure.”
The face of our unpleasant little visitor turned as white as his neckcloth.
“Heavens, sir, what an idea! I never thought of such villainy! What inhuman
rogues there are in the world! But Godfrey is a fine lad—a staunch lad. Nothing
would induce him to give his old uncle away. I’ll have the plate moved over to
the bank this evening. In the meantime spare no pains, Mr. Detective, I beg you
to leave no stone unturned to bring him safely back. As to money, well, so far as
a fiver, or even a tenner, goes, you can always look to me.”
Even in his chastened frame of mind the noble miser could give us no
information which could help us, for he knew little of the private life of his
nephew. Our only clue lay in the truncated telegram, and with a copy of this in
his hand Holmes set forth to find a second link for his chain. We had shaken off
Lord Mount-James, and Overton had gone to consult with the other members of
his team over the misfortune which had befallen them.
There was a telegraph office24 at a short distance from the hotel. We halted
outside it.
“It’s worth trying, Watson,” said Holmes. “Of course, with a warrant we could
demand to see the counterfoils, but we have not reached that stage yet. I don’t
suppose they remember faces in so busy a place. Let us venture it.”
“I am sorry to trouble you,” said he in his blandest manner to the young
woman behind the grating; “there is some small mistake about a telegram I sent
yesterday. I have had no answer, and I very much fear that I must have omitted
to put my name at the end. Could you tell me if this was so?”
The young woman turned over a sheaf of counterfoils.
“What o’clock was it?” she asked.
“A little after six.”
“Whom was it to?”
Holmes put his finger to his lips and glanced at me. “The last words in it were
‘for God’s sake,’ ” he whispered confidentially; “I am very anxious at getting no
answer.”
The young woman separated one of the forms.
“This is it. There is no name,” said she, smoothing it out upon the counter.
“Then that, of course, accounts for my getting no answer,” said Holmes.
“Dear me, how very stupid of me, to be sure! Good-morning, miss, and many
thanks for having relieved my mind.” He chuckled and rubbed his hands when
we found ourselves in the street once more.
“Well?” I asked.
“We progress, my dear Watson, we progress. I had seven different schemes
for getting a glimpse of that telegram, but I could hardly hope to succeed the
very first time.”
“And what have you gained?”
“A starting-point for our investigation.” He hailed a cab. “King’s Cross
Station,”25 said he.
“We have a journey, then?”
“Yes, I think we must run down to Cambridge together. All the indications
seem to me to point in that direction.”
“Tell me,” I asked as we rattled up Gray’s Inn Road,26 “have you any
suspicion yet as to the cause of the disappearance? I don’t think that among all
our cases I have known one where the motives were more obscure. Surely you
don’t really imagine that he may be kidnapped in order to give information
against his wealthy uncle?”
“I confess, my dear Watson, that that does not appeal to me as a very probable
explanation. It struck me, however, as being the one which was most likely to
interest that exceedingly unpleasant old person.”
“It certainly did that. But what are your alternatives?”
“I could mention several. You must admit that it is curious and suggestive that
this incident should occur on the eve of this important match, and should involve
the only man whose presence seems essential to the success of the side. It may,
of course, be coincidence, but it is interesting. Amateur sport is free from
betting, but a good deal of outside betting goes on among the public,27 and it is
possible that it might be worth someone’s while to get at a player as the ruffians
of the Turf get at a race-horse. There is one explanation. A second very obvious
one is that this young man really is the heir of a great property, however modest
his means may at present be, and it is not impossible that a plot to hold him for
ransom might be concocted.”
“These theories take no account of the telegram.”
“Quite true, Watson. The telegram still remains the only solid thing with
which we have to deal, and we must not permit our attention to wander away
from it. It is to gain light upon the purpose of this telegram that we are now upon
our way to Cambridge. The path of our investigation is at present obscure, but I
shall be very much surprised if before evening we have not cleared it up, or
made a considerable advance along it.”
It was already dark when we reached the old University city. Holmes took a
cab at the station and ordered the man to drive to the house of Dr. Leslie
Armstrong. A few minutes later, we had stopped at a large mansion on the
busiest thoroughfare. We were shown in, and after a long wait were at last
admitted into the consulting-room, where we found the doctor seated behind his
table.
It argues the degree in which I had lost touch with my profession that the
name of Leslie Armstrong was unknown to me.28 Now I am aware that he is not
only one of the heads of the medical school of the University, but a thinker of
European reputation in more than one branch of science. Yet even without
knowing his brilliant record one could not fail to be impressed by a mere glance
at the man—the square, massive face, the brooding eyes under the thatched
brows, and the granite moulding of the inflexible jaw. A man of deep character,
a man with an alert mind, grim, ascetic, self-contained, formidable—so I read
Dr. Leslie Armstrong. He held my friend’s card in his hand, and he looked up
with no very pleased expression upon his dour features.
Dr. Leslie Armstrong.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“I have heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I am aware of your
profession—one of which I by no means approve.”
“In that, Doctor, you will find yourself in agreement with every criminal in
the country,” said my friend quietly.
“So far as your efforts are directed towards the suppression of crime, sir, they
must have the support of every reasonable member of the community, though I
cannot doubt that the official machinery is amply sufficient for the purpose.
Where your calling is more open to criticism is when you pry into the secrets of
private individuals, when you rake up family matters which are better hidden,
and when you incidentally waste the time of men who are more busy than
yourself. At the present moment, for example, I should be writing a treatise
instead of conversing with you.”
“He looked up with no very pleased expression on his
dour features.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“No doubt, Doctor; and yet the conversation may prove more important than
the treatise. Incidentally I may tell you that we are doing the reverse of what you
very justly blame, and that we are endeavouring to prevent anything like public
exposure of private matters which must necessarily follow when once the case is
fairly in the hands of the official police. You may look upon me simply as an
irregular pioneer, who goes in front of the regular forces of the country. I have
come to ask you about Mr. Godfrey Staunton.”
“What about him?”
“You know him, do you not?”
“He is an intimate friend of mine.”
“You are aware that he has disappeared?”
“Ah, indeed!” There was no change of expression in the rugged features of the
doctor.
“He left his hotel last night. He has not been heard of.”
“No doubt he will return.”
“To-morrow is the ’Varsity football match.”
“I have no sympathy with these childish games. The young man’s fate
interests me deeply, since I know him and like him. The football match does not
come within my horizon at all.”
“I claim your sympathy, then, in my investigation of Mr. Staunton’s fate. Do
you know where he is?”
“Certainly not.”
“You have not seen him since yesterday?”
“No, I have not.”
“Was Mr. Staunton a healthy man?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did you ever know him ill?”
“Never.”
Holmes popped a sheet of paper before the doctor’s eyes. “Then perhaps you
will explain this receipted bill for thirteen guineas, paid by Mr. Godfrey
Staunton last month to Dr. Leslie Armstrong, of Cambridge. I picked it out from
among the papers upon his desk.”
The doctor flushed with anger.
“I do not feel that there is any reason why I should render an explanation to
you, Mr. Holmes.”
Holmes replaced the bill in his notebook. “If you prefer a public explanation,
it must come sooner or later,” said he. “I have already told you that I can hush up
that which others will be bound to publish, and you would really be wiser to take
me into your complete confidence.”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Did you hear from Mr. Staunton in London?”
“Certainly not.”
“Dear me, dear me! the post-office again!” Holmes sighed, wearily. “A most
urgent telegram was despatched to you from London by Godfrey Staunton at sixfifteen yesterday evening—a telegram which is undoubtedly associated with his
disappearance—and yet you have not had it. It is most culpable. I shall certainly
go down to the office here and register a complaint.”
Dr. Leslie Armstrong sprang up from behind his desk, and his dark face was
crimson with fury.
“I’ll trouble you to walk out of my house, sir,” said he. “You can tell your
employer, Lord Mount-James, that I do not wish to have anything to do either
with him or with his agents. No, sir, not another word!” He rang the bell
furiously. “John, show these gentlemen out.” A pompous butler ushered us
severely to the door, and we found ourselves in the street. Holmes burst out
laughing.
“Dr. Leslie Armstrong is certainly a man of energy and character,” said he. “I
have not seen a man who, if he turns his talents that way, was more calculated to
fill the gap left by the illustrious Moriarty. And now, my poor Watson, here we
are, stranded and friendless, in this inhospitable town,29 which we cannot leave
without abandoning our case. This little inn just opposite Armstrong’s house is
singularly adapted to our needs. If you would engage a front room and purchase
the necessaries for the night, I may have time to make a few inquiries.”
These few inquiries proved, however, to be a more lengthy proceeding than
Holmes had imagined, for he did not return to the inn until nearly nine o’clock.
He was pale and dejected, stained with dust, and exhausted with hunger and
fatigue. A cold supper was ready upon the table, and when his needs were
satisfied and his pipe alight he was ready to take that half-comic and wholly
philosophic view which was natural to him when his affairs were going awry.
The sound of carriage wheels caused him to rise and glance out of the window.
A brougham and pair of greys, under the glare of a gas-lamp, stood before the
doctor’s door.
“It’s been out three hours,” said Holmes; “started at half-past six, and here it is
back again. That gives a radius of ten or twelve miles, and he does it once, or
sometimes twice, a day.”
“No unusual thing for a doctor in practice.”
“But Armstrong is not really a doctor in practice. He is a lecturer and a
consultant, but he does not care for general practice, which distracts him from
his literary work. Why, then, does he make these long journeys, which must be
exceedingly irksome to him, and who is it that he visits?”
“His coachman—”
“My dear Watson, can you doubt that it was to him that I first applied? I do
not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings
of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man
liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were
strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question. All that I have
learned I got from a friendly native in the yard of our own inn. It was he who
told me of the doctor’s habits and of his daily journey. At that instant, to give
point to his words, the carriage came round to the door.”
“Could you not follow it?”
“Excellent, Watson! You are scintillating this evening. The idea did cross my
mind. There is, as you may have observed, a bicycle shop next to our inn. Into
this I rushed, engaged a bicycle, and was able to get started before the carriage
was quite out of sight. I rapidly overtook it, and then, keeping at a discreet
distance of a hundred yards or so, I followed its lights until we were clear of the
town. He had got well out on the country road when a somewhat mortifying
incident occurred. The carriage stopped, the doctor alighted, walked swiftly back
to where I had also halted, and told me in an excellent sardonic fashion that he
feared the road was narrow, and that he hoped his carriage did not impede the
passage of my bicycle. Nothing could have been more admirable than his way of
putting it. I at once rode past the carriage, and, keeping to the main road, I went
on for a few miles, and then halted in a convenient place to see if the carriage
passed. There was no sign of it, however, and so it became evident that it had
turned down one of several side-roads which I had observed. I rode back, but
again saw nothing of the carriage, and now, as you perceive, it has returned after
me. Of course, I had at the outset no particular reason to connect these journeys
with the disappearance of Godfrey Staunton, and was only inclined to investigate
them on the general grounds that everything which concerns Dr. Armstrong is at
present of interest to us, but, now that I find he keeps so keen a lookout upon
anyone who may follow him on these excursions, the affair appears more
important, and I shall not be satisfied until I have made the matter clear.”
“We can follow him to-morrow.”
“Can we? It is not so easy as you seem to think. You are not familiar with
Cambridgeshire scenery, are you? It does not lend itself to concealment. All this
country that I passed over to-night is as flat and clean as the palm of your hand,
and the man we are following is no fool, as he very clearly showed to-night. I
have wired to Overton to let us know any fresh London developments at this
address, and in the meantime we can only concentrate our attention upon Dr.
Armstrong, whose name the obliging young lady at the office allowed me to read
upon the counterfoil of Staunton’s urgent message. He knows where that young
man is—to that I’ll swear, and if he knows, then it must be our own fault if we
cannot manage to know also. At present it must be admitted that the odd trick is
in his possession, and, as you are aware, Watson, it is not my habit to leave the
game in that condition.”30
And yet the next day brought us no nearer to the solution of the mystery. A
note was handed in after breakfast, which Holmes passed across to me with a
smile.
Sir:
I can assure you that you are wasting your time in dogging my movements.
I have, as you discovered last night, a window at the back of my brougham,
and if you desire a twenty-mile ride which will lead you to the spot from
which you started, you have only to follow me. Meanwhile, I can inform
you that no spying upon me can in any way help Mr. Godfrey Staunton, and
I am convinced that the best service you can do to that gentleman is to
return at once to London and to report to your employer that you are unable
to trace him. Your time in Cambridge will certainly be wasted.
Yours faithfully,
Leslie Armstrong
“An outspoken, honest antagonist is the doctor,” said Holmes. “Well, well, he
excites my curiosity, and I must really know before I leave him.”
“His carriage is at his door now,” said I. “There he is stepping into it. I saw
him glance up at our window as he did so. Suppose I try my luck upon the
bicycle?”
“No, no, my dear Watson! With all respect for your natural acumen, I do not
think that you are quite a match for the worthy doctor. I think that possibly I can
attain our end by some independent explorations of my own. I am afraid that I
must leave you to your own devices, as the appearance of two inquiring strangers
upon a sleepy country-side might excite more gossip than I care for. No doubt
you will find some sights to amuse you in this venerable city, and I hope to bring
back a more favourable report to you before evening.”
Once more, however, my friend was destined to be disappointed. He came
back at night weary and unsuccessful.
“I have had a blank day, Watson. Having got the doctor’s general direction, I
spent the day in visiting all the villages upon that side of Cambridge, and
comparing notes with publicans and other local news agencies. I have covered
some ground. Chesterton, Histon, Waterbeach, and Oakington have each been
explored, and have each proved disappointing. The daily appearance of a
brougham and pair could hardly have been overlooked in such Sleepy Hollows.
The doctor has scored once more. Is there a telegram for me?”
“Yes; I opened it. Here it is: ‘Ask for Pompey from Jeremy Dixon, Trinity
College.’31 I don’t understand it.”
“Oh, it is clear enough. It is from our friend Overton, and is in answer to a
question from me. I’ll just send round a note to Mr. Jeremy Dixon, and then I
have no doubt that our luck will turn. By the way, is there any news of the
match?”
“Yes, the local evening paper has an excellent account in its last edition.
Oxford won by a goal and two tries.32 The last sentences of the description say:
The defeat of the Light Blues may be entirely attributed to the unfortunate
absence of the crack International, Godfrey Staunton, whose want was felt
at every instant of the game. The lack of combination in the three-quarter
line and their weakness both in attack and defence more than neutralized
the efforts of a heavy and hard-working pack.
“Then our friend Overton’s forebodings have been justified,” said Holmes.
“Personally I am in agreement with Dr. Armstrong, and football does not come
within my horizon. Early to bed to-night, Watson, for I foresee that to-morrow
may be an eventful day.”
I was horrified by my first glimpse of Holmes next morning, for he sat by the
fire holding his tiny hypodermic syringe. I associated that33 with the single
weakness of his nature, and I feared the worst when I saw it glittering in his
hand. He laughed at my expression of dismay and laid it upon the table.
“No, no, my dear fellow, there is no cause for alarm. It is not upon this
occasion the instrument of evil, but it will rather prove to be the key which will
unlock our mystery. On this syringe I base all my hopes. I have just returned
from a small scouting expedition, and everything is favourable. Eat a good
breakfast, Watson, for I propose to get upon Dr. Armstrong’s trail to-day, and
once on it I will not stop for rest or food until I run him to his burrow.”
“In that case,” said I, “we had best carry our breakfast with us, for he is
making an early start. His carriage is at the door.”
“Never mind. Let him go. He will be clever if he can drive where I cannot
follow him. When you have finished, come downstairs with me, and I will
introduce you to a detective who is a very eminent specialist in the work that lies
before us.”
When we descended I followed Holmes into the stable yard, where he opened
the door of a loose-box34 and led out a squat, lop-eared, white-and-tan dog,
something between a beagle and a foxhound.
“Let me introduce you to Pompey,” said he. “Pompey is the pride of the local
draghounds35—no very great flier, as his build will show, but a staunch hound
on a scent. Well, Pompey, you may not be fast, but I expect you will be too fast
for a couple of middle-aged London gentlemen, so I will take the liberty of
fastening this leather leash to your collar. Now, boy, come along, and show what
you can do.” He led him across to the doctor’s door. The dog sniffed round for
an instant, and then with a shrill whine of excitement started off down the street,
tugging at his leash in his efforts to go faster. In half an hour, we were clear of
the town and hastening down a country road.
“What have you done, Holmes?” I asked.
“We were clear of the town and hastening down a
country road.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“A threadbare and venerable device, but useful upon occasion. I walked into
the doctor’s yard this morning, and shot my syringe full of aniseed over the hind
wheel. A draghound will follow aniseed from here to John o’ Groat’s,36 and our
friend Armstrong would have to drive through the Cam37 before he would shake
Pompey off his trail. Oh, the cunning rascal! This is how he gave me the slip the
other night.”
The dog had suddenly turned out of the main road into a grass-grown lane.
Half a mile farther this opened into another broad road, and the trail turned hard
to the right in the direction of the town, which we had just quitted. The road took
a sweep to the south of the town and continued in the opposite direction to that
in which we started.
“This detour has been entirely for our benefit, then?” said Holmes. “No
wonder that my inquiries among those villagers led to nothing. The doctor has
certainly played the game for all it is worth, and one would like to know the
reason for such elaborate deception.38 This should be the village of Trumpington
to the right of us. And, by Jove! here is the brougham coming round the corner.
Quick, Watson, quick, or we are done!”
He sprang through a gate into a field, dragging the reluctant Pompey after
him. We had hardly got under the shelter of the hedge when the carriage rattled
past. I caught a glimpse of Dr. Armstrong within, his shoulders bowed, his head
sunk on his hands, the very image of distress. I could tell by my companion’s
graver face that he also had seen.
“I fear there is some dark ending to our quest,” said he. “It cannot be long
before we know it. Come, Pompey! Ah, it is the cottage in the field!”
There could be no doubt that we had reached the end of our journey. Pompey
ran about and whined eagerly outside the gate, where the marks of the
brougham’s wheels were still to be seen. A footpath led across to the lonely
cottage. Holmes tied the dog to the hedge, and we hastened onwards. My friend
knocked at the little rustic door, and knocked again without response. And yet
the cottage was not deserted, for a low sound came to our ears—a kind of drone
of misery and despair, which was indescribably melancholy. Holmes paused
irresolute, and then he glanced back at the road which he had just traversed. A
brougham was coming down it, and there could be no mistaking those grey
horses.
“The carriage rattled past.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“By Jove, the doctor is coming back!” cried Holmes. “That settles it. We are
bound to see what it means before he comes.”
He opened the door, and we stepped into the hall. The droning sound swelled
louder upon our ears until it became one long, deep wail of distress. It came
from upstairs. Holmes darted up, and I followed him. He pushed open a halfclosed door, and we both stood appalled at the sight before us.
A woman, young and beautiful, was lying dead upon the bed. Her calm, pale
face, with dim, wide-opened blue eyes, looked upwards from amid a great tangle
of golden hair. At the foot of the bed, half sitting, half kneeling, his face buried
in the clothes, was a young man, whose frame was racked by his sobs. So
absorbed was he by his bitter grief that he never looked up until Holmes’s hand
was on his shoulder.
I caught a glimpse of Dr. Armstrong within.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
“Are you Mr. Godfrey Staunton?”
“Yes, yes; I am—but you are too late. She is dead.”
The man was so dazed that he could not be made to understand that we were
anything but doctors who had been sent to his assistance. Holmes was
endeavouring to utter a few words of consolation and to explain the alarm which
had been caused to his friends by his sudden disappearance when there was a
step upon the stairs, and there was the heavy, stern, questioning face of Dr.
Armstrong at the door.
“So, gentlemen,” said he, “you have attained your end and have certainly
chosen a particularly delicate moment for your intrusion. I would not brawl in
the presence of death, but I can assure you that if I were a younger man your
monstrous conduct would not pass with impunity.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Armstrong, I think we are a little at cross purposes,” said my
friend, with dignity. “If you could step downstairs with us, we may each be able
to give some light to the other upon this miserable affair.”
A minute later the grim doctor and ourselves were in the sitting-room below.
“Well, sir?” said he.
“I wish you to understand, in the first place, that I am not employed by Lord
Mount-James, and that my sympathies in this matter are entirely against that
nobleman. When a man is lost it is my duty to ascertain his fate, but having done
so the matter ends so far as I am concerned; and so long as there is nothing
criminal, I am much more anxious to hush up private scandals than to give them
publicity. If, as I imagine, there is no breach of the law in this matter, you can
absolutely depend upon my discretion and my co-operation in keeping the facts
out of the papers!”
“He never looked up until Holmes’s hand was on his
shoulder.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Dr. Armstrong took a quick step forward and wrung Holmes by the hand.
“You are a good fellow,” said he. “I had misjudged you. I thank heaven that
my compunction at leaving poor Staunton all alone in this plight caused me to
turn my carriage back; and so to make your acquaintance. Knowing as much as
you do, the situation is very easily explained. A year ago Godfrey Staunton
lodged in London for a time and became passionately attached to his landlady’s
daughter, whom he married. She was as good as she was beautiful and as
intelligent as she was good. No man need be ashamed of such a wife. But
Godfrey was the heir to this crabbed old nobleman, and it was quite certain that
the news of his marriage would have been the end of his inheritance. I knew the
lad well, and I loved him for his many excellent qualities. I did all I could to help
him to keep things straight. We did our very best to keep the thing from
everyone, for, when once such a whisper gets about, it is not long before
everyone has heard it. Thanks to this lonely cottage and his own discretion,
Godfrey has up to now succeeded. Their secret was known to no one save to me
and to one excellent servant who has at present gone for assistance to
Trumpington. But at last there came a terrible blow in the shape of dangerous
illness to his wife. It was consumption39 of the most virulent kind. The poor boy
was half crazed with grief, and yet he had to go to London to play this match, for
he could not get out of it without explanations which would expose the secret. I
tried to cheer him up by a wire, and he sent me one in reply, imploring me to do
all I could. This was the telegram which you appear in some inexplicable way to
have seen. I did not tell him how urgent the danger was, for I knew that he could
do no good here, but I sent the truth to the girl’s father, and he very injudiciously
communicated it to Godfrey. The result was that he came straight away in a state
bordering on frenzy, and has remained in the same state, kneeling at the end of
her bed, until this morning death put an end to her sufferings. That is all, Mr.
Holmes, and I am sure that I can rely upon your discretion and that of your
friend.”
Holmes grasped the doctor’s hand.
“Come, Watson,” said he, and we passed from that house of grief into the pale
sunlight of the winter day.40
THE RULES OF RUGBY
And then follows rush upon rush, and scrummage upon scrummage,
the ball now driven through into the School-house quarters, and now
into the School goal. . . . You say you don’t see much in it all—nothing
but a struggling mass of boys, and a leather ball which seems to excite
them all to great fury, as a red rag does a bull. My dear sir, a battle
would look much the same to you, except that the boys would be men,
and the balls iron; but a battle would be worth your looking at for all
that, and so is a football match. You can’t be expected to appreciate
the delicate strokes of play, the turns by which a game is lost and won
—it takes an old player to do that; but the broad philosophy of football
you can understand if you will. Come along with me a little nearer,
and let us consider it.
—T
H
,
Tom Brown’s School Days (1857)
HOMAS
UGHES
LEGEND has it that the game of rugby was “invented” in 1823 during a game of
football (American soccer) when William Webb Ellis, a student at Rugby School
in Warwickshire picked up the ball and began running downfield with it. The
story, probably apocryphal, has elicited its share of controversy, and certainly
there were other sporting events at which a ball was carried rather than kicked.
Nonetheless, a plaque at Rugby School—where Tom Brown’s School Days is set
—proudly commemorates the antics of the sixteen-year-old “who with a fine
disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the ball in his
arms and ran with it.” Other schools and universities played variations of the
game in the mid-nineteenth century, but a clear delineation between football and
“rugby football” was not established until several rugby teams, rebuffed by the
prohibitive rules of the newly formed Football Association, formed the Rugby
Football Union in 1871 (see note 11, above).
Before too long, tensions within the new league arose, this time not over rules
of play but over rules of payment. In order to ensure that they could field full
teams, working-class clubs from the north began compensating players for
“broken time,” or time that they lost at their mining or factory jobs while playing
rugby. Clubs from the south—the domain, for the most part, of “gentlemen”
players with less pressing financial considerations—failed to understand the
need for such compensation, and they indignantly protested what they
considered a violation of the purity of amateur sport. The Rugby Football Union
agreed, insisting that all payments to players cease. After years in which the
opposing factions could not reach a compromise, twenty-two clubs split off in
1895 to form the Northern Rugby Union, which later became known as Rugby
League. This league became the home for professional rugby teams, and Rugby
Football Union league, or “Rugby Union,” became that of amateur play. (In
1995, finally acknowledging the complications inherent in trying to maintain
strict amateur standards, Rugby Union dropped its restrictions and permitted its
players to be paid.) Even in the current era, the clubs in Rugby League—now coowned by Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch—are concentrated in the north of
Britain and championed by the working class, whereas Rugby Union clubs retain
a distinctly middle-and upper-class fan base.
As amateur clubs, Cambridge and Oxford would have been playing according
to Rugby Union rules, which remain the most widely adopted in Britain. The
game incorporates some elements of American football and soccer, being played
with an oval ball on a rectangular field, or “pitch,” measuring 70 meters (229.7
feet) wide by 146 meters (160 yards) long. There are two opposing scoring zones
and upright goalposts, rather like in American football, although the goalposts in
rugby take more of a letter “H” shape, with the goalposts 5.6 metres (18.3 feet)
apart and the crossbar 3 metres (10 feet) above the ground. Teams of fifteen
players each (thirteen in Rugby League) play two halves, each forty minutes in
length, with a ten-minute halftime in between. The team usually consists of eight
forwards, who form the scrummage (discussed below); two half-backs, who are
posted outside the scrummage; four three-quarter backs, who are arranged in a
line across the field behind the scrummage; and the last line of defence, the
fullback or “back.”
Play is continuous, resembling that of American soccer. A player moves the
ball downfield by carrying the ball, kicking it, or passing it behind him or to the
side; no forward passing is allowed. Neither is blocking allowed—the ball
carrier’s teammates must stay behind him as play progresses down the field—
but the abrupt tackling with which defensive players may stop ball carriers, not
to mention the fact that rugby players may wear (voluntarily) only “scrumcap”
headgear and a limited amount of shoulder protection, is largely what lends the
sport its historically rough reputation. Some seventy deaths were reported in
English rugby games from 1890 to 1893 alone, although numerous regulations
enacted since then, including the prohibition of tripping and “hacking,” have
greatly lessened the risk of serious injury.
Once a player is tackled and the ball touches the ground, he must immediately
relinquish it, either passing the ball backward to a teammate or surrendering it to
a member of the opposing team. More common is the loose maul, a sort of
multiplayer semi-tackle in which the ball carrier’s progress is temporarily halted
and offensive and defensive players swarm around him, fighting for possession.
(When the ball touches the ground, the situation becomes known as a ruck.) In
this position, the ball may change hands from the carrier to a teammate, and as
long as the players remain on their feet and locked in a cohesive unit, they may
drive the ball down the pitch in what is known as a rolling maul.
Should the ball carrier drop or pass the ball in any sort of forward motion, or
should a team be called offside, then play is stopped, resulting in a scrum, or
scrummage. Here, the forwards on each team lock arms and face off against each
other, pushing forward to form a roiling mass into which the attacking team’s
“scrum-half” rolls the ball. Both teams attempt to kick the ball backward out of
the scrum, and play continues at the same chaotic pace as before. Members of
the scrum must remain bound together and on their feet until the ball has been
ejected.
A ball that strays out of bounds, or goes “into touch,” leads to another striking
formation of Rugby Union (but not Rugby League): the visually spectacular
lineout. The team that was not last to touch the ball is awarded the throwin, and
the forwards of each team arrange themselves in two straight lines, facing the
sideline (“touchline”). At a coded signal, the player known as the hooker throws
the ball toward a selected player (the “jumper”), who is hoisted straight upward
by his teammates—his feet at the level of their shoulders—to receive the
inbound pass. Players may not make use of the jumper’s clothing in lifting him
up, but must physically lay hands on his person (thus cutting down on past
injuries in which the unfortunate jumper was choked by his own jersey).
Simultaneously, the other team elevates its own player, who attempts to intercept
the inbound pass by whatever means necessary; and the two players duel for the
ball, occupying their own midair playing field, in what can appear for all the
world like some strange form of human puppetry.
Of course, the aim of this entire endeavour is to score as many points as
possible, and there are two primary methods of doing so, although the weight
given to each has varied through the years. A goal consists of a player’s kicking
the ball through the opponent’s goalposts, above the crossbar. A try is achieved
by bringing the ball across the opponent’s goal line and touching it down
(“bringing it to ground”) in the opponent’s goal area. (For readers weaned on
American football, a goal is roughly similar to a field goal, a try to a
touchdown.) In the earliest days of rugby, a try scored no points but allowed a
team the opportunity to place-kick a “free” goal. But the concept of the try
gradually gained in significance, particularly with Rugby Union’s adoption, in
the 1886–1887 season, of Cheltenham College’s system, in which three tries
were the equivalent of one goal. Presumably, the Oxford-Cambridge match of
“The Missing Three-Quarter,” which chronologists date anywhere between 1894
and 1897, used some version of this system of scoring. Rugby Union rules were
changed again in 1905 such that a try equalled three points, a follow-up
conversion goal two points, a dropped goal (a ball drop-kicked through the
goalposts from the field during play) four points, and a penalty goal three points.
Later rules changes finally brought Rugby Union’s scoring system to its current
levels, in which a try is worth five points, a conversion two points, and a
dropped goal or a penalty goal three points.
“The Missing Three-Quarter” was published in the
Strand Magazine in August 1904 and in Collier’s Weekly
on November 26, 1904. The manuscript is at the British
Library.
1
In rugby, the position of the forwards on either side of
the centre. For an explanation of the game of rugby and
its associated terms, see “The Rules of Rugby,” page
1153.
2
The manuscript has “by the time that the table is
cleared.”
3
Watson’s concern about Holmes’s cocaine habit appears
touching. Yet, considering that Holmes is actually seen
using cocaine in the accounts of only two cases—The
Sign of Four and “A Scandal in Bohemia”—it is hard to
describe the addiction as having jeopardised Holmes’s
career. Troubling as the habit was, Watson may be
indulging in a bit of vanity here, identifying himself as
Holmes’s saviour and the one person able to stop him
from imminent relapse. Jack Tracey and Jim Berkey, in
4
Subcutaneously, My Dear Watson, trace the course of
Holmes’s drug dependence from 1887 to 1902, with only
short intermittent drug-free periods; and even they label
Watson’s statement here an “insupportable boast.”
The Reverend Arthur Henry Stanton, according to
Donald Redmond’s Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Sources,
was wrongly accused of authorship of a book of Catholic
prayers.
5
Michael Harrison, in In the Footsteps of Sherlock
Holmes, points out the omission of Louis A. Staunton,
who with others of his family was convicted of
murdering his wife in 1877 and surely would have been
in Holmes’s index.
6
C. Alan Bradley and William A. S. Sarjeant regard
Holmes’s ignorance as unfathomable, and an indication
that Holmes must not have attended an English public
school, where students could not help but learn at least
the basics of rugby. “Indeed,” Bradley and Sarjeant
exclaim, “could any man who had grown up in England
—even if privately tutored, and however little interested
in sport he might be—remain so ignorant?” This evidence
leads them to decide that Holmes was not, in fact, a man,
but a woman in disguise; a less bizarre conclusion might
be that Holmes’s early education took place wholly
outside England.
7
“ ’Varsity” was originally a colloquial abbreviation of
“University.”
8
9
“Two years” in the manuscript.
The first rugby game in Cambridge took place in 1839,
but the Cambridge University Rugby Union Football
Club was not officially founded until 1872. The
university’s rival, Oxford, can claim superiority at least in
this instance, having established its own rugby club three
years earlier.
10
The Blackheath Football Club was founded in 1858 as
the world’s first “open” rugby club. Blackheath was one
of the founding members of the fledgling, eleven-club
Football Association, formed in 1863. But when the
association proposed to adopt Cambridge rules, in which
“hacking” (kicking in the shins) and running with the ball
were disallowed, Blackheath withdrew from the
association and in 1871 formed the Rugby Football
Union, comprising twenty clubs and following a set of
rules that the club had written up in 1862. It was this split
that helped to clarify the distinction between football (or
American soccer) and rugby. See “The Rules of Rugby,”
page 1153, for more on the Rugby Football Union.
11
On March 27, 1871, the first international match was
played, organised by Blackheath and pitting England
12
against Scotland in Edinburgh. In the following decade
and a half, the countries of the United Kingdom
(England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales) began playing
one another annually, and have done so continuously
with only a few exceptions occurring over national
disputes. The “Internationals” are now known as the “Six
Nations” and include Italy and France.
According to J. P. W. Mallalieu, Holmes is not the
only person whose lack of rugby knowledge is being
exposed by this exchange. In “The Sussex Vampire,”
Watson passes himself off as a former rugby player for
Blackheath, but Mallalieu, a rugby fan and a former M.P.,
uses Overton’s speech here to demonstrate that Watson
probably never played the game. After all, the doctor has
clearly never heard of Staunton nor of Overton. And
Mallalieu looks skeptically upon some of the statements
that Watson attributes to Overton, claiming that no
skilled rugby player would speak in such a manner. For
example, in considering candidates to replace Staunton,
Overton bemoans that one player, Stevenson, despite his
speed, “couldn’t drop from the twenty-five line, and a
three-quarter who can’t either punt or drop isn’t worth a
place for pace alone.” To this, Mallalieu cries,
“Twaddle!” explaining that any other player might “drop
from the twenty-five line” in Stevenson’s place, and that
a three-quarter rarely has the opportunity to score (hence
13
there is little need for him to kick the ball). For Mallalieu,
Overton’s incongruous references indicate plainly that
Watson’s familiarity with the sport is not much greater
than Holmes’s, that he misstated Overton’s comments
about the game, and that he did not play at Blackheath so
much as accidentally wander onto the field from the
stands.
Of course, neither Holmes nor Watson, both in their
forties (“The Missing Three-Quarter” is usually placed in
1896 by the chronologists—see Chronological Table),
would have participated in amateur team sports for some
years. “[Football],” remarks the Encyclopædia Britannica
(9th Ed.), “is a game more adapted to youths than to
middle-aged persons, and should not be indulged in after
the frame is full-grown and set, when the tumbles and
scrimmages incidental to the Rugby code are apt to be
baneful.”
14
15
“Rugger” is simply another word for rugby.
The very first Cambridge-Oxford match was played at
Oxford in 1872, the year Cambridge’s club was founded.
(Oxford emerged the victor, a fact that remains notably
unreported on Cambridge’s website.) Two years later, the
match was moved to a neutral site, Kennington Oval, and
various other venues, including Blackheath’s Rectory
Field, were subsequently tried out until the game moved
16
to Queen’s Club in 1887. With the exception of the years
during World War I, when all rugby matches were
suspended, Queen’s Club continued to host the so-called
Varsity Match—which came to be held every second
Tuesday in December—until it was determined that the
location had become too small for the throngs of fans that
turned out to witness the intense rivalry. In 1921 the
game was moved to Twickenham Stadium, where it has
been played ever since.
The manuscript reads “down Northumberland Avenue
in the direction of the Thames Embankment.”
17
18
To cheat or victimise.
Gout is a disorder that strikes men, usually over the age
of thirty, and is characterised by chronic inflammation of
the joints. A buildup of urate deposits in the tissue
surrounding the joints can cause deformity and extreme
stiffness, particular in the feet and hands. In a remarkable
case of coincidence, this editor discovered that Sir
Thomas Watson (1792–1882), in his Lectures on the
Principles and Practice of Physic, wrote: “A namesake of
mine, Mr. Henry Watson, describes in the first volume of
Medical Communications, the case of a Mr. Middleton,
who was accustomed, when playing at cards, to chalk or
score the game upon the table with his gouty knuckles.”
Did Overton use this phrase by chance in describing Lord
19
Mount-James? Was he perhaps repeating a remark by the
physician of Lord Mount-James—who may have even
been Sir Thomas Watson? Or did John H. Watson, who
may well have attended a lecture by his namesake or read
his great work, interpolate the remark himself in
reporting the incident?
In football, a cut or gash in the skin caused by a kick.
In some editions the word is “back.”
20
A mute was an undertaker’s attendant, assigned to
walk in the funeral procession alongside the coffin. An
example is provided in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist
(1838), in which the orphan Oliver is apprenticed out by
Mr. Bumble to Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker, who
eventually sets him to work as a mute for children’s
funerals. It is the solemnity of the orphan’s face that
strikes the undertaker as useful: “ ‘There’s an expression
of melancholy in his face, my dear,’ resumed Mr.
Sowerberry, ‘which is very interesting. He would make a
delightful mute, my love.’ ”
21
The “Bayswater” omnibus ran every five minutes from
Burdett Road to Shepherd’s Bush Green.
22
This no doubt explains why “one of the richest men in
England” travelled by bus, which charged a fare of 1d. to
6d., depending on the destination.
23
In the manuscript, “two telegraph offices at equal
distances from the hotel.” Watson is evidently engaging
in some geographical obfuscation here and elsewhere in
the manuscript.
24
25
“Fenchurch Street Station” in the manuscript.
In the manuscript, originally “we rattled down the
Strand.”
26
This comment seems to contradict Holmes’s earlier
remark that “amateur sport . . . is the best and soundest
thing in England.”
27
While Watson had sold his practice in 1894 (see “The
Norwood Builder”) this statement seemingly contradicts
Watson’s continued diligent reading of medical texts,
reported in “The Golden Pince-Nez” only a few years
earlier.
28
This remark contrasts with “The Creeping Man,” in
which Holmes refers to the unnamed university locale of
that tale as “this charming town.” Scholars of course
seize upon the point to insist that the university locale of
“The
Missing
Three-Quarter”—most
assuredly
Cambridge—was not Holmes’s alma mater.
29
30
A whist reference—see “The Norwood Builder.”
31
“St. John’s College” in the manuscript.
See “The Rules of Rugby,” page 1153, for an
explanation of the scoring of the match. Richard
Lancelyn Green, in trying to determine the exact year that
“The Missing Three-Quarter” might have taken place,
notes that since matches between Oxford and Cambridge
were played every second Tuesday of December at the
Queen’s Club, “if the dates in the story are taken literally,
then the match would have been played either in 1894,
1895, or 1896. The last would be the most likely as it was
the only one of the three won by Oxford.” A different
theory is put forth by D. Martin Dakin (among others),
who observes that Oxford won by two tries in 1897.
Neither the 1896 nor the 1897 game fits the score exactly.
Jay Finley Christ reports that Whitaker’s Almanac says of
the 1897 game that “the Cambridge three-quarter line did
not come off,” which seems to refer to “The Missing
Three-Quarter.”
32
The English text omits the word “instrument” here,
found in both the Strand Magazine and American texts.
33
34
That portion of a stable where horses are kept untied.
Hounds trained to race by following a scent left by a
“drag” over a predetermined course. Originally, the dogs
followed the scent of a fox let loose on the course, but
later, to bring control to the event, an artificial scent,
usually aniseed, was applied to an object dragged over
35
the ground.
The village of John o’ Groats was founded during the
reign of James IV (1488–1513) when Dutchman Jan de
Groot and his two brothers settled near Dunnet Head in
Scotland, at the northernmost tip of the British mainland.
In order to appease his descendants, who argued over
their precedence in the family, de Groot built an
octagonal house with eight doors and eight windows. (He
also built an octagonal table—in some stories, a round
table—so that no one person was ever seated at the head.)
A mound and a flagpole now mark the site of the original
house. The expression “from Land’s End to John o’
Groats” means from one end of Great Britain to the other.
36
37
The river upon which Cambridge stands.
And what “excellent qualities” are those that would
draw the renowned head of the medical school and
European “thinker” to an athlete with no obvious
intellectual tendencies? Marshall S. Berdan suggests only
one: money. The heir to Lord Mount-James’s fortune
surely must have provided an enticing mark for a doctor
on a university salary. “With the parsimonious old
nobleman racked with gout,” Berdan deduces,
“Armstrong saw an easy way to finance his future
research and altogether dispense with his bothersome
practice.”
38
See “The Final Problem,” note 40, for a discussion of
the prevalence and impact of consumption in Victorian
England.
39
Sportswriter Red Smith scandalously suggests, in
“Dear Me, Mr. Holmes,” that Holmes made bets on the
match and that his actions in the case were designed to
assure his winnings. While Holmes immediately grasped
the importance of Dr. Armstrong, he allowed himself “to
be put off with windy bluff. . . .” Attempting to trail
Armstrong, Holmes carelessly loses him on a stretch of
land “as flat and clean as the palm of your hand” and then
forbids Watson to give chase to Armstrong. Why,
ponders Smith? “Well, the match hadn’t been played
yet,” Smith notes. Holmes had induced Overton to admit
that Cambridge was likely to lose the match without
Staunton. Spotting an opportunity to make a quick profit,
Smith proposes, Holmes busily spent his time in
Cambridge corresponding by telegram with bookies.
Only after Oxford’s victory, notes Smith, did Holmes
finally manage to find Armstrong and Staunton.
Marshall S. Berdan attempts to refute Smith’s
character assassination, arguing that Holmes’s delay in
solving the case may be explained on the basis that he
perceived no urgency and was experiencing a temporary
lack of work. Further, Berdan suggests, he may have
wanted, as an alumnus of Oxford, to see Oxford win.
40
While this latter point suggests an interest in amateur
sports that Holmes flatly denies, Berdan goes on to
propose that Watson, the incorrigible gambler (see
“Shoscombe Old Place”), who—despite having played
rugby himself (“The Sussex Vampire”), feigned
ignorance of both Overton and Rugby—arranged to bet
on the game with clubmen friends. “All of the
discrepancies in the adventure can thus be accounted for
without having to resort to the unacceptable depravity of
the Master alleged by Mr. Smith. Smith, it seems, had the
right charge but the wrong suspect.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE1
In this, one of the four cases in which Holmes protégé Inspector
Stanley Hopkins appears (the others being “The Missing ThreeQuarter,” “Black Peter,” and “The Golden Pince-Nez,” all recorded
in The Return), we witness Holmes’s knowledge of wine, contrasted
with a disdain for the upper class first viewed in “The Noble
Bachelor.” Most emblematic of the detective’s complicated views is
the wealthy Sir Eustace Brackenstall, the murder victim, who is
unfavourably contrasted with the plucky heroine and her seaman
friend. The self-reliant Lady Mary Brackenstall awakens Holmes’s
usual sympathy for Australians (as seen by his treatment of them in
“The ‘Gloria Scott’ ” and “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”), and as in
those cases, Holmes takes the law into his own hands. Here, however,
his sympathies may have overridden his judgement: Many scholars
believe that Holmes lets himself be fooled by a villainess cleverer than
he credited.
IT WAS ON a bitterly cold night and frosty morning, towards the end of the winter
of ’972 that I was wakened by a tugging at my shoulder. It was Holmes. The
candle in his hand shone upon his eager, stooping face, and told me at a glance
that something was amiss.
“Come, Watson, come!” he cried. “The game is afoot.3 Not a word! Into your
clothes and come!”
Ten minutes later we were both in a cab and rattling through the silent streets
on our way to Charing Cross Station. The first faint winter’s dawn was
beginning to appear, and we could dimly see the occasional figure of an early
workman as he passed us, blurred and indistinct in the opalescent London reek.
Holmes nestled in silence into his heavy coat, and I was glad to do the same, for
the air was most bitter, and neither of us had broken our fast.
It was not until we had consumed some hot tea at the station and taken our
places in the Kentish4 train that we were sufficiently thawed, he to speak and I to
listen. Holmes drew a note from his pocket and read aloud:
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
ABBEY GRANGE,5 MARSHAM, KENT, 3:30 A.M.
MY DEAR MR. HOLMES—I should be very glad of your immediate
assistance in what promises to be a most remarkable case. It is something
quite in your line. Except for releasing the lady I will see that everything is
kept exactly as I have found it, but I beg you not to lose an instant, as it is
difficult to leave Sir Eustace there.—
Yours faithfully,
STANLEY HOPKINS.
“Hopkins has called me in seven times,6 and on each occasion his summons
has been entirely justified,” said Holmes. “I fancy that every one of his cases has
found its way into your collection, and I must admit, Watson, that you have
some power of selection, which atones for much which I deplore in your
narratives. Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a
story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an
instructive and even classical series of demonstrations. You slur over work of
the utmost finesse and delicacy, in order to dwell upon sensational details which
may excite, but cannot possibly instruct, the reader.”
“‘Come, Watson, come!’ he cried. ‘The game is afoot.’”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Why do you not write them yourself?” I said, with some bitterness.
“I will, my dear Watson, I will.7 At present I am, as you know, fairly busy, but
I propose to devote my declining years to the composition of a textbook which
shall focus the whole art of detection into one volume. Our present research
appears to be a case of murder.”
“You think this Sir Eustace is dead, then?”
“I should say so. Hopkins’s writing shows considerable agitation, and he is
not an emotional man. Yes, I gather there has been violence, and that the body is
left for our inspection. A mere suicide would not have caused him to send for
me. As to the release of the lady, it would appear that she has been locked in her
room during the tragedy. We are moving in high life, Watson, crackling paper,
‘E. B.’ monogram, coat-of-arms, picturesque address. I think that friend Hopkins
will live up to his reputation, and that we shall have an interesting morning. The
crime was committed before twelve last night.”
“How can you possibly tell?”
“By an inspection of the trains and by reckoning the time. The local police
had to be called in, they had to communicate with Scotland Yard, Hopkins had
to go out, and he in turn had to send for me. All that makes a fair night’s work.
Well, here we are at Chislehurst Station, and we shall soon set our doubts at
rest.”
A drive of a couple of miles through narrow country lanes brought us to a
park gate, which was opened for us by an old lodge-keeper, whose haggard face
bore the reflection of some great disaster. The avenue ran through a noble park,
between lines of ancient elms, and ended in a low, widespread house,8 pillared in
front after the fashion of Palladio.9 The central part was evidently of a great age
and shrouded in ivy, but the large windows showed that modern changes had
been carried out, and one wing of the house appeared to be entirely new. The
youthful figure and alert, eager face of Inspector Stanley Hopkins confronted us
in the open doorway.
“I’m very glad you have come, Mr. Holmes. And you, too, Dr. Watson. But,
indeed, if I had my time over again, I should not have troubled you, for since the
lady has come to herself, she has given so clear an account of the affair that there
is not much left for us to do. You remember that Lewisham gang of burglars?”
“What, the three Randalls?”
“Exactly; the father and two sons. It’s their work. I have not a doubt of it.
They did a job at Sydenham a fortnight ago and were seen and described. Rather
cool to do another so soon and so near; but it is they, beyond all doubt. It’s a
hanging matter this time.”
“Sir Eustace is dead, then?”
“Yes; his head was knocked in with his own poker.”
“Sir Eustace Brackenstall,10 the driver tells me.”
“Exactly—one of the richest men in Kent. Lady Brackenstall is in the
morning-room. Poor lady, she has had a most dreadful experience. She seemed
half dead when I saw her first. I think you had best see her and hear her account
of the facts. Then we will examine the dining-room together.”
Lady Brackenstall was no ordinary person. Seldom have I seen so graceful a
figure, so womanly a presence, and so beautiful a face. She was a blonde,
golden-haired, blue-eyed, and would no doubt have had the perfect complexion
which goes with such colouring had not her recent experience left her drawn and
haggard. Her sufferings were physical as well as mental, for over one eye rose a
hideous, plum-coloured swelling, which her maid, a tall, austere woman, was
bathing assiduously with vinegar and water. The lady lay back exhausted upon a
couch, but her quick, observant gaze as we entered the room and the alert
expression of her beautiful features, showed that neither her wits nor her courage
had been shaken by her terrible experience. She was enveloped in a loose
dressing-gown of blue and silver, but a black sequin-covered dinner-dress was
hung upon the couch beside her.
“I have told you all that happened, Mr. Hopkins,” she said wearily; “could you
not repeat it for me? Well, if you think it necessary, I will tell these gentlemen
what occurred. Have they been in the dining-room yet?”
The lady lay back exhausted upon a couch enveloped in a
loose dressing-gown of blue and silver.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“I thought they had better hear your ladyship’s story first.”
“I shall be glad when you can arrange matters. It is horrible to me to think of
him still lying there.” She shuddered and buried her face for a moment in her
hands. As she did so the loose gown fell back from her forearms. Holmes uttered
an exclamation.
“You have other injuries, madam! What is this?” Two vivid red spots stood
out on one of the white, round limbs. She hastily covered it.
“It is nothing. It has no connection with this hideous business of last night.11
If you and your friend will sit down, I will tell you all I can.
“I am the wife of Sir Eustace Brackenstall. I have been married about a year. I
suppose that it is no use my attempting to conceal that our marriage has not been
a happy one. I fear that all our neighbours would tell you that, even if I were to
attempt to deny it. Perhaps the fault may be partly mine. I was brought up in the
freer, less conventional atmosphere of South Australia, and this English life,
with its proprieties and its primness, is not congenial to me. But the main reason
lies in the one fact, which is notorious to everyone, and that is that Sir Eustace
was a confirmed drunkard. To be with such a man for an hour is unpleasant. Can
you imagine what it means for a sensitive and high-spirited woman to be tied to
him for day and night? It is a sacrilege, a crime, a villainy to hold that such a
marriage is binding. I say that these monstrous laws of yours12 will bring a curse
upon the land—Heaven13 will not let such wickedness endure.” For an instant
she sat up, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes blazing from under the terrible mark
upon her brow. Then the strong, soothing hand of the austere maid drew her
head down on to the cushion, and the wild anger died away into passionate
sobbing. At last she continued:
“I will tell you about last night. You are aware, perhaps, that in this house all
servants sleep in the modern wing. This central block is made up of the
dwelling-rooms, with the kitchen behind and our bedroom above. My maid
Theresa sleeps above my room. There is no one else, and no sound could alarm
those who are in the farther wing. This must have been well known to the
robbers, or they would not have acted as they did.
”I am the wife of Sir Eustace Brackenstall.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Sir Eustace retired about half-past ten. The servants had already gone to their
quarters. Only my maid was up, and she had remained in her room at the top of
the house until I needed her services. I sat until after eleven in this room,
absorbed in a book. Then I walked round to see that all was right before I went
upstairs. It was my custom to do this myself, for, as I have explained, Sir
Eustace was not always to be trusted. I went into the kitchen, the butler’s pantry,
the gun-room, the billiard-room, the drawing-room, and finally the dining-room.
As I approached the window, which is covered with thick curtains, I suddenly
felt the wind blow upon my face and realized that it was open. I flung the curtain
aside and found myself face to face with a broad-shouldered elderly man, who
had just stepped into the room. The window is a long French one, which really
forms a door leading to the lawn. I held my bedroom candle lit in my hand, and,
by its light, behind the first man I saw two others, who were in the act of
entering. I stepped back, but the fellow was on me in an instant. He caught me
first by the wrist and then by the throat. I opened my mouth to scream, but he
struck me a savage blow with his fist over the eye, and felled me to the ground. I
must have been unconscious for a few minutes, for when I came to myself, I
found that they had torn down the bell-rope, and had secured me tightly to the
oaken chair which stands at the head of the dining-table. I was so firmly bound
that I could not move, and a handkerchief round my mouth prevented me from
uttering any sound. It was at this instant that my unfortunate husband entered the
room. He had evidently heard some suspicious sounds, and he came prepared for
such a scene as he found. He was dressed in his shirt14 and trousers, with his
favourite blackthorn cudgel in his hand.15 He rushed at one of16 the burglars, but
another—it was an elderly man17—stooped, picked the poker out of the grate
and struck him a horrible blow as he passed. He fell without18 a groan and never
moved again. I fainted once more, but again it could only have been a very few
minutes during which I was insensible. When I opened my eyes I found that they
had collected the silver from the sideboard, and they had drawn a bottle of wine
which stood there. Each of them had a glass in his hand. I have already told you,
have I not, that one was elderly, with a beard, and the others young, hairless lads.
They might have been a father with his two sons. They talked together in
whispers. Then they came over and made sure that I was still securely bound.
Finally they withdrew, closing the window after them. It was quite a quarter of
an hour before I got my mouth free. When I did so, my screams brought the
maid to my assistance. The other servants were soon alarmed, and we sent for
the local police, who instantly communicated with London. That is really all that
I can tell you, gentlemen, and I trust that it will not be necessary for me to go
over so painful a story again.”
“Any questions, Mr. Holmes?” asked Hopkins.
“I will not impose any further tax upon Lady Brackenstall’s patience and
time,” said Holmes. “Before I go into the dining-room, I should like to hear your
experience.” He looked at the maid.
“I saw the men before ever they came into the house,” said she. “As I sat by
my bedroom window I saw three men in the moonlight down by the lodge gate
yonder, but I thought nothing of it at the time. It was more than an hour after that
I heard my mistress scream, and down I ran, to find her, poor lamb, just as she
says, and him on the floor, with his blood and brains over the room. It was
enough to drive a woman out of her wits, tied there, and her very dress spotted
with him; but she never wanted courage, did Miss Mary Fraser of Adelaide, and
Lady Brackenstall of Abbey Grange hasn’t learned new ways. You’ve
questioned her long enough, you gentlemen, and now she is coming to her own
room, just with her old Theresa, to get the rest that she badly needs.”
With a motherly tenderness the gaunt woman put her arm round her mistress
and led her from the room.
“She has been with her all her life,” said Hopkins. “Nursed her as a baby, and
came with her to England when they first left Australia, eighteen months ago.
Theresa Wright is her name, and the kind of maid you don’t pick up nowadays.
This way, Mr. Holmes, if you please!”
The keen interest had passed out of Holmes’s expressive face, and I knew that
with the mystery all the charm of the case had departed. There still remained an
arrest to be effected, but what were these commonplace rogues that he should
soil his hands with them? An abstruse and learned specialist who finds that he
has been called in for a case of measles would experience something of the
annoyance which I read in my friend’s eyes. Yet the scene in the dining-room of
the Abbey Grange was sufficiently strange to arrest his attention and to recall his
waning interest.
It was a very large and high chamber, with carved oak ceiling, oaken
panelling, and a fine array of deer’s heads and ancient weapons around the walls.
At the further end from the door was the high French window of which we had
heard. Three smaller windows on the right-hand side filled the apartment with
cold winter sunshine. On the left was a large, deep fireplace, with a massive,
overhanging oak mantelpiece. Beside the fireplace was a heavy oaken chair with
arms and crossbars at the bottom. In and out through the open woodwork was
woven a crimson cord, which was secured at each side to the crosspiece below.
In releasing the lady, the cord had been slipped off her, but the knots with which
it had been secured still remained. These details only struck our attention
afterwards, for our thoughts were entirely absorbed by the terrible object which
lay upon the tiger-skin hearthrug in front of the fire.
It was the body of a tall, well-made man, about forty years of age. He lay
upon his back, his face upturned, with his white teeth grinning through his short,
black beard. His two clenched hands were raised above his head, and a heavy
blackthorn stick lay across them. His dark, handsome, aquiline features were
convulsed into a spasm of vindictive hatred, which had set his dead face in a
terribly fiendish expression. He had evidently been in his bed when the alarm
had broken out, for he wore a foppish, embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet
projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, and the whole room
bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down.
Beside him lay the heavy poker, bent into a curve by the concussion. Holmes
examined both it and the indescribable wreck which it had wrought.
“It was the body of a tall, well-made man, about forty
years of age.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“He must be a powerful man, this elder Randall,” he remarked.
“Yes,” said Hopkins. “I have some record of the fellow, and he is a rough
customer.”
“You should have no difficulty in getting him.”
“Not the slightest. We have been on the look-out for him, and there was some
idea that he had got away to America. Now that we know that the gang are here,
I don’t see how they can escape. We have the news at every seaport already, and
a reward will be offered before evening. What beats me is how they could have
done so mad a thing, knowing that the lady could describe them and that we
could not fail to recognise the description.”
“Exactly. One would have expected that they would have silenced Lady
Brackenstall as well.”
“They may not have realized,” I suggested, “that she had recovered from her
faint.”
“That is likely enough. If she seemed to be senseless, they would not take her
life. What about this poor fellow, Hopkins? I seem to have heard some queer
stories about him.”
“He was a good-hearted man when he was sober, but a perfect fiend when he
was drunk, or rather when he was half drunk, for he seldom really went the
whole way. The devil seemed to be in him at such times, and he was capable of
anything. From what I hear, in spite of all his wealth and his title, he very nearly
came our way once or twice. There was a scandal about his drenching a dog with
petroleum and setting it on fire—her ladyship’s dog, to make the matter worse—
and that was only hushed up with difficulty. Then he threw a decanter at that
maid, Theresa Wright; there was trouble about that. On the whole, and between
ourselves, it will be a brighter house without him. What are you looking at
now?”
Holmes was down on his knees, examining with great attention the knots upon
the red cord with which the lady had been secured. Then he carefully scrutinized
the broken and frayed end where it had snapped off when the burglar had
dragged it down.
“When this was pulled down, the bell in the kitchen must have rung loudly,”
he remarked.
“No one could hear it. The kitchen stands right at the back of the house.”
“How did the burglar know no one would hear it? How dared he pull at a bellrope in that reckless fashion?”
“Exactly, Mr. Holmes, exactly. You put the very question which I have asked
myself again and again. There can be no doubt that this fellow must have known
the house and its habits. He must have perfectly understood that the servants
would all be in bed at that comparatively early hour, and that no one could
possibly hear a bell ring in the kitchen. Therefore, he must have been in close
league with one of the servants. Surely that is evident. But there are eight
servants, and all of good character.”
“Other things being equal,” said Holmes, “one would suspect the one at whose
head the master threw a decanter. And yet that would involve treachery towards
the mistress to whom this woman seems devoted. Well, well, the point is a minor
one, and when you have Randall you will probably find no difficulty in securing
his accomplice. The lady’s story certainly seems to be corroborated, if it needed
corroboration, by every detail which we see before us.” He walked to the French
window and threw it open. “There are no signs here, but the ground is iron hard,
and one would not expect them. I see that these candles in the mantelpiece have
been lighted.”
“Yes, it was by their light and that of the lady’s bedroom candle that the
burglars saw their way about.”
“And what did they take?”
“Well, they did not take much—only half a dozen articles of plate19 off the
sideboard. Lady Brackenstall thinks that they were themselves so disturbed by
the death of Sir Eustace that they did not ransack the house as they would
otherwise have done.”
“No doubt that is true. And yet they drank some wine, I understand.”
“To steady their nerves.”
“Exactly. These three glasses upon the sideboard have been untouched, I
suppose?”
“Yes; and the bottle stands as they left it.”
“These three glasses upon the sideboard have been
untouched, I suppose.”
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
“Let us look at it. Halloa, halloa! What is this?”
The three glasses were grouped together, all of them tinged with wine, and
one of them containing some dregs of beeswing.20 The bottle stood near them,
two-thirds full, and beside it lay a long, deeply stained cork. Its appearance and
the dust upon the bottle showed that it was no common vintage which the
murderers had enjoyed.21
A change had come over Holmes’s manner. He had lost his listless expression,
and again I saw an alert light of interest in his keen, deep-set eyes. He raised the
cork and examined it minutely.
“How did they draw it?” he asked.
Hopkins pointed to a half-opened drawer. In it lay some table linen and a large
corkscrew.
“Did Lady Brackenstall say that screw was used?”
“No; you remember that she was senseless at the moment when the bottle was
opened.”
“Quite so. As a matter of fact, that screw was not used. This bottle was opened
by a pocket-screw, probably contained in a knife, and not more than an inch and
a half long. If you will examine the top of the cork, you will observe that the
screw was driven in three times before the cork was extracted. It has never been
transfixed. This long screw would have transfixed it and drawn it up with a
single pull. When you catch this fellow, you will find that he has one of these
multiplex knives22 in his possession.”
“Excellent!” said Hopkins.
“Halloa, halloa, what is this?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Pocket knives including corkscrews.
“But these glasses do puzzle me, I confess. Lady Brackenstall actually saw the
three men drinking, did she not?”
“Yes; she was clear about that.”
“Then there is an end of it. What more is to be said? And yet, you must admit
that the three glasses are very remarkable, Hopkins. What? You see nothing
remarkable? Well, well, let it pass. Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge
and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex
explanation when a simpler one is at hand. Of course, it must be a mere chance
about the glasses. Well, good-morning, Hopkins. I don’t see that I can be of any
use to you, and you appear to have your case very clear. You will let me know
when Randall is arrested, and any further developments which may occur. I trust
that I shall soon have to congratulate you upon a successful conclusion. Come,
Watson, I fancy that we may employ ourselves more profitably at home.”
Sherlock Holmes examines the glasses.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“I could see by Holmes’s face that he was much
puzzled.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
During our return journey I could see by Holmes’s face that he was much
puzzled by something which he had observed. Every now and then, by an effort,
he would throw off the impression, and talk as if the matter were clear, but then
his doubts would settle down upon him again, and his knitted brows and
abstracted eyes would show that his thoughts had gone back once more to the
great dining-room of the Abbey Grange, in which this midnight tragedy had
been enacted. At last by a sudden impulse, just as our train was crawling out of a
suburban station, he sprang on to the platform and pulled me out after him.
“Excuse me, my dear fellow,” said he, as we watched the rear carriages of our
train disappearing round a curve; “I am sorry to make you the victim of what
may seem a mere whim, but on my life, Watson, I simply can’t leave that case in
this condition. Every instinct that I possess cries out against it. It’s wrong—it’s
all wrong—I’ll swear that it’s wrong. And yet the lady’s story was complete, the
maid’s corroboration was sufficient, the detail was fairly exact. What have I to
put up against that? Three wineglasses, that is all. But if I had not taken things
for granted, if I had examined everything with care which I should have shown
had we approached the case de novo23 and had no cut-and-dried story to warp
my mind, should I not then have found something more definite to go upon? Of
course I should. Sit down on this bench, Watson, until a train for Chislehurst
arrives, and allow me to lay the evidence before you, imploring you in the first
instance to dismiss from your mind the idea that anything which the maid or her
mistress may have said must necessarily be true. The lady’s charming
personality must not be permitted to warp our judgment.
“Surely there are details in her story which, if we looked at in cold blood,
would excite our suspicion. These burglars made a considerable haul at
Sydenham a fortnight ago. Some account of them and of their appearance was in
the papers, and would naturally occur to anyone who wished to invent a story in
which imaginary robbers should play a part. As a matter of fact, burglars who
have done a good stroke of business are, as a rule, only too glad to enjoy the
proceeds in peace and quiet without embarking on another perilous undertaking.
Again, it is unusual for burglars to operate at so early an hour; it is unusual for
burglars to strike a lady to prevent her screaming, since one would imagine that
was the sure way to make her scream; it is unusual for them to commit murder
when their numbers are sufficient to overpower one man; it is unusual for them
to be content with a limited plunder when there was much more within their
reach; and finally, I should say that it was very unusual for such men to leave a
bottle half empty.24 How do all these unusuals strike you, Watson?”
“Their cumulative effect is certainly considerable, and yet each of them is
quite possible in itself. The most unusual thing of all, as it seems to me, is that
the lady should be tied to the chair.”
“Well, I am not so clear about that, Watson, for it is evident that they must
either kill her or else secure her in such a way that she could not give immediate
notice of their escape. But at any rate I have shown, have I not, that there is a
certain element of improbability about the lady’s story? And now on the top of
this comes the incident of the wineglasses.”
“What about the wineglasses?”
“Can you see them in your mind’s eye?”
“I see them clearly.”
“We are told that three men drank from them. Does that strike you as likely?”
“Why not? There was wine in each glass.”
“Exactly; but there was beeswing only in one glass. You must have noticed
that fact. What does that suggest to your mind?”
“The last glass filled would be most likely to contain beeswing.”
“Not at all. The bottle was full of it, and it is inconceivable that the two
glasses were clear and the third heavily charged with it. There are two possible
explanations, and only two. One is that after the second glass was filled the
bottle was violently agitated, and so the third glass received the beeswing. That
does not appear probable. No, no, I am sure that I am right.”
“What, then, do you suppose?”
“That only two glasses were used, and that the dregs of both were poured into
a third glass, so as to give the false impression that three people had been here.
In that way all the beeswing would be in the last glass, would it not? Yes, I am
convinced that this is so. But if I have hit upon the true explanation of this one
small phenomenon, then in an instant the case rises from the commonplace to the
exceedingly remarkable, for it can only mean that Lady Brackenstall and her
maid have deliberately lied to us, that not one word of their story is to be
believed, that they have some very strong reason for covering the real criminal,
and that we must construct our case for ourselves without any help from them.
That is the mission which now lies before us, and here, Watson, is the
Chislehurst25 train.”
The household of the Abbey Grange were much surprised at our return, but
Sherlock Holmes, finding that Stanley Hopkins had gone off to report to
headquarters, took possession of the dining-room, locked the door upon the
inside, and devoted himself for two hours to one of those minute and laborious
investigations which form the solid basis on which his brilliant edifices of
deduction were reared. Seated in a corner like an interested student who
observes the demonstration of his professor, I followed every step of that
remarkable research. The window, the curtains, the carpet, the chair, the rope—
each in turn was minutely examined and duly pondered. The body of the
unfortunate baronet26 had been removed, and all else remained as we had seen it
in the morning. Then, to my astonishment, Holmes climbed up on to the massive
mantelpiece. Far above his head hung the few inches of red cord which were still
attached to the wire. For a long time he gazed upwards at it, and then in an
attempt to get nearer to it he rested his knee upon a wooden bracket on the wall.
This brought his hand within a few inches of the broken end of the rope; but it
was not this so much as the bracket itself which seemed to engage his attention.
Finally he sprang down with an ejaculation of satisfaction.
“It’s all right, Watson,” said he. “We have got our case—one of the most
remarkable in our collection. But, dear me, how slow-witted I have been, and
how nearly I have committed the blunder of my lifetime! Now, I think that with
a few missing links my chain is almost complete.”
“You have got your men?”
“Man, Watson, man. Only one, but a very formidable person. Strong as a lion
—witness the blow which bent that poker! Six foot three in height, active as a
squirrel, dexterous with his fingers; finally, remarkably quick-witted, for this
whole ingenious story is of his concoction. Yes, Watson, we have come upon the
handiwork of a very remarkable individual. And yet in that bell-rope he has
given us a clue which should not have left us a doubt.”
“Where was the clue?”
“Well, if you were to pull down a bell-rope, Watson, where would you expect
it to break? Surely at the spot where it is attached to the wire. Why should it
break three inches from the top, as this one has done?”
“Because it is frayed there?”
“Exactly. This end, which we can examine, is frayed. He was cunning enough
to do that with his knife. But the other end is not frayed. You could not observe
that from here, but if you were on the mantelpiece you would see that it is cut
clean off without any mark of fraying whatever. You can reconstruct what
occurred. The man needed the rope. He would not tear it down for fear of giving
the alarm by ringing the bell. What did he do? He sprang up on the mantelpiece,
could not quite reach it, put his knee on the bracket—you will see the impression
in the dust—and so got his knife to bear upon the cord. I could not reach the
place by at least three inches, from which I infer that he is at least three inches a
bigger man than I. Look at that mark upon the seat of the oaken chair! What is
it?”
“Look at that mark on the seat of the oaken chair.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Blood.”
“Undoubtedly it is blood. This alone puts the lady’s story out of court. If she
were seated on the chair when the crime was done, how comes that mark? No,
no, she was placed in the chair after the death of her husband. I’ll wager that the
black dress shows a corresponding mark to this. We have not yet met our
Waterloo, Watson, but this is our Marengo, for it begins in defeat and ends in
victory.27 I should like now to have a few words with the nurse Theresa. We
must be wary for a while, if we are to get the information which we want.”
She was an interesting person, this stern Australian nurse. Taciturn,
suspicious, ungracious, it took some time before Holmes’s pleasant manner and
frank acceptance of all that she said thawed her into a corresponding amiability.
She did not attempt to conceal her hatred for her late employer.
“Yes, sir, it is true that he threw the decanter at me. I heard him call my
mistress a name, and I told him that he would not dare to speak so if her brother
had been there. Then it was that he threw it at me. He might have thrown a
dozen if he had but left my bonny bird alone. He was forever ill-treating her, and
she was too proud to complain. She will not even tell me all that he has done to
her. She never told me of those marks on her arm that you saw this morning, but
I know very well that they come from a stab with a hat-pin. The sly fiend—
Heaven forgive me that I should speak of him so, now that he is dead, but a fiend
he was, if ever one walked the earth. He was all honey when first we met him,
only eighteen months ago, and we both feel as if it were eighteen years. She had
only just arrived in London. Yes, it was her first voyage—she had never been
from home before. He won her with his title and his money and his false London
ways. If she made a mistake she has paid for it, if ever a woman did. What
month did we meet him? Well, I tell you it was just after we arrived. We arrived
in June, and it was July. They were married in January of last year. Yes, she is
down in the morning-room again, and I have no doubt she will see you, but you
must not ask too much of her, for she has gone through all that flesh and blood
will stand.”
Lady Brackenstall was reclining on the same couch, but looked brighter than
before. The maid had entered with us, and began once more to foment28 the
bruise upon her mistress’s brow.
“I hope,” said the lady, “that you have not come to cross-examine me again?”
“No,” Holmes answered, in his gentlest voice, “I will not cause you any
unnecessary trouble, Lady Brackenstall, and my whole desire is to make things
easy for you, for I am convinced that you are a much-tried woman. If you will
treat me as a friend and trust me, you may find that I will justify your trust.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“To tell me the truth.”
“Mr. Holmes!”
“No, no, Lady Brackenstall, it is no use. You may have heard of any little
reputation which I possess. I will stake it all on the fact that your story is an
absolute fabrication.”
Mistress and maid were both staring at Holmes with pale faces and frightened
eyes.
“You are an impudent fellow!” cried Theresa. “Do you mean to say that my
mistress has told a lie?”
Holmes rose from his chair.
“Have you nothing to tell me?”
“I have told you everything.”
“Think once more, Lady Brackenstall. Would it not be better to be frank?”
For an instant there was hesitation in her beautiful face. Then some new
strong thought caused it to set like a mask.
“I have told you all I know.”
Holmes took his hat and shrugged his shoulders. “I am sorry,” he said, and
without another word we left the room and the house. There was a pond in the
park, and to this my friend led the way. It was frozen over, but a single hole was
left for the convenience of a solitary swan. Holmes gazed at it, and then passed
on to the lodge gate. There he scribbled a short note for Stanley Hopkins, and
left it with the lodge-keeper.
“It may be a hit, or it may be a miss, but we are bound to do something for
friend Hopkins, just to justify this second visit,” said he. “I will not quite take
him into my confidence yet. I think our next scene of operations must be the
shipping office of the Adelaide-Southampton line, which stands at the end of
Pall Mall, if I remember right. There is a second line of steamers which connect
South Australia with England, but we will draw the larger cover29 first.”
Holmes’s card sent in to the manager ensured instant attention, and he was not
long in acquiring all the information which he needed. In June of ’95, only one
of their line had reached a home port. It was the Rock of Gibraltar, their largest
and best boat. A reference to the passenger list showed that Miss Fraser of
Adelaide, with her maid, had made the voyage in her. The boat was now on her
way to Australia, somewhere to the south of the Suez Canal. Her officers were
the same as in ’95, with one exception. The first officer, Mr. Jack Croker,30 had
been made a captain and was to take charge of their new ship, the Bass Rock,
sailing in two days’ time from Southampton. He lived at Sydenham, but he was
likely to be in that morning for instructions, if we cared to wait for him.
“Holmes gazed at it and then passed on.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
No; Mr. Holmes had no desire to see him, but would be glad to know more
about his record and character.
His record was magnificent. There was not an officer in the fleet to touch him.
As to his character, he was reliable on duty, but a wild, desperate fellow off the
deck of his ship, hot-headed, excitable, but loyal, honest, and kind-hearted. That
was the pith of the information with which Holmes left the office of the
Adelaide-Southampton Company. Thence he drove to Scotland Yard, but,
instead of entering, he sat in his cab with his brows drawn down, lost in
profound thought. Finally he drove round to the Charing Cross telegraph office,
sent off a message, and then, at last, we made for Baker Street once more.
“No, I couldn’t do it, Watson,” said he, as we reentered our room. “Once that
warrant was made out, nothing on earth would save him. Once or twice in my
career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal
than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather
play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience. Let us know a
little more before we act.”
Before evening, we had a visit from Inspector Stanley Hopkins. Things were
not going very well with him.
“I believe that you are a wizard, Mr. Holmes. I really do sometimes think that
you have powers that are not human. Now, how on earth could you know that
the stolen silver was at the bottom of that pond?”
“I didn’t know it.”
“But you told me to examine it.”
“You got it, then?”
“Yes I got it.”
“I am very glad if I have helped you.”
“But you haven’t helped me. You have made the affair far more difficult.
What sort of burglars are they who steal silver and then throw it into the nearest
pond?”
“It was certainly rather eccentric behaviour. I was merely going on the idea
that if the silver had been taken by persons who did not want it, who merely took
it for a blind, as it were, then they would naturally be anxious to get rid of it.”
“But why should such an idea cross your mind?”
“Well, I thought it was possible. When they came out through the French
window, there was the pond, with one tempting little hole in the ice, right in
front of their noses. Could there be a better hiding-place?”
“Ah, a hiding-place—that is better!” cried Stanley Hopkins. “Yes, yes, I see it
all now! It was early, there were folk upon the roads, they were afraid of being
seen with the silver, so they sank it in the pond, intending to return for it when
the coast was clear. Excellent, Mr. Holmes—that is better than your idea of a
blind.”
“Quite so; you have got an admirable theory. I have no doubt that my own
ideas were quite wild, but you must admit that they have ended in discovering
the silver.”
“Yes, sir; yes. It was all your doing. But I have had a bad set-back.”
“A set-back?”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes. The Randall gang were arrested in New York this
morning.”
“Dear me, Hopkins. That is certainly rather against your theory that they
committed a murder in Kent last night.”
“It is fatal, Mr. Holmes, absolutely fatal. Still, there are other gangs of three
besides the Randalls, or it may be some new gang of which the police have never
heard.”
“Quite so, it is perfectly possible. What, are you off?”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes; there is no rest for me until I have got to the bottom of the
business. I suppose you have no hint to give me?”
“I have given you one.”
“Which?”
“Well, I suggested a blind.”
“But why, Mr. Holmes, why?”
“Ah, that’s the question, of course. But I commend the idea to your mind. You
might possibly find that there was something in it. You won’t stop for dinner?
Well, good-bye, and let us know how you get on.”
Dinner was over, and the table cleared before Holmes alluded to the matter
again. He had lit his pipe and held his slippered feet to the cheerful blaze of the
fire. Suddenly he looked at his watch.
“I expect developments, Watson.”
“When?”
“Now—within a few minutes. I dare say you thought I acted rather badly to
Stanley Hopkins just now?”
“I trust your judgment.”
“A very sensible reply, Watson. You must look at it this way: what I know is
unofficial; what he knows is official. I have the right to private judgment, but he
has none. He must disclose all, or he is a traitor to his service. In a doubtful case
I would not put him in so painful a position, and so I reserve my information
until my own mind is clear upon the matter.”
“But when will that be?”
“The time has come. You will now be present at the last scene of a remarkable
little drama.”
There was a sound upon the stairs, and our door was opened to admit as fine a
specimen of manhood as ever passed through it. He was a very tall young man,
golden-moustached, blue-eyed, with a skin which had been burned by tropical
suns, and a springy step which showed that the huge frame was as active as it
was strong. He closed the door behind him, and then he stood with clenched
hands and heaving breast, choking down some overmastering emotion.
“Sit down, Captain Croker. You got my telegram?”
Our visitor sank into an arm-chair and looked from one to the other of us with
questioning eyes.
“I got your telegram, and I came at the hour you said. I heard that you had
been down to the office. There was no getting away from you. Let’s hear the
worst. What are you going to do with me? Arrest me? Speak out, man! You
can’t sit there and play with me like a cat with a mouse.”
“The door was opened to admit as fine a specimen of
manhood as ever passed through it.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
He stood with clenched hands and heaving breast.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1904
“Give him a cigar,” said Holmes. “Bite on that, Captain Croker, and don’t let
your nerves run away with you. I should not sit here smoking with you if I
thought that you were a common criminal, you may be sure of that. Be frank
with me, and we may do some good. Play tricks with me, and I’ll crush you.”
“What do you wish me to do?”
“To give me a true account of all that happened at the Abbey Grange last
night—a true account, mind you, with nothing added and nothing taken off. I
know so much already that if you go one inch off the straight, I’ll blow this
police whistle from my window and the affair goes out of my hands forever.”
The sailor thought for a little. Then he struck his leg with his great sunburned
hand.
“I’ll chance it,” he cried. “I believe you are a man of your word, and a white
man,31 and I’ll tell you the whole story. But one thing I will say first. So far as I
am concerned, I regret nothing and I fear nothing, and I would do it all again and
be proud of the job. Curse the beast, if he had as many lives as a cat, he would
owe them all to me! But it’s the lady, Mary—Mary Fraser—for never will I call
her by that accursed name. When I think of getting her into trouble, I who would
give my life just to bring one smile to her dear face, it’s that that turns my soul
into water. And yet—and yet—what less could I do? I’ll tell you my story,
gentlemen, and then I’ll ask you, as man to man, what less could I do?
“I must go back a bit. You seem to know everything, so I expect that you
know that I met her when she was a passenger and I was first officer of the Rock
of Gibraltar. From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every
day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down
in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I
knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as
fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all
love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we
parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.
“Next time I came back from sea, I heard of her marriage. Well, why
shouldn’t she marry whom she liked? Title and money—who could carry them
better than she? She was born for all that is beautiful and dainty. I didn’t grieve
over her marriage. I was not such a selfish hound as that. I just rejoiced that good
luck had come her way, and that she had not thrown herself away on a penniless
sailor.32 That’s how I loved Mary Fraser.
“Well, I never thought to see her again, but last voyage I was promoted, and
the new boat was not yet launched, so I had to wait for a couple of months with
my people at Sydenham. One day out in a country lane I met Theresa Wright,
her old maid. She told me all about her, about him, about everything. I tell you,
gentlemen, it nearly drove me mad. This drunken hound, that he should dare to
raise his hand to her whose boots he was not worthy to lick! I met Theresa again.
Then I met Mary herself—and met her again. Then she would meet me no more.
But the other day I had a notice that I was to start on my voyage within a week,
and I determined that I would see her once before I left. Theresa was always my
friend, for she loved Mary and hated this villain almost as much as I did. From
her I learned the ways of the house. Mary used to sit up reading in her own little
room downstairs. I crept round there last night and scratched at the window. At
first she would not open to me, but in her heart I know that now she loves me,
and she could not leave me in the frosty night. She whispered to me to come
round to the big front window, and I found it open before me, so as to let me into
the dining-room. Again I heard from her own lips things that made my blood
boil, and again I cursed this brute who mishandled the woman I loved. Well,
gentlemen, I was standing with her just inside the window, in all innocence, as
Heaven is my judge, when he rushed like a madman into the room, called her the
vilest name that a man could use to a woman,33 and welted her across the face
with the stick he had in his hand. I had sprung for the poker, and it was a fair
fight between us. See here on my arm where his first blow fell. Then it was my
turn, and I went through him as if he had been a rotten pumpkin. Do you think I
was sorry? Not I! It was his life or mine; but far more than that, it was his life or
hers, for how could I leave her in the power of this madman? That was how I
killed him. Was I wrong? Well, then, what would either of you gentlemen have
done if you had been in my position?
“She had screamed when he struck her, and that brought old Theresa down
from the room above. There was a bottle of wine on the sideboard, and I opened
it and poured a little between Mary’s lips, for she was half dead with shock.
Then I took a drop myself.34 Theresa was as cool as ice, and it was her plot as
much as mine. We must make it appear that burglars had done the thing. Theresa
kept on repeating our story to her mistress, while I swarmed up and cut the rope
of the bell. Then I lashed her in her chair, and frayed out the end of the rope to
make it look natural, else they would wonder how in the world a burglar could
have got up there to cut it. Then I gathered up a few plates and pots of silver, to
carry out the idea of the robbery, and there I left them, with orders to give the
alarm when I had a quarter of an hour’s start. I dropped the silver into the pond
and made off for Sydenham, feeling that for once in my life I had done a real
good night’s work. And that’s the truth and the whole truth, Mr. Holmes, if it
costs me my neck.”
Holmes smoked for some time in silence. Then he crossed the room and shook
our visitor by the hand.
“That’s what I think,” said he. “I know that every word is true, for you have
hardly said a word which I did not know. No one but an acrobat or a sailor could
have got up to that bell-rope from the bracket, and no one but a sailor could have
made the knots with which the cord was fastened to the chair. Only once had this
lady been brought into contact with sailors, and that was on her voyage, and it
was someone of her own class of life, since she was trying hard to shield him,
and so showing that she loved him. You see how easy it was for me to lay my
hands upon you when once I had started upon the right trail.”
“I thought the police never could have seen through our dodge.”
“And the police haven’t; nor will they, to the best of my belief. Now, look
here, Captain Croker, this is a very serious matter, though I am willing to admit
that you acted under the most extreme provocation to which any man could be
subjected. I am not sure that in defence of your own life your action will not be
pronounced legitimate. However, that is for a British jury to decide. Meanwhile I
have so much sympathy for you that if you choose to disappear in the next
twenty-four hours I will promise you that no one will hinder you.”
“And then it will all come out?”
“Certainly it will come out.”
The sailor flushed with anger.
“What sort of proposal is that to make a man? I know enough of law to
understand that Mary would be had as accomplice. Do you think I would leave
her alone to face the music while I slunk away? No, sir; let them do their worst
upon me, but for Heaven’s sake, Mr. Holmes, find some way of keeping my
poor Mary out of the courts.”
Holmes for the second time held out his hand to the sailor.
“I was only testing you, and you ring true every time. Well, it is a great
responsibility that I take upon myself, but I have given Hopkins an excellent
hint, and if he can’t avail himself of it I can do no more. See here, Captain
Croker, we’ll do this in due form of law. You are the prisoner. Watson, you are a
British jury, and I never met a man who was more eminently fitted to represent
one. I am the judge. Now, gentleman of the jury, you have heard the evidence.
Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”
“Not guilty, my lord,” said I.
“Vox populi, vox Dei.35 You are acquitted, Captain Croker. So long as the law
does not find some other victim you are safe from me. Come back to this lady in
a year, and may her future and yours justify us in the judgment which we have
pronounced this night!”36
“The Abbey Grange” was published in the Strand
Magazine in September 1904 and in Collier’s Weekly on
December 31, 1904.
1
The manuscript of “The Abbey Grange” is owned by
the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Cologny/Geneva. Both the
manuscript and the Collier’s Weekly appearance have the
opening line as: “It was a bitterly cold and frosty morning
towards the end of ’97,” which would place the story in
December 1897, as compared to “the end of the winter of
2
’97,” which most chronologists take to mean January
1897.
Holmes, drawing on his knowledge of Shakespeare
(learnt, some suggest, in the course of a brief acting
career), paraphrases The First Part of Henry the Fourth,
Act I, Scene 3: “Before the game’s a-foot . . .” and The
Life of Henry the Fifth, Act III, Scene 1: “The game’s
afoot!” Despite the public identification of the phrase
with Holmes, he is not recorded as uttering it in any other
context; Watson himself uses the phrase once, in
“Wisteria Lodge.” It is therefore one degree more
respectable than the popular “Elementary, my dear
Watson,” which appears nowhere in the Canon.
3
4
“Chislehurst” in the manuscript.
Abbey Wood is a hamlet near Chislehurst, eleven miles
from London. “Marsham” is the name of a village in
Norfolk.
5
Holmes also worked with Hopkins in “The Golden
Pince-Nez,” “Black Peter,” and “The Missing ThreeQuarter,” none of which had yet seen print in 1897. What
were the other three or four cases?
6
“The Blanched Soldier” and “The Lion’s Mane,” both
written by Holmes, were first published in 1926. In both,
Holmes acknowledges that his “plain way” of writing
7
will not have the reader-appeal of Watson’s work.
Michael Harrison suggests that “Marsham, Kent” may
reasonably be identified with the town of St. Mary Cray.
In In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, he writes: “Most
of the old houses in this once most select of all London’s
suburbs remain: turned . . . into golf-clubs, or hospitals or
schools or lunatic asylums . . . if ‘Abbey Grange’ . . . still
survives, it will no longer be in private occupation.”
8
Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) was an Italian
Renaissance architect celebrated for his palaces and
villas, most notably the Villa Rotonda near Vicenza.
Combining a classic Roman style with principles of
simplicity and order, Palladio favored temple-like arches
and columns; strict symmetry (a central hall surrounded
by smaller rooms, for example) governed the interiors of
his structures. In the eighteenth century Palladio’s style
was widely imitated in England, Italy, and the United
States. His influence may be seen in the façade of
Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, completed in 1809.
Palladio’s most famous published work is I quattro libri
dell’architectura (1570, translated as The Four Books of
Architecture in 1716), a landmark study of classical
architecture.
9
10
“Heppenstall” in the manuscript.
11
Curiously, “to-night” in the American editions.
What Lady Brackenstall likely refers to here is the
1857 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act, which laid
out provisions by which men and women could divorce
and created a civil court to handle such matters. (Prior to
passage of the bill, anyone seeking a divorce had to do so
through the Church of England, in a process that
essentially entailed men suing their wives for adultery.)
While the new law purported to afford more rights to
women, historian Simon Schama reveals that “it was not
what it seemed. Enacted specifically to pre-empt a
measure that would have given married women property
rights, this piece of legislation perpetuated, rather than
corrected, the inequities between the sexes.” A man was
now allowed to file for divorce on grounds of adultery,
whereas a woman could do so only if her husband’s
adultery also involved rape, sodomy, incest, bestiality,
physical cruelty, or two years’ desertion. In addition, the
cost of getting a divorce was well beyond the means of
most Victorian women. Sir Eustace’s being a drunken,
abusive lout would never have earned his wife a hearing
in court; certainly, today’s complaints of irreconcilable
differences or emotional cruelty were a long way off. As
Schama writes, “The notion that a divorce action might
be brought . . . for mere incompatibility remained the
most fantastic prospect.” See “A Case of Identity” for
12
more on the property rights (or lack thereof) of married
women in the Victorian age.
The editor of the American edition makes a number of
changes in phraseology in the story, coarsening the
dialogue, perhaps in an effort to appeal to what the editor
perceived to be a less-refined readership. Here the word
“God” is substituted for “Heaven;” elsewhere, “devil”
replaces “fiend,” and “curse” replaces “damn.”
13
“Nightshirt” in the American edition. There is specific
reference later to Brackenstall’s nightshirt, and the
American editor apparently did not want the readers
confused by the use of this British colloquialism.
14
A “cudgel” is a weapon of punishment—why, one may
ask, did Sir Eustace have a “favourite” (implying more
than one)? Perhaps Lady Brackenstall meant that when he
felt threatened, he favoured a cudgel rather than a poker
or other object with which to defend himself.
15
16
“One of” is omitted in American editions.
“One of the younger ones” in the manuscript. Note
that, a few sentences before, Lady Brackenstall refers to
“a broad-shouldered elderly man.” Why would she here
say “an” elderly man, not “the” elderly man? In other
words, the manuscript record is more likely to be
accurate. Did Watson go back and deliberately introduce
17
inconsistencies in her account after the truth was known,
as hints?
18
Curiously changed to “with” in American editions.
Dishes, cups, or other household articles covered in
precious metals such as silver or gold.
19
Beeswing is a translucent, flaky film found in older
wines, particularly those, such as port, that are bottleaged for many years. The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
provides that “A port drinker is very particular not to
‘break the beeswing’ by shaking the bottle, or turning it
the wrong way up.”
20
What was the wine? The most important clue is the
presence of the beeswing, which generally manifests
itself in crusted port, a rare and costly wine. But there are
other telling signs: (a) The wine had been left on the
sideboard after dinner, suggesting that it was not drunk
with dinner but perhaps was intended for later drinking.
This confirms that the wine was an “after-dinner” wine
such as port. (b) Sir Eustace was “one of the richest men
in Kent,” according to Hopkins. His life style was more
nouveau riche than that of the landed gentry, and he
made a show of his wealth, using monogrammed paper,
displaying a coat-of-arms, and sporting a “foppish”
nightshirt. Thus, despite the fact that he was a “confirmed
21
drunkard” and probably no longer particular about his
own source of intoxication, for the sake of appearances
he would have stocked his wine cellar with the showiest,
most expensive wines available. This suggests a bottle
from the 1834 vintage, “one of the most renowned of the
mid-19th century,” according to Michael Broadbent’s
The New Great Vintage Wine Book. The “giant of the
vintage” was Kopke’s Quinta do Roriz. Although this
type of port is no longer in existence, Nicholas Utechin
verifies, in “Some Remarkable Wines,” that it was sold
by Harrod’s in 1895 for £60 a dozen. Of course, there can
be no certainty with such scant evidence, but the 1834
Kopke’s Quinta do Roriz does seem a likely candidate for
the sideboard.
In the late 1880s, the Swiss army decided that its
soldiers would be best served if several of their necessary
implements were combined into one pocket knife. Such a
knife would require a screwdriver (with which the
soldier’s rifle could be disassembled), a can opener, a
utensil with which holes could be bored, and, of course, a
blade. This design evolved into pocket knives for the
general public with a wide variety of tools incorporated.
Harrod’s 1895 catalogue, for example, illustrates six
different types of pocket knives that include a corkscrew.
22
Latin: anew, afresh. A trial de novo is one at which
none of the evidence or rulings from any previous trial is
23
automatically placed before the judge.
Note that the level of the contents of the bottle changes
without any explanation by Dr. Watson. When previously
observed, the Doctor records that the bottle is “two-thirds
full.” Perhaps Holmes poured some wine off to conduct
an actual experiment, instead of simply imagining the
result. William R. Cochran, in “The Magic Wine Bottle,”
suggests that Holmes and Watson drank the missing
beverage.
24
25
American editions inexplicably have “Sydenham.”
Ranking below barons, baronets are given precedence
over most knights, various companions, and various
descendants of the younger sons of peers. As a baronet,
Brackenstall would be formally addressed as “Sir Eustace
Brackenstall, Bt.” (or the fuller abbreviation “Bart,” now
considered old-fashioned). His wife would be known as
“Your Ladyship” and addressed, as Holmes and Watson
have done properly, as “Lady Brackenstall,” her Christian
name being dropped. Only the daughter of a duke,
marquis, or earl would retain her Christian name in the
formal address. See, for example, Lady Hilda Trelawney
Hope, the youngest daughter of the Duke of Belminster
(“The Second Stain”).
Note that a mere knight would also be referred to as
“Sir Eustace . . .” and his wife as “Lady Brackenstall.”
26
However, a baronetage was hereditary, while a
knighthood was not. Even if Watson did not actually
know that Brackenstall was a baronet, his evident lack of
merits strongly implies that his title was an hereditary
honour, rather than earned. Of course, it is unthinkable
that Watson would refer to someone as a baronet who
was not.
The Battle of Marengo—a major engagement in the
French Revolutionary Wars—was fought on June 14,
1800, between the French, commanded by Napoleon
Bonaparte, and the Austrians, led by General Michael
Friedrich von Melas. Having miscalculated where Melas
was, Napoleon came upon the village of Marengo in
Piedmont, northern Italy, with his forces scattered and
unprepared for combat. Melas’s surprise attack drove the
French four miles backward, spelling certain victory for
the Austrians. But here the overconfident Melas made an
error, handing over command to a subordinate officer and
departing for Alessandria. In a matter of hours, a French
division headed by General Louis Desaix returned to
launch a vicious counterattack, turning the tide and
sending the Austrians into retreat. Napoleon later came to
regard the Battle of Marengo as the most brilliant victory
of his career, despite the fact that he was only very
narrowly saved from defeat.
“Chicken Marengo,” a traditional Provençal dish, is
27
popularly supposed to have been invented for Napoleon
after the battle. Reportedly, foragers were only able to
find chicken, tomatoes, eggs, crayfish, garlic, olive oil,
and cognac, as well as the soldiers’ bread, and the dish
was cobbled together with the ingredients on hand.
Napoleon is said to have so liked the dish (or was so
superstitious) that he ordered that it be prepared after
every succeeding battle.
To apply hot, moist cloths to the body; to treat with a
poultice or warm medicinal compress.
28
A shooting metaphor, meaning to draw the fox from its
covert or temporary lair. When the animal “breaks
cover,” the hunt begins.
29
30
“Crocker” in the American editions.
Subtly racist, drawn from U.S. slang, the phrase meant
“honest.” The Oxford English Dictionary records its first
usage in English writing in 1883.
31
Despite Croker’s adoring portrait of her, some
commentators suggest tartly that Mary Fraser of
Adelaide, in throwing aside a man who truly loved her,
got only what she deserved in marrying Sir Eustace. John
Hall, for instance, in Sidelights on Holmes, sees her as
little more than a social climber, commenting that “Miss
Fraser evidently agreed with [Croker’s] view, and the
32
title and money outweighed Sir Eustace’s manifest
defects.” Conversely, drawing only upon her character as
evidence (and in flat contrast to Theresa Wright’s
statement that Sir Eustace’s “title and his money”
attracted Mary), David Brown comes to the unique
conclusion that Mary herself was a wealthy woman and
that Sir Eustace married her for her money. Others
propose that Holmes was in fact taken in by Mary Fraser,
who married Sir Eustace Brackenstall for his money and
plotted to use Captain Croker to kill her new husband.
John Hall makes the case that that name was “bitch,”
and grants that even a person of delicate sensibilities
“could not really blame Sir Eustace for the stray naughty
word, considering that he had come down from his lonely
bedroom to find his wife entertaining a jolly sailor in his
ancestral dining-room.”
33
Holmes earlier reached the conclusion that, because
two glasses of wine were clear of beeswing and one was
full of it, “only two glasses were used, and that the dregs
of both were poured into a third glass, so as to give the
false impression that three people had been here.” With
Captain Croker’s explanation, it becomes evident that
Holmes’s conclusion was indeed correct, although one of
the glasses likely still had a trace of beeswing. Yet his
reasoning was actually incorrect. A little further thought
would have shown Holmes that the beeswing would be
34
heaviest not in the third glass, but in the first glass poured
—that is, the one offered to Lady Brackenstall—and that
only one glass would be clear of the sediment altogether.
Captain Croker never says that a third glass was
poured as part of the plan. In fact, Theresa Wright, who
was as “cool as ice,” could well have used a glass herself!
At any rate, Holmes appears to be accurate in assuming
that the plotters decided to fill a third glass for
appearances. The ensuing situation is where Holmes’s
thinking goes slightly awry. Instead of the third glass,
filled partly from each of the other two, having the most
sediment, it would contain the least, being poured from
the top portion of the wine in each glass. Lady
Brackenstall’s glass would likely be the fullest, with only
“a little [poured] between [her] lips,” while Captain
Croker’s would have been vigorously drunk. The third
glass would have been filled, then, by pouring off wine
from Lady Brackenstall’s glass into an empty third glass.
Because her glass would have sat the longest, the
sediment would have settled to the greatest extent in her
glass.
A simple experiment conducted by this editor
demonstrates the result: one glass nearly clear of
sediment, one glass with a moderate amount (Captain
Croker’s glass), and one glass heavily charged with
sediment (the remains of Lady Brackenstall’s original
glass). So, while Holmes reached the right conclusion—
namely, that there was something wrong with the amount
of beeswing in each glass—he certainly explained his
reasoning incorrectly. Perhaps this was simply an insight
produced by his “special knowledge and special powers.”
“The voice of the people is the voice of God,” a
proverb attributed to William of Malmesbury in the
twelfth century. Legal scholars credit the growth of the
jury as an institution in the Middle Ages to its rôle in
ameliorating the “divine” justice dispensed by the royal
court.
35
“The Abbey Grange” was first published in 1904, and
the events of the case were said by Watson to have
occurred “towards the end of the winter of ’97.” D.
Martin Dakin asks, “[H]ow could Watson have been
authorised to let the cat out of the bag less than seven
years later? Would it not make Croker liable to instant
arrest, not to mention Lady Brackenstall and the maid?
Possibly even Holmes himself as an accessory after?”
The only solution, as far as Dakin sees it, is that Croker
and the former Lady Brackenstall (now, presumably,
Mrs. Croker) had died in the intervening seven years,
thus releasing Watson to write his tale. Still, publication
of “The Abbey Grange” would surely have upset Hopkins
once he realised how Holmes had kept him in the dark—
unless, Dakin suggests hopefully, Hopkins realised that
Holmes’s motives were pure, and that he had wished to
36
spare Hopkins the unpleasantness of arresting and trying
a man as decent as Croker.
Notwithstanding that the case was not published by
Watson until 1904, the facts were apparently made
known by him to his literary agent, Dr. Arthur Conan
Doyle, who, in March 1899, published in the Strand
Magazine a remarkably similar tale entitled “B.24” (later
republished in Conan Doyle’s Round the Fire Stories),
involving a beautiful woman who murders her sadistic
husband and arranges for a burglar to be hanged for it.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN1
In “The Naval Treaty,” Dr. Watson mentions “The Adventure of the
Second Stain” as a case involving “interests of such importance and
implicat[ing] so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many
years it will be impossible to make it public.” That case is definitely
not this case. (For one thing, one may search in vain for mention of
Fritz von Waldbaum or Monsieur Dubuque.) Yet this “Second Stain”
is also a case of great international importance and one of the few
reported matters to involve Holmes with political crimes, the others
being “The Naval Treaty” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans.” The
events that take place are reminiscent of those in Edgar Allan Poe’s
“Purloined Letter,” and it becomes clear that Holmes—who, in A
Study in Scarlet, decries C. Auguste Dupin, the detective of the
“Purloined Letter,” as “a very inferior fellow”—is not above copying
the tactics of the era’s other famous detective. “The Second Stain” is
also noteworthy as the last case reported by Watson before his
announcement of Holmes’s retirement. The news of Holmes’s
retirement closed the series of stories known as The Return of
Sherlock Holmes, and the public had to wait until 1908 for any further
tales of the detective.
I HAD INTENDED the “Adventure of the Abbey Grange” to be the last of those
exploits of my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, which I should ever communicate
to the public.2 This resolution of mine was not due to any lack of material, since
I have notes of many hundreds of cases to which I have never alluded, nor was it
caused by any waning interest on the part of my readers in the singular
personality and unique methods of this remarkable man. The real reason lay in
the reluctance which Mr. Holmes has shown to the continued publication of his
experiences. So long as he was in actual professional practice the records of his
successes were of some practical value to him;3 but since he has definitely
retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex
Downs,4 notoriety has become hateful to him, and he has peremptorily requested
that his wishes in this matter should be strictly observed.5 It was only upon my
representing to him that I had given a promise that the “Adventure of the Second
Stain” should be published when the times were ripe, and pointed out to him that
it is only appropriate that this long series of episodes should culminate in the
most important international case which he has ever been called upon to handle,6
that I at last succeeded in obtaining his consent that a carefully guarded account
of the incident should at last be laid before the public. If in telling the story I
seem to be somewhat vague in certain details, the public will readily understand
that there is an excellent reason for my reticence.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1905
It was, then, in a year, and even in a decade, that shall be nameless, that upon
one Tuesday morning in autumn we found two visitors of European fame within
the walls of our humble room in Baker Street. The one, austere, high-nosed,
eagle-eyed, and dominant, was none other than the illustrious Lord Bellinger,7
twice Premier of Britain. The other, dark, clear-cut, and elegant, hardly yet of
middle age, and endowed with every beauty of body and of mind, was the Right
Honourable Trelawney Hope, Secretary for European Affairs, and the most
rising statesman in the country. They sat side by side upon our paper-littered
settee, and it was easy to see from their worn and anxious faces that it was
business of the most pressing importance which had brought them. The
Premier’s thin, blue-veined hands were clasped tightly over the ivory head of his
umbrella, and his gaunt, ascetic face looked gloomily from Holmes to me. The
European Secretary pulled nervously at his moustache8 and fidgeted with the
seals of his watch-chain.
“When I discovered my loss, Mr. Holmes, which was at eight o’clock this
morning, I at once informed the Prime Minister. It was at his suggestion that we
have both come to you.”
“Have you informed the police?”
“No, sir,” said the Prime Minister, with the quick, decisive manner for which
he was famous.
“We have not done so, nor is it possible that we should do so. To inform the
police must, in the long run, mean to inform the public. This is what we
particularly desire to avoid.”
“And why, sir?”
“They sat side by side.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Because the document in question is of such immense importance that its
publication might very easily—I might almost say probably—lead to European
complications of the utmost moment. It is not too much to say that peace or war
may hang upon the issue. Unless its recovery can be attended with the utmost
secrecy, then it may as well not be recovered at all, for all that is aimed at by
those who have taken it is that its contents should be generally known.”
“I understand. Now, Mr. Trelawney Hope, I should be much obliged if you
would tell me exactly the circumstances under which this document
disappeared.”
“That can be done in a very few words, Mr. Holmes. The letter—for it was a
letter from a foreign potentate—was received six days ago. It was of such
importance that I have never left it in my safe, but I have taken it across each
evening to my house in Whitehall Terrace, and kept it in my bedroom in a
locked despatch-box. It was there last night. Of that I am certain. I actually
opened the box while I was dressing for dinner and saw the document inside.
This morning it was gone. The despatch-box had stood beside the glass upon my
dressing-table all night. I am a light sleeper, and so is my wife. We are both
prepared to swear that no one could have entered the room during the night. And
yet I repeat that the paper is gone.”
“What time did you dine?”
“Half-past seven.”
“How long was it before you went to bed?”
“My wife had gone to the theatre. I waited up for her. It was half-past eleven
before we went to our room.”
“Then for four hours the despatch-box had lain unguarded?”
“No one is ever permitted to enter that room save the house-maid in the
morning, and my valet, or my wife’s maid, during the rest of the day. They are
both trusty servants who have been with us for some time. Besides, neither of
them could possibly have known that there was anything more valuable than the
ordinary departmental papers in my despatch-box.”
“Who did know of the existence of that letter?”
“No one in the house.”
“Surely your wife knew?”
“No, sir; I had said nothing to my wife until I missed the paper this morning.”9
The Premier nodded approvingly.
“I have long known, sir, how high is your sense of public duty,” said he. “I am
convinced that in the case of a secret of this importance it would rise superior to
the most intimate domestic ties.”
The European Secretary bowed.
“You do me no more than justice, sir. Until this morning I have never
breathed one word to my wife upon this matter.”
“Could she have guessed?”
“No, Mr. Holmes, she could not have guessed—nor could anyone have
guessed.”
“Have you lost any documents before?”
“No, sir.”
“Who is there in England who did know of the existence of this letter?”
“Each member of the Cabinet was informed of it yesterday; but the pledge of
secrecy which attends every Cabinet meeting was increased by the solemn
warning which was given by the Prime Minister. Good heavens, to think that
within a few hours I should myself have lost it!” His handsome face was
distorted with a spasm of despair, and his hands tore at his hair. For a moment
we caught a glimpse of the natural man—impulsive, ardent, keenly sensitive.
The next the aristocratic mask was replaced, and the gentle voice had returned.
“Besides the members of the Cabinet there are two, or possibly three,
departmental officials who know of the letter. No one else in England, Mr.
Holmes, I assure you.”
“But abroad?”
“I believe that no one abroad has seen it save the man who wrote it. I am well
convinced that his Ministers—that the usual official channels have not been
employed.”
Holmes considered for some little time.
“Now, sir, I must ask you more particularly what this document is, and why
its disappearance should have such momentous consequences?”
The two statesmen exchanged a quick glance, and the Premier’s shaggy
eyebrows gathered in a frown.
“Mr. Holmes, the envelope is a long, thin one of pale blue colour. There is a
seal of red wax stamped with a crouching lion. It is addressed in large, bold
handwriting to—”
“I fear, sir,” said Holmes, “that, interesting and indeed essential as these
details are, my inquiries must go more to the root of things. What was the
letter?”
“That is a State secret of the utmost importance, and I fear that I cannot tell
you, nor do I see that it is necessary. If by the aid of the powers which you are
said to possess you can find such an envelope as I describe with its enclosure,
you will have deserved well of your country, and earned any reward which it lies
in our power to bestow.”
Sherlock Holmes rose with a smile.
“You are two of the most busy men in the country,” said he, “and in my own
small way I have also a good many calls upon me. I regret exceedingly that I
cannot help you in this matter, and any continuation of this interview would be a
waste of time.”
The Premier sprang to his feet with that quick, fierce gleam of his deep-set
eyes before which a Cabinet had cowered. “I am not accustomed—” he began,
but mastered his anger and resumed his seat. For a minute or more we all sat in
silence. Then the old statesman shrugged his shoulders.
“The Premier sprang to his feet.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“We must accept your terms, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right, and it is
unreasonable for us to expect you to act unless we give you our entire
confidence.”
“I agree with you, sir,” said the younger statesman.
“Then I will tell you, relying entirely upon your honour and that of your
colleague, Dr. Watson. I may appeal to your patriotism also, for I could not
imagine a greater misfortune for the country than that this affair should come
out.”
“You may safely trust us.”
“The letter, then, is from a certain foreign potentate who has been ruffled by
some recent Colonial developments of this country. It has been written hurriedly
and upon his own responsibility entirely. Inquiries have shown that his Ministers
know nothing of the matter. At the same time it is couched in so unfortunate a
manner, and certain phrases in it are of so provocative a character, that its
publication would undoubtedly lead to a most dangerous state of feeling in this
country. There would be such a ferment, sir, that I do not hesitate to say that
within a week of the publication of that letter this country would be involved in a
great war.”
Holmes wrote a name upon a slip of paper and handed it to the Premier.
“Exactly. It was he.10 And it is this letter—this letter which may well mean
the expenditure of a thousand millions and the lives of a hundred thousand men
—which has become lost in this unaccountable fashion.”
“Have you informed the sender?”
“Yes, sir, a cipher telegram has been despatched.”
“Perhaps he desires the publication of the letter.”
“No, sir, we have strong reason to believe that he already understands that he
has acted in an indiscreet and hot-headed manner. It would be a greater blow to
him and to his country than to us if this letter were to come out.”
“If this is so, whose interest is it that the letter should come out? Why should
anyone desire to steal it or to publish it?”11
“There, Mr. Holmes, you take me into regions of high international politics.
But if you consider the European situation you will have no difficulty in
perceiving the motive. The whole of Europe is an armed camp. There is a double
league12 which makes a fair balance of military power. Great Britain holds the
scales. If Britain were driven into war with one confederacy, it would assure the
supremacy of the other confederacy, whether they joined in the war or not. Do
you follow?”
“Very clearly. It is then the interest of the enemies of this potentate to secure
and publish this letter, so as to make a breach between his country and ours?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And to whom would this document be sent if it fell into the hands of an
enemy?”
“To any of the great Chancelleries of Europe. It is probably speeding on its
way thither at the present instant as fast as steam can take it.”
Mr. Trelawney Hope dropped his head on his chest and groaned aloud. The
Premier placed his hand kindly upon his shoulder.
“It is your misfortune, my dear fellow. No one can blame you. There is no
precaution which you have neglected. Now, Mr. Holmes, you are in full
possession of the facts. What course do you recommend?”
Holmes shook his head mournfully.
“You think, sir, that unless this document is recovered there will be war?”
“I think it is very probable.”
“Then, sir, prepare for war.”
“That is a hard saying, Mr. Holmes.”
“Consider the facts, sir. It is inconceivable that it was taken after eleven-thirty
at night, since I understand that Mr. Hope and his wife were both in the room
from that hour until the loss was found out. It was taken, then, yesterday evening
between seven-thirty and eleven-thirty, probably near the earlier hour, since
whoever took it evidently knew that it was there and would naturally secure it as
early as possible. Now, sir, if a document of this importance were taken at that
hour, where can it be now? No one has any reason to retain it. It has been passed
rapidly on to those who need it. What chance have we now to overtake or even
to trace it? It is beyond our reach.”
The Prime Minister rose from the settee.
“What you say is perfectly logical, Mr. Holmes. I feel that the matter is indeed
out of our hands.”
“Let us presume, for argument’s sake, that the document was taken by the
maid or by the valet—”
“They are both old and tried servants.”
“I understand you to say that your room is on the second floor, that there is no
entrance from without, and that from within no one could go up unobserved. It
must, then, be somebody in the house who has taken it. To whom would the thief
take it? To one of several international spies and secret agents, whose names are
tolerably familiar to me. There are three13 who may be said to be the heads of
their profession. I will begin my research by going round and finding if each of
them is at his post. If one is missing—especially if he has disappeared since last
night—we will have some indication as to where the document has gone.”
“Why should he be missing?” asked the European Secretary. “He would take
the letter to an Embassy in London, as likely as not.”
“I fancy not. These agents work independently, and their relations with the
Embassies are often strained.”
The Prime Minister nodded his acquiescence.
“I believe you are right, Mr. Holmes. He would take so valuable a prize to
headquarters with his own hands. I think that your course of action is an
excellent one. Meanwhile, Hope, we cannot neglect our other duties on account
of this one misfortune. Should there be any fresh developments during the day
we shall communicate with you, and you will no doubt let us know the results of
your own inquiries.”
The two statesmen bowed and walked gravely from the room.
When our illustrious visitors had departed, Holmes lit his pipe in silence and
sat for some time lost in the deepest thought. I had opened the morning paper
and was immersed in a sensational crime which had occurred in London the
night before, when my friend gave an exclamation, sprang to his feet, and laid
his pipe down upon the mantelpiece.
“Yes,” said he, “there is no better way of approaching it. The situation is
desperate, but not hopeless. Even now, if we could be sure which of them has
taken it, it is just possible that it has not yet passed out of his hands. After all, it
is a question of money with these fellows, and I have the British Treasury behind
me. If it’s on the market I’ll buy it—if it means another penny on the income
tax.14 It is conceivable that the fellow might hold it back to see what bids come
from this side before he tries his luck on the other. There are only those three
capable of playing so bold a game; there are Oberstein, La Rothière, and
Eduardo Lucas.15 I will see each of them.”
The Treasury.
Queen’s London (1897)
I glanced at my morning paper.
“Is that Eduardo Lucas of Godolphin Street?”
“Yes.”
“You will not see him.”
“Why not?”
“He was murdered in his house last night.”
My friend has so often astonished me in the course of our adventures that it
was with a sense of exultation that I realized how completely I had astonished
him. He stared in amazement, and then snatched the paper from my hands. This
was the paragraph which I had been engaged in reading when he rose from his
chair:
MURDER IN WESTMINSTER
A crime of a mysterious character was committed last night at 16
Godolphin Street, one of the old-fashioned and secluded rows of
eighteenth-century houses which lie between the river and the Abbey,
almost in the shadow of the great Tower of the Houses of Parliament. This
small but select mansion has been inhabited for some years by Mr. Eduardo
Lucas, well known in society circles both on account of his charming
personality and because he has the well-deserved reputation of being one of
the best amateur tenors in the country. Mr. Lucas is an unmarried man,
thirty-four years of age, and his establishment consists of Mrs. Pringle, an
elderly housekeeper, and of Mitton, his valet. The former retires early and
sleeps at the top of the house. The valet was out for the evening, visiting a
friend at Hammersmith. From ten o’clock onwards Mr. Lucas had the house
to himself. What occurred during that time has not yet transpired, but at a
quarter to twelve Police-constable Barrett, passing along Godolphin Street,
observed that the door of No. 16 was ajar. He knocked, but received no
answer. Perceiving a light in the front room, he advanced into the passage
and again knocked, but without reply. He then pushed open the door and
entered. The room was in a state of wild disorder, the furniture being all
swept to one side, and one chair lying on its back in the centre. Beside this
chair, and still grasping one of its legs, lay the unfortunate tenant of the
house. He had been stabbed to the heart and must have died instantly. The
knife with which the crime had been committed was a curved Indian
dagger, plucked down from a trophy of Oriental arms which adorned one of
the walls. Robbery does not appear to have been the motive of the crime,
for there had been no attempt to remove the valuable contents of the room.
Mr. Eduardo Lucas was so well known and popular that his violent and
mysterious fate will arouse painful interest and intense sympathy in a widespread circle of friends.
“Well, Watson, what do you make of this?” asked Holmes, after a long pause.
“It is an amazing coincidence.”
“A coincidence! Here is one of the three men whom we had named as possible
actors in this drama, and he meets a violent death during the very hours when we
know that that drama was being enacted. The odds are enormous against its
being coincidence. No figures could express them. No, my dear Watson, the two
events are connected—must be connected. It is for us to find the connection.”
“My dear Watson, the two events are connected—must
be connected.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“But now the official police must know all.”
“Not at all. They know all they see at Godolphin Street. They know—and
shall know—nothing of Whitehall Terrace. Only we know of both events, and
can trace the relation between them. There is one obvious point which would, in
any case, have turned my suspicions against Lucas. Godolphin Street,
Westminster, is only a few minutes’ walk from Whitehall Terrace. The other
secret agents whom I have named live in the extreme West End.16 It was easier,
therefore, for Lucas than for the others to establish a connection or receive a
message from the European Secretary’s household—a small thing, and yet
where events are compressed into a few hours it may prove essential. Halloa!
what have we here?”
Mrs. Hudson had appeared with a lady’s card upon her salver.17 Holmes
glanced at it, raised his eyebrows, and handed it over to me.
“Ask Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope if she will be kind enough to step up,” said
he.
A moment later our modest apartment, already so distinguished that morning,
was further honoured by the entrance of the most lovely woman in London. I
had often heard of the beauty of the youngest daughter of the Duke of
Belminster, but no description of it, and no contemplation of colourless
photographs, had prepared me for the subtle, delicate charm and the beautiful
colouring of that exquisite head. And yet as we saw it that autumn morning, it
was not its beauty which would be the first thing to impress the observer. The
cheek was lovely but it was paled with emotion; the eyes were bright, but it was
the brightness of fever; the sensitive mouth was tight and drawn in an effort after
self-command. Terror—not beauty—was what sprang first to the eye as our fair
visitor stood framed for an instant in the open door.
“Has my husband been here, Mr. Holmes?”
“Yes, madam, he has been here.”
“Mr. Holmes, I implore you not to tell him that I came here.” Holmes bowed
coldly and motioned the lady to a chair.
“Your ladyship places me in a very delicate position. I beg that you will sit
down and tell me what you desire; but I fear that I cannot make any
unconditional promise.”
She swept across the room and seated herself with her back to the window. It
was a queenly presence—tall, graceful, and intensely womanly.
“Mr. Holmes,” she said—and her white-gloved hands clasped and unclasped
as she spoke—“I will speak frankly to you in the hope that it may induce you to
speak frankly in return. There is complete confidence between my husband and
me on all matters save one. That one is politics. On this his lips are sealed. He
tells me nothing. Now, I am aware that there was a most deplorable occurrence
in our house last night. I know that a paper has disappeared. But because the
matter is political my husband refuses to take me into his complete confidence.
Now it is essential—essential, I say—that I should thoroughly understand it.
You are the only other person, save only these politicians, who knows the true
facts. I beg you, then, Mr. Holmes, to tell me exactly what has happened and
what it will lead to. Tell me all, Mr. Holmes. Let no regard for your client’s
interests keep you silent, for I assure you that his interests, if he would only see
it, would be best served by taking me into his complete confidence. What was
this paper that was stolen?”
She seated herself with her back to the window.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1905
“Madam, what you ask me is really impossible.”
She groaned and sank her face in her hands.
“You must see that this is so, madam. If your husband thinks fit to keep you in
the dark over this matter, is it for me, who have only learned the true facts under
the pledge of professional secrecy, to tell what he has withheld? It is not fair to
ask it. It is him whom you must ask.”
“I have asked him. I come to you as a last resource. But without your telling
me anything definite, Mr. Holmes, you may do a great service if you would
enlighten me on one point.”
“What is it, madam?”
“Is my husband’s political career likely to suffer through this incident?”
“Well, madam, unless it is set right it may certainly have a very unfortunate
effect.”
“Ah!” She drew in her breath sharply as one whose doubts are resolved.
“One more question, Mr. Holmes. From an expression which my husband
dropped in the first shock of this disaster I understood that terrible public
consequences might arise from the loss of this document.”18
“If he said so, I certainly cannot deny it.”
“Of what nature are they?”
“Nay, madam, there again you ask me more than I can possibly answer.”
“Then I will take up no more of your time. I cannot blame you, Mr. Holmes,
for having refused to speak more freely, and you on your side will not, I am sure,
think the worse of me because I desire, even against his will, to share my
husband’s anxieties. Once more I beg that you will say nothing of my visit.” She
looked back at us from the door, and I had a last impression of that beautiful
haunted face, the startled eyes, and the drawn mouth. Then she was gone.
“Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department,”19 said Holmes, with a smile,
when the dwindling frou-frou of skirts had ended in the slam of the door. “What
was the fair lady’s game? What did she really want?”
“Surely her own statement is clear and her anxiety very natural.”
“Hum! Think of her appearance, Watson, her manner, her suppressed
excitement, her restlessness, her tenacity in asking questions. Remember that she
comes of a caste who do not lightly show emotion.”
“She was certainly much moved.”
“Remember also the curious earnestness with which she assured us that it was
best for her husband that she should know all. What did she mean by that? And
you must have observed, Watson, how she manœuvred to have the light at her
back. She did not wish us to read her expression.”
“Yes; she chose the one chair in the room.”20
“And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman
at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose—that
proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their
most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may
depend upon a hairpin or a curling-tongs. Good-morning, Watson.”
“She looked back at us from the door.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“You are off?”
“Yes, I will while away the morning at Godolphin Street with our friends of
the regular establishment. With Eduardo Lucas lies the solution of our problem,
though I must admit that I have not an inkling as to what form it may take. It is a
capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts. Do you stay on guard, my
good Watson, and receive any fresh visitors. I’ll join you at lunch if I am able.”
All that day and the next and the next Holmes was in a mood which his friends
would call taciturn, and others morose. He ran out and ran in, smoked
incessantly, played snatches on his violin, sank into reveries, devoured
sandwiches at irregular hours, and hardly answered the casual questions which I
put to him. It was evident to me that things were not going well with him or his
quest. He would say nothing of the case, and it was from the papers that I
learned the particulars of the inquest, and the arrest with the subsequent release
of John Mitton, the valet of the deceased. The coroner’s jury brought in the
obvious “Wilful Murder,” but the parties remained as unknown as ever. No
motive was suggested. The room was full of articles of value, but none had been
taken. The dead man’s papers had not been tampered with. They were carefully
examined, and showed that he was a keen student of international politics, an
indefatigable gossip, a remarkable linguist, and an untiring letter-writer. He had
been on intimate terms with the leading politicians of several countries. But
nothing sensational was discovered among the documents which filled his
drawers. As to his relations with women, they appeared to have been
promiscuous but superficial. He had many acquaintances among them, but few
friends, and no one whom he loved. His habits were regular, his conduct
inoffensive. His death was an absolute mystery and likely to remain so.
As to the arrest of John Mitton, the valet, it was a council of despair as an
alternative to absolute inaction. But no case could be sustained against him. He
had visited friends in Hammersmith that night. The alibi was complete. It is true
that he started home at an hour which should have brought him to Westminster
before the time when the crime was discovered, but his own explanation that he
had walked part of the way seemed probable enough in view of the fineness of
the night. He had actually arrived at twelve o’clock, and appeared to be
overwhelmed by the unexpected tragedy. He had always been on good terms
with his master. Several of the dead man’s possessions—notably a small case of
razors—had been found in the valet’s boxes, but he explained that they had been
presents from the deceased, and the housekeeper was able to corroborate the
story. Mitton had been in Lucas’s employment for three years. It was noticeable
that Lucas did not take Mitton on the Continent with him. Sometimes he visited
Paris for three months on end, but Mitton was left in charge of the Godolphin
Street house. As to the housekeeper, she had heard nothing on the night of the
crime. If her master had a visitor, he had himself admitted him.
So for three mornings the mystery remained, so far as I could follow it in the
papers. If Holmes knew more, he kept his own counsel, but, as he told me that
Inspector Lestrade had taken him into his confidence in the case, I knew that he
was in close touch with every development. Upon the fourth day there appeared
a long telegram from Paris which seemed to solve the whole question.
A discovery has just been made by the Parisian police [said the Daily
Telegraph] which raises the veil which hung round the tragic fate of Mr.
Eduardo Lucas, who met his death by violence last Monday night at
Godolphin Street, Westminster. Our readers will remember that the
deceased gentleman was found stabbed in his room, and that some
suspicion attached to his valet, but that the case broke down on an alibi.
Yesterday a lady, who has been known as Mme. Henri Fournaye, occupying
a small villa in the Rue Austerlitz, was reported to the authorities by her
servants as being insane. An examination showed she had indeed developed
mania of a dangerous and permanent form. On inquiry the police have
discovered that Mme. Henri Fournaye only returned from a journey to
London on Tuesday last, and there is evidence to connect her with the crime
at Westminster. A comparison of photographs has proved conclusively that
M. Henri Fournaye and Eduardo Lucas were really one and the same
person, and that the deceased had for some reason lived a double life in
London and Paris. Mme. Fournaye, who is of Creole origin, is of an
extremely excitable nature, and has suffered in the past from attacks of
jealousy which have amounted to frenzy. It is conjectured that it was in one
of these that she committed the terrible crime which has caused such a
sensation in London. Her movements upon the Monday night have not yet
been traced, but it is undoubted that a woman answering to her description
attracted much attention at Charing Cross Station on Tuesday morning by
the wildness of her appearance and the violence of her gestures. It is
probable, therefore, that the crime was either committed when insane, or
that its immediate effect was to drive the unhappy woman out of her mind.
At present she is unable to give any coherent account of the past, and the
doctors hold out no hopes of the re-establishment of her reason. There is
evidence that a woman, who might have been Mme. Fournaye, was seen for
some hours upon Monday night watching the house in Godolphin Street.21
“What do you think of that, Holmes?” I had read the account aloud to him,
while he finished his breakfast.
“My dear Watson,” said he, as he rose from the table and paced up and down
the room, “you are most long-suffering, but if I have told you nothing in the last
three days, it is because there is nothing to tell. Even now this report from Paris
does not help us much.”
“Surely it is final as regards the man’s death.”
“The man’s death is a mere incident—a trivial episode—in comparison with
our real task, which is to trace this document and save a European catastrophe.
Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that
nothing has happened.22 I get reports almost hourly from the Government, and it
is certain that nowhere in Europe is there any sign of trouble. Now, if this letter
were loose—no, it can’t be loose—but if it isn’t loose, where can it be? Who has
it? Why is it held back? That’s the question that beats in my brain like a
hammer. Was it, indeed, a coincidence that Lucas should meet his death on the
night when the letter disappeared? Did the letter ever reach him? If so, why is it
not among his papers? Did this mad wife of his carry it off with her? If so, is it in
her house in Paris? How could I search for it without the French police having
their suspicions aroused? It is a case, my dear Watson, where the law is as
dangerous to us as the criminals are. Every man’s hand is against us, and yet the
interests at stake are colossal. Should I bring it to a successful conclusion, it will
certainly represent the crowning glory of my career. Ah, here is my latest from
the front!” He glanced hurriedly at the note which had been handed in. “Halloa!
Lestrade seems to have observed something of interest. Put on your hat, Watson,
and we will stroll down together to Westminster.”
It was my first visit to the scene of the crime—a high, dingy, narrow-chested
house, prim, formal, and solid, like the century which gave it birth. Lestrade’s
bulldog features gazed out at us from the front window, and he greeted us
warmly when a big constable had opened the door and let us in. The room into
which we were shown was that in which the crime had been committed, but no
trace of it now remained, save an ugly, irregular stain upon the carpet. This
carpet was a small square drugget23 in the centre of the room, surrounded by a
broad expanse of beautiful, old-fashioned, wood-flooring in square blocks,
highly polished. Over the fireplace was a magnificent trophy of weapons, one of
which had been used on that tragic night. In the window was a sumptuous
writing-desk, and every detail of the apartment, the pictures, the rugs, and the
hangings, all pointed to a taste which was luxurious to the verge of effeminacy.
“Seen the Paris news?” asked Lestrade.
Holmes nodded.
“Our French friends seem to have touched the spot this time. No doubt it’s
just as they say. She knocked at the door—surprise visit, I guess, for he kept his
life in water-tight compartments—he let her in, couldn’t keep her in the street.
She told him how she had traced him, reproached him. One thing led to another,
and then with that dagger so handy the end soon came. It wasn’t all done in an
instant, though, for these chairs were all swept over yonder, and he had one in
his hand as if he had tried to hold her off with it. We’ve got it all clear as if we
had seen it.”
Holmes raised his eyebrows.
“And yet you have sent for me?”
“Ah, yes, that’s another matter—a mere trifle, but the sort of thing you take an
interest in—queer, you know, and what you might call freakish. It has nothing to
do with the main fact—can’t have, on the face of it.”
“What is it, then?”
“Well, you know, after a crime of this sort we are very careful to keep things
in their position. Nothing has been moved. Officer in charge here day and night.
This morning, as the man was buried and the investigation over—so far as this
room is concerned—we thought we could tidy up a bit. This carpet. You see, it is
not fastened down; only just laid there. We had occasion to raise it. We found
—”
“Yes? You found—”
Holmes’s face grew tense with anxiety.
“Well, I’m sure you would never guess in a hundred years what we did find.
You see that stain on the carpet? Well, a great deal must have soaked through,
must it not?”
“Undoubtedly it must.”
“Well, you will be surprised to hear that there is no stain on the white
woodwork to correspond.”
“No stain! But there must—”
“Yes; so you would say. But the fact remains that there isn’t.”
He took the corner of the carpet in his hand and, turning it over, he showed
that it was indeed as he said.
“He took the corner of the carpet in his hand.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“There is a second stain.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1905
“But the under side is as stained as the upper. It must have left a mark.”
Lestrade chuckled with delight at having puzzled the famous expert.
“Now I’ll show you the explanation. There is a second stain, but it does not
correspond with the other. See for yourself.” As he spoke he turned over another
portion of the carpet, and there, sure enough, was a great crimson spill upon the
square white facing of the old-fashioned floor. “What do you make of that, Mr.
Holmes?”
“Why, it is simple enough. The two stains did correspond, but the carpet has
been turned round. As it was square and unfastened, it was easily done.”
“The official police don’t need you, Mr. Holmes, to tell them that the carpet
must have been turned round. That’s clear enough, for the stains lie above each
other—if you lay it over this way. But what I want to know is, who shifted the
carpet, and why?”
I could see from Holmes’s rigid face that he was vibrating with inward
excitement.
“Look here, Lestrade!” said he, “has that constable in the passage been in
charge of the place all the time?”
“Yes, he has.”
“Well, take my advice. Examine him carefully. Don’t do it before us. We’ll
wait here. You take him into the back room. You’ll be more likely to get a
confession out of him alone. Ask him how he dared to admit people and leave
them alone in this room. Don’t ask him if he has done it. Take it for granted. Tell
him you know someone has been here. Press him. Tell him that a full confession
is his only chance of forgiveness. Do exactly what I tell you!”
“By George, if he knows I’ll have it out of him!” cried Lestrade. He darted
into the hall, and a few moments later his bullying voice sounded from the back
room.
“Now, Watson, now!” cried Holmes, with frenzied eagerness. All the
demoniacal force of the man masked behind that listless manner burst out in a
paroxysm of energy. He tore the drugget from the floor, and in an instant was
down on his hands and knees clawing at each of the squares of wood beneath it.
One turned sideways as he dug his nails into the edge of it. It hinged back like
the lid of a box. A small black cavity opened beneath it. Holmes plunged his
eager hand into it and drew it out with a bitter snarl of anger and disappointment.
It was empty.
“Quick, Watson, quick! Get it back again!” The wooden lid was replaced, and
the drugget had only just been drawn straight when Lestrade’s voice was heard
in the passage. He found Holmes leaning languidly against the mantelpiece,
resigned and patient, endeavouring to conceal his irrepressible yawns.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Holmes. I can see that you are bored to death
with the whole affair. Well, he has confessed all right. Come in here,
MacPherson. Let these gentlemen hear of your most inexcusable conduct.”
The big constable, very hot and penitent, sidled into the room.
“I meant no harm, sir, I’m sure. The young woman came to the door last
evening—mistook the house, she did. And then we got talking. It’s lonesome,
when you’re on duty here all day.”
“Well, what happened then?”
“She wanted to see where the crime was done—had read about it in the
papers, she said. She was a very respectable, well-spoken young woman, sir, and
I saw no harm in letting her have a peep. When she saw that mark on the carpet,
down she dropped on the floor, and lay as if she were dead. I ran to the back and
got some water, but I could not bring her to. Then I went round the corner to the
Ivy Plant for some brandy, and by the time I had brought it back the young
woman had recovered and was off—ashamed of herself, I daresay, and dared not
face me!”
“It hinged back like the lid of a box.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“How about moving that drugget?”
“Well, sir, it was a bit rumpled, certainly, when I came back. You see, she fell
on it and it lies on a polished floor with nothing to keep it in place. I straightened
it out afterwards.”
“It’s a lesson to you that you can’t deceive me, Constable MacPherson,” said
Lestrade, with dignity. “No doubt you thought that your breach of duty could
never be discovered, and yet a mere glance at that drugget was enough to
convince me that someone had been admitted to the room. It’s lucky for you, my
man, that nothing is missing, or you would find yourself in Queer Street.24 I’m
sorry to have called you down over such a petty business, Mr. Holmes, but I
thought the point of the second stain not corresponding with the first would
interest you.”
“Certainly it was most interesting. Has this woman only been here once,
Constable?”
“Yes, sir, only once.”
“Who was she?”
“Don’t know the name, sir. Was answering an advertisement about
typewriting and came to the wrong number—very pleasant, genteel young
woman, sir.”
He found Holmes leaning languidly against the
mantelpiece.
Charles Raymond Macaulay, Return of Sherlock Holmes (McClure
Phillips), 1905
“Tall? Handsome?”
“Yes, sir; she was a well-grown young woman. I suppose you might say she
was handsome. Perhaps some would say she was very handsome. ‘Oh, officer,
do let me have a peep!’ says she. She had pretty, coaxing ways, as you might
say, and I thought there was no harm in letting her just put her head through the
door.”
“How was she dressed?”
“Quiet, sir—a long mantle down to her feet.”
“What time was it?”
“It was just growing dusk at the time. They were lighting the lamps as I came
back with the brandy.”
“Very good,” said Holmes. “Come, Watson, I think that we have more
important work elsewhere.”
As we left the house Lestrade remained in the front room, while the repentant
constable opened the door to let us out. Holmes turned on the step and held up
something in his hand. The constable stared intently.
“Good Lord, sir!” he cried, with amazement on his face. Holmes put his finger
on his lips, replaced his hand in his breast-pocket, and burst out laughing as we
turned down the street. “Excellent!” said he. “Come, friend Watson, the curtain
rings up for the last act. You will be relieved to hear that there will be no war,
that the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope will suffer no setback in his brilliant
career, that the indiscreet Sovereign will receive no punishment for his
indiscretion, that the Prime Minister will have no European complication to deal
with, and that with a little tact and management upon our part nobody will be a
penny the worse for what might have been a very ugly incident.”25
My mind filled with admiration for this extraordinary man.
“You have solved it!” I cried.
“Hardly that, Watson. There are some points which are as dark as ever. But
we have so much that it will be our own fault if we cannot get the rest. We will
go straight to Whitehall Terrace and bring the matter to a head.”
When we arrived at the residence of the European Secretary it was for Lady
Hilda Trelawney Hope that Sherlock Holmes inquired. We were shown into the
morning-room.
“Mr. Holmes!” said the lady, and her face was pink with her indignation.
“This is surely most unfair and ungenerous upon your part. I desired, as I have
explained, to keep my visit to you a secret, lest my husband should think that I
was intruding into his affairs. And yet you compromise me by coming here and
so showing that there are business relations between us.”
“Unfortunately, madam, I had no possible alternative. I have been
commissioned to recover this immensely important paper. I must therefore ask
you, madam, to be kind enough to place it in my hands.”
The lady sprang to her feet, with the colour all dashed in an instant from her
beautiful face. Her eyes glazed—she tottered—I thought that she would faint.
Then with a grand effort she rallied from the shock, and a supreme astonishment
and indignation chased every other expression from her features.
“You—you insult me, Mr. Holmes.”
“Come, come, madam, it is useless. Give up the letter.”
She darted to the bell.
“The butler shall show you out.”
“Madam, I have been commissioned to recover this
immensely important paper.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1905
“You insult me, Mr. Holmes.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Do not ring, Lady Hilda. If you do, then all my earnest efforts to avoid a
scandal will be frustrated. Give up the letter, and all will be set right. If you will
work with me I can arrange everything. If you work against me, I must expose
you.”
She stood grandly defiant, a queenly figure, her eyes fixed upon his as if she
would read his very soul. Her hand was on the bell, but she had forborne to ring
it.
“You are trying to frighten me. It is not a very manly thing, Mr. Holmes, to
come here and browbeat a woman. You say that you know something. What is it
that you know?”
“Pray sit down, madam. You will hurt yourself there if you fall. I will not
speak until you sit down. Thank you.”
“I give you five minutes, Mr. Holmes.”
“One is enough, Lady Hilda. I know of your visit to Eduardo Lucas, and of
your giving him this document, of your ingenious return to the room last night,
and of the manner in which you took the letter from the hiding-place under the
carpet.”
She stared at him with an ashen face and gulped twice before she could speak.
“You are mad, Mr. Holmes—you are mad!” she cried, at last.
He drew a small piece of cardboard from his pocket. It was the face of a
woman cut out of a portrait.
“I have carried this because I thought it might be useful,” said he.26 “The
policeman has recognised it.”
She gave a gasp, and her head dropped back in the chair.
“Come, Lady Hilda. You have the letter. The matter may still be adjusted. I
have no desire to bring trouble to you. My duty ends when I have returned the
lost letter to your husband. Take my advice and be frank with me; it is your only
chance.”
Her courage was admirable. Even now she would not own defeat.27
“I tell you again, Mr. Holmes, that you are under some absurd illusion.”
Holmes rose from his chair.
“I am sorry for you, Lady Hilda. I have done my best for you; I can see that it
is all in vain.”
He rang the bell. The butler entered.
“Is Mr. Trelawney Hope at home?”
“He will be home, sir, at a quarter to one.”
Holmes glanced at his watch.
“Still a quarter of an hour,” said he. “Very good, I shall wait.”
The butler had hardly closed the door behind him when Lady Hilda was down
on her knees at Holmes’s feet, her hands outstretched, her beautiful face
upturned and wet with her tears.
“Oh, spare me, Mr. Holmes! Spare me!” she pleaded, in a frenzy of
supplication. “For heaven’s sake, don’t tell him! I love him so! I would not bring
one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.”
Holmes raised the lady. “I am thankful, madam, that you have come to your
senses even at this last moment! There is not an instant to lose. Where is the
letter?”
She darted across to a writing-desk, unlocked it, and drew out a long blue
envelope.
“Here it is, Mr. Holmes. Would to heaven I had never seen it!”
“How can we return it?” Holmes muttered. “Quick, quick, we must think of
some way! Where is the despatch-box?”
“Still in his bedroom.”
“What a stroke of luck! Quick, madam, bring it here!”
A moment later she had appeared with a red flat box in her hand. “How did
you open it before? You have a duplicate key? Yes, of course you have. Open
it!”
From out of her bosom Lady Hilda had drawn a small key. The box flew
open. It was stuffed with papers. Holmes thrust the blue envelope deep down
into the heart of them, between the leaves of some other document. The box was
shut, locked, and returned to his bedroom.
“Now we are ready for him,” said Holmes; “we have still ten minutes. I am
going far to screen you, Lady Hilda. In return you will spend the time in telling
me frankly the real meaning of this extraordinary affair.”
“Mr. Holmes, I will tell you everything,” cried the lady. “Oh, Mr. Holmes, I
would cut off my right hand before I gave him a moment of sorrow! There is no
woman in all London who loves her husband as I do, and yet if he knew how I
have acted—how I have been compelled to act—he would never forgive me. For
his own honour stands so high that he could not forget or pardon a lapse in
another. Help me, Mr. Holmes! My happiness, his happiness, our very lives are
at stake!”
“Quick, madam, the time grows short!”
“It was a letter of mine, Mr. Holmes, an indiscreet letter written before my
marriage28—a foolish letter, a letter of an impulsive, loving girl.29 I meant no
harm, and yet he would have thought it criminal. Had he read that letter his
confidence would have been forever destroyed. It is years since I wrote it. I had
thought that the whole matter was forgotten. Then at last I heard from this man,
Lucas, that it had passed into his hands, and that he would lay it before my
husband. I implored his mercy. He said that he would return my letter if I would
bring him a certain document which he described in my husband’s despatch-box.
He had some spy in the office who had told him of its existence.30 He assured
me that no harm could come to my husband. Put yourself in my position, Mr.
Holmes! What was I to do?”
“Take your husband into your confidence.”31
“I could not, Mr. Holmes, I could not! On the one side seemed certain ruin; on
the other, terrible as it seemed to take my husband’s papers, still in a matter of
politics I could not understand the consequences, while in a matter of love and
trust they were only too clear to me. I did it, Mr. Holmes! I took an impression
of his key; this man, Lucas, furnished a duplicate. I opened his despatch-box,
took the paper, and conveyed it to Godolphin Street.”
“What happened there, madam?”
“I tapped at the door as agreed. Lucas opened it. I followed him into his room,
leaving the hall door ajar behind me, for I feared to be alone with the man. I
remembered that there was a woman outside as I entered.32 Our business was
soon done. He had my letter on his desk; I handed him the document. He gave
me the letter. At this instant there was a sound at the door. There were steps in
the passage. Lucas quickly turned back the drugget, thrust the document into
some hiding-place there, and covered it over.
“What happened after that is like some fearful dream. I have a vision of a
dark, frantic face, of a woman’s voice, which screamed in French, ‘My waiting
is not in vain.33 At last, at last I have found you with her!’ There was a savage
struggle. I saw him with a chair in his hand, a knife gleamed in hers. I rushed
from the horrible scene, ran from the house, and only next morning in the paper
did I learn the dreadful result.34 That night I was happy, for I had my letter, and I
had not seen yet what the future would bring.
“It was the next morning that I realized that I had only exchanged one trouble
for another. My husband’s anguish at the loss of his paper went to my heart. I
could hardly prevent myself from there and then kneeling down at his feet and
telling him what I had done. But that again would mean a confession of the past.
I came to you that morning in order to understand the full enormity of my
offence. From the instant that I grasped it my whole mind was turned to the one
thought of getting back my husband’s paper. It must still be where Lucas had
placed it, for it was concealed before this dreadful woman entered the room. If it
had not been for her coming, I should not have known where his hiding-place
was. How was I to get into the room? For two days I watched the place, but the
door was never left open. Last night I made a last attempt. What I did and how I
succeeded, you have already learned. I brought the paper back with me, and
thought of destroying it,35 since I could see no way of returning it without
confessing my guilt to my husband.36 Heavens, I hear his step upon the stair!”
The European Secretary burst excitedly into the room.
“Any news, Mr. Holmes, any news?” he cried.
“I have some hopes.”
“Ah, thank heaven!” His face became radiant. “The Prime Minister is
lunching with me. May he share your hopes? He has nerves of steel, and yet I
know that he has hardly slept since this terrible event. Jacobs, will you ask the
Prime Minister to come up? As to you, dear, I fear that this is a matter of
politics. We will join you in a few minutes in the dining-room.”
The Prime Minister’s manner was subdued, but I could see by the gleam of his
eyes and the twitchings of his bony hands that he shared the excitement of his
young colleague.
“I understand that you have something to report, Mr. Holmes?”
“Purely negative as yet,” my friend answered. “I have inquired at every point
where it might be, and I am sure that there is no danger to be apprehended.”
“But that is not enough, Mr. Holmes. We cannot live forever on such a
volcano. We must have something definite.”
“I am in hopes of getting it. That is why I am here. The more I think of the
matter the more convinced I am that the letter has never left this house.”
“Mr. Holmes!”
“If it had it would certainly have been public by now.”
“But why should anyone take it in order to keep it in this37 house?”
“I am not convinced that anyone did take it.”
“Then how could it leave the despatch-box?”
“I am not convinced that it ever did leave the despatch-box.”
“Mr. Holmes, this joking is very ill-timed. You have my assurance that it left
the box.”
“Have you examined the box since Tuesday morning?”
“No; it was not necessary.”
“You may conceivably have overlooked it.”
“Impossible, I say.”
“But I am not convinced of it; I have known such things to happen. I presume
there are other papers there. Well, it may have got mixed with them.”
“It was on the top.”
“Someone may have shaken the box and displaced it.”
“No, no; I had everything out.”
“Surely it is easily decided, Hope,” said the Premier. “Let us have the
despatch-box brought in.”
The Secretary rang the bell.
“Jacobs, bring down my despatch-box. This is a farcical waste of time, but
still, if nothing else will satisfy you, it shall be done. Thank you, Jacobs; put it
here. I have always had the key on my watch-chain. Here are the papers, you
see. Letter from Lord Merrow, report from Sir Charles Hardy, memorandum
from Belgrade, note on the Russo-German grain taxes, letter from Madrid, note
from Lord Flowers—Good heavens! what is this? Lord Bellinger! Lord
Bellinger!”
The Premier snatched the blue envelope from his hand.
“The Premier snatched the blue envelope from his hand.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Yes, it is it—and the letter intact. Hope, I congratulate you!”
“Thank you! Thank you! What a weight from my heart. But this is
inconceivable—impossible! Mr. Holmes, you are a wizard, a sorcerer! How did
you know it was there?”
“Because I knew it was nowhere else.”
“I cannot believe my eyes!” He ran wildly to the door. “Where is my wife? I
must tell her that all is well. Hilda! Hilda!” we heard his voice on the stairs.
The Premier looked at Holmes with twinkling eyes.
“Come, sir,” said he. “There is more in this than meets the eye. How came the
letter back in the box?”
Holmes turned away smiling from the keen scrutiny of those wonderful eyes.
“We also have our diplomatic secrets,”38 said he and, picking up his hat, he
turned to the door.
“LORD BELLINGER” AND THE “RIGHT
HONOURABLE TRELAWNEY HOPE”
“The one, austere, high-nosed, eagle-eyed, and dominant, was none
other than the illustrious Lord Bellinger, twice Premier of Britain. The
other, dark, clear-cut, and elegant, hardly yet of middle age, and
endowed with every beauty of body and of mind, was the Right
Honourable Trelawney Hope, Secretary for European Affairs, and the
most rising statesman in the country.”
IS IT POSSIBLE to identify the faces behind the masks created by Dr. Watson in
“The Second Stain”?
The first to be considered is “the illustrious Lord Bellinger,” who Watson
reveals was “twice Premier of Britain.” Since Watson deliberately hides the year
and even the decade of “The Second Stain” from readers, relying upon
chronological clues is an uncertain task. Only three prime ministers held office
more than once during the lifetimes of Holmes and Watson: Benjamin Disraeli
(1868, 1874–1880), William Gladstone (1868– 1874, 1880–1885, 1886, 1892–
1894), and Robert Salisbury (1885–1886, 1886–1892, 1895–1902). Only
Salisbury and Gladstone did so for a second time during the Partnership.
Gavin Brend makes a case for Lord Salisbury, placing “The Second Stain”
during Salisbury’s second term. Acknowledging that Holmes’s description of
Lord Bellinger as “austere, high-nosed, eagle-eyed, and dominant” resembles
Gladstone more than it does Salisbury, he insists that this is another point in
Salisbury’s favour, because Watson was so careful in disguising his characters
that he would never give Gladstone such an accurate portrait. June Thomson
contrarily argues that Salisbury would be described as “dominant” and “eagleeyed” and therefore agrees with Brend’s identification. She also finds the letter
in “The Second Stain” consistent with the kaiser’s dispatch of the Kruger
telegram (see note 10, above) and therefore likely to have occurred between
December 1895 and January 1896, during Salisbury’s second term of office.
Others disagree with Brend’s assessment, taking Watson’s description at its
face value, so to speak. O. F. Grazebrook, in Volume 2 of Studies in Sherlock
Holmes, identifies Lord Bellinger as Mr. Gladstone on that basis, suggesting also
that Gladstone’s involvement explains Lord Holdhurst’s remark to Holmes in
“The Naval Treaty”: “Your name is very familiar to me, Mr. Holmes.”
Presumably, Grazebrook deduces, Gladstone had told his successor, Lord
Salisbury—Grazebrook identifies Salisbury with Lord Holdhurst—about
Holmes’s involvement with the affair of the missing document. Otherwise, it
would have been nearly impossible for Holdhurst/Salisbury to have heard of
Holmes, given that by 1889, the date generally assigned to “The Naval Treaty,”
only A Study in Scarlet (1887) had been published and had not achieved much
attention.
Jon L. Lellenberg, in “Revised Treatise,” claims to have confirmed
conclusively the identification of Lord Bellinger as Gladstone, using
documentation, not description, as his triumphal proof. Turning to the British
government’s official history of World War II, SOE in France: An Account of
the Work of the British Special Operations Executive 1940–1944, written by M.
R. D. Foot and published by the government in 1966, Lellenberg opens to the
third chapter, which discusses recruiting and training. This chapter, according to
Lellenberg, addresses
the necessity of avoiding public disclosure and recognition of even
successful exploits; and a footnote on page 44 comments: “Sherlock
Holmes’s interview with a thinly disguised Mr. Gladstone during his
adventure of ‘The Second Stain’ is the locus classicus.” No doubt this
passing reference by Professor Foot, a distinguished historian with access to
the classified archives, escaped the notice of the Foreign Office censor
during the security review.
Several alternate identifications for Lord Bellinger have been made. Marcella
Holmes, in “Sherlock Holmes and the Prime Minister,” reviews the cases for
Disraeli (who held the title of Lord Beaconsfield), Gladstone, Salisbury, and
Archibald Rosebery (1894–1895). She concludes that Watson had no part in the
affair, which took place in 1878 or 1879, and that Lord Beaconsfield was Lord
Bellinger. Her case rests on Disraeli’s two terms in office, the similar initial of
“Beaconsfield” and “Bellinger,” and the similarity of physical appearance to
Watson’s description. Based solely on chronology, T. S. Blakeney identifies
Lord Bellinger as Lord Rosebery and congratulates Watson on his skill in hiding
Rosebery’s personality by claiming that he served as prime minister twice. The
most surprising identification of Lord Bellinger must be D. A. Redmond’s, in
“Lord Bellinger—Who Else?,” demonstrating that Lord Bellinger was John
Albert Bellinger, first Baron Bellinger, and not the prime minister at all.
Turning to the “Right Honourable Trelawney Hope,” Watson has said that he
was “hardly of middle age”; but no foreign secretary (Watson’s “Secretary for
European Affairs”) throughout the relevant period was that young a man. Still,
Gavin Brend calculates that if the events of “The Second Stain” had to have
taken place, as Watson describes, “one Tuesday morning in autumn” when the
prime minister and foreign secretary were two different people, then only 1886,
the first year of Lord Salisbury’s second term, would fit the bill. Sir Stafford
Northcote (the Earl of Iddesleigh) was Salisbury’s foreign minister that year,
with Salisbury taking over the responsibilities of the office the following year,
after Northcote’s death in January 1887.
Felix Morley, who also casts his vote with Salisbury and Northcote, elaborates
upon the political situation in “The Significance of the Second Stain.”
Northcote’s death came close upon the heels of relative turmoil in Salisbury’s
cabinet. On Christmas Eve, Lord Randolph Churchill, Salisbury’s chancellor of
the exchequer (or finance minister), resigned after submitting his first budget;
soon after, W. H. Smith, the secretary of state for war—with whom Churchill
had clashed—resigned as well. Northcote had just come to an agreement with
Salisbury for his own resignation when he died suddenly, in the anteroom of the
prime minister’s official residence. “How tragic the circumstances were the
reader of The Adventure of the Second Stain can fully realize,” Morley explains.
He theorises that after Holmes’s recovery of the document, word of Northcote’s
“reckless carelessness with state papers” would surely have spread to other
members of the cabinet. Morley blames Lady Hilda’s feminine naivete for the
leak, writing, “I am on delicate ground, but it may be stated as a general rule that
a lady who has twice been terribly indiscreet is not unlikely to err a third time.”
Assuming that Lady Hilda may have foolishly spoken to the butler about
Holmes’s restoration of her husband’s mysterious document, Morley continues,
“At any rate a new light is thrown on the unexplained resignation from Lord
Salisbury’s Cabinet and the sudden, ‘almost tragic’ death of his Foreign
Secretary.”
Taking a contrary view, C. Arnold Johnson, in “Lord Iddesleigh?,” suggests
that Trelawney Hope was not Northcote but rather Lord Randolph Churchill,
with his true cabinet position disguised by Watson. Similarly, June Thomson
proposes Joseph Chamberlain for the rôle, during his term of service as
“Secretary of State for the Colonies” for Salisbury during his second term.
Chamberlain fits the description as well, as an “elegant” man.
Adherents of the “Gladstone” identification of Lord Bellinger generally point
to Lord Rosebery, who served as Gladstone’s foreign secretary in 1886 (for five
months) and from 1892 to 1894, as the original of Trelawney Hope. Rosebery,
who served as prime minister in late 1894–early 1895, certainly qualified as a
“rising statesman in the country.” Lady Hannah Rosebery was the only daughter
of Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild of Mentmore and thus might well have
been disguised as Lady Hilda.
Watson’s “carefully guarded” account succeeds in leaving little definitive
evidence of the faces behind the masks!
“The Second Stain” was published in the Strand
Magazine in December 1904 and in the January 28, 1905,
issue of Collier’s Weekly. The manuscript is in the
possession of Haverford College.
1
“The Abbey Grange” was published in the Strand
Magazine in September 1904, three months before
publication of “The Second Stain.”
2
Roger T. Clapp underlines the practical value of
Watson’s writing, observing in “The Curious Problem of
the Railway Timetables” that, as a businessman, Holmes
made shrewd use of Watson’s abilities to generate new
clients. Word of mouth from satisfied clients and referrals
from Scotland Yard could only create so much business,
and outright advertising by professionals was considered
unseemly. Holmes must have realised that publication of
Watson’s records of his cases would advertise the
detective’s services to the wider public. “That this was
his underlying plan,” Clapp goes on, “is quite clearly
evidenced by his repeated—although subtle—suggestions
that Watson select for his published stories those cases
which best illustrated Holmes’s deductive powers and
3
resources . . . and his frequent complaints that Watson
was sacrificing technical detail which would reflect
Holmes’s brilliance for the purely dramatic aspects of his
cases.” Holmes’s constant apathy and even belittling of
Watson’s efforts (sprinkled with offhand suggestions of
cases Watson might want to write up) was a
psychological tactic, Clapp argues, designed to let
Watson think the entire project was his own idea, not
some manipulative marketing ploy.
Watson writes in the preface to His Last Bow (1917)
that the farm was “five miles from Eastbourne,” and in
“The Lion’s Mane,” the villa is said to be “situated upon
the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a great
view of the Channel.”
4
Edgar W. Smith adamantly disputes this image of
Holmes as publicity-shy recluse. “The facts flatly
contradict this assertion,” Edgar W. Smith declares in
“Dr. Watson and the Great Censorship.” Although the
public had been told that Holmes had died in 1891—in
the story “The Final Problem,” published in 1893—no
sooner did Holmes retire than “The Empty House” was
published in the Strand, revealing that Holmes, still very
much alive, had returned to London in 1894 to solve
Ronald Adair’s murder. It may be that what Watson
meant here was that Holmes did not want any publicity
about the details of his retirement, and as will be seen in
5
“The Lion’s Mane,” and “His Last Bow,” both postretirement tales, Holmes’s place of refuge is obscure.
The manuscript originally read “one supreme example
of the international influences he has exercised.”
6
See the appendix on page 1222 for a discussion of the
identities of “Lord Bellinger” and the “Right Honourable
Trelawney Hope.”
7
In the manuscript, Watson originally wrote that he
“puffed a cigarette.”
8
The manuscript omits the phrase “until I missed the
paper this morning.”
9
Commentators suggest that the “foreign potentate”
who sent the ill-advised letter must have been Kaiser
Wilhelm II (1859– 1941), also known as William II. The
emperor of Germany and king of Prussia from 1888 to
1918, William had already earned himself a rocky
reputation in Britain, despite the traditional friendship
between the two nations. In 1895, he famously sent a
telegram to South African president Paul Kruger
congratulating him on his defeat of the British-supported
Jameson Raid. The strengthening of Germany’s navy and
the expansion of its colonial interests further incited
British suspicions, and the two countries began to feel the
strain of competition. Germany’s creation of the Triple
10
Alliance with Italy and Austria-Hungary in 1881 (see
“The Naval Treaty,” note 19) divided the two nations still
more, and in 1907 Britain countered by joining with
Russia and longtime rival France to form the Triple
Entente. The rising tensions between Germany and
Britain, combined with William’s lack of political tact,
seem to lend themselves to a letter containing
“provocative” phrases and of such import that it could
involve Britain in a “great war.” In fact, Germany and
Britain would face off against each other in the Great
War only eight years after publication of “The Second
Stain.”
This seems a stunningly naive statement by Holmes,
who has just been informed of the highly delicate nature
of the letter’s contents. Aubrey C. Roberts expresses his
disappointment in what he sees as only one of Holmes’s
“lapses” in “The Second Stain,” chiding, “With questions
like these right up front, it is a great wonder that the
illustrious Premier did not take his business elsewhere,
post haste.”
11
This could allude either to the Triple Alliance or, more
likely, to the then-Dual Alliance between France and
Russia (preliminarily formed in 1891, and confirmed in
1894), which Britain had yet to join. See note 10, above.
Scholars reach little concurrence on the dating of “The
Second Stain,” ranging from 1886 to 1894, although
12
those proposing the later date do so on the existence of
the Dual Alliance.
13
“Half-a-dozen,” according to the manuscript.
This would have been a pretty penny indeed! In A
Sherlock Holmes Handbook, Christopher Redmond
explains that income tax in the 1890s stood at 2.5 percent.
Remembering that a pound consists of twenty shillings,
each shilling twelve pennies, the tax was 2.5% x 240
pennies/pound, or 6 pennies per pound. Holmes’s
“another penny on the income tax” would be a one-sixth
increase in the tax and would, according to Redmond’s
calculations, “add more than £2 million to the annual
collections of only £13 million, out of a total public
revenue of £100 million.”
14
The first two reappear, with Oberstein as a principal
character, in “The Bruce-Partington Plans.”
15
Kensington and Notting Hill are the addresses of
Oberstein and La Rothiere given in “The BrucePartington Plans.”
16
A tray upon which food or drinks are served. From the
French salve, to save; the Spanish salva, to taste food to
detect poison; and the Latin salvare, to save.
17
18
Lady Hilda’s demeanour here departs markedly from
that of today’s political wives, who tend to be somewhat
savvier about their husbands’ affairs. Her naivete about
what the theft of the letter might imply is surely a product
of the age, D. Martin Dakin comments, observing that
“Nowadays any politician fortunate enough to be married
to a society beauty would be sure to have her active
assistance in his election campaign and writing part of his
address to his constituents.”
The manuscript originally read, “ ‘Now, Watson,
what’s the meaning of this?’ asked Holmes.”
19
Watson means the one chair in the room that would
have put the light at her back, not that there are no other
chairs present. Holmes and Watson’s armchairs are
mentioned in “The Three Gables,” “The Five Orange
Pips,” and “The ‘Gloria Scott’.” The basket chair,
generally used by clients, is noted in “The Noble
Bachelor” and “The Blue Carbuncle.” Holmes and
Watson would (as gentlemen) clearly have been standing
when she entered the room, and Lady Hilda thus had a
choice of at least three chairs.
20
Who would have possibly noticed Mme. Fournaye—
until now, a person of seemingly no importance—at both
Godolphin Street on Monday and Charing Cross Station
on Tuesday? Certainly she appears undeserving of
attention. It is also unlikely, argues George J.
21
McCormack, that responsible doctors would have so
quickly concluded that she was permanently insane.
Based on such dubious reporting, McCormack proposes
that the entire newspaper article was a fabrication,
planted by Holmes. McCormack goes on to conclude that
Lady Hilda herself murdered Lucas and that Watson
invented the story of the French wife at Holmes’s
insistence, to shield her and to conceal his role as a
criminal accessory.
Felix Morley points out that Holmes might have
remembered the value of his own observation, in “Silver
Blaze,” that a dog that “did nothing in the night-time”
could prove a vital piece of “negative evidence.” In this
situation, Morley writes, “Holmes failed to make an
equally brilliant—and obvious—deduction.”
22
23
A rug made of coarse wool or wool and cotton.
E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
supplies that “to live in Queer Street” meant “To be of
doubtful solvency. To be one marked in a tradesman’s
ledger with a quære (inquire), meaning, make inquiries
about this customer.” Similarly, in Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
one character remarks, “No, sir, I make it a rule of mine:
the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.”
Although historian Graham Robb ventures that the word
24
“queer” had come to imply homosexuality as early as
1894 (see “The Greek Interpreter,” note 8), the
implication was far from universal, and generally the
word was still used to refer to irregularity or to
counterfeit goods.
25
In English editions, the word “incident” is “accident.”
This is prescient of Holmes, for there is surely no prior
hint that any third party might be called upon to identify
any of the principals of the case. Did he also have a
photograph of Trelawney Hope?
26
At this point in the manuscript, a substantial portion
appears in a handwriting that is not that of Conan Doyle,
the scrivener of virtually all of the other manuscripts.
Several suggestions were considered, including that the
writing was that of Alfred Wood, Conan Doyle’s
secretary; that of Sir Arthur but his so-called resting
hand; or even that of Dr. Watson! The editors of Baker
Street Miscellanea, however, wisely asked Dame Jean
Conan Doyle, the daughter of Arthur Conan Doyle, who
promptly identified it as that of her mother, then Jean
Leckie, later Sir Arthur’s second wife.
27
The phrase “written before my marriage” was added to
the manuscript.
28
29
B. George Isen asserts that the letter was written to
Eduardo Lucas himself, a “man whose relations with
women . . . appeared to have been promiscuous but
superficial.” Isen concludes that Lady Hilda killed Lucas
mere moments before the “French wife” burst into the
room but that Holmes, out of concern for both Lady
Hilda and England, concealed the facts (rather as he did
for the mysterious lady culprit in “Charles Augustus
Milverton”).
This sentence has been added to the original
manuscript, and nothing further is said about Lucas’s spy.
Who was the spy? Surprisingly, observes B. George Isen,
no one—not even Holmes—seems significantly worried
about “this dangerous creature in the presumably secure
government office who not only had known that Mr.
Trelawney Hope always carried the missive with him but
knew, too, that Hope deposited it in his dispatch box at
home.” Surely Holmes must have sought to discover the
identity of the spy and expose him or her to the
government.
John Hall, in Sidelights on Holmes, suggests that
while Holmes would not have dropped the matter,
exposure may have been unnecessary. “Perhaps Holmes
thought that, with Lucas dead and thus any hold he had
over the spy gone, the furore [over Lucas’s death] would
ensure that the spy behaved himself in the future. It might
even be that Holmes had a discreet word with the
30
offender, and satisfied himself that there would be no
further lapses.”
This sentence was added to the manuscript in the
handwriting of Conan Doyle.
31
This sentence does not appear in the original
manuscript.
32
This sentence also was added to the original
manuscript.
33
And so it emerges that Watson, in judging Lucas’s
murder “an amazing coincidence,” was right after all,
whereas an uncharacteristically rash Holmes, who
insisted, “No, my dear Watson, the two events are
connected—must be connected,” was in the wrong. In
considering Lucas’s death, Nathan L. Bengis writes in
“Sherlock Stays After School,” the practical Watson took
a less cerebral approach and came to the correct
conclusion “but allowed himself to be shouted down” by
Holmes, who normally lectures against leaping to
conclusions but did the opposite here. Of course, even
upon learning the true sequence of events, Holmes
declines to give his friend proper credit. Bengis
complains, “One would expect Holmes to have been big
enough to admit his error to Watson in some words as
these: ‘You were perfectly right. It was an amazing
34
coincidence. I was too rash in jumping to conclusions.’
Watson, of course, was too fine to recriminate his friend
with ‘I told you so,’ but he had been made so often to eat
humble pie that for once he should have insisted that his
friend eat some!”
The phrase “and thought of destroying it” is not in the
manuscript.
35
Scornfully, D. Martin Dakin deems Lady Hilda “one of
the most dim-witted of lovelies” for seeing no way out of
her dilemma. “As she had a duplicate key and the
dispatch-box was still in the bedroom, there was no
reason why she should not have put it back on the quiet at
any time, without waiting for Holmes to do it for her.”
36
37
“His” in some American editions.
“Let us face it,” concludes Aubrey Roberts.
“[Holmes’s] number one ally in this case was ‘Lady
Luck.’ ” His risky gamble in challenging the premier with
pointed questions paid off; the ensuing murder of Lucas
was, in the end, a fluke that opened the door to important
new evidence. So, too, was Lestrade’s sudden
summoning of Holmes to consult with him about the
second stain a happy stroke of luck. In the end, the clues
dropped into Holmes’s lap fortuitously, assembling
themselves into a pattern quite beyond his initial line of
38
thought. “However,” Roberts sighs, “would this arrogant
egocentric be expected to say, ‘Sir, it was an uncommon
bit of luck; a chance shot in the dark’? No, of course not.
Still he must have been smiling at that possibility as he
turned away to hide such thoughts from the ‘keen
scrutiny’ of the Premier. . . .”
George McCormack decides that Holmes’s
“diplomatic secret” was the guilt of Lady Hilda, and
further surmises that Holmes did not in fact replace the
state papers in the despatch-box, since doing so would
have exposed Lady Hilda as the sole suspect (assuming
that Trelawney Hope did not fall for such a cheap parlour
trick). Instead, McCormack theorises, Watson created out
of whole cloth the touching scene at the Hope residence;
in reality, Holmes extracted the paper from Lady Hilda
and then handed it over outright to Hope and Lord
Bellinger at the Baker Street office, without telling them
from which channels he had procured it. “It was to
encourage such speculation,” McCormack writes, “that
Holmes, in declining to explain how he had recovered the
paper, said to Lord Bellinger, ‘We also have our
diplomatic secrets.’ In this way, Lady Hilda was in no
way implicated.”
Yet Lord Bellinger had no such illusions, concludes
Ian McQueen, which “Holmes clearly perceived as he
‘turned away smiling from the keen scrutiny of those
wonderful eyes.’ The next Cabinet reshuffle probably
saw Trelawney Hope stripped of office and sent to
occupy a back bench in the Lords. In time he may even
have guessed that his wife was branded as a security risk.
Bellinger’s twinkle of mystification was not to be
satisfied by Holmes’s disarming remark about diplomatic
secrets. And Holmes knew it; or why the hurried exit?”
PREFACE
THE FRIENDS OF Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be glad to learn that he is still alive
and well, though somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism.1 He
has, for many years, lived in a small farm upon the Downs2 five miles from
Eastbourne, where his time is divided between philosophy and agriculture.
During this period of rest he has refused the most princely offers to take up
various cases, having determined that his retirement was a permanent one. The
approach of the German war caused him, however, to lay his remarkable
combination of intellectual and practical activity at the disposal of the
Government, with historical results which are recounted in “His Last Bow.”
Several previous experiences which have lain long in my portfolio, have been
added to His Last Bow so as to complete the volume.3
JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.
Holmes’s rheumatism is studied in detail in Rosemary
Michaud’s insightful “All in Your Hands, Mr. Holmes.”
Michaud concludes from the Canonical evidence that
Holmes’s arthritis was in his hands and that it became
severe after the Great Hiatus. This explains why Holmes
virtually gave up the violin and perhaps explains
Holmes’s inability to prevent the attack on Watson in
“The Three Garridebs.” The incident, argues Michaud,
revealed to Holmes once and for all that he could no
longer continue certain aspects of his detective work
1
without endangering Watson and himself and led him to
retire soon thereafter. John Hall, however, in Sidelights
on Holmes, suggests that Watson is deliberately
deceiving the reader here, to provide a “cover” for
Holmes’s post-“Last Bow” espionage activities.
Ensuing details reveal that Watson is referring here to
the South Downs or Sussex Downs, the range of chalk
hills that divides the county of Sussex into the coastal
district and the Wealden district of forested land.
2
“The Cardboard Box,” which originally appeared in
book form following “Wisteria Lodge,” has been restored
to its rightful place in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
See “The Cardboard Box.”
3
THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE1
As Watson reported in the preface to His Last Bow, a collection of
eight stories published in 1917, Holmes may have been retired, but the
accounts of plenty of his cases remained to delight his fans. The seven
new stories that Watson added to “His Last Bow” as part of the
collection (also included was “The Cardboard Box,” properly part of
The Memoirs) had appeared in the Strand sporadically from 1908
through 1917. “Wisteria Lodge,” the first, is misdated by Watson
(probably by accident), who places it in 1892, when Holmes was
missing and thought dead. Here, as in “The Golden Pince-Nez,”
Holmes deals with a political fugitive, this time from South America.
Although voodoo is a staple of twentieth-century thrillers, the earliest
book in the British Library on the subject was published in 1893, and
this story may be the earliest literary reference to voodoo. Unusually,
Holmes is assisted in the case by that rarity in Dr. Watson’s accounts,
a competent local policeman.
I. THE SINGULAR EXPERIENCE OF MR. JOHN
SCOTT ECCLES
I FIND IT RECORDED in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards
the end of March in the year 1892.2 Holmes had received a telegram whilst we
sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply. He made no remark, but the matter
remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a
thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the
message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,”3 said he.
“How do you define the word ‘grotesque’?”
“Strange—remarkable,” I suggested.
He shook his head at my definition.
“There is surely something more than that,” said he; “some underlying
suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you cast your mind back to some of
those narratives with which you have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will
recognise how often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal. Think of that
little affair of the red-headed men. That was grotesque enough in the outset, and
yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery. Or, again, there was that most
grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which led straight to a murderous
conspiracy. The word puts me on the alert.”
“Have you it there?” I asked.
He read the telegram aloud.
Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult
you?
SCOTT ECCLES,
Post Office, Charing Cross.4
“Man or woman?” I asked.5
“Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She
would have come.”
“Will you see him?”
“My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up
Colonel Carruthers.6 My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces
because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.7 Life is
commonplace, the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed
for ever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to
look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here, unless I am
mistaken, is our client.”
A measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a stout, tall,
grey-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was ushered into the room. His
life history was written in his heavy features and pompous manner. From his
spats to his gold-rimmed spectacles he was a Conservative, a Churchman, a good
citizen, orthodox and conventional to the last degree. But some amazing
experience had disturbed his native composure and left its traces in his bristling
hair, his flushed, angry cheeks, and his flurried, excited manner. He plunged
instantly into his business.
“I have had a most singular and unpleasant experience, Mr. Holmes,” said he.
“Never in my life have I been placed in such a situation. It is most improper—
most outrageous. I must insist upon some explanation.” He swelled and puffed in
his anger.
“Pray sit down, Mr. Scott Eccles,” said Holmes, in a soothing voice. “May I
ask, in the first place, why you came to me at all?”
“Well, sir, it did not appear to be a matter which concerned the police, and
yet, when you have heard the facts, you must admit that I could not leave it
where it was. Private detectives are a class with whom I have absolutely no
sympathy, but none the less, having heard your name—”
“Quite so. But, in the second place, why did you not come at once?”
“What do you mean?”
Holmes glanced at his watch.
“It is a quarter past two,” he said. “Your telegram was dispatched about one.
But no one can glance at your toilet and attire without seeing that your
disturbance dates from the moment of your waking.”
Our client smoothed down his unbrushed hair and felt his unshaven chin.
“You are right, Mr. Holmes. I never gave a thought to my toilet. I was only
too glad to get out of such a house. But I have been running round making
inquiries before I came to you. I went to the house agents, you know, and they
said that Mr. Garcia’s rent was paid up all right and that everything was in order
at Wisteria Lodge.”
“Come, come, sir,” said Holmes, laughing. “You are like my friend Dr.
Watson, who has a bad habit of telling his stories wrong end foremost. Please
arrange your thoughts and let me know, in their due sequence, exactly what
those events are which have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt, with dress
boots and waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of advice and assistance.”
Our client looked down with a rueful face at his own unconventional
appearance.
“I’m sure it must look very bad, Mr. Holmes, and I am not aware that in my
whole life such a thing has ever happened before. But I will tell you the whole
queer business, and when I have done so you will admit, I am sure, that there has
been enough to excuse me.”
But his narrative was nipped in the bud. There was a bustle outside, and Mrs.
Hudson opened the door to usher in two robust and official-looking individuals,
one of whom was well known to us as Inspector Gregson8 of Scotland Yard, an
energetic, gallant, and, within his limitations, a capable officer. He shook hands
with Holmes, and introduced his comrade as Inspector Baynes of the Surrey
Constabulary.
“I have been running round making inquiries before I
came to you.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“We are hunting together, Mr. Holmes, and our trail lay in this direction.” He
turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor. “Are you Mr. John Scott Eccles, of
Popham House, Lee?”
“I am.”
“We have been following you about all the morning.”
“You traced him through the telegram, no doubt,” said Holmes.9
“Exactly, Mr. Holmes. We picked up the scent at Charing Cross Post Office
and came on here.”
“But why do you follow me? What do you want?”
“We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which led up to the
death last night of Mr. Aloysius Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, near Esher.”
Our client had sat up with staring eyes and every tinge of colour struck from
his astonished face.
“Dead? Did you say he was dead?”
“Yes, sir, he is dead.”
“But how? An accident?”
“Murder, if ever there was one upon earth.”
“Good God! This is awful! You don’t mean—you don’t mean that I am
suspected?”
“A letter of yours was found in the dead man’s pocket, and we know by it that
you had planned to pass last night at his house.”
“So I did.”
“Oh, you did, did you?”
Our client sat up with staring eyes.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1908
“This is awful! You don’t mean—you don’t mean that I
am suspected?”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
Out came the official notebook.
“Wait a bit, Gregson,” said Sherlock Holmes. “All you desire is a plain
statement, is it not?”
“And it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eccles that it may be used against him.”
“Mr. Eccles was going to tell us about it when you entered the room. I think,
Watson, a brandy and soda would do him no harm. Now, sir, I suggest that you
take no notice of this addition to your audience, and that you proceed with your
narrative exactly as you would have done had you never been interrupted.”
Our visitor had gulped off the brandy and the colour had returned to his face.
With a dubious glance at the inspector’s notebook, he plunged at once into his
extraordinary statement.
“I am a bachelor,” said he, “and, being of a sociable turn, I cultivate a large
number of friends. Among these are the family of a retired brewer called
Melville, living at Albemarle Mansion, Kensington. It was at his table that I met
some weeks ago a young fellow named Garcia. He was, I understood, of Spanish
descent and connected in some way with the Embassy. He spoke perfect English,
was pleasing in his manners, and as good-looking a man as ever I saw in my life.
“In some way we struck up quite a friendship, this young fellow and I. He
seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and within two days of our meeting
he came to see me at Lee. One thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting
me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge, between Esher and
Oxshott. Yesterday evening I went to Esher to fulfil this engagement.10
“He had described his household to me before I went there. He lived with a
faithful servant, a countryman of his own, who looked after all his needs. This
fellow could speak English and did his housekeeping for him. Then there was a
wonderful cook, he said, a half-breed whom he had picked up in his travels, who
could serve an excellent dinner. I remember that he remarked what a queer
household it was to find in the heart of Surrey, and that I agreed with him,
though it has proved a good deal queerer than I thought.
“I drove to the place—about two miles on the south side of Esher. The house
was a fair-sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving drive which
was banked with high evergreen shrubs. It was an old, tumble-down building in
a crazy state of disrepair. When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in
front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in
visiting a man whom I knew so slightly. He opened the door himself, however,
and greeted me with a great show of cordiality. I was handed over to the
manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his
hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was tête-àtête, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to
continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly
understand him. He continually drummed his fingers on the table, gnawed his
nails, and gave other signs of nervous impatience. The dinner itself was neither
well served nor well cooked, and the gloomy presence of the taciturn servant did
not help to enliven us. I can assure you that many times in the course of the
evening I wished that I could invent some excuse which would take me back to
Lee.
“One thing comes back to my memory which may have a bearing upon the
business that you two gentlemen are investigating. I thought nothing of it at the
time. Near the end of dinner a note was handed in by the servant. I noticed that
after my host had read it he seemed even more distrait and strange than before.
He gave up all pretence at conversation and sat, smoking endless cigarettes, lost
in his own thoughts, but he made no remark as to the contents. About eleven I
was glad to go to bed. Some time later Garcia looked in at my door—the room
was dark at the time—and asked me if I had rung. I said that I had not. He
apologised for having disturbed me so late, saying that it was nearly one o’clock.
I dropped off after this and slept soundly all night.
“And now I come to the amazing part of my tale. When I woke it was broad
daylight. I glanced at my watch, and the time was nearly nine. I had particularly
asked to be called at eight, so I was very much astonished at this forgetfulness. I
sprang up and rang for the servant. There was no response. I rang again and
again, with the same result. Then I came to the conclusion that the bell was out
of order. I huddled on my clothes and hurried downstairs in an exceedingly bad
temper to order some hot water. You can imagine my surprise when I found that
there was no one there. I shouted in the hall. There was no answer. Then I ran
from room to room. All were deserted. My host had shown me which was his
bedroom the night before, so I knocked at the door. No reply. I turned the handle
and walked in. The room was empty, and the bed had never been slept in. He
had gone with the rest. The foreign host, the foreign footman, the foreign cook,
all had vanished in the night! That was the end of my visit to Wisteria Lodge.”
Sherlock Holmes was rubbing his hands and chuckling as he added this
bizarre incident to his collection of strange episodes.
“Your experience is, so far as I know, perfectly unique,” said he. “May I ask,
sir, what you did then?”
“I was furious. My first idea was that I had been the victim of some absurd
practical joke. I packed my things, banged the hall door behind me, and set off
for Esher, with my bag in my hand. I called at Allan Brothers’, the chief land
agents in the village, and found that it was from this firm that the villa had been
rented. It struck me that the whole proceeding could hardly be for the purpose of
making a fool of me, and that the main object must be to get out of the rent. It is
late in March, so quarter-day is at hand.11 But this theory would not work. The
agent was obliged to me for my warning, but told me that the rent had been paid
in advance. Then I made my way to town and called at the Spanish Embassy.
The man was unknown there. After this I went to see Melville, at whose house I
had first met Garcia, but I found that he really knew rather less about him than I
did. Finally, when I got your reply to my wire I came out to you, since I
understand that you are a person who gives advice in difficult cases. But now,
Mr. Inspector, I gather, from what you said when you entered the room, that you
can carry the story on, and that some tragedy has occurred. I can assure you that
every word I have said is the truth, and that, outside of what I have told you, I
know absolutely nothing about the fate of this man. My only desire is to help the
law in every possible way.”
“I am sure of it, Mr. Scott Eccles—I am sure of it,” said Inspector Gregson, in
a very amiable tone. “I am bound to say that everything which you have said
agrees very closely with the facts as they have come to our notice. For example,
there was that note which arrived during dinner. Did you chance to observe what
became of it?”
“Yes, I did. Garcia rolled it up and threw it into the fire.”
“What do you say to that, Mr. Baynes?”
The country detective was a stout, puffy, red man, whose face was only
redeemed from grossness by two extraordinarily bright eyes, almost hidden
behind the heavy creases of cheek and brow. With a slow smile he drew a folded
and discoloured scrap of paper from his pocket.
“It was a dog-grate,12 Mr. Holmes, and he overpitched it. I picked this out
unburned from the back of it.”
Holmes smiled his appreciation.
“You must have examined the house very carefully, to find a single pellet of
paper.”
“It was a dog-grate, Mr. Holmes, and he overpitched it. I
picked this out unburned from the back of it.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“I did, Mr. Holmes. It’s my way. Shall I read it, Mr. Gregson?”
The Londoner nodded.
“The note is written upon ordinary cream-laid paper without watermark. It is a
quarter-sheet. The paper is cut off in two snips with a short-bladed scissors. It
has been folded over three times and sealed with purple wax, put on hurriedly
and pressed down with some flat, oval object. It is addressed to Mr. Garcia,
Wisteria Lodge. It says:
Our own colours, green and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first
corridor, seventh right, green baize. God speed.
D.
It is a woman’s writing, done with a sharp-pointed pen, but the address is either
done with another pen or by someone else. It is thicker and bolder, as you see.”
“A very remarkable note,” said Holmes, glancing it over. “I must compliment
you, Mr. Baynes, upon your attention to detail in your examination of it. A few
trifling points might perhaps be added. The oval seal is undoubtedly a plain
sleeve-link13—what else is of such a shape? The scissors were bent nail-scissors.
Short as the two snips are, you can distinctly see the same slight curve in each.”
The country detective chuckled.
“I thought I had squeezed all the juice out of it, but I see there was a little
over,” he said. “I’m bound to say that I make nothing of the note except that
there was something on hand, and that a woman, as usual, was at the bottom of
it.”
Mr. Scott Eccles had fidgeted in his seat during this conversation.
“I am glad you found the note, since it corroborates my story,” said he. “But I
beg to point out that I have not yet heard what has happened to Mr. Garcia, nor
what has become of his household.”
“As to Garcia,” said Gregson, “that is easily answered. He was found dead
this morning upon Oxshott Common, nearly a mile from his home. His head had
been smashed to pulp by heavy blows of a sand-bag or some such instrument,
which had crushed rather than wounded. It is a lonely corner, and there is no
house within a quarter of a mile of the spot. He had apparently been struck down
first from behind, but his assailant had gone on beating him long after he was
dead. It was a most furious assault. There are no footsteps nor any clue to the
criminals.”
“Robbed?”
“No, there was no attempt at robbery.”
“This is very painful—very painful and terrible,” said Mr. Scott Eccles, in a
querulous voice; “but it is really uncommonly hard upon me. I had nothing to do
with my host going off upon a nocturnal excursion and meeting so sad an end.
How do I come to be mixed up with the case?”
“Very simply, sir,” Inspector Baynes answered. “The only document found in
the pocket of the deceased was a letter from you saying that you would be with
him on the night of his death. It was the envelope of this letter which gave us the
dead man’s name and address. It was after nine this morning when we reached
his house and found neither you nor anyone else inside it. I wired to Mr.
Gregson to run you down in London while I examined Wisteria Lodge. Then I
came into town, joined Mr. Gregson, and here we are.”
“I think now,” said Gregson, rising, “we had best put this matter into an
official shape. You will come round with us to the station, Mr. Scott Eccles, and
let us have your statement in writing.”
“Certainly, I will come at once. But I retain your services, Mr. Holmes. I
desire you to spare no expense and no pains to get at the truth.”
My friend turned to the country inspector.
“I suppose that you have no objection to my collaborating with you, Mr.
Baynes?”
“Highly honoured, sir, I am sure.”
“You appear to have been very prompt and businesslike in all that you have
done. Was there any clue, may I ask, as to the exact hour that the man met his
death?”
“He had been there since one o’clock. There was rain about that time, and his
death had certainly been before the rain.”
“But that is perfectly impossible, Mr. Baynes,” cried our client. “His voice is
unmistakable. I could swear to it that it was he who addressed me in my
bedroom at that very hour.”
“Remarkable, but by no means impossible,” said Holmes, smiling.
“You have a clue?” asked Gregson.
“On the face of it the case is not a very complex one, though it certainly
presents some novel and interesting features. A further knowledge of facts is
necessary before I would venture to give a final and definite opinion. By the
way, Mr. Baynes, did you find anything remarkable besides this note in your
examination of the house?”
The detective looked at my friend in a singular way.
“There were,” said he, “one or two very remarkable things. Perhaps when I
have finished at the police-station you would care to come out and give me your
opinion of them.”
“I am entirely at your service,” said Sherlock Holmes, ringing the bell. “You
will show these gentlemen out, Mrs. Hudson, and kindly send the boy with this
telegram. He is to pay a five-shilling reply.”
We sat for some time in silence after our visitors had left. Holmes smoked
hard, with his brows drawn down over his keen eyes, and his head thrust forward
in the eager way characteristic of the man.
“Well, Watson,” he asked, turning suddenly upon me, “what do you make of
it?”
“I can make nothing of this mystification of Scott Eccles.”
“But the crime?”
“Well, taken with the disappearance of the man’s companions, I should say
that they were in some way concerned in the murder and had fled from justice.”
“That is certainly a possible point of view. On the face of it you must admit,
however, that it is very strange that his two servants should have been in a
conspiracy against him and should have attacked him on the one night when he
had a guest. They had him alone at their mercy every other night in the week.”
“Then why did they fly?”
“Quite so. Why did they fly? There is a big fact. Another big fact is the
remarkable experience of our client, Scott Eccles. Now, my dear Watson, is it
beyond the limits of human ingenuity to furnish an explanation which would
cover both these big facts? If it were one which would also admit of the
mysterious note with its very curious phraseology, why, then it would be worth
accepting as a temporary hypothesis. If the fresh facts which come to our
knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually
become a solution.”
“But what is our hypothesis?”
Holmes leaned back in his chair with half-closed eyes.
“You must admit, my dear Watson, that the idea of a joke is impossible. There
were grave events afoot, as the sequel showed, and the coaxing of Scott Eccles
to Wisteria Lodge had some connection with them.”
“But what possible connection?”
“Let us take it link by link. There is, on the face of it, something unnatural
about this strange and sudden friendship between the young Spaniard and Scott
Eccles. It was the former who forced the pace. He called upon Eccles at the other
end of London on the very day after he first met him, and he kept in close touch
with him until he got him down to Esher. Now, what did he want with Eccles?
What could Eccles supply? I see no charm in the man. He is not particularly
intelligent14—not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin. Why,
then, was he picked out from all the other people whom Garcia met as
particularly suited to his purpose? Has he any one outstanding quality? I say that
he has. He is the very type of conventional British respectability, and the very
man as a witness to impress another Briton. You saw yourself how neither of the
inspectors dreamed of questioning his statement, extraordinary as it was.”
“But what was he to witness?”
“Nothing, as things turned out, but everything had they gone another way.
That is how I read the matter.”
“I see, he might have proved an alibi.”
“Exactly, my dear Watson; he might have proved an alibi. We will suppose,
for argument’s sake, that the household of Wisteria Lodge are confederates in
some design. The attempt, whatever it may be, is to come off, we will say,
before one o’clock. By some juggling of the clocks it is quite possible that they
may have got Scott Eccles to bed earlier than he thought, but in any case it is
likely that when Garcia went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was
really not more than twelve. If Garcia could do whatever he had to do and be
back by the hour mentioned he had evidently a powerful reply to any
accusation.15 Here was this irreproachable Englishman ready to swear in any
court of law that the accused was in his house all the time. It was an insurance
against the worst.”
“Yes, yes, I see that. But how about the disappearance of the others?”
“I have not all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any insuperable
difficulties. Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You will find
yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.”
“And the message?”
“How did it run? ‘Our own colours, green and white.’ Sounds like racing.16
‘Green open, white shut.’ That is clearly a signal. ‘Main stair, first corridor,
seventh right, green baize.’ This is an assignation. We may find a jealous
husband at the bottom of it all. It was clearly a dangerous quest. She would not
have said ‘God speed’ had it not been so. ‘D.’—that should be a guide.”
“The man was a Spaniard. I suggest that ‘D’ stands for Dolores, a common
female name in Spain.”
“Good, Watson, very good—but quite inadmissible. A Spaniard would write
to a Spaniard in Spanish. The writer of this note is certainly English. Well, we
can only possess our souls in patience, until this excellent inspector comes back
for us. Meanwhile we can thank our lucky fate which has rescued us for a few
short hours from the insufferable fatigues of idleness.”
An answer had arrived to Holmes’s telegram before our Surrey officer had
returned. Holmes read it, and was about to place it in his notebook when he
caught a glimpse of my expectant face. He tossed it across with a laugh.
“We are moving in exalted circles,” said he.
The telegram was a list of names and addresses:
Lord Harringby, The Dingle; Sir George Ffolliott, Oxshott Towers; Mr.
Hynes Hynes, J.P., Purdey Place; Mr. James Baker Williams, Forton Old
Hall; Mr. Henderson, High Gable; Rev. Joshua Stone, Nether Walsling.
“He tossed it across with a laugh.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“This is a very obvious way of limiting our field of operations,” said Holmes.
“No doubt Baynes, with his methodical mind, has already adopted some similar
plan.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“Well, my dear fellow, we have already arrived at the conclusion that the
message received by Garcia at dinner was an appointment or an assignation.
Now, if the obvious reading of it is correct, and in order to keep this tryst one
has to ascend a main stair and seek the seventh door in a corridor, it is perfectly
clear that the house is a very large one. It is equally certain that this house cannot
be more than a mile or two from Oxshott, since Garcia was walking in that
direction, and hoped, according to my reading of the facts, to be back in Wisteria
Lodge in time to avail himself of an alibi, which would only be valid up to one
o’clock. As the number of large houses close to Oxshott must be limited, I
adopted the obvious method of sending to the agents mentioned by Scott Eccles
and obtaining a list of them. Here they are in this telegram, and the other end of
our tangled skein must lie among them.”
It was nearly six o’clock before we found ourselves in the pretty Surrey village
of Esher, with Inspector Baynes as our companion.
Holmes and I had taken things for the night, and found comfortable quarters at
the Bull. Finally we set out in the company of the detective on our visit to
Wisteria Lodge. It was a cold, dark March evening, with a sharp wind and a fine
rain beating upon our faces, a fit setting for the wild common over which our
road passed and the tragic goal to which it led us.
II. THE TIGER OF SAN PEDRO
A COLD AND MELANCHOLY walk of a couple of miles brought us to a high wooden
gate, which opened into a gloomy avenue of chestnuts. The curved and
shadowed drive led us to a low, dark house, pitch-black against a slate-coloured
sky. From the front window upon the left of the door there peeped a glimmer of
a feeble light.
“There’s a constable in possession,” said Baynes. “I’ll knock at the window.”
He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on the pane. Through
the fogged glass I dimly saw a man spring up from a chair beside the fire, and
heard a sharp cry from within the room. An instant later a white-faced, hardbreathing policeman had opened the door, the candle wavering in his trembling
hand.
“What’s the matter, Walters?” asked Baynes, sharply.
The man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and gave a long sigh of
relief.
“I am glad you have come, sir. It has been a long evening, and I don’t think
my nerve is as good as it was.”
“Your nerve, Walters? I should not have thought you had a nerve in your
body.”
“Well, sir, it’s this lonely, silent house and the queer thing in the kitchen.
Then when you tapped at the window I thought it had come again.”
The queer thing in the kitchen.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1908
It was at the window.
Lee Conrey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 24, 1912
“That what had come again?”
“The devil, sir, for all I know. It was at the window.”
“What was at the window, and when?”
“It was just about two hours ago. The light was just fading. I was sitting
reading in the chair. I don’t know what made me look up, but there was a face
looking in at me through the lower pane. Lord, sir, what a face it was! I’ll see it
in my dreams.”
“Tut, tut, Walters! This is not talk for a police-constable.”
“I know, sir, I know; but it shook me, sir, and there’s no use to deny it. It
wasn’t black, sir, nor was it white, nor any colour that I know, but a kind of
queer shade like clay with a splash of milk in it. Then there was the size of it—it
was twice yours, sir. And the look of it—the great staring goggle eyes, and the
line of white teeth like a hungry beast. I tell you, sir, I couldn’t move a finger,
nor get my breath, till it whisked away and was gone. Out I ran and through the
shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there.”
“If I didn’t know you were a good man, Walters, I should put a black mark
against you for this. If it were the devil himself a constable on duty should never
thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him. I suppose the whole thing is
not a vision and a touch of nerves?”
“That, at least, is very easily settled,” said Holmes, lighting his little pocket
lantern. “Yes,” he reported, after a short examination of the grass bed, “a number
twelve shoe, I should say. If he was all on the same scale as his foot he must
certainly have been a giant.”
“What became of him?”
“He seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road.”
“Well,” said the inspector, with a grave and thoughtful face, “whoever he may
have been, and whatever he may have wanted, he’s gone for the present, and we
have more immediate things to attend to. Now, Mr. Holmes, with your
permission, I will show you round the house.”
The various bedrooms and sitting-rooms had yielded nothing to a careful
search. Apparently the tenants had brought little or nothing with them, and all
the furniture down to the smallest details had been taken over with the house. A
good deal of clothing with the stamp of Marx and Co., High Holborn, had been
left behind. Telegraphic inquiries had been already made which showed that
Marx knew nothing of his customer save that he was a good payer. Odds and
ends, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire
revolver, and a guitar were amongst the personal property.
“There was a face looking in at me through the lower
pane.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“Nothing in all this,” said Baynes, stalking, candle in hand, from room to
room. “But now, Mr. Holmes, I invite your attention to the kitchen.”
It was a gloomy, high-ceilinged room at the back of the house, with a straw
litter in one corner, which served apparently as a bed for the cook. The table was
piled with half-eaten dishes and dirty plates, the debris of last night’s dinner.
“Look at this,” said Baynes. “What do you make of it?”
He held up his candle before an extraordinary object which stood at the back
of the dresser. It was so wrinkled and shrunken and withered that it was difficult
to say what it might have been. One could but say that it was black and leathery
and that it bore some resemblance to a dwarfish, human figure. At first, as I
examined it, I thought that it was a mummified negro baby, and then it seemed a
very twisted and ancient monkey. Finally I was left in doubt as to whether it was
animal or human. A double band of white shells was strung round the centre of
it.
He held up the candle before an extraordinary object
which stood at the back of the dresser.
Lee Conrey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 1, 1912
“‘Very interesting, indeed,’ said Holmes.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“Very interesting—very interesting, indeed!” said Holmes peering at this
sinister relic. “Anything more?”
In silence Baynes led the way to the sink and held forward his candle. The
limbs and body of some large, white bird, torn savagely to pieces with the
feathers still on, were littered all over it. Holmes pointed to the wattles on the
severed head.
“A white cock,” said he; “most interesting! It is really a very curious case.”
But Mr. Baynes had kept his most sinister exhibit to the last. From under the
sink he drew a zinc pail which contained a quantity of blood. Then from the
table he took a platter heaped with small pieces of charred bone.
“Something has been killed and something has been burned. We raked all
these out of the fire. We had a doctor in this morning. He says that they are not
human.”
Holmes smiled and rubbed his hands.
“I must congratulate you, inspector, on handling so distinctive and instructive
a case. Your powers, if I may say so without offence, seem superior to your
opportunities.”
Inspector Baynes’s small eyes twinkled with pleasure.
“You’re right, Mr. Holmes. We stagnate in the provinces. A case of this sort
gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it. What do you make of these
bones?”
“From under the sink he drew a zinc pail.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“A lamb, I should say, or a kid.”
“And the white cock?”
“Curious, Mr. Baynes, very curious. I should say almost unique.”
“Yes, sir, there must have been some very strange people with some very
strange ways in this house. One of them is dead. Did his companions follow him
and kill him? If they did we should have them, for every port is watched. But my
own views are different. Yes, sir, my own views are very different.”
“You have a theory then?”
“And I’ll work it myself, Mr. Holmes. It’s only due to my own credit to do so.
Your name is made, but I have still to make mine. I should be glad to be able to
say afterwards that I had solved it without your help.”
Holmes laughed good-humouredly.
“Well, well, inspector,” said he. “Do you follow your path and I will follow
mine. My results are always very much at your service if you care to apply to me
for them. I think that I have seen all that I wish in this house, and that my time
may be more profitably employed elsewhere. Au revoir and good luck!”
I could tell by numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost upon
anyone but myself, that Holmes was on a hot scent. As impassive as ever to the
casual observer, there were none the less a subdued eagerness and suggestion of
tension in his brightened eyes and brisker manner which assured me that the
game was afoot. After his habit he said nothing, and after mine I asked no
questions. Sufficient for me to share the sport and lend my humble help to the
capture without distracting that intent brain with needless interruption. All would
come round to me in due time.
I waited, therefore—but, to my ever-deepening disappointment I waited in
vain. Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step forward. One morning he
spent in town, and I learned from a casual reference that he had visited the
British Museum. Save for this one excursion, he spent his days in long, and often
solitary walks, or in chatting with a number of village gossips whose
acquaintance he had cultivated.
“I’m sure, Watson, a week in the country will be invaluable to you,” he
remarked. “It is very pleasant to see the first green shoots upon the hedges and
the catkins on the hazels once again. With a spud,17 a tin box, and an elementary
book on botany, there are instructive days to be spent.” He prowled about with
this equipment himself,18 but it was a poor show of plants which he would bring
back of an evening.
Occasionally in our rambles we came across Inspector Baynes. His fat, red
face wreathed itself in smiles and his small eyes glittered as he greeted my
companion. He said little about the case, but from that little we gathered that he
also was not dissatisfied at the course of events. I must admit, however, that I
was somewhat surprised when, some five days after the crime, I opened my
morning paper to find in large letters:
THE OXSHOTT MYSTERY
A SOLUTION
ARREST OF SUPPOSED ASSASSIN
Holmes sprang in his chair as if he had been stung when I read the head-lines.
“By Jove!” he cried. “You don’t mean that Baynes has got him?”
“Apparently,” said I, as I read the following report:
Great excitement was caused in Esher and the neighbouring district when it
was learned late last night that an arrest had been effected in connection
with the Oxshott murder. It will be remembered that Mr. Garcia, of
Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on Oxshott Common, his body showing
signs of extreme violence, and that on the same night his servant and his
cook fled, which appeared to show their participation in the crime. It was
suggested, but never proved, that the deceased gentleman may have had
valuables in the house, and that their abstraction was the motive of the
crime. Every effort was made by Inspector Baynes, who has the case in
hand, to ascertain the hiding place of the fugitives, and he had good reason
to believe that they had not gone far, but were lurking in some retreat which
had already been prepared. It was certain from the first, however, that they
would eventually be detected, as the cook, from the evidence of one or two
tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of him through the window, was a
man of most remarkable appearance—being a huge and hideous mulatto,19
with yellowish features of a pronounced negroid type. This man has been
seen since the crime, for he was detected and pursued by Constable Walters
on the same evening, when he had the audacity to revisit Wisteria Lodge.
Inspector Baynes, considering that such a visit must have some purpose in
view, and was likely, therefore, to be repeated, abandoned the house, but
left an ambuscade in the shrubbery. The man walked into the trap, and was
captured last night after a struggle, in which Constable Downing was badly
bitten by the savage. We understand that when the prisoner is brought
before the magistrates a remand20 will be applied for by the police, and that
great developments are hoped from his capture.
“Really we must see Baynes at once,” cried Holmes, picking up his hat. “We
will just catch him before he starts.” We hurried down the village street and
found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just leaving his lodgings.
“You’ve seen the paper, Mr. Holmes?” he asked, holding one out to us.
“Yes, Baynes, I’ve seen it. Pray don’t think it a liberty if I give you a word of
friendly warning.”
“Of warning, Mr. Holmes?”
“I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not convinced that you
are on the right lines. I don’t want you to commit yourself too far, unless you are
sure.”
“You’re very kind, Mr. Holmes.”
“I assure you I speak for your good.”
It seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an instant over one of
Mr. Baynes’s tiny eyes.
“We agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes. That’s what I am doing.”
“Oh, very good,” said Holmes. “Don’t blame me.”
“No, sir; I believe you mean well by me. But we all have our own systems,
Mr. Holmes. You have yours, and maybe I have mine.”
“Let us say no more about it.”
“You’re welcome always to my news. This fellow is a perfect savage, as
strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil. He chewed Downing’s thumb
nearly off before they could master him. He hardly speaks a word of English,
and we can get nothing out of him but grunts.”
“And you think you have evidence that he murdered his late master?”
“I didn’t say so, Mr. Holmes; I didn’t say so. We all have our little ways. You
try yours and I will try mine. That’s the agreement.”
Holmes shrugged his shoulders as we walked away together. “I can’t make the
man out. He seems to be riding for a fall. Well, as he says, we must each try our
own way and see what comes of it. But there’s something in Inspector Baynes
which I can’t quite understand.”
“Just sit down in that chair, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes, when we had
returned to our apartment at the Bull. “I want to put you in touch with the
situation, as I may need your help to-night. Let me show you the evolution of
this case, so far as I have been able to follow it. Simple as it has been in its
leading features, it has none the less presented surprising difficulties in the way
of an arrest. There are gaps in that direction which we have still to fill.
“We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon the evening
of his death. We may put aside this idea of Baynes’s that Garcia’s servants were
concerned in the matter. The proof of this lies in the fact that it was he who had
arranged for the presence of Scott Eccles, which could only have been done for
the purpose of an alibi. It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and
apparently a criminal enterprise, in hand that night, in the course of which he
met his death. I say criminal because only a man with a criminal enterprise
desires to establish an alibi. Who, then, is most likely to have taken his life?
Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was directed. So far it
seems to me that we are on safe ground.
“We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia’s household. They
were all confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off then Garcia
returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the Englishman’s
evidence, and all would be well. But the attempt was a dangerous one, and if
Garcia did not return by a certain hour it was probable that his own life had been
sacrificed. It had been arranged, therefore, that in such a case his two
subordinates were to make for some prearranged spot, where they could escape
investigation and be in a position afterwards to renew their attempt. That would
fully explain the facts, would it not?”
The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me. I
wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me before.
“But why should one servant return?”
“We can imagine that, in the confusion of flight, something precious,
something which he could not bear to part with, had been left behind. That
would explain his persistence, would it not?”
“Well, what is the next step?”
“The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner. It indicates a
confederate at the other end. Now, where was the other end? I have already
shown you that it could only lie in some large house, and that the number of
large houses is limited. My first days in this village were devoted to a series of
walks, in which in the intervals of my botanical researches I made a
reconnaissance of all the large houses and an examination of the family history
of the occupants. One house, and only one, riveted my attention. It is the famous
old Jacobean21 grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott,
and less than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy. The other mansions
belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far aloof from romance. But
Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all accounts a curious man, to whom
curious adventures might befall. I concentrated my attention, therefore, upon
him and his household.
“A singular set of people, Watson—the man himself the most singular of them
all. I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark,
deep-set, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of my true business. He is a
man of fifty, strong, active, with iron-grey hair, great bunched black eyebrows,
the step of a deer, and the air of an emperor—a fierce, masterful man, with a redhot spirit behind his parchment face. He is either a foreigner or has lived long in
the Tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord. His friend and
secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate brown, wily, suave
and cat-like with a poisonous gentleness of speech. You see, Watson, we have
come already upon two sets of foreigners—one at Wisteria Lodge and one at
High Gable—so our gaps are beginning to close.
“These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of the
household; but there is one other person, who for our immediate purpose may be
even more important. Henderson has two children—girls of eleven and thirteen.
Their governess is a Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman of forty or thereabouts.
There is also one confidential manservant. This little group forms the real
family, for they travel about together and Henderson is a great traveller, always
on the move. It is only within the last few weeks that he has returned, after a
year’s absence, to High Gable. I may add that he is enormously rich, and
whatever his whims may be he can very easily satisfy them. For the rest, his
house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the usual overfed,
underworked staff of a large English country-house.
“So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own
observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants with a
grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck, but it would not
have come my way had I not been looking out for it. As Baynes remarks, we all
have our systems. It was my system which enabled me to find John Warner, late
gardener of High Gable, sacked in a moment of temper by his imperious
employer. He in turn had friends among the indoor servants, who unite in their
fear and dislike of their master. So I had my key to the secrets of the
establishment.
“Curious people, Watson! I don’t pretend to understand it all yet, but very
curious people anyway. It’s a double-winged house, and the servants live on one
side, the family on the other. There’s no link between the two save for
Henderson’s own servant, who serves the family’s meals. Everything is carried
to a certain door, which forms the one connection. Governess and children
hardly go out at all, except into the garden. Henderson never by any chance
walks alone. His dark secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the
servants is that their master is terribly afraid of something. ‘Sold his soul to the
devil in exchange for money,’ says Warner, ‘and expects his creditor to come up
and claim his own.’ Where they came from, or who they are, nobody has an
idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson has lashed at folk with his dogwhip, and only his long purse and heavy compensation have kept him out of the
courts.
“Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information. We
may take it that the letter came out of this strange household, and was an
invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already been planned.
Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel, and it was a woman.
Who then, but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our reasoning seems to point that
way. At any rate, we may take it as a hypothesis, and see what consequences it
would entail. I may add that Miss Burnet’s age and character make it certain that
my first idea that there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.
“If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of
Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of his death? If he
met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be sealed. Still, in her heart she
must retain bitterness and hatred against those who had killed him, and would
presumably help so far as she could to have revenge upon them. Could we see
her, then, and try to use her? That was my first thought. But now we come to a
sinister fact. Miss Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night of
the murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she alive? Has she
perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend whom she had summoned?
Or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point which we still have to decide.
“You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, Watson. There is nothing
upon which we can apply for a warrant. Our whole scheme might seem fantastic
if laid before a magistrate. The woman’s disappearance counts for nothing, since
in that extraordinary household any member of it might be invisible for a week.
And yet she may at the present moment be in danger of her life. All I can do is to
watch the house and leave my agent, Warner, on guard at the gates. We can’t let
such a situation continue. If the law can do nothing we must take the risk
ourselves.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an outhouse. My
suggestion is that you and I go to-night and see if we can strike at the very heart
of the mystery.”
It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect. The old house with its
atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown
dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a
false position, all combined to damp my ardour. But there was something in the
ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made it impossible to shrink from any
adventure which he might recommend. One knew that thus, and only thus, could
a solution be found. I clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast.
But it was not destined that our investigation should have so adventurous an
ending. It was about five o’clock, and the shadows of the March evening were
beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed into our room.
“They’ve gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The lady broke
away, and I’ve got her in a cab downstairs.”
“Excellent, Warner!” cried Holmes, springing to his feet. “Watson, the gaps
are closing rapidly.”
In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She bore
upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent tragedy. Her head
hung listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised it and turned her dull eyes upon
us, I saw that her pupils were dark dots in the centre of the broad grey iris. She
was drugged with opium.
“I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes,” said our emissary,
the discharged gardener. “When the carriage came out I followed it to the
station. She was like one walking in her sleep; but when they tried to get her into
the train she came to life and struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. She
fought her way out again. I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are. I
shan’t forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I’d have a short
life if he had his way—the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil.”
We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of the
strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug. Baynes had
been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly explained to him.
“Why, sir, you’ve got me the very evidence I want,” said the inspector,
warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. “I was on the same scent as you from
the first.”
“What! You were after Henderson?”
“Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable I
was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below. It was just
who would get his evidence first.”
“She fought her way out again.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“Then why did you arrest the mulatto?”
Baynes chuckled.
“I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected, and that
he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was in any danger.
I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our eyes were off him. I knew
he would be likely to clear off then and give us a chance of getting at Miss
Burnet.”
Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector’s shoulder.
“You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and intuition,” said
he.
Baynes flushed with pleasure.
The light from the window streamed across the
shrubbery.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1908
“I’ve had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week. Wherever the
High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight. But he must have been hard put
to it when Miss Burnet broke away. However, your man picked her up, and it all
ends well. We can’t arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we
get a statement the better.”
“Every minute she gets stronger,” said Holmes, glancing at the governess.
“But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?”
“Henderson,” the inspector answered, “is Don22 Murillo, once called the Tiger
of San Pedro.”
The Tiger of San Pedro! The whole history of the man came back to me in a
flash. He had made his name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty tyrant that had
ever governed any country with a pretence to civilization. Strong, fearless, and
energetic, he had sufficient virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon
a cowering people for ten or twelve years. His name was a terror through all
Central America.23 At the end of that time there was a universal rising against
him. But he was as cunning as he was cruel, and at the first whisper of coming
trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship which was manned
by devoted adherents. It was an empty palace which was stormed by the
insurgents next day. The Dictator, his two children, his secretary, and his wealth
had all escaped them. From that moment he had vanished from the world, and
his identity had been a frequent subject for comment in the European Press.24
“Yes, sir; Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro,” said Baynes. “If you look it
up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and white, same as in the
note, Mr. Holmes. Henderson he called himself, but I traced him back, Paris and
Rome and Madrid to Barcelona, where his ship came in in ’86. They’ve been
looking for him all the time for their revenge, but it is only now that they have
begun to find him out.”
“They discovered him a year ago,” said Miss Burnet, who had sat up and was
now intently following the conversation. “Once already his life has been
attempted; but some evil spirit shielded him. Now, again, it is the noble,
chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the monster goes safe. But another will
come, and yet another, until some day justice will be done; that is as certain as
the rise of to-morrow’s sun.” Her thin hands clenched, and her worn face
blanched with the passion of her hatred.
“But how come you into this matter, Miss Burnet?” asked Holmes. “How can
an English lady join in such a murderous affair?”
“I join in it because there is no other way in the world by which justice can be
gained. What does the law of England care for the rivers of blood shed years ago
in San Pedro, or for the ship-load of treasure which this man has stolen? To you
they are like crimes committed in some other planet. But we know. We have
learned the truth in sorrow and in suffering. To us there is no fiend in hell like
Juan Murillo, and no peace in life while his victims still cry for vengeance.”
“No doubt,” said Holmes, “he was as you say. I have heard that he was
atrocious. But how are you affected?”
“I will tell you it all. This villain’s policy was to murder, on one pretext or
another, every man who showed such promise that he might in time come to be a
dangerous rival. My husband—yes, my real name is Signora25 Victor Durando
—was the San Pedro Minister in London. He met me and married me there. A
nobler man never lived upon earth. Unhappily, Murillo heard of his excellence,
recalled him on some pretext, and had him shot. With a premonition of his fate
he had refused to take me with him. His estates were confiscated, and I was left
with a pittance and a broken heart.
“Then came the downfall of the tyrant. He escaped as you have just described.
But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose nearest and dearest had suffered
torture and death at his hands, would not let the matter rest. They banded
themselves into a society which should never be dissolved until the work was
done. It was my part after we had discovered in the transformed Henderson the
fallen despot, to attach myself to his household and keep the others in touch with
his movements. This I was able to do by securing the position of governess in his
family. He little knew that the woman who faced him at every meal was the
woman whose husband he had hurried at an hour’s notice into eternity. I smiled
on him, did my duty to his children, and bided my time. An attempt was made in
Paris, and failed. We zigzagged swiftly here and there over Europe, to throw off
the pursuers, and finally returned to this house, which he had taken upon his first
arrival in England.
“But here also the ministers of justice were waiting. Knowing that he would
return there, Garcia, who is the son of the former highest dignitary in San Pedro,
was waiting with two trusty companions of humble station, all three fired with
the same reasons for revenge. He could do little during the day, for Murillo took
every precaution, and never went out save with his satellite Lucas, or Lopez as
he was known in the days of his greatness. At night, however, he slept alone, and
the avenger might find him. On a certain evening, which had been prearranged, I
sent my friend final instructions, for the man was for ever on the alert, and
continually changed his room. I was to see that the doors were open and the
signal of a green or white light in a window which faced the drive was to give
notice if all was safe, or if the attempt had better be postponed.
“But everything went wrong with us. In some way I had excited the suspicion
of Lopez, the secretary. He crept up behind me, and sprang upon me just as I had
finished the note. He and his master dragged me to my room, and held judgment
upon me as a convicted traitress. Then and there they would have plunged their
knives into me, could they have seen how to escape the consequence of the deed.
Finally, after much debate, they concluded that my murder was too dangerous.
But they determined to get rid for ever of Garcia.26 They had gagged me, and
Murillo twisted my arm round until I gave him the address. I swear that he might
have twisted it off had I understood what it would mean to Garcia. Lopez
addressed the note which I had written, sealed it with his sleeve-link, and sent it
by the hand of the servant, Jose.27 How they murdered him I do not know, save
that it was Murillo’s hand who struck him down, for Lopez had remained to
guard me. I believe he must have waited among the gorse bushes through which
the path winds and struck him down as he passed. At first they were of a mind to
let him enter the house and to kill him as a detected burglar; but they argued that
if they were mixed up in an inquiry their own identity would at once be publicly
disclosed and they would be open to further attacks. With the death of Garcia the
pursuit might cease, since such a death might frighten others from the task.
“He crept up behind me just as I had finished the note.”
Lee Conrey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 8, 1912
“He and his master dragged me to my room.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“All would now have been well for them had it not been for my knowledge of
what they had done. I have no doubt that there were times when my life hung in
the balance. I was confined to my room, terrorised by the most horrible threats,
cruelly ill-used to break my spirit—see this stab on my shoulder and the bruises
from end to end of my arms—and a gag was thrust into my mouth on the one
occasion when I tried to call from the window. For five days this cruel
imprisonment continued, with hardly enough food to hold body and soul
together. This afternoon a good lunch was brought me, but the moment after I
took it I knew that I had been drugged. In a sort of dream I remember being halfled, half-carried to the carriage; in the same state I was conveyed to the train.
Only then, when the wheels were almost moving did I suddenly realise that my
liberty lay in my own hands. I sprang out, they tried to drag me back, and had it
not been for the help of this good man, who led me to the cab, I should never
have broken away. Now, thank God, I am beyond their power for ever.”
“They had gagged me, and Murillo twisted my arm
round.”
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1908
We had all listened intently to this remarkable statement. It was Holmes who
broke the silence.
“Our difficulties are not over,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Our police
work ends, but our legal work begins.”
“Exactly,” said I. “A plausible lawyer could make it out as an act of selfdefence. There may be a hundred crimes in the background, but it is only on this
one that they can be tried.”
“Come, come,” said Baynes, cheerily; “I think better of the law than that.
Self-defence is one thing. To entice a man in cold blood with the object of
murdering him is another, whatever danger you may fear from him. No, no; we
shall all be justified when we see the tenants of High Gable at the next Guildford
Assizes.”28
It is a matter of history, however, that a little time was still to elapse before the
Tiger of San Pedro should meet with his deserts. Wily and bold, he and his
companion threw their pursuer off their track by entering a lodging-house in
Edmonton Street and leaving by the back-gate into Curzon Square. From that
day they were seen no more in England. Some six months afterwards the
Marquess29 of Montalva and Signor Rulli,30 his secretary, were both murdered
in their rooms at the Hotel Escurial at Madrid. The crime was ascribed to
Nihilism,31 and the murderers were never arrested. Inspector Baynes visited us at
Baker Street with a printed description of the dark face of the secretary, and of
the masterful features, the magnetic black eyes, and the tufted brows of his
master. We could not doubt that justice, if belated, had come at last.
The crime was ascribed to Nihilism, and the murderers
were never arrested.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1908
“The man walked into the trap and was captured.”
Arthur Twidle, Strand Magazine, 1908
“A chaotic case, my dear Watson,” said Holmes, over an evening pipe. “It will
not be possible for you to present it in that compact form which is dear to your
heart. It covers two continents, concerns two groups of mysterious persons, and
is further complicated by the highly respectable presence of our friend Scott
Eccles, whose inclusion shows me that the deceased Garcia had a scheming
mind and a well-developed instinct of self-preservation. It is remarkable only for
the fact that amid a perfect jungle of possibilities we, with our worthy
collaborator the inspector, have kept our close hold on the essentials and so been
guided along the crooked and winding path. Is there any point which is not quite
clear to you?”
“The object of the mulatto cook’s return?”
“I think that the strange creature in the kitchen may account for it. The man
was a primitive savage from the backwoods of San Pedro, and this was his
fetish.32 When his companion and he had fled to some prearranged retreat—
already occupied, no doubt, by a confederate—the companion had persuaded
him to leave so compromising an article of furniture. But the mulatto’s heart was
with it, and he was driven back to it next day, when, on reconnoitring through
the window, he found policeman Walters in possession. He waited three days
longer, and then his piety or his superstition drove him to try once more.
Inspector Baynes, who, with his usual astuteness, had minimised the incident
before me, had really recognised its importance, and had left a trap into which
the creature walked. Any other point, Watson?”
“The torn bird, the pail of blood, the charred bones, all the mystery of that
weird kitchen?”
Holmes smiled as he turned up an entry in his notebook.
“I spent a morning in the British Museum reading up that and other points.
Here is a quotation from Eckermann’s Voodooism and the Negroid Religions:
Sacrifices to propitiate his unclean gods.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1908
The true Voodoo-worshipper attempts nothing of importance without
certain sacrifices which are intended to propitiate his unclean gods. In
extreme cases these rites take the form of human sacrifices followed by
cannibalism. The more usual victims are a white cock, which is plucked in
pieces alive, or a black goat, whose throat is cut and body burned.33
“So you see our savage friend was very orthodox in his ritual. It is grotesque,
Watson,” Holmes added, as he slowly fastened his notebook; “but, as I have had
occasion to remark, there is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.”
“The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge” appeared as a title
for this story only when book and omnibus editions were
published. In Collier’s Magazine (August 15, 1908), the
whole story was entitled “The Singular Experience of Mr.
J. Scott Eccles,” and in England the Strand Magazine
titled it “A Reminiscence of Mr. Sherlock Holmes,”
calling the first installment (September 1908) “The
Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles” and the
second installment (October 1908) “The Tiger of San
Pedro.” Indeed, until collected in book form, the entire
series of stories, appearing from September 1908 to
December 1913 (not including “The Cardboard Box” or
“His Last Bow”), was entitled the “Reminiscences of
Sherlock Holmes.”
1
This date is of course incorrect, for between April 1891
and April 1894 Holmes was absent from London (and
public view) on the Great Hiatus. See “The Empty
House.”
2
The first of numerous snide remarks to Watson during
the course of this tale, which Watson, to his everlasting
credit, faithfully records.
3
The day-and-night post office in Charing Cross was one
of the oldest of the London post offices. In Holmes and
Watson’s day, it was tucked away on the ground floor of
Morley’s Hotel, but had its entrance on the south side of
4
the Strand. The central post office—a “magnificent pile,”
in the words of one Victorian writer—was located in St.
Martins-le-Grand, and there were only four branch
offices, at Lombard Street; Charing Cross; Cavendish
Street, Oxford Street; and 266 Borough High Street.
Although the question may seem strange to an
American reader, the “Scott” was obviously part of a
typical English compound name (for example, Conan
Doyle) and not the writer’s first name. There would have
been no reason for the writer to have wasted money on
including his or her first name in the telegram.
5
This is not Bob Carruthers of “The Solitary Cyclist,”
who had no apparent military connections. Carruthers is
another in the long line of colonels of questionable
integrity—see, for example, Colonel Lysander Stark, no
doubt an alias (“The Engineer’s Thumb”); Colonel
Dorking, whose conduct may have been cause for
blackmail (“Charles Augustus Milverton”); Colonel
James Barclay, “David” to his wife’s “Bathsheba” (“The
Crooked Man”); Colonel Warburton, the madman (“The
Engineer’s Thumb”); Colonel Openshaw of the
Confederate Army (“The Five Orange Pips”); Colonel
Upwood, guilty of scandalous conduct (The Hound of the
Baskervilles); Colonel Emsworth, guilty of overreaction
(“The Blanched Soldier”); Colonel Valentine Walker,
guilty of treason (“The Bruce-Partington Plans”); Colonel
6
James Moriarty, guilty of brotherhood (“The Empty
House”); and Colonel Sebastian Moran, guilty of almost
everything (“The Empty House”). Only Colonel Ross of
“Silver Blaze,” Colonel Spence Munro of “The Copper
Beeches,” Colonel Hayter of “The Reigate Squires,” and
Colonel Sir James Damery of “The Illustrious Client”
seem free of taint.
Holmes uses a similar analogy in “The Devil’s Foot”
when he says, “To let the brain work without sufficient
material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.”
7
Gregson appears only here and in A Study in Scarlet and
“The Greek Interpreter.”
8
How, exactly, Eccles was traced is not discussed, but
Colonel E. Ennalls Berl speculates that Gregson and
Baynes must have possessed some undisclosed
information as to Eccles’s movements, since he visited
several other locations before heading to Charing Cross
Post Office and therefore, theoretically, could have wired
the telegram from anywhere.
9
Commentators contend that Eccles and Garcia’s
“friendship” was a homosexual relationship, albeit
unconsummated. While male-male friendships were very
different in Victorian times, and certainly many were free
from homoerotic content (for example, as this editor
10
firmly believes, that between Holmes and Watson), there
are unexplained incidents in this tale, the implications of
which seem to slide right by Watson, which suggest the
initiation of an erotic relationship here. Holmes, perhaps
to avoid shocking Watson, invents quite other reasons for
the friendship.
This would have been Lady Day, March 25. The four
“quarter-days,” upon which quarterly payments (such as
rents) are due, derive from the medieval church calendar
and indicate the start of a new fiscal season. In England,
Wales, and Northern Ireland they are Lady Day (also
referenced in “The Resident Patient”), Midsummer (June
24), Michaelmas (September 29), and Christmas
(December 25). In 1991 the dates were synchronised to
February 28, May 28, August 28, and November 28.
11
A detached fire-grate standing in a fireplace on
supports called dogs.
12
13
A cuff-link.
Such a comment seems “rather unfair,” remarks Cathy
Fraser, “about someone who had the presence of mind to
search the house, visit the house-agents, the Spanish
Embassy and Melville, in his attempt to unravel the
mystery, before resorting to Holmes.” Perhaps Holmes
has not yet forgiven Eccles for his earlier declaration that
14
“Private detectives are a class with whom I have
absolutely no sympathy.”
Garcia’s plan hinged on Eccles’s believing that it was
1:00 A.M. when he disturbed his houseguest’s sleep; but
Eccles had his own watch, having glanced at it when he
awoke in the morning. “[I]t is rather unreasonable,”
writes Edward F. Clark, Jr., in “Wisteria Lodge Revisited
(A Model Cop, a Model Laundry Item, and a Not-SoModel Culinary Artist),” “to expect that a sly schemer, a
plotter, like Garcia, would stake his alibi—everything—
on the chance that Scott Eccles might not strike a light
and check the hour.” Clark theorises that Garcia’s cook
added some sort of sleeping potion to Eccles’s soup,
rendering him so drowsy that he would not think to look
at the time during the night.
D. Martin Dakin, on the other hand, takes issue with
Garcia’s strategy regarding the actual timing of his alibi.
If Garcia did leave the house at midnight, presumably he
was to carry out his mission by 12:30 A.M. and return by
1:00 A.M.—meaning that he would need an alibi for 12:30,
not 1:00.
15
This would mean the colours worn by racehorses and
their jockeys, as in the program descriptions listed in
“Silver Blaze.” That Holmes makes such an association
for Watson’s benefit should not be surprising, given
Watson’s admitted knowledge of the Turf (see
16
“Shoscombe Old Place”).
A small spade used for digging out weeds. “Spud” as
slang for potato is said to have derived from this word,
since a spud or any other number of digging implements
could be used to dig up potatoes.
17
Few would regard Holmes as a nature-lover; in fact,
Humfrey Michell reminds readers that Holmes’s
admiration of the moss-rose, in “The Naval Treaty,” is
the only occasion on which he is recorded even noticing
flowers. “Can we really believe that he would deceive a
child when he prowled about with a spud, a tin box and
an elementary book on botany during his singularly inept
investigation . . . ? Assuredly that strange story should be
classed among the Apocrypha.”
18
In the strictest terms, a mulatto was said to be the child
of one black parent and one white parent. Reflecting the
racial climate of the day, there were further terms that
specified one’s mixed-race lineage to an even greater
degree: a “quadroon” (one-quarter black) was the child of
a mulatto and a white, while an “octoroon” (one-eighth
black) was the child of a quadroon and a white. The child
of an octoroon and a white was finally considered to be
white, according to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and
Fable, whose listing of “Negro Offspring” tellingly only
presents situations in which a white man would mate with
19
a “negro” or mixed-race woman. The word “mulatto”
was derived from the Portuguese diminutive of mulo, or
mule, the crossbred offspring of a male donkey and
female horse.
In this context, a judicial order for committal of an
alleged offender to custody pending trial.
20
Jacobean architecture, which originated during the
reign of James I (1603–1625), bridged Elizabethan with
English Renaissance style, combining the old ornamental
decorations and grand manor flourishes with more formal
design elements such as columns, arches, and flat roofs
featuring low, protective parapets.
21
A Spanish title applied in courtesy to all of the “better”
classes. It precedes the bearer’s Christian name (as in
“Don Juan”). Thus the inspector’s reference to “Don
Murillo” is improper.
22
Any attempt to guess the true location of “San Pedro”
by looking for clues in the fateful note (“Our own
colours, green and white”) is fruitless, for green and
white, as Julian Wolff points out in Practical Handbook
of Sherlockian Heraldry, are not the colours of any
Central American flag. Wolff does notice that green and
yellow are the colours of Brazil’s flag, a close enough
match to support a possible correlation there. Cindy
23
Stevens makes an excellent case for Hispaniola as “San
Pedro.” Other suggestions include Nicaragua, El
Salvador, and Guatemala. (See note 24 for further
details.)
Operating on the assumption that the green and white
colours of Garcia’s note were actually meant to be the
green and yellow colours of the Brazilian flag, Julian
Wolff identifies the “Tiger” as Dom Pedro de Alcântara,
or Pedro II, the last emperor of Brazil. Pedro II reigned
from 1831 until 1889, when a military coup forced him
into exile in Europe. Far from being a “lewd and
bloodthirsty tyrant,” Pedro II was widely popular; under
his reign the slaves were emancipated, export revenues
increased, and the railway system expanded. It was the
monarchy’s ties to a traditionally elite feudal system,
more than dissatisfaction with Pedro II himself, that
caused pro-capitalist groups—among them the urban
middle class, coffee farmers, and the military—to push
for a new system of government. Wolff explains the
contradiction between Pedro II’s actual nature and the
violent description accorded him here by pointing out that
Holmes and Watson were getting information from the
point of view of the opposition. Although Watson seems
to recall reading about Dom Pedro in the press, his
recollection of those press reports may well have been
coloured by the passions of Garcia and his confederates.
24
As Wolff puts it, “Anyone who has read the opposition’s
opinion of our best and wisest men will easily
understand.”
Evan Wilson concludes instead that the country in
question is El Salvador, the dictator Rafael Zaldívar, who
ruled from 1876 to 1885 and oversaw numerous Indian
uprisings. Charles Higham, in Adventures of Conan
Doyle, suggests José Santos Zelaya (1893–1909),
president of Nicaragua. Zelaya, a true dictator who
annexed the Mosquito Coast, incited revolutions in
neighboring countries, and attempted to assume control
of the Central American Federation, made plenty of
enemies—including the U.S. government, which,
frustrated by his refusal to allow a canal to be built
through Nicaragua, encouraged his Conservative
opposition to revolt. Zelaya was forced to resign and go
into exile, but not until one year after “Wisteria Lodge”
was first published. In a detailed examination of the
problem, Henry Dietz also fingers Zelaya as the Tiger,
arguing that Watson “anticipated the end of the adventure
before it took place in the hopes of hurrying Zelaya’s
downfall.”
Klas Lithner is persuasive in arguing for Justo Rufino
Barrios, a dictator of Guatemala from 1873 to 1885. Most
fancifully, Rick Lai proposes that Murillo was the man
named Mayes, known as the “Tiger of Haiti,” whose evil
deeds were recorded by Arthur Morrison in The Red
Triangle (1903), a record of the adventures of Holmes’s
rival Martin Hewitt.
Watson undoubtedly means “Señora”; “Signora” is an
Italian title.
25
The logic of killing Garcia but not Señora Durando
seems convoluted, argues D. Martin Dakin, seeing as
how “his body was bound to be discovered, whereas she
could have disappeared without anyone being the wiser.”
Chris Wills-Wood answers that Murillo and his
confederates were seeking to avoid drawing attention to
High Gable itself. Señora Durando’s death would have
caused the police to make troublesome inquiries of her
employers, whereas Garcia’s murder could have—had
not the wily Holmes and Baynes been involved—
presumably eluded any connection with the house down
the road.
26
“But why didn’t the fool Lopez wait to pounce until
she’d addressed the envelope herself?” D. Martin Dakin
asks. “It would have saved them the trouble of torturing
her, as well as giving the letter a more authentic
appearance. It is strange enough as it is that the address in
a different handwriting didn’t arouse Garcia’s
suspicions.” That Garcia did notice is the contention of
Chris Wills-Wood, who remembers that, after receiving
the letter, Garcia seemed (according to Eccles’s account)
27
“even more distrait and strange than before” and later
became “lost in his own thoughts.”
As the county seat of Surrey, Guildford would have
hosted the semiannual legal hearings for the entire
county.
28
In England, a rank of the peerage below that of a duke
and above that of an earl. In other countries, the title has
been debased.
29
Clearly “Signor” should be “Señor,” and “Rulli” is an
unlikely Spanish name.
30
31
See “The Golden Pince-Nez,” note 19.
The magical power attributed to a fetish (which may be
either the remnant of a living thing, such as a bone, a
shell, or a claw; or an artificially constructed object, such
as a wooden carving) is said to come from a god that
inhabits the item and imbues it with his desires. In some
cases, the fetish is thought to have a will of its own. Had
the cook placed a “taboo” on his fetish, it would have
taken on even greater power, and no one but the cook
would have been able to touch it.
32
The references to “unclean gods” and cannibalism
reflect a Victorian revulsion for voodoo that largely
persists today. Yet the staying power of Haiti’s primary
33
religion has forced even the Catholic church to come to
uneasy terms with its practices. In fact, some of voodoo’s
rituals are derived from Catholicism itself. Brought to
Haiti by West African slaves (particularly those from
Benin), voodoo holds that the world is governed by
spiritual forces, or loas, who must be appeased through
ritual animal sacrifice, food offerings, and ceremonial
song and dance. Loas, which may be identified with
deceased ancestors, African gods, or Catholic saints, are
sometimes said to inhabit the bodies of voodoo devotees
who have entered into a trance state.
It is from voodoo that the leering, lurching zombies of
horror films originate. A zombie is the soul of a deceased
person summoned by an evil sorcerer to enact magic, or a
corpse raised from the grave to perform manual labor.
Voodoo priests may also appear to create zombies by
administering a poison that renders one paralysed for
several hours.
Despite some of voodoo’s more idiosyncratic aspects,
cannibalism’s role in the belief system is no more than an
urban legend, as is the sticking of pins into so-called
voodoo dolls. Varieties of voodoo are practised not only
in Haiti but also in the Guyanas, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil,
and the United States. In light of Don Murillo’s flight
from one capital of Europe to another, it is not surprising
to find a servant without references in the Don’s retinue,
and the cook, whom the Don “picked up in his travels,” is
of indeterminate geographic origin.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE1
Long before Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola romanticised the
Mafia for the American public, “The Red Circle” involved Holmes
with an Italian secret society so powerful that Watson was compelled
to disguise its name. The “Italian colony” in London, although a
distinct feature of the landscape, by and large kept itself apart from
the rest of the population, and only one other case, “The Six
Napoleons,” involves Italians. Here, Holmes accidentally joins forces
with the Pinkertons, America’s premier private detective agency of the
nineteenth century, to capture a cross-Atlantic killer. The Pinkertons
appear again in The Valley of Fear, but this is the only record of
Holmes working with them. Scholars consider that Holmes may well
have been duped by the beautiful heroine into letting the real murderer
go.
PART I
WELL, MRS. WARREN, I cannot see that you have any particular cause for
uneasiness, nor do I understand why I, whose time is of some value, should
interfere in the matter. I really have other things to engage me.” So spoke
Sherlock Holmes, and turned back to the great scrapbook in which he was
arranging and indexing some of his recent material.
But the landlady had the pertinacity, and also the cunning, of her sex. She held
her ground firmly.
“You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year,” she said—“Mr.
Fairdale Hobbs.”
“Ah, yes—a simple matter.”
“But he would never cease talking of it—your kindness, sir, and the way in
which you brought light into the darkness. I remembered his words when I was
in doubt and darkness myself. I know you could if you only would.”
Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, and also, to do him justice,
upon the side of kindliness. The two forces made him lay down his gum-brush
with a sigh of resignation and push back his chair.
A Reverie.
H. M. Brock, R. I., and Joseph Simpson, R. B. A., Strand Magazine, 1911
“Well, well, Mrs. Warren, let us hear about it, then. You don’t object to
tobacco, I take it? Thank you, Watson—the matches! You are uneasy, as I
understand, because your new lodger remains in his rooms and you cannot see
him. Why, bless you, Mrs. Warren, if I were your lodger you often would not see
me for weeks on end.”
“No doubt, sir; but this is different. It frightens me, Mr. Holmes. I can’t sleep
for fright. To hear his quick step moving here and moving there from early
morning to late at night, and yet never to catch so much as a glimpse of him—
it’s more than I can stand. My husband is as nervous over it as I am, but he is out
at his work all day, while I get no rest from it. What is he hiding for? What has
be done? Except for the girl,2 I am all alone in the house with him, and it’s more
than my nerves can stand.”
Holmes leaned forward and laid his long, thin fingers upon the woman’s
shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished. The
scared look faded from her eyes, and her agitated features smoothed into their
usual commonplace. She sat down in the chair which he had indicated. “If I take
it up I must understand every detail,” said he. “Take time to consider. The
smallest point may be the most essential. You say that the man came ten days
ago, and paid you for a fortnight’s board and lodging?”
“He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week.3 There is a small sittingroom and bedroom, and all complete, at the top of the house.4
“Well?”
“He said, ‘I’ll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my own terms.’
I’m a poor woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little, and the money meant much
to me. He took out a ten-pound note, and he held it out to me then and there.
‘You can have the same every fortnight for a long time to come if you keep the
terms,’ he said. ‘If not, I’ll have no more to do with you.’ ”
“What were the terms?”
“Well, sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house. That was all
right. Lodgers often have them. Also that he was to be left entirely to himself
and never, upon any excuse, to be disturbed.”
“Nothing wonderful in that, surely?”
“Not in reason, sir. But this is out of all reason. He has been there for ten days,
and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set eyes upon him. We can
hear that quick step of his pacing up and down, up and down, night, morning,
and noon; but except on that first night he has never once gone out of the house.”
“Oh, he went out the first night, did he?”
“Yes, sir, and returned very late—after we were all in bed. He told me after he
had taken the rooms that he would do so, and asked me not to bar the door. I
heard him come up the stair after midnight.”
“But his meals?”
“It was his particular direction that we should always, when he rang, leave his
meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he rings again when he has finished
and we take it down from the same chair. If he wants anything else he prints it
on a slip of paper and leaves it.”
“Prints it?”
“Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here’s one I brought
to show you—SOAP. Here’s another—MATCH. This is one he left the first
morning—DAILY GAZETTE.5 I leave that paper with his breakfast every
morning.”
“Dear me, Watson,” said Holmes, staring with great curiosity at the slips of
foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, “this is certainly a little unusual.
Seclusion I can understand; but why print? Printing is a clumsy process. Why
not write? What would it suggest, Watson?”
“That he desired to conceal his handwriting.”
“But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady should have a word of
his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then, again, why such laconic
messages?”
“I cannot imagine.”
“It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The words are written
with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not unusual pattern. You will
observe that the paper is torn away at the side here after the printing was done,
so that the ‘S’ of ‘SOAP’ is partly gone. Suggestive, Watson, is it not?”
“Of caution?”
“Exactly. There was evidently some mark, some thumb-print, something
which might give a clue to the person’s identity. Now, Mrs. Warren, you say that
the man was of middle size, dark, and bearded. What age would he be?”
“Holmes stared with great curiosity at the slips of
foolscap.”
H. M. Brock, R. I., and Joseph Simpson, R. B. A., Strand Magazine, 1911
“Youngish, sir—not over thirty.”
“Well, can you give me no further indications?”
“He spoke good English, sir, and yet I thought he was a foreigner by his
accent.”
“And he was well dressed?”
“Very smartly dressed, sir—quite the gentleman. Dark clothes—nothing you
would note.”
“He gave no name?”
“No, sir.”
“And has had no letters or callers?”
“None.”
“But surely you or the girl enter his room of a morning?”
“No, sir; he looks after himself entirely.”
“Dear me! That is certainly remarkable. What about his luggage?”
“He had one big brown bag with him—nothing else.”
“Well, we don’t seem to have much material to help us. Do you say nothing
has come out of that room—absolutely nothing?”
The landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shook out two burnt
matches and a cigarette-end upon the table.
“They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because I had heard that
you can read great things out of small ones.”
Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
“There is nothing here,” said he. “The matches have, of course, been used to
light cigarettes. That is obvious from the shortness of the burnt end. Half the
match is consumed in lighting a pipe or cigar. But, dear me! This cigarette stub
is certainly remarkable. The gentleman was bearded and moustached, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t understand that. I should say that only a clean-shaven man could have
smoked this. Why, Watson, even your modest moustache would have been
singed.”
“A holder?” I suggested.
“No, no; the end is matted. I suppose there could not be two people in your
rooms, Mrs. Warren?”
“No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life in one.”
“Well, I think we must wait for a little more material. After all, you have
nothing to complain of. You have received your rent, and he is not a troublesome
lodger, though he is certainly an unusual one. He pays you well, and if he
chooses to lie concealed it is no direct business of yours. We have no excuse for
an intrusion upon his privacy until we have some reason to think that there is a
guilty reason for it. I’ve taken up the matter, and I won’t lose sight of it. Report
to me if anything fresh occurs, and rely upon my assistance if it should be
needed.
“There are certainly some points of interest in this case, Watson,” he
remarked, when the landlady had left us. “It may, of course, be trivial—
individual eccentricity; or it may be very much deeper than appears on the
surface. The first thing that strikes one is the obvious possibility that the person
now in the rooms may be entirely different from the one who engaged them.”
“Why should you think so?”
“Well, apart from this cigarette-end, was it not suggestive that the only time
the lodger went out was immediately after his taking the rooms? He came back
—or someone came back—when all witnesses were out of the way. We have no
proof that the person who came back was the person who went out. Then, again,
the man who took the rooms spoke English well. This other, however, prints
‘match’ when it should have been ‘matches.’ I can imagine that the word was
taken out of a dictionary, which would give the noun but not the plural. The
laconic style may be to conceal the absence of knowledge of English. Yes,
Watson, there are good reasons to suspect that there has been a substitution of
lodgers.”
“But for what possible end?”
“Ah! there lies our problem. There is one rather obvious line of investigation.”
He took down the great book in which, day by day, he filed the agony columns
of the various London journals. “Dear me!” said he, turning over the pages,
“what a chorus of groans, cries, and bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular
happenings! But surely the most valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to
a student of the unusual! This person is alone and cannot be approached by letter
without a breach of that absolute secrecy which is desired. How is any news or
any message to reach him from without? Obviously by advertisement through a
newspaper.6 There seems no other way, and fortunately we need concern
ourselves with the one paper only. Here are the Daily Gazette extracts of the last
fortnight.7 ‘Lady with a black boa at Prince’s Skating Club’—that we may pass.
‘Surely Jimmy will not break his mother’s heart’—that appears to be irrelevant.
‘If the lady who fainted in the Brixton bus’—she does not interest me. ‘Every
day my heart longs—’ Bleat, Watson—unmitigated bleat! Ah, this is a little
more possible. Listen to this: ‘Be patient. Will find some sure means of
communication. Meanwhile, this column.—G.’ That is two days after Mrs.
Warren’s lodger arrived. It sounds plausible, does it not? The mysterious one
could understand English, even if he could not print it. Let us see if we can pick
up the trace again. Yes, here we are—three days later. ‘Am making successful
arrangements. Patience and prudence. The clouds will pass.—G.’ Nothing for a
week after that. Then comes something much more definite: ‘The path is
clearing. If I find chance signal message remember code agreed—one A, two B,
and so on. You will hear soon.—G.’ That was in yesterday’s paper, and there is
nothing in to-day’s. It’s all very appropriate to Mrs. Warren’s lodger. If we wait
a little, Watson, I don’t doubt that the affair will grow more intelligible.”
So it proved; for in the morning I found my friend standing on the hearthrug
with his back to the fire, and a smile of complete satisfaction upon his face.
“How’s this, Watson?” he cried, picking up the paper from the table. “ ‘High
red house with white stone facings. Third floor. Second window left. After dusk.
—G.’ That is definite enough. I think after breakfast we must make a little
reconnaissance of Mrs. Warren’s neighbourhood. Ah, Mrs. Warren! what news
do you bring us this morning?”
Our client had suddenly burst into the room with an explosive energy which
told of some new and momentous development.
“It’s a police matter, Mr. Holmes!” she cried. “I’ll have no more of it! He
shall pack out of that8 with his baggage. I would have gone straight up and told
him so, only I thought it was but fair to you to take your opinion first. But I’m at
the end of my patience, and when it comes to knocking my old man about—”
“Knocking Mr. Warren about?”
“Using him roughly, anyway.”
“But who used him roughly?”
“Ah! that’s what we want to know! It was this morning, sir. Mr. Warren is a
timekeeper at Morton and Waylight’s, in Tottenham Court Road. He has to be
out of the house before seven. Well, this morning he had not got ten paces down
the road when two men came up behind him, threw a coat over his head, and
bundled him into a cab that was beside the kerb. They drove him an hour, and
then opened the door and shot him out. He lay in the roadway so shaken in his
wits that he never saw what became of the cab. When he picked himself up he
found he was on Hampstead Heath; so he took a bus home, and there he lies now
on the sofa, while I came straight round to tell you what had happened.”
“Most interesting,” said Holmes. “Did he observe the appearance of these men
—did he hear them talk?”
“They bundled him into a cab that was beside the kerb.”
H. M. Brock, R. I., and Joseph Simpson, R. B. A., Strand Magazine, 1911
“No; he is clean dazed. He just knows that he was lifted up as if by magic and
dropped as if by magic. Two at least were in it, and maybe three.”
“And you connect this attack with your lodger?”
“Well, we’ve lived there fifteen years and no such happenings ever came
before. I’ve had enough of him. Money’s not everything. I’ll have him out of my
house before the day is done.”
“Wait a bit, Mrs. Warren. Do nothing rash. I begin to think that this affair may
be very much more important than appeared at first sight. It is clear now that
some danger is threatening your lodger. It is equally clear that his enemies, lying
in wait for him near your door, mistook your husband for him in the foggy
morning light. On discovering their mistake they released him. What they would
have done had it not been a mistake, we can only conjecture.”
“Well, what am I to do, Mr. Holmes?”
“I have a great fancy to see this lodger9 of yours, Mrs. Warren.”
“I don’t see how that is to be managed, unless you break in the door. I always
hear him unlock it as I go down the stair after I leave the tray.”
“He has to take the tray in. Surely we could conceal ourselves and see him do
it.”
The landlady thought for a moment.
“Well, sir, there’s the box-room opposite. I could arrange a looking-glass,
maybe, and if you were behind the door—”
“Excellent!” said Holmes. “When does he lunch?”
“About one, sir.”
“Then Dr. Watson and I will come round in time. For the present, Mrs.
Warren, good-bye.”
At half-past twelve we found ourselves upon the steps of Mrs. Warren’s house
—a high, thin, yellow-brick edifice in Great Orme Street, a narrow thoroughfare
at the northeast side of the British Museum. Standing as it does near the corner
of the street, it commands a view down Howe Street, with its more pretentious
houses. Holmes pointed with a chuckle to one of these, a row of residential flats,
which projected so that they could not fail to catch the eye.
Great Orme Street, properly Great Ormond Street.
Old London
“See, Watson!” said he. “ ‘High red house with stone facings.’ There is the
signal station all right. We know the place, and we know the code; so surely our
task should be simple. There’s a ‘To Let’ card in that window. It is evidently an
empty flat to which the confederate has access.10 Well, Mrs. Warren, what
now?”
“I have it all ready for you. If you will both come up and leave your boots
below on the landing, I’ll put you there now.”
It was an excellent hiding-place which she had arranged. The mirror was so
placed that, seated in the dark, we could very plainly see the door opposite. We
had hardly settled down in it, and Mrs. Warren left us, when a distant tinkle
announced that our mysterious neighbour had rung. Presently the landlady
appeared with the tray, laid it down upon a chair beside the closed door, and
then, treading heavily, departed. Crouching together in the angle of the door, we
kept our eyes fixed upon the mirror. Suddenly, as the landlady’s footsteps died
away, there was the creak of a turning key, the handle revolved, and two thin
hands darted out and lifted the tray from the chair. An instant later it was
hurriedly replaced, and I caught a glimpse of a dark, beautiful, horrified face
glaring at the narrow opening of the box-room. Then the door crashed to, the key
turned once more, and all was silence. Holmes twitched my sleeve, and together
we stole down the stair.
“I caught a glimpse of a dark, beautiful, horrified face
glaring at thenarrow opening of the box-room.”
H. M. Brock, R. I., and Joseph Simpson, R. B. A., Strand Magazine, 1911
“I will call again in the evening,” said he to the expectant landlady. “I think,
Watson, we can discuss this business better in our own quarters.”
“My surmise, as you saw, proved to be correct,” said he, speaking from the
depths of his easy-chair. “There has been a substitution of lodgers. What I did
not foresee is that we should find a woman, and no ordinary woman,11 Watson.”
“She saw us.”
“Well, she saw something to alarm her. That is certain. The general sequence
of events is pretty clear, is it not? A couple seek refuge in London from a very
terrible and instant danger. The measure of that danger is the rigour of their
precautions. The man, who has some work which he must do, desires to leave
the woman in absolute safety while he does it. It is not an easy problem, but he
solved it in an original fashion, and so effectively that her presence was not even
known to the landlady who supplies her with food. The printed messages, as is
now evident, were to prevent her sex being discovered by her writing. The man
cannot come near the woman, or he will guide their enemies to her.12 Since he
cannot communicate with her direct, he has recourse to the agony column of a
paper. So far all is clear.”
“But what is at the root of it?”
“Ah, yes, Watson—severely practical, as usual! What is at the root of it all?
Mrs. Warren’s whimsical problem enlarges somewhat and assumes a more
sinister aspect as we proceed. This much we can say: that it is no ordinary love
escapade. You saw the woman’s face at the sign of danger. We have heard, too,
of the attack upon the landlord, which was undoubtedly meant for the lodger.
These alarms, and the desperate need for secrecy, argue that the matter is one of
life or death. The attack upon Mr. Warren further shows that the enemy,
whoever they are, are themselves not aware of the substitution of the female
lodger for the male. It is very curious and complex, Watson.”
“Why should you go further in it? What have you to gain from it?”
“What, indeed? It is Art for Art’s sake, Watson. I suppose when you doctored
you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?”
“For my education, Holmes.”
“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for
the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither money nor credit in it, and
yet one would wish to tidy it up. When dusk comes we should find ourselves one
stage advanced in our investigation.”
When we returned to Mrs. Warren’s rooms, the gloom of a London winter
evening had thickened into one grey curtain, a dead monotone of colour, broken
only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows and the blurred haloes of the
gaslamps. As we peered from the darkened sitting-room of the lodging-house,
one more dim light glimmered high up through the obscurity.
“Someone is moving in that room,” said Holmes in a whisper, his gaunt and
eager face thrust forward to the window-pane. “Yes, I can see his shadow. There
he is again! He has a candle in his hand. Now he is peering across. He wants to
be sure that she is on the look-out. Now he begins to flash. Take the message
also, Watson, that we may check each other. A single flash—that is ‘A,’ surely.
Now, then. How many did you make it? Twenty.13 So did I. That should mean
‘T.’ A T—that’s intelligible enough! Another ‘T.’ Surely this is the beginning of
a second word. Now, then—TENTA. Dead stop. That can’t be all, Watson?
ATTENTA gives no sense. Nor is it any better as three words AT, TEN, TA,
unless ‘T.A.’ are a person’s initials. There it goes again! What’s that? ATTE—
why, it is the same message over again. Curious, Watson, very curious! Now he
is off once more! AT—why, he is repeating it for the third time. ‘ATTENTA’
three times! How often will he repeat it? No, that seems to be the finish. He has
withdrawn from the window. What do you make of it, Watson?”
“A cipher message, Holmes.”
My companion gave a sudden chuckle of comprehension. “And not a very
obscure cipher, Watson,” said he. “Why, of course, it is Italian! The ‘A’ means
that it is addressed to a woman. ‘Beware! Beware! Beware!’ How’s that
Watson?”14
“I believe you have hit it.”
“Not a doubt of it. It is a very urgent message, thrice repeated to make it more
so. But beware of what? Wait a bit; he is coming to the window once more.”
Again we saw the dim silhouette of a crouching man and the whisk of the
small flame across the window as the signals were renewed. They came more
rapidly than before—so rapid that it was hard to follow them.
“ ‘PERICOLO’—‘pericolo’—eh, what’s that, Watson? ‘Danger,’ isn’t it? Yes,
by Jove, it’s a danger signal. There he goes again! ‘PERI.’ Halloa, what on earth
—”
The light had suddenly gone out, the glimmering square of window had
disappeared, and the third floor formed a dark band round the lofty building,
with its tiers of shining casements. That last warning cry had been suddenly cut
short. How, and by whom? The same thought occurred on the instant to us both.
Holmes sprang up from where he crouched by the window.
“This is serious, Watson,” he cried. “There is some devilry going forward!
Why should such a message stop in such a way?15 I should put Scotland Yard in
touch with this business—and yet, it is too pressing for us to leave.”
“Shall I go for the police?”
“We must define the situation a little more clearly. It may bear some more
innocent interpretation. Come, Watson, let us go across ourselves and see what
we can make of it.”
PART II
AS we walked rapidly down Howe Street I glanced back at the building which
we had left. There, dimly outlined at the top window, I could see the shadow of a
head, a woman’s head, gazing tensely, rigidly, out into the night, waiting with
breathless suspense for the renewal of that interrupted message. At the doorway
of the Howe Street flats a man, muffled in a cravat and greatcoat, was leaning
against the railing. He started as the hall-light fell upon our faces.
“Holmes!” he cried.
“Why, Gregson!” said my companion as he shook hands with the Scotland
Yard detective. “Journeys end with lovers’ meetings.16 What brings you here?”
“The same reasons that bring you, I expect,” said Gregson. “How you got on
to it I can’t imagine.”
“Different threads, but leading up to the same tangle. I’ve been taking the
signals.”
“Signals?”
“Yes, from that window. They broke off in the middle. We came over to see
the reason. But since it is safe in your hands I see no object in continuing the
business.”
“Wait a bit!” cried Gregson, eagerly. “I’ll do you this justice, Mr. Holmes,
that I was never in a case yet that I didn’t feel stronger for having you on my
side. There’s only the one exit to these flats, so we have him safe.”
“Who is he?”
“Well, well, we score over you for once, Mr. Holmes. You must give us best
this time.” He struck his stick sharply upon the ground, on which a cabman, his
whip in his hand, sauntered over from a four-wheeler which stood on the far side
of the street. “May I introduce you to Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” he said to the
cabman. “This is Mr. Leverton, of Pinkerton’s American Agency.”17
“The hero of the Long Island Cave Mystery?”18 said Holmes. “Sir, I am
pleased to meet you.”
The American, a quiet, businesslike young man, with a clean-shaven, hatchet
face, flushed up at the words of commendation. “I am on the trail of my life
now, Mr. Holmes,” said he. “If I can get Gorgiano—”
“What! Gorgiano of the Red Circle?”19
“Oh, he has a European fame, has he? Well, we’ve learned all about him in
America. We know he is at the bottom of fifty murders, and yet we have nothing
positive we can take him on. I tracked him over from New York, and I’ve been
close to him for a week in London, waiting some excuse to get my hand on his
collar. Mr. Gregson and I ran him to ground in that big tenement house, and
there’s only the one door, so he can’t slip us. There’s three folk come out since
he went in, but I’ll swear he wasn’t one of them.”
“Mr. Holmes talks of signals,” said Gregson. “I expect, as usual, he knows a
good deal that we don’t.”
In a few clear words Holmes explained the situation as it had appeared to us.
The American struck his hands together with vexation.
“He’s on to us!” he cried.
“Why do you think so?”
“Well, it figures out that way, does it not? Here he is, sending out messages to
an accomplice—there are several of his gang in London. Then suddenly, just as
by your own account he was telling them that there was danger, he broke short
off. What could it mean except that from the window he had suddenly either
caught sight of us in the street, or in some way come to understand how close the
danger was, and that he must act right away if he was to avoid it? What do you
suggest, Mr. Holmes?”
“That we go up at once and see for ourselves.”
“But we have no warrant for his arrest.”
“He is in unoccupied premises under suspicious circumstances,” said
Gregson. “That is good enough for the moment. When we have him by the heels
we can see if New York can’t help us to keep him. I’ll take the responsibility of
arresting him now.”
Our official detectives may blunder in the matter of intelligence, but never in
that of courage. Gregson climbed the stair to arrest this desperate murderer with
the same absolutely quiet and businesslike bearing with which he would have
ascended the official staircase of Scotland Yard. The Pinkerton man had tried to
push past him, but Gregson had firmly elbowed him back. London dangers were
the privilege of the London force.
The door of the left-hand flat upon the third landing was standing ajar.
Gregson pushed it open. Within all was absolute silence and darkness. I struck a
match, and lit the detective’s lantern. As I did so, and as the flicker steadied into
a flame, we all gave a gasp of surprise. On the deal boards of the carpetless floor
there was outlined a fresh track of blood. The red steps pointed towards us and
led away from an inner room, the door of which was closed. Gregson flung it
open and held his light full blaze in front of him, whilst we all peered eagerly
over his shoulders.
In the middle of the floor of the empty room was huddled the figure of an
enormous man, his clean-shaven, swarthy face grotesquely horrible in its
contortion, and his head encircled by a ghastly crimson halo of blood, lying in a
broad wet circle upon the white woodwork. His knees were drawn up, his hands
thrown out in agony, and from the centre of his broad, brown, upturned throat
there projected the white haft of a knife driven blade-deep into his body. Giant
as he was, the man must have gone down like a pole-axed ox before that terrific
blow. Beside his right hand a most formidable horn-handled, two-edged dagger
lay upon the floor, and near it a black kid glove.
“By George! it’s Black Gorgiano himself!” cried the American detective.
“Someone has got ahead of us this time.”
“‘By George! It’s Black Gorgiano himself!’ cried the
American detective.”
H. M. Brock, R. I., Strand Magazine, 1911
“Holmes was passing the candle backwards and forwards
across the window-panes.”
H. M. Brock, R. I., Strand Magazine, 1911
“Here is the candle in the window, Mr. Holmes,” said Gregson. “Why,
whatever are you doing?”
Holmes had stepped across, had lit the candle, and was passing it backwards
and forwards across the window-panes. Then he peered into the darkness, blew
the candle out, and threw it on the floor.
“I rather think that will be helpful,” said he. He came over and stood in deep
thought while the two professionals were examining the body. “You say that
three people came out from the flat while you were waiting downstairs,” said he,
at last. “Did you observe them closely?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Was there a fellow about thirty, black-bearded, dark, of middle size?”
“Yes; he was the last to pass me.”
“That is your man, I fancy. I can give you his description, and we have a very
excellent outline of his footmark. That should be enough for you.”
“Not much, Mr. Holmes, among the millions of London.”
“Perhaps not. That is why I thought it best to summon this lady to your aid.”
We all turned round at the words. There, framed in the doorway, was a tall
and beautiful woman—the mysterious lodger of Bloomsbury. Slowly she
advanced, her face pale and drawn with a frightful apprehension, her eyes fixed
and staring, her terrified gaze rivetted upon the dark figure on the floor.
“Slowly she advanced, her face pale and drawn with a
frightful apprehension.”
H. M. Brock, R. I., Strand Magazine, 1911
“You have killed him!” she muttered. “Oh, Dio mio, you have killed him!”
Then I heard a sudden sharp intake of her breath, and she sprang into the air with
a cry of joy. Round and round the room she danced, her hands clapping, her dark
eyes gleaming with delighted wonder, and a thousand pretty Italian exclamations
pouring from her lips. It was terrible and amazing to see such a woman so
convulsed with joy at such a sight. Suddenly she stopped and gazed at us all with
a questioning stare.
“But you! You are police, are you not? You have killed Giuseppe Gorgiano. Is
it not so?”
“We are police, madam.”
She looked round into the shadows of the room.
“But where, then, is Gennaro?” she asked. “He is my husband, Gennaro
Lucca. I am Emilia Lucca, and we are both from New York. Where is Gennaro?
He cal