← catalogue

The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English

by unknown · English · Gutenberg #2038 · 702,002 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English

Editor: Julian Hawthorne

Contributor: Egerton Castle
        Wilkie Collins
        Arthur Conan Doyle
        Rudyard Kipling
        Robert Louis Stevenson
        Stanley John Weyman


        
Release date: June 4, 2005 [eBook #2038]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2038

Credits: Produced by Don Lainson. Text file originally posted in
        January, 2000 with an html conversion added by Walter
        Deboeuf in 2003. The present text and html files were
        produced by Suzanne Shell, M, and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net;


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOCK AND KEY LIBRARY: CLASSIC MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE STORIES: MODERN ENGLISH ***




Produced by Don Lainson. Text file originally posted in
January, 2000 with an html conversion added by Walter
Deboeuf in 2003. The present text and html files were
produced by Suzanne Shell, M, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net;







THE
LOCK AND KEY
LIBRARY

CLASSIC MYSTERY AND
DETECTIVE STORIES

_EDITED BY_
JULIAN HAWTHORNE

MODERN ENGLISH

    Rudyard Kipling          A. Conan Doyle

                 Egerton Castle

    Stanley J. Weyman        Wilkie Collins

            Robert Louis Stevenson


    NEW YORK
    THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO.
    1909

[Illustration: "And Sent out a Jet of Fire from His Nostrils"

Drawing by Power O'Malley. To illustrate "In the House of Suddhoo," by
Rudyard Kipling]




Rudyard Kipling




_My Own True Ghost Story_

    As I came through the Desert thus it was--
    As I came through the Desert.
            _The City of Dreadful Night._


Somewhere in the Other World, where there are books and pictures and plays
and shop windows to look at, and thousands of men who spend their lives in
building up all four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories about the
real insides of people; and his name is Mr. Walter Besant. But he will
insist upon treating his ghosts--he has published half a workshopful of
them--with levity. He makes his ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some
cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. You may treat anything, from
a Viceroy to a Vernacular Paper, with levity; but you must behave
reverently toward a ghost, and particularly an Indian one.

There are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby
corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler passes. Then
they drop upon his neck and remain. There are also terrible ghosts of
women who have died in child-bed. These wander along the pathways at dusk,
or hide in the crops near a village, and call seductively. But to answer
their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned
backward that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts of little
children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well curbs and the
fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch women by the wrist
and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse ghosts, however,
are only vernacular articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has
yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman; but
many English ghosts have scared the life out of both white and black.

Nearly every other Station owns a ghost. There are said to be two at
Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree dâk-bungalow
on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a
White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a house in Lahore;
Dalhousie says that one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the
incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry
ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a
sorrowful one; there are Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open
without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the
heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the
chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there
is something--not fever--wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad. The older
Provinces simply bristle with haunted houses, and march phantom armies
along their main thoroughfares.

Some of the dâk-bungalows on the Grand Trunk Road have handy little
cemeteries in their compound--witnesses to the "changes and chances of
this mortal life" in the days when men drove from Calcutta to the
Northwest. These bungalows are objectionable places to put up in. They are
generally very old, always dirty, while the _khansamah_ is as ancient as
the bungalow. He either chatters senilely, or falls into the long trances
of age. In both moods he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers
to some Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and says that when he
was in that Sahib's service not a _khansamah_ in the Province could touch
him. Then he jabbers and mows and trembles and fidgets among the dishes,
and you repent of your irritation.

In these dâk-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and when
found, they should be made a note of. Not long ago it was my business to
live in dâk-bungalows. I never inhabited the same house for three nights
running, and grew to be learned in the breed. I lived in Government-built
ones with red brick walls and rail ceilings, an inventory of the furniture
posted in every room, and an excited snake at the threshold to give
welcome. I lived in "converted" ones--old houses officiating as
dâk-bungalows--where nothing was in its proper place and there wasn't even
a fowl for dinner. I lived in second-hand palaces where the wind blew
through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as through a broken
pane. I lived in dâk-bungalows where the last entry in the visitors' book
was fifteen months old, and where they slashed off the curry-kid's head
with a sword. It was my good luck to meet all sorts of men, from sober
traveling missionaries and deserters flying from British Regiments, to
drunken loafers who threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still
greater good fortune just to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair
proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in
dâk-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would
voluntarily hang about a dâk-bungalow would be mad of course; but so many
men have died mad in dâk-bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of
lunatic ghosts.

In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts rather, for there were two of
them. Up till that hour I had sympathized with Mr. Besant's method of
handling them, as shown in "The Strange Case of Mr. Lucraft and Other
Stories." I am now in the Opposition.

We will call the bungalow Katmal dâk-bungalow. But _that_ was the smallest
part of the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in
dâk-bungalows. He should marry. Katmal dâk-bungalow was old and rotten and
unrepaired. The floor was of worn brick, the walls were filthy, and the
windows were nearly black with grime. It stood on a bypath largely used by
native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests; but
real Sahibs were rare. The _khansamah_, who was nearly bent double with
old age, said so.

When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain on the face of the
land, accompanied by a restless wind, and every gust made a noise like the
rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy palms outside. The _khansamah_
completely lost his head on my arrival. He had served a Sahib once. Did I
know that Sahib? He gave me the name of a well-known man who has been
buried for more than a quarter of a century, and showed me an ancient
daguerreotype of that man in his prehistoric youth. I had seen a steel
engraving of him at the head of a double volume of Memoirs a month before,
and I felt ancient beyond telling.

The day shut in and the _khansamah_ went to get me food. He did not go
through the, pretense of calling it "_khana_"--man's victuals. He said
"_ratub_," and that means, among other things, "grub"--dog's rations.
There was no insult in his choice of the term. He had forgotten the other
word, I suppose.

While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, I settled myself down,
after exploring the dâk-bungalow. There were three rooms, beside my own,
which was a corner kennel, each giving into the other through dingy white
doors fastened with long iron bars. The bungalow was a very solid one, but
the partition walls of the rooms were almost jerry-built in their
flimsiness. Every step or bang of a trunk echoed from my room down the
other three, and every footfall came back tremulously from the far walls.
For this reason I shut the door. There were no lamps--only candles in long
glass shades. An oil wick was set in the bathroom.

For bleak, unadulterated misery that dâk-bungalow was the worst of the
many that I had ever set foot in. There was no fireplace, and the windows
would not open; so a brazier of charcoal would have been useless. The rain
and the wind splashed and gurgled and moaned round the house, and the
toddy palms rattled and roared. Half a dozen jackals went through the
compound singing, and a hyena stood afar off and mocked them. A hyena
would convince a Sadducee of the Resurrection of the Dead--the worst sort
of Dead. Then came the _ratub_--a curious meal, half native and half
English in composition--with the old _khansamah_ babbling behind my chair
about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles playing
shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains. It was just the
sort of dinner and evening to make a man think of every single one of his
past sins, and of all the others that he intended to commit if he lived.

Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy. The lamp in the bathroom
threw the most absurd shadows into the room, and the wind was beginning to
talk nonsense.

Just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-sucking I heard the
regular--"Let-us-take-and-heave-him-over" grunt of doolie-bearers in the
compound. First one doolie came in, then a second, and then a third. I
heard the doolies dumped on the ground, and the shutter in front of my
door shook. "That's some one trying to come in," I said. But no one spoke,
and I persuaded myself that it was the gusty wind. The shutter of the room
next to mine was attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened. "That's
some Sub-Deputy Assistant," I said, "and he has brought his friends with
him. Now they'll talk and spit and smoke for an hour."

But there were no voices and no footsteps. No one was putting his luggage
into the next room. The door shut, and I thanked Providence that I was to
be left in peace. But I was curious to know where the doolies had gone. I
got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a
doolie. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room,
the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake--the whir of a
billiard ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing
for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterwards there was
another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened--indeed I was not.
I was very curious to know what had become of the doolies. I jumped into
bed for that reason.

Next minute I heard the double click of a cannon and my hair sat up. It is
a mistake to say that hair stands up. The skin of the head tightens and
you can feel a faint, prickly, bristling all over the scalp. That is the
hair sitting up.

There was a whir and a click, and both sounds could only have been made by
one thing--a billiard ball. I argued the matter out at great length with
myself; and the more I argued the less probable it seemed that one bed,
one table, and two chairs--all the furniture of the room next to
mine--could so exactly duplicate the sounds of a game of billiards. After
another cannon, a three-cushion one to judge by the whir, I argued no
more. I had found my ghost and would have given worlds to have escaped
from that dâk-bungalow. I listened, and with each listen the game grew
clearer. There was whir on whir and click on click. Sometimes there was a
double click and a whir and another click. Beyond any sort of doubt,
people were playing billiards in the next room. And the next room was not
big enough to hold a billiard table!

Between the pauses of the wind I heard the game go forward--stroke after
stroke. I tried to believe that I could not hear voices; but that attempt
was a failure.

Do you know what fear is? Not ordinary fear of insult, injury or death,
but abject, quivering dread of something that you cannot see--fear that
dries the inside of the mouth and half of the throat--fear that makes you
sweat on the palms of the hands, and gulp in order to keep the uvula at
work? This is a fine Fear--a great cowardice, and must be felt to be
appreciated. The very improbability of billiards in a dâk-bungalow proved
the reality of the thing. No man--drunk or sober--could imagine a game at
billiards, or invent the spitting crack of a "screw-cannon."

A severe course of dâk-bungalows has this disadvantage--it breeds infinite
credulity. If a man said to a confirmed dâk-bungalow-haunter:--"There is a
corpse in the next room, and there's a mad girl in the next but one, and
the woman and man on that camel have just eloped from a place sixty miles
away," the hearer would not disbelieve because he would know that nothing
is too wild, grotesque, or horrible to happen in a dâk-bungalow.

This credulity, unfortunately, extends to ghosts. A rational person fresh
from his own house would have turned on his side and slept. I did not. So
surely as I was given up as a bad carcass by the scores of things in the
bed because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, so surely did I hear
every stroke of a long game at billiards played in the echoing room behind
the iron-barred door. My dominant fear was that the players might want a
marker. It was an absurd fear; because creatures who could play in the
dark would be above such superfluities. I only know that that was my
terror; and it was real.

After a long, long while the game stopped, and the door banged. I slept
because I was dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred to have kept
awake. Not for everything in Asia would I have dropped the door-bar and
peered into the dark of the next room.

When the morning came, I considered that I had done well and wisely, and
inquired for the means of departure.

"By the way, _khansamah_," I said, "what were those three doolies doing in
my compound in the night?"

"There were no doolies," said the _khansamah_.

I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open door.
I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have played Black Pool with
the owner of the big Black Pool down below.

"Has this place always been a dâk-bungalow?" I asked.

"No," said the _khansamah_. "Ten or twenty years ago, I have forgotten how
long, it was a billiard room."

"A how much?"

"A billiard room for the Sahibs who built the Railway. I was _khansamah_
then in the big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived, and I used to
come across with brandy-_shrab_. These three rooms were all one, and they
held a big table on which the Sahibs played every evening. But the Sahibs
are all dead now, and the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."

"Do you remember anything about the Sahibs?"

"It is long ago, but I remember that one Sahib, a fat man and always
angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me:--'Mangal Khan,
brandy-_pani do_,' and I filled the glass, and he bent over the table to
strike, and his head fell lower and lower till it hit the table, and his
spectacles came off, and when we--the Sahibs and I myself--ran to lift him
he was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha, he was a strong Sahib! But he
is dead and I, old Mangal Khan, am still living, by your favor."

That was more than enough! I had my ghost--a first-hand, authenticated
article. I would write to the Society for Psychical Research--I would
paralyze the Empire with the news! But I would, first of all, put eighty
miles of assessed crop land between myself and that dâk-bungalow before
nightfall. The Society might send their regular agent to investigate later
on.

I went into my own room and prepared to pack after noting down the facts
of the case. As I smoked I heard the game begin again,--with a miss in
balk this time, for the whir was a short one.

The door was open and I could see into the room. _Click--click!_ That was
a cannon. I entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within
and a fresh breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a tremendous
rate. And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro
inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was
making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the breeze!

Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls! Impossible to mistake
the whir of a ball over the slate! But I was to be excused. Even when I
shut my enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously like that of a fast
game.

Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, Kadir Baksh.

"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste! No wonder the Presence was
disturbed and is speckled. Three sets of doolie-bearers came to the
bungalow late last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was
their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for the English people! What
honor has the _khansamah_? They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No
wonder, if these _Oorias_ have been here, that the Presence is sorely
spotted. It is shame, and the work of a dirty man!"

Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for
rent in advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them with the big
green umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has
no notions of morality.

There was an interview with the _khansamah_, but as he promptly lost his
head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in
the course of which he put the fat Engineer-Sahib's tragic death in three
separate stations--two of them fifty miles away. The third shift was to
Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while driving a dog-cart.

If I had encouraged him the _khansamah_ would have wandered all through
Bengal with his corpse.

I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for the night, while the
wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding-dong
"hundred and fifty up." Then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped,
and I felt that I had ruined my one genuine, hall-marked ghost story.

Had I only stopped at the proper time, I could have made _anything_ out of
it.

That was the bitterest thought of all!




_The Sending of Dana Da_

    When the Devil rides on your chest, remember the _chamar_.
                         _--Native Proverb._


Once upon a time some people in India made a new heaven and a new earth
out of broken teacups, a missing brooch or two, and a hair brush. These
were hidden under bushes, or stuffed into holes in the hillside, and an
entire civil service of subordinate gods used to find or mend them again;
and everyone said: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamed of in our philosophy." Several other things happened also, but the
religion never seemed to get much beyond its first manifestations; though
it added an air-line postal _dak_, and orchestral effects in order to keep
abreast of the times, and stall off competition.

This religion was too elastic for ordinary use. It stretched itself and
embraced pieces of everything that medicine men of all ages have
manufactured. It approved and stole from Freemasonry; looted the
Latter-day Rosicrucians of half their pet words; took any fragments of
Egyptian philosophy that it found in the Encyclopædia Britannica; annexed
as many of the Vedas as had been translated into French or English, and
talked of all the rest; built in the German versions of what is left of
the Zend Avesta; encouraged white, gray, and black magic, including
Spiritualism, palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, hot chestnuts,
double-kerneled nuts and tallow droppings; would have adopted Voodoo and
Oboe had it known anything about them, and showed itself, in every way,
one of the most accommodating arrangements that had ever been invented
since the birth of the sea.

When it was in thorough working order, with all the machinery down to the
subscriptions complete, Dana Da came from nowhere, with nothing in his
hands, and wrote a chapter in its history which has hitherto been
unpublished. He said that his first name was Dana, and his second was Da.
Now, setting aside Dana of the New York _Sun_, Dana is a Bhil name, and Da
fits no native of India unless you accept the Bengali Dé as the original
spelling. Da is Lap or Finnish; and Dana Da was neither Finn, Chin, Bhil,
Bengali, Lap, Nair, Gond, Romaney, Magh, Bokhariot, Kurd, Armenian,
Levantine, Jew, Persian, Punjabi, Madrasi, Parsee, nor anything else known
to ethnologists. He was simply Dana Da, and declined to give further
information. For the sake of brevity, and as roughly indicating his
origin, he was called "The Native." He might have been the original Old
Man of the Mountains, who is said to be the only authorized head of the
Teacup Creed. Some people said that he was; but Dana Da used to smile and
deny any connection with the cult; explaining that he was an "independent
experimenter."

As I have said, he came from nowhere, with his hands behind his back, and
studied the creed for three weeks; sitting at the feet of those best
competent to explain its mysteries. Then he laughed aloud and went away,
but the laugh might have been either of devotion or derision.

When he returned he was without money, but his pride was unabated. He
declared that he knew more about the things in heaven and earth than those
who taught him, and for this contumacy was abandoned altogether.

His next appearance in public life was at a big cantonment in Upper India,
and he was then telling fortunes with the help of three leaden dice, a
very dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of opium pills. He told better
fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of whisky; but the things which
he invented on the opium were quite worth the money. He was in reduced
circumstances. Among other people's he told the fortune of an Englishman
who had once been interested in the Simla creed, but who, later on, had
married and forgotten all his old knowledge in the study of babies and
Exchange. The Englishman allowed Dana Da to tell a fortune for charity's
sake, and, gave him five rupees, a dinner, and some old clothes. When he
had eaten, Dana Da professed gratitude, and asked if there were anything
he could do for his host--in the esoteric line.

"Is there anyone that you love?" said Dana Da. The Englishman loved his
wife, but had no desire to drag her name into the conversation. He
therefore shook his head.

"Is there anyone that you hate?" said Dana Da. The Englishman said that
there were several men whom he hated deeply.

"Very good," said Dana Da, upon whom the whisky and the opium were
beginning to tell. "Only give me their names, and I will dispatch a
Sending to them and kill them."

Now a Sending is a horrible arrangement, first invented, they say, in
Iceland. It is a thing sent by a wizard, and may take any form, but most
generally wanders about the land in the shape of a little purple cloud
till it finds the sendee, and him it kills by changing into the form of a
horse, or a cat, or a man without a face. It is not strictly a native
patent, though _chamars_ can, if irritated, dispatch a Sending which sits
on the breast of their enemy by night and nearly kills him. Very few
natives care to irritate _chamars_ for this reason.

"Let me dispatch a Sending," said Dana Da; "I am nearly dead now with
want, and drink, and opium; but I should like to kill a man before I die.
I can send a Sending anywhere you choose, and in any form except in the
shape of a man."

The Englishman had no friends that he wished to kill, but partly to soothe
Dana Da, whose eyes were rolling, and partly to see what would be done, he
asked whether a modified Sending could not be arranged for--such a Sending
as should make a man's life a burden to him, and yet do him no harm. If
this were possible, he notified his willingness to give Dana Da ten rupees
for the job.

"I am not what I was once," said Dana Da, "and I must take the money
because I am poor. To what Englishman shall I send it?"

"Send a Sending to Lone Sahib," said the Englishman, naming a man who had
been most bitter in rebuking him for his apostasy from the Teacup Creed.
Dana Da laughed and nodded.

"I could have chosen no better man myself," said he. "I will see that he
finds the Sending about his path and about his bed."

He lay down on the hearthrug, turned up the whites of his eyes, shivered
all over, and began to snort. This was magic, or opium, or the Sending, or
all three. When he opened his eyes he vowed that the Sending had started
upon the warpath, and was at that moment flying up to the town where Lone
Sahib lives.

"Give me my ten rupees," said Dana Da, wearily, "and write a letter to
Lone Sahib, telling him, and all who believe with him, that you and a
friend are using a power greater than theirs. They will see that you are
speaking the truth."

He departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more rupees if anything
came of the Sending.

The Englishman sent a letter to Lone Sahib, couched in what he remembered
of the terminology of the creed. He wrote: "I also, in the days of what
you held to be my backsliding, have obtained enlightenment, and with
enlightenment has come power." Then he grew so deeply mysterious that the
recipient of the letter could make neither head nor tail of it, and was
proportionately impressed; for he fancied that his friend had become a
"fifth rounder." When a man is a "fifth rounder" he can do more than Slade
and Houdin combined.

Lone Sahib read the letter in five different fashions, and was beginning a
sixth interpretation, when his bearer dashed in with the news that there
was a cat on the bed. Now, if there was one thing that Lone Sahib hated
more than another it was a cat. He rated the bearer for not turning it out
of the house. The bearer said that he was afraid. All the doors of the
bedroom had been shut throughout the morning, and no real cat could
possibly have entered the room. He would prefer not to meddle with the
creature.

Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly, and there, on the pillow of his bed,
sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten, not a jumpsome, frisky little
beast, but a sluglike crawler with its eyes barely opened and its paws
lacking strength or direction--a kitten that ought to have been in a
basket with its mamma. Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck,
handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned, and fined the bearer four
annas.

That evening, as he was reading in his room, he fancied that he saw
something moving about on the hearthrug, outside the circle of light from
his reading lamp. When the thing began to myowl, he realized that it was a
kitten--a wee white kitten, nearly blind and very miserable. He was
seriously angry, and spoke bitterly to his bearer, who said that there was
no kitten in the room when he brought in the lamp, and real kittens of
tender age generally had mother cats in attendance.

"If the Presence will go out into the veranda and listen," said the
bearer, "he will hear no cats. How, therefore, can the kitten on the bed
and the kitten on the hearthrug be real kittens?"

Lone Sahib went out to listen, and the bearer followed him, but there was
no sound of Rachel mewing for her children. He returned to his room,
having hurled the kitten down the hillside, and wrote out the incidents of
the day for the benefit of his coreligionists. Those people were so
absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out
of the common to agencies. As it was their business to know all about the
agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with
manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the
ceiling--unstamped--and spirits used to squatter up and down their
staircases all night. But they had never come into contact with kittens.
Lone Sahib wrote out the facts, noting the hour and the minute, as every
psychical observer is bound to do, and appending the Englishman's letter
because it was the most mysterious document and might have had a bearing
upon anything in this world or the next. An outsider would have
translated all the tangle thus: "Look out! You laughed at me once, and now
I am going to make you sit up."

Lone Sahib's coreligionists found that meaning in it; but their
translation was refined and full of four-syllable words. They held a
sederunt, and were filled with tremulous joy, for, in spite of their
familiarity with all the other worlds and cycles, they had a very human
awe of things sent from ghostland. They met in Lone Sahib's room in
shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by a
clinking among the photo frames on the mantelpiece. A wee white kitten,
nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the
candlesticks. That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the
manifestation in the flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of
purpose, but it was a manifestation of undoubted authenticity.

They drafted a round robin to the Englishman, the backslider of old days,
adjuring him in the interests of the creed to explain whether there was
any connection between the embodiment of some Egyptian god or other (I
have forgotten the name) and his communication. They called the kitten Ra,
or Toth, or Shem, or Noah, or something; and when Lone Sahib confessed
that the first one had, at his most misguided instance, been drowned by
the sweeper, they said consolingly that in his next life he would be a
"bounder," and not even a "rounder" of the lowest grade. These words may
not be quite correct, but they express the sense of the house accurately.

When the Englishman received the round robin--it came by post--he was
startled and bewildered. He sent into the bazaar for Dana Da, who read the
letter and laughed. "That is my Sending," said he. "I told you I would
work well. Now give me another ten rupees."

"But what in the world is this gibberish about Egyptian gods?" asked the
Englishman.

"Cats," said Dana Da, with a hiccough, for he had discovered the
Englishman's whisky bottle. "Cats and cats and cats! Never was such a
Sending. A hundred of cats. Now give me ten more rupees and write as I
dictate."

Dana Da's letter was a curiosity. It bore the Englishman's signature, and
hinted at cats--at a Sending of cats. The mere words on paper were creepy
and uncanny to behold.

"What have you done, though?" said the Englishman; "I am as much in the
dark as ever. Do you mean to say that you can actually send this absurd
Sending you talk about?"

"Judge for yourself," said Dana Da. "What does that letter mean? In a
little time they will all be at my feet and yours, and I, oh, glory! will
be drugged or drunk all day long."

Dana Da knew his people.

When a man who hates cats wakes up in the morning and finds a little
squirming kitten on his breast, or puts his hand into his ulster pocket
and finds a little half-dead kitten where his gloves should be, or opens
his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his dress shirts, or goes for a
long ride with his mackintosh strapped on his saddle-bow and shakes a
little sprawling kitten from its folds when he opens it, or goes out to
dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair, or stays at home
and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt, or wriggling among his boots,
or hanging, head downward, in his tobacco jar, or being mangled by his
terrier in the veranda--when such a man finds one kitten, neither more nor
less, once a day in a place where no kitten rightly could or should be, he
is naturally upset. When he dare not murder his daily trove because he
believes it to be a manifestation, an emissary, an embodiment, and half a
dozen other things all out of the regular course of nature, he is more
than upset. He is actually distressed. Some of Lone Sahib's coreligionists
thought that he was a highly favored individual; but many said that if he
had treated the first kitten with proper respect--as suited a Toth-Ra
Tum-Sennacherib Embodiment--all his trouble would have been averted. They
compared him to the Ancient Mariner, but none the less they were proud of
him and proud of the Englishman who had sent the manifestation. They did
not call it a Sending because Icelandic magic was not in their programme.

After sixteen kittens--that is to say, after one fortnight, for there were
three kittens on the first day to impress the fact of the Sending, the
whole camp was uplifted by a letter--it came flying through a window--from
the Old Man of the Mountains--the head of all the creed--explaining the
manifestation in the most beautiful language and soaking up all the credit
of it for himself. The Englishman, said the letter, was not there at all.
He was a backslider without power or asceticism, who couldn't even raise a
table by force of volition, much less project an army of kittens through
space. The entire arrangement, said the letter, was strictly orthodox,
worked and sanctioned by the highest authorities within the pale of the
creed. There was great joy at this, for some of the weaker brethren seeing
that an outsider who had been working on independent lines could create
kittens, whereas their own rulers had never gone beyond crockery--and
broken at that--were showing a desire to break line on their own trail. In
fact, there was the promise of a schism. A second round robin was drafted
to the Englishman, beginning: "Oh, Scoffer," and ending with a selection
of curses from the rites of Mizraim and Memphis and the Commination of
Jugana; who was a "fifth rounder," upon whose name an upstart "third
rounder" once traded. A papal excommunication is a _billet-doux_ compared
to the Commination of Jugana. The Englishman had been proved under the
hand and seal of the Old Man of the Mountains to have appropriated virtue
and pretended to have power which, in reality, belonged only to the
supreme head. Naturally the round robin did not spare him.

He handed the letter to Dana Da to translate into decent English. The
effect on Dana Da was curious. At first he was furiously angry, and then
he laughed for five minutes.

"I had thought," he said, "that they would have come to me. In another
week I would have shown that I sent the Sending, and they would have
discrowned the Old Man of the Mountains who has sent this Sending of mine.
Do you do nothing. The time has come for me to act. Write as I dictate,
and I will put them to shame. But give me ten more rupees."

At Dana Da's dictation the Englishman wrote nothing less than a formal
challenge to the Old Man of the Mountains. It wound up: "And if this
manifestation be from your hand, then let it go forward; but if it be from
my hand, I will that the Sending shall cease in two days' time. On that
day there shall be twelve kittens and thenceforward none at all. The
people shall judge between us." This was signed by Dana Da, who added
pentacles and pentagrams, and a _crux ansata_, and half a dozen
_swastikas_, and a Triple Tau to his name, just to show that he was all he
laid claim to be.

The challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies, and they
remembered then that Dana Da had laughed at them some years ago. It was
officially announced that the Old Man of the Mountains would treat the
matter with contempt; Dana Da being an independent investigator without a
single "round" at the back of him. But this did not soothe his people.
They wanted to see a fight. They were very human for all their
spirituality. Lone Sahib, who was really being worn out with kittens,
submitted meekly to his fate. He felt that he was being "kittened to prove
the power of Dana Da," as the poet says.

When the stated day dawned, the shower of kittens began. Some were white
and some were tabby, and all were about the same loathsome age. Three were
on his hearthrug, three in his bathroom, and the other six turned up at
intervals among the visitors who came to see the prophecy break down.
Never was a more satisfactory Sending. On the next day there were no
kittens, and the next day and all the other days were kittenless and
quiet. The people murmured and looked to the Old Man of the Mountains for
an explanation. A letter, written on a palm leaf, dropped from the
ceiling, but everyone except Lone Sahib felt that letters were not what
the occasion demanded. There should have been cats, there should have been
cats--full-grown ones. The letter proved conclusively that there had been
a hitch in the psychic current which, colliding with a dual identity, had
interfered with the percipient activity all along the main line. The
kittens were still going on, but owing to some failure in the developing
fluid, they were not materialized. The air was thick with letters for a
few days afterwards. Unseen hands played Glück and Beethoven on
finger-bowls and clock shades; but all men felt that psychic life was a
mockery without materialized kittens. Even Lone Sahib shouted with the
majority on this head. Dana Da's letters were very insulting, and if he
had then offered to lead a new departure, there is no knowing what might
not have happened.

But Dana Da was dying of whisky and opium in the Englishman's go-down, and
had small heart for new creeds.

"They have been put to shame," said he. "Never was such a Sending. It has
killed me."

"Nonsense," said the Englishman, "you are going to die, Dana Da, and that
sort of stuff must be left behind. I'll admit that you have made some
queer things come about. Tell me honestly, now, how was it done?"

"Give me ten more rupees," said Dana Da, faintly, "and if I die before I
spend them, bury them with me." The silver was counted out while Dana Da
was fighting with death. His hand closed upon the money and he smiled a
grim smile.

"Bend low," he whispered. The Englishman bent.

"_Bunnia_--mission school--expelled--_box-wallah_ (peddler)--Ceylon pearl
merchant--all mine English education--outcasted, and made up name Dana
Da--England with American thought-reading man and--and--you gave me ten
rupees several times--I gave the Sahib's bearer two-eight a month for
cats--little, little cats. I wrote, and he put them about--very clever
man. Very few kittens now in the bazaar. Ask Lone Sahib's sweeper's wife."

So saying, Dana Da gasped and passed away into a land where, if all be
true, there are no materializations and the making of new creeds is
discouraged.

But consider the gorgeous simplicity of it all!




_In the House of Suddhoo_

    A stone's throw out on either hand
    From that well-ordered road we tread,
      And all the world is wild and strange;
    _Churel_ and ghoul and _Djinn_ and sprite
    Shall bear us company to-night,
    For we have reached the Oldest Land
      Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.

                        _--From the Dusk to the Dawn._


The house of Suddhoo, near the Taksali Gate, is two storied, with four
carved windows of old brown wood, and a flat roof. You may recognize it by
five red handprints arranged like the Five of Diamonds on the whitewash
between the upper windows. Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, and a man who says he
gets his living by seal-cutting live in the lower story with a troop of
wives, servants, friends, and retainers. The two upper rooms used to be
occupied by Janoo and Azizun and a little black-and-tan terrier that was
stolen from an Englishman's house and given to Janoo by a soldier. To-day,
only Janoo lives in the upper rooms. Suddhoo sleeps on the roof generally,
except when he sleeps in the street. He used to go to Peshawar in the cold
weather to visit his son, who sells curiosities near the Edwardes' Gate,
and then he slept under a real mud roof. Suddhoo is a great friend of
mine, because his cousin had a son who secured, thanks to my
recommendation, the post of head messenger to a big firm in the Station.
Suddhoo says that God will make me a Lieutenant-Governor one of these
days. I daresay his prophecy will come true. He is very, very old, with
white hair and no teeth worth showing, and he has outlived his
wits--outlived nearly everything except his fondness for his son at
Peshawar. Janoo and Azizun are Kashmiris, Ladies of the City, and theirs
was an ancient and more or less honorable profession; but Azizun has since
married a medical student from the Northwest and has settled down to a
most respectable life somewhere near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an
extortionate and an adulterator. He is very rich. The man who is supposed
to get his living by seal cutting pretends to be very poor. This lets you
know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants in the house of
Suddhoo. Then there is Me, of course; but I am only the chorus that comes
in at the end to explain things. So I do not count.

Suddhoo was not clever. The man who pretended to cut seals was the
cleverest of them all--Bhagwan Dass only knew how to lie--except Janoo.
She was also beautiful, but that was her own affair.

Suddhoo's son at Peshawar was attacked by pleurisy, and old Suddhoo was
troubled. The seal-cutter man heard of Suddhoo's anxiety and made capital
out of it. He was abreast of the times. He got a friend in Peshawar to
telegraph daily accounts of the son's health. And here the story begins.

Suddhoo's cousin's son told me, one evening, that Suddhoo wanted to see
me; that he was too old and feeble to come personally, and that I should
be conferring an everlasting honor on the House of Suddhoo if I went to
him. I went; but I think, seeing how well off Suddhoo was then, that he
might have sent something better than an _ekka_, which jolted fearfully,
to haul out a future Lieutenant-Governor to the City on a muggy April
evening. The _ekka_ did not run quickly. It was full dark when we pulled
up opposite the door of Ranjit Singh's Tomb near the main gate of the
Fort. Here was Suddhoo and he said that by reason of my condescension, it
was absolutely certain that I should become a Lieutenant-Governor while
my hair was yet black. Then we talked about the weather and the state of
my health, and the wheat crops, for fifteen minutes, in the Huzuri Bagh,
under the stars.

Suddhoo came to the point at last. He said that Janoo had told him that
there was an order of the _Sirkar_ against magic, because it was feared
that magic might one day kill the Empress of India. I didn't know anything
about the state of the law; but I fancied that something interesting was
going to happen. I said that so far from magic being discouraged by the
Government it was highly commended. The greatest officials of the State
practiced it themselves. (If the Financial Statement isn't magic, I don't
know what is.) Then, to encourage him further, I said that, if there was
any _jadoo_ afoot, I had not the least objection to giving it my
countenance and sanction, and to seeing that it was clean _jadoo_--white
magic, as distinguished from the unclean _jadoo_ which kills folk. It took
a long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was just what he had asked
me to come for. Then he told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who
said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he
gave Suddhoo news of his sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the
lightning could fly, and that this news was always corroborated by the
letters. Further, that he had told Suddhoo how a great danger was
threatening his son, which could be removed by clean _jadoo_; and, of
course, heavy payment. I began to see exactly how the land lay, and told
Suddhoo that _I_ also understood a little _jadoo_ in the Western line, and
would go to his house to see that everything was done decently and in
order. We set off together; and on the way Suddhoo told me that he had
paid the seal cutter between one hundred and two hundred rupees already;
and the _jadoo_ of that night would cost two hundred more. Which was
cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his son's danger; but I do
not think he meant it.

The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. I
could hear awful noises from behind the seal cutter's shop front, as if
some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while we
groped our way upstairs told me that the _jadoo_ had begun. Janoo and
Azizun met us at the stair head, and told us that the _jadoo_ work was
coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is a
lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the _jadoo_ was an
invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal cutter would go
to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and old
age. He kept walking up and down the room in the half light, repeating his
son's name over and over again, and asking Azizun if the seal cutter ought
not to make a reduction in the case of his own landlord. Janoo pulled me
over to the shadow in the recess of the carved bow-windows. The boards
were up, and the rooms were only lit by one tiny oil lamp. There was no
chance of my being seen if I stayed still.

Presently, the groans below ceased, and we heard steps on the staircase.
That was the seal cutter. He stopped outside the door as the terrier
barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out
the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow
from the two _huqas_ that belonged to Janoo and Azizun. The seal cutter
came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan.
Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo backed on to one of the beds with a
shudder. There was a clink of something metallic, and then shot up a pale
blue-green flame near the ground. The light was just enough to show
Azizun, pressed against one corner of the room with the terrier between
her knees; Janoo, with her hands clasped, leaning forward as she sat on
the bed; Suddhoo, face down, quivering, and the seal cutter.

I hope I may never see another man like that seal cutter. He was stripped
to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my wrist round
his forehead, a salmon-colored loin-cloth round his middle, and a steel
bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was the face of the
man that turned me cold. It was blue-gray in the first place. In the
second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the whites of
them; and, in the third, the face was the face of a demon--a
ghoul--anything you please except of the sleek, oily old ruffian who sat
in the daytime over his turning-lathe downstairs. He was lying on his
stomach with his arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been
thrown down pinioned. His head and neck were the only parts of him off the
floor. They were nearly at right angles to the body, like the head of a
cobra at spring. It was ghastly. In the center of the room, on the bare
earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue-green light
floating in the center like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the
floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could
see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could
not see any other motion. The head seemed the only thing alive about him,
except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back muscles. Janoo from
the bed was breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before
her eyes; and old Suddhoo, fingering at the dirt that had got into his
white beard, was crying to himself. The horror of it was that the
creeping, crawly thing made no sound--only crawled! And, remember, this
lasted for ten minutes, while the terrier whined, and Azizun shuddered,
and Janoo gasped and Suddhoo cried.

I felt the hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a
thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal cutter betrayed himself by his
most impressive trick and made me calm again. After he had finished that
unspeakable crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor as high as he
could, and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils. Now I knew how
fire--spouting is done--I can do it myself--so I felt at ease. The
business was a fraud. If he had only kept to that crawl without trying to
raise the effect, goodness knows what I might not have thought. Both the
girls shrieked at the jet of fire, and the head dropped, chin down on the
floor, with a thud; the whole body lying then like a corpse with its arms
trussed. There was a pause of five full minutes after this, and the
blue-green flame died down. Janoo stooped to settle one of her anklets,
while Azizun turned her face to the wall and took the terrier in her arms.
Suddhoo put out an arm mechanically to Janoo's _huqa_, and she slid it
across the floor with her foot. Directly above the body and on the wall
were a couple of flaming portraits, in stamped paper frames, of the Queen
and the Prince of Wales. They looked down on the performance, and, to my
thinking, seemed to heighten the grotesqueness of it all.

Just when the silence was getting unendurable, the body turned over and
rolled away from the basin to the side of the room, where it lay stomach
up. There was a faint "plop" from the basin--exactly like the noise a fish
makes when it takes a fly--and the green light in the center revived.

I looked at the basin, and saw, bobbing in the water the dried, shriveled,
black head of a native baby--open eyes, open mouth and shaved scalp. It
was worse, being so very sudden, than the crawling exhibition. We had no
time to say anything before it began to speak.

Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerized dying man,
and you will realize less than one half of the horror of that head's
voice.

There was an interval of a second or two between each word, and a sort of
"ring, ring, ring," in the note of the voice like the timbre of a bell. It
pealed slowly, as if talking to itself, for several minutes before I got
rid of my cold sweat. Then the blessed solution struck me. I looked at the
body lying near the doorway, and saw, just where the hollow of the throat
joins on the shoulders, a muscle that had nothing to do with any man's
regular breathing, twitching away steadily. The whole thing was a careful
reproduction of the Egyptian teraphin that one reads about sometimes; and
the voice was as clever and as appalling a piece of ventriloquism as one
could wish to hear. All this time the head was "lip-lip-lapping" against
the side of the basin, and speaking. It told Suddhoo, on his face again
whining, of his son's illness and of the state of the illness up to the
evening of that very night. I always shall respect the seal cutter for
keeping so faithfully to the time of the Peshawar telegrams. It went on to
say that skilled doctors were night and day watching over the man's life;
and that he would eventually recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer,
whose servant was the head in the basin, were doubled.

Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask for twice
your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have used when he rose
from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a woman of masculine
intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard her say "_Ash nahin!
Fareib!_" scornfully under her breath; and just as she said so, the light
in the basin died out, the head stopped talking, and we heard the room
door creak on its hinges. Then Janoo struck a match, lit the lamp, and we
saw that head, basin, and seal cutter were gone. Suddhoo was wringing his
hands and explaining to anyone who cared to listen, that, if his chances
of eternal salvation depended on it, he could not raise another two
hundred rupees. Azizun was nearly in hysterics in the corner; while Janoo
sat down composedly on one of the beds to discuss the probabilities of the
whole thing being a _bunao_, or "make-up."

I explained as much as I knew of the seal cutter's way of _jadoo_; but her
argument was much more simple:--"The magic that is always demanding gifts
is no true magic," said she. "My mother told me that the only potent love
spells are those which are told you for love. This seal cutter man is a
liar and a devil. I dare not tell, do anything, or get anything done,
because I am in debt to Bhagwan Dass the bunnia for two gold rings and a
heavy anklet. I must get my food from his shop. The seal cutter is the
friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he would poison my food. A fool's _jadoo_ has
been going on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many rupees each night.
The seal cutter used black hens and lemons and _mantras_ before. He never
showed us anything like this till to-night. Azizun is a fool, and will be
a _pur dahnashin_ soon. Suddhoo has lost his strength and his wits. See
now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many rupees while he lived, and many
more after his death; and behold, he is spending everything on that
offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the seal cutter!"

Here I said: "But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business? Of
course I can speak to the seal cutter, and he shall refund. The whole
thing is child's talk--shame--and senseless."

"Suddhoo _is_ an old child," said Janoo. "He has lived on the roofs these
seventy years and is as senseless as a milch goat. He brought you here to
assure himself that he was not breaking any law of the _Sirkar_, whose
salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of the seal
cutter, and that cow devourer has forbidden him to go and see his son.
What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning post? I have to watch
his money going day by day to that lying beast below."

Janoo stamped her foot on the floor and nearly cried with vexation; while
Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket in the corner, and Azizun was
trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the
charge of aiding and abetting the seal cutter in obtaining money under
false pretenses, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal
Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot inform the
police. What witnesses would support my statements? Janoo refuses flatly,
and Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly--lost in this big
India of ours. I dare not again take the law into my own hands, and speak
to the seal cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo
disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is
bound hand and foot by her debt to the _bunnia_. Suddhoo is an old dotard;
and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the _Sirkar_ rather
patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but Suddhoo
is completely under the influence of the seal cutter, by whose advice he
regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the money that she
hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal cutter, and becomes
daily more furious and sullen.

She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something happens
to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal cutter will die of cholera--the
white arsenic kind--about the middle of May. And thus I shall have to be
privy to a murder in the house of Suddhoo.




_His Wedded Wife_

    Cry "Murder!" in the market-place, and each
    Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
    That ask:--"Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain
    Some centuries ago, across the world,
    That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
    To-day.

                    _--Vibart's Moralities._


Shakespeare says something about worms, or it may be giants or beetles,
turning if you tread on them too severely. The safest plan is never to
tread on a worm--not even on the last new subaltern from Home, with his
buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of sappy English
beef in his cheeks. This is the story of the worm that turned. For the
sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay Faizanne, "The Worm,"
although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy, without a hair on his
face, and with a waist like a girl's, when he came out to the Second
"Shikarris" and was made unhappy in several ways. The "Shikarris" are a
high-caste regiment, and you must be able to do things well--play a banjo,
or ride more than little, or sing, or act--to get on with them.

The Worm did nothing except fall off his pony, and knock chips out of gate
posts with his trap. Even that became monotonous after a time. He objected
to whist, cut the cloth at billiards, sang out of tune, kept very much to
himself, and wrote to his Mamma and sisters at Home. Four of these five
things were vices which the "Shikarris" objected to and set themselves to
eradicate. Everyone knows how subalterns are, by brother subalterns,
softened and not permitted to be ferocious. It is good and wholesome, and
does no one any harm, unless tempers are lost; and then there is trouble.
There was a man once--but that is another story.

The "Shikarris" _shikarred_ The Worm very much, and he bore everything
without winking. He was so good and so anxious to learn, and flushed so
pink, that his education was cut short, and he was left to his own devices
by everyone except the Senior Subaltern who continued to make life a
burden to The Worm. The Senior Subaltern meant no harm; but his chaff was
coarse, and he didn't quite understand where to stop. He had been waiting
too long for his Company; and that always sours a man. Also he was in
love, which made him worse.

One day, after he had borrowed The Worm's trap for a lady who never
existed, had used it himself all the afternoon, had sent a note to The
Worm, purporting to come from the lady, and was telling the Mess all about
it, The Worm rose in his place and said, in his quiet, ladylike
voice:--"That was a very pretty sell; but I'll lay you a month's pay to a
month's pay when you get your step, that I work a sell on you that you'll
remember for the rest of your days, and the Regiment after you when you're
dead or broke." The Worm wasn't angry in the least, and the rest of the
Mess shouted. Then the Senior Subaltern looked at The Worm from the boots
upward, and down again and said: "Done, Baby." The Worm took the rest of
the Mess to witness that the bet had been taken, and retired into a book
with a sweet smile.

Two months passed, and the Senior Subaltern still educated The Worm, who
began to move about a little more as the hot weather came on. I have said
that the Senior Subaltern was in love. The curious thing is that a girl
was in love with the Senior Subaltern. Though the Colonel said awful
things, and the Majors snorted, and married Captains looked unutterable
wisdom, and the juniors scoffed, those two were engaged.

The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his Company and his
acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother The Worm. The girl
was a pretty girl, and had money of her own. She does not come into this
story at all.

One night, at beginning of the hot weather, all the Mess, except The Worm
who had gone to his own room to write Home letters, were sitting on the
platform outside the Mess House. The Band had finished playing, but no one
wanted to go in. And the Captains' wives were there also. The folly of a
man in love is unlimited. The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on
the merits of the girl he was engaged to, and the ladies were purring
approval, while the men yawned, when there was a rustle of skirts in the
dark, and a tired, faint voice lifted itself.

"Where's my husband?"

I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the "Shikarris";
but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they had been shot.
Three of them were married men. Perhaps they were afraid that their wives
had come from Home unbeknownst. The fourth said that he had acted on the
impulse of the moment. He explained this afterwards.

Then the voice cried: "Oh Lionel!" Lionel was the Senior Subaltern's name.
A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on the peg
tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior Subaltern
was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things were going to
happen and ready to believe the worst. In this bad, small world of ours,
one knows so little of the life of the next man--which, after all, is
entirely his own concern--that one is not surprised when a crash comes.
Anything might turn up any day for anyone. Perhaps the Senior Subaltern
had been trapped in his youth. Men are crippled that way occasionally. We
didn't know; we wanted to hear; and the Captains' wives were as anxious as
we. If he _had_ been trapped, he was to be excused; for the woman from
nowhere, in the dusty shoes and gray traveling dress, was very lovely,
with black hair and great eyes full of tears. She was tall, with a fine
figure, and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear. As soon as
the Senior Subaltern stood up, she threw her arms round his neck, and
called him "my darling" and said she could not bear waiting alone in
England, and his letters were so short and cold, and she was his to the
end of the world, and would he forgive her? This did not sound quite like
a lady's way of speaking. It was too demonstrative.

Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their
eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the Day
of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.

Next the Colonel said, very shortly: "Well, sir?" and the woman sobbed
afresh. The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the arms round his neck,
but he gasped out: "It's a d----d lie! I never had a wife in my life!"
"Don't swear," said the Colonel. "Come into the Mess. We must sift this
clear somehow," and he sighed to himself, for he believed in his
"Shikarris," did the Colonel.

We trooped into the anteroom, under the full lights, and there we saw how
beautiful the woman was. She stood up in the middle of us all, sometimes
choking with crying, then hard and proud, and then holding out her arms to
the Senior Subaltern. It was like the fourth act of a tragedy. She told us
how the Senior Subaltern had married her when he was Home on leave
eighteen months before; and she seemed to know all that we knew, and more
too, of his people and his past life. He was white and ashy gray, trying
now and again to break into the torrent of her words; and we, noting how
lovely she was and what a criminal he looked, esteemed him a beast of the
worst kind. We felt sorry for him, though.

I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his wife.
Nor will he. It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark, unannounced, into
our dull lives. The Captains' wives stood back; but their eyes were
alight, and you could see that they had already convicted and sentenced
the Senior Subaltern. The Colonel seemed five years older. One Major was
shading his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath it.
Another was chewing his mustache and smiling quietly as if he were
witnessing a play. Full in the open space in the center, by the whist
tables, the Senior Subaltern's terrier was hunting for fleas. I remember
all this as clearly as though a photograph were in my hand. I remember the
look of horror on the Senior Subaltern's face. It was rather like seeing a
man hanged; but much more interesting. Finally, the woman wound up by
saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F.M. in tattoo on his
left shoulder. We all knew that, and to our innocent minds it seemed to
clinch the matter. But one of the Bachelor Majors said very politely: "I
presume that your marriage certificate would be more to the purpose?"

That roused the woman. She stood up and sneered at the Senior Subaltern
for a cur, and abused the Major and the Colonel and all the rest. Then she
wept, and then she pulled a paper from her breast, saying imperially:
"Take that! And let my husband--my lawfully wedded husband--read it
aloud--if he dare!"

There was a hush, and the men looked into each other's eyes as the Senior
Subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way, and took the paper. We
were wondering, as we stared, whether there was anything against any one
of us that might turn up later on. The Senior Subaltern's throat was dry;
but, as he ran his eye over the paper, he broke out into a hoarse cackle
of relief, and said to the woman: "You young blackguard!"

But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was written: "This
is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my debts to the Senior
Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior Subaltern is my debtor, by
agreement on the 23d of February, as by the Mess attested, to the extent
of one month's Captain's pay, in the lawful currency of the India Empire."

Then a deputation set off for The Worm's quarters and found him, betwixt
and between, unlacing his stays, with the hat, wig, serge dress, etc., on
the bed. He came over as he was, and the "Shikarris" shouted till the
Gunners' Mess sent over to know if they might have a share of the fun. I
think we were all, except the Colonel and the Senior Subaltern, a little
disappointed that the scandal had come to nothing. But that is human
nature. There could be no two words about The Worm's acting. It leaned as
near to a nasty tragedy as anything this side of a joke can. When most of
the Subalterns sat upon him with sofa cushions to find out why he had not
said that acting was his strong point, he answered very quietly: "I don't
think you ever asked me. I used to act at Home with my sisters." But no
acting with girls could account for The Worm's display that night.
Personally, I think it was in bad taste. Besides being dangerous. There is
no sort of use in playing with fire, even for fun.

The "Shikarris" made him President of the Regimental Dramatic Club; and,
when the Senior Subaltern paid up his debt, which he did at once, The Worm
sank the money in scenery and dresses. He was a good Worm; and the
"Shikarris" are proud of him. The only drawback is that he has been
christened "Mrs. Senior Subaltern"; and, as there are now two Mrs. Senior
Subalterns in the Station, this is sometimes confusing to strangers.

Later on, I will tell you of a case something like this, but with all the
jest left out and nothing in it but real trouble.




A. Conan Doyle





_A Case of Identity_


"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the
fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than
anything which the mind of man can invent. We would not dare to conceive
the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could
fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently
remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the
strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful
chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most
_outré_ results, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and
foreseen conclusions, most stale and unprofitable."

"And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases which come to
light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough. We
have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet
the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic."

"A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic
effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the police report, where
more stress is laid perhaps upon the platitudes of the magistrate than
upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the
whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the
commonplace."

I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your thinking so," I
said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to
everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are
brought in contact with all that is strange and _bizarre_. But here"--I
picked up the morning paper from the ground--"let us put it to a practical
test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. 'A husband's cruelty to
his wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it
that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other
woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the unsympathetic sister
or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude."

"Indeed your example is an unfortunate one for your argument," said
Holmes, taking the paper, and glancing his eye down it. "This is the
Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up
some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler,
there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had
drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false
teeth and hurling them at his wife, which you will allow is not an action
likely to occur to the imagination of the average story teller. Take a
pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in
your example."

He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the center
of the lid. Its splendor was in such contrast to his homely ways and
simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.

"Ah!" said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a
little souvenir from the King of Bohemia, in return for my assistance in
the case of the Irene Adler papers."

"And the ring?" I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which sparkled
upon his finger.

"It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I
served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you, who
have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems."

"And have you any on hand just now?" I asked with interest.

"Some ten or twelve, but none which present any features of interest. They
are important, you understand, without being interesting. Indeed I have
found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for
the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which
gives the charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are apt to be the
simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the
motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter which has
been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing which presents any
features of interest. It is possible, however, that I may have something
better before very many minutes are over, for this is one of my clients,
or I am much mistaken."

He had risen from his chair, and was standing between the parted blinds,
gazing down into the dull, neutral-tinted London street. Looking over his
shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman
with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red feather in a
broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess-of-Devonshire
fashion over her ear.

From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, hesitating
fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated backward and forward,
and her fingers fidgeted with her glove buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge,
as of the swimmer who leaves the bank, she hurried across the road, and we
heard the sharp clang of the bell.

"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette
into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always means an _affaire de
coeur_. She would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too
delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a
woman has been seriously wronged by a man, she no longer oscillates, and
the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is
a love matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed or
grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts."

As he spoke, there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered
to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind
his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot
boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was
remarkable, and having closed the door, and bowed her into an armchair, he
looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was
peculiar to him.

"Do you not find," he said, "that with your short sight it is a little
trying to do so much typewriting?"

"I did at first," she answered, "but now I know where the letters are
without looking." Then, suddenly realizing the full purport of his words,
she gave a violent start, and looked up with fear and astonishment upon
her broad, good-humored face. "You've heard about me, Mr. Holmes," she
cried, "else how could you know all that?"

"Never mind," said Holmes, laughing, "it is my business to know things.
Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why
should you come to consult me?"

"I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege, whose
husband you found so easily when the police and everyone had given him up
for dead. Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I'm not
rich, but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the
little that I make by the machine, and I would give it all to know what
has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel."

"Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?" asked Sherlock
Holmes, with his finger tips together, and his eyes to the ceiling.

Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss Mary
Sutherland. "Yes, I did bang out of the house," she said, "for it made me
angry to see the easy way in which Mr. Windibank--that is, my father--took
it all. He would not go to the police, and he would not go to you, and so
at last, as he would do nothing, and kept on saying that there was no harm
done, it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away to
you."

"Your father?" said Holmes. "Your stepfather, surely, since the name is
different."

"Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too, for
he is only five years and two months older than myself."

"And your mother is alive?"

"Oh, yes; mother is alive and well. I wasn't best pleased, Mr. Holmes,
when she married again so soon after father's death, and a man who was
nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father was a plumber in the
Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business behind him, which mother
carried on with Mr. Hardy, the foreman; but when Mr. Windibank came he
made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a traveler in
wines. They got four thousand seven hundred for the good-will and
interest, which wasn't near as much as father could have got if he had
been alive."

I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and
inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he had listened with the
greatest concentration of attention.

"Your own little income," he asked, "does it come out of the business?"

"Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate, and was left me by my Uncle Ned in
Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying four and half per cent. Two
thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the
interest."

"You interest me extremely," said Holmes. "And since you draw so large a
sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you no doubt
travel a little, and indulge yourself in every way. I believe that a
single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about sixty pounds."

"I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you understand that
as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a burden to them, and so they
have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course
that is only just for the time. Mr. Windibank draws my interest every
quarter, and pays it over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well
with what I earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can
often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day."

"You have made your position very clear to me," said Holmes. "This is my
friend, Doctor Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before
myself. Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr. Hosmer
Angel."

A flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face, and she picked nervously at the
fringe of her jacket. "I met him first at the gasfitters' ball," she said.
"They used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then afterwards
they remembered us, and sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank did not wish us
to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I
wanted so much as to join a Sunday School treat. But this time I was set
on going, and I would go, for what right had he to prevent? He said the
folk were not fit for us to know, when all father's friends were to be
there. And he said that I had nothing fit to wear, when I had my purple
plush that I had never so much as taken out of the drawer. At last, when
nothing else would do, he went off to France upon the business of the
firm; but we went, mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our
foreman, and it was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel."

"I suppose," said Holmes, "that when Mr. Windibank came back from France,
he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball?"

"Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and shrugged
his shoulders, and said there was no use denying anything to a woman, for
she would have her way."

"I see. Then at the gasfitters' ball you met, as I understand, a gentleman
called Mr. Hosmer Angel?"

"Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if we had
got home all safe, and after that we met him--that is to say, Mr. Holmes,
I met him twice for walks, but after that father came back again, and Mr.
Hosmer Angel could not come to the house any more."

"No?"

"Well, you know, father didn't like anything of the sort. He wouldn't have
any visitors if he could help it, and he used to say that a woman should
be happy in her own family circle. But then, as I used to say to mother, a
woman wants her own circle to begin with, and I had not got mine yet."

"But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see you?"

"Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hosmer wrote
and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until he
had gone. We could write in the meantime, and he used to write every day.
I took the letters in the morning, so there was no need for father to
know."

"Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that we took.
Hosmer--Mr. Angel--was a cashier in an office in Leadenhall Street--and--"

"What office?"

"That's the worst of it, Mr. Holmes; I don't know."

"Where did he live, then?"

"He slept on the premises."

"And you don't know his address?"

"No--except that it was Leadenhall Street."

"Where did you address your letters, then?"

"To the Leadenhall Street Post Office, to be left till called for. He said
that if they were sent to the office he would be chaffed by all the other
clerks about having letters from a lady, so I offered to typewrite them,
like he did his, but he wouldn't have that, for he said that when I wrote
them they seemed to come from me, but when they were typewritten he always
felt that the machine had come between us. That will just show you how
fond he was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think
of."

"It was most suggestive," said Holmes. "It has long been an axiom of mine
that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you remember
any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?"

"He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the
evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to be conspicuous.
Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was gentle. He'd had
the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had
left him with a weak throat and a hesitating, whispering fashion of
speech. He was always well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were
weak, just as mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare."

"Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather, returned to
France?"

"Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again, and proposed that we should
marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest, and made me
swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever happened I would
always be true to him. Mother said he was quite right to make me swear,
and that it was a sign of his passion. Mother was all in his favor from
the first, and was even fonder of him than I was. Then, when they talked
of marrying within the week, I began to ask about father; but they both
said never to mind about father, but just to tell him afterwards and
mother said she would make it all right with him. I didn't quite like
that, Mr. Holmes. It seemed funny that I should ask his leave, as he was
only a few years older than me; but I didn't want to do anything on the
sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the company has its French
offices, but the letter came back to me on the very morning of the
wedding."

"It missed him, then?"

"Yes, sir, for he had started to England just before it arrived."

"Ha! that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged, then, for the
Friday. Was it to be in church?"

"Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Saviour's, near King's
Cross, and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. Pancras Hotel.
Hosmer came for us in a hansom, but as there were two of us, he put us
both into it, and stepped himself into a four-wheeler, which happened to
be the only other cab in the street. We got to the church first, and when
the four-wheeler drove up we waited for him to step out, but he never did,
and when the cabman got down from the box and looked, there was no one
there! The cabman said that he could not imagine what had become of him,
for he had seen him get in with his own eyes. That was last Friday, Mr.
Holmes, and I have never seen or heard anything since then to throw any
light upon what became of him."

"It seems to me that you have been very shamefully treated," said Holmes.

"Oh, no, sir! He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why, all the
morning he was saying to me that, whatever happened, I was to be true; and
that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to separate us, I was
always to remember that I was pledged to him, and that he would claim his
pledge sooner or later. It seemed strange talk for a wedding morning, but
what has happened since gives a meaning to it."

"Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then, that some unforeseen
catastrophe has occurred to him?"

"Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he would not
have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw happened."

"But you have no notion as to what it could have been?"

"None."

"One more question. How did your mother take the matter?"

"She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the matter again."

"And your father? Did you tell him?"

"Yes, and he seemed to think, with me, that something had happened, and
that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said, what interest could
anyone have in bringing me to the door of the church, and then leaving me?
Now, if he had borrowed my money, or if he had married me and got my money
settled on him, there might be some reason; but Hosmer was very
independent about money, and never would look at a shilling of mine. And
yet what could have happened? And why could he not write? Oh! it drives me
half mad to think of, and I can't sleep a wink at night." She pulled a
little handkerchief out of her muff, and began to sob heavily into it.

"I shall glance into the case for you," said Holmes, rising, "and I have
no doubt that we shall reach some definite result. Let the weight of the
matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind dwell upon it further.
Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer Angel vanish from your memory, as he has
done from your life."

"Then you don't think I'll see him again?"

"I fear not."

"Then what has happened to him?"

"You will leave that question in my hands. I should like an accurate
description of him, and any letters of his which you can spare."

"I advertised for him in last Saturday's _Chronicle_," said she. "Here is
the slip, and here are four letters from him."

"Thank you. And your address?"

"No. 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell."

"Mr. Angel's address you never had, I understand. Where is your father's
place of business?"

"He travels for Westhouse & Marbank, the great claret importers of
Fenchurch Street."

"Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will leave the
papers here, and remember the advice which I have given you. Let the whole
incident be a sealed book, and do not allow it to affect your life."

"You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be true to
Hosmer. He shall find me ready when he comes back."

For all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face, there was something
noble in the simple faith of our visitor which compelled our respect. She
laid her little bundle of papers upon the table, and went her way, with a
promise to come again whenever she might be summoned.

Sherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his finger tips still
pressed together, his legs stretched out in front of him, and his gaze
directed upward to the ceiling. Then he took down from the rack the old
and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a counselor, and, having lighted
it, he leaned back in his chair, with thick blue cloud wreaths spinning up
from him, and a look of infinite languor in his face.

"Quite an interesting study, that maiden," he observed. "I found her more
interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, is rather a trite
one. You will find parallel cases, if you consult my index, in Andover in
'77, and there was something of the sort at The Hague last year. Old as is
the idea, however, there were one or two details which were new to me. But
the maiden herself was most instructive."

"You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite invisible to
me," I remarked.

"Not invisible, but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and
so you missed all that was important. I can never bring you to realize the
importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb nails, or the great
issues that may hang from a boot lace. Now, what did you gather from that
woman's appearance? Describe it."

"Well, she had a slate-colored, broad-brimmed straw hat, with a feather of
a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black beads sewed upon it and a
fringe of little black jet ornaments. Her dress was brown, rather darker
than coffee color, with a little purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her
gloves were grayish, and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her
boots I didn't observe. She had small round, hanging gold earrings, and a
general air of being fairly well-to-do, in a vulgar, comfortable,
easy-going way."

Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled.

"'Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really
done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of
importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for
color. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate
yourself upon details. My first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a
man it is perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you
observe, this woman had plush upon her sleeve, which is a most useful
material for showing traces. The double line a little above the wrist,
where the typewritist presses against the table, was beautifully defined.
The sewing machine, of the hand type, leaves a similar mark, but only on
the left arm, and on the side of it farthest from the thumb, instead of
being right across the broadest part, as this was. I then glanced at her
face, and observing the dint of a _pince-nez_ at either side of her nose,
I ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed to
surprise her."

"It surprised me."

"But, surely, it was very obvious. I was then much surprised and
interested on glancing down to observe that, though the boots which she
was wearing were not unlike each other, they were really odd ones, the one
having a slightly decorated toe cap and the other a plain one. One was
buttoned only in the two lower buttons out of five, and the other at the
first, third, and fifth. Now, when you see that a young lady, otherwise
neatly dressed, has come away from home with odd boots, half-buttoned, it
is no great deduction to say that she came away in a hurry."

"And what else?" I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by my
friend's incisive reasoning.

"I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving home, but
after being fully dressed. You observed that her right glove was torn at
the forefinger, but you did not, apparently, see that both glove and
finger were stained with violet ink. She had written in a hurry, and
dipped her pen too deep. It must have been this morning, or the mark would
not remain clear upon the finger. All this is amusing, though rather
elementary, but I must go back to business, Watson. Would you mind reading
me the advertised description of Mr. Hosmer Angel?"

I held the little printed slip to the light. "Missing," it said, "on the
morning of the fourteenth, a gentleman named Hosmer Angel. About five feet
seven inches in height; strongly built, sallow complexion, black hair, a
little bald in the center, bushy black side-whiskers and mustache; tinted
glasses; slight infirmity of speech. Was dressed, when last seen, in black
frock-coat faced with silk, black waistcoat, gold Albert chain, and gray
Harris tweed trousers, with brown gaiters over elastic-sided boots. Known
to have been employed in an office in Leadenhall Street. Anybody
bringing," etc., etc.

"That will do," said Holmes. "As to the letters," he continued, glancing
over them, "they are very commonplace. Absolutely no clew in them to Mr.
Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There is one remarkable point,
however, which will no doubt strike you."

"They are typewritten," I remarked.

"Not only that, but the signature is typewritten. Look at the neat little
'Hosmer Angel' at the bottom. There is a date, you see, but no
superscription except Leadenhall Street, which is rather vague. The point
about the signature is very suggestive--in fact, we may call it
conclusive."

"Of what?"

"My dear fellow, is it possible you do not see how strongly it bears upon
the case?"

"I cannot say that I do, unless it were that he wished to be able to deny
his signature if an action for breach of promise were instituted."

"No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters which
should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the other is to
the young lady's stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking him whether he could
meet us here at six o'clock to-morrow evening. It is just as well that we
should do business with the male relatives. And now, doctor, we can do
nothing until the answers to those letters come, so we may put our little
problem upon the shelf for the interim."

I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend's subtle powers of
reasoning, and extraordinary energy in action, that I felt that he must
have some solid grounds for the assured and easy demeanor with which he
treated the singular mystery which he had been called upon to fathom. Once
only had I known him to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and the
Irene Adler photograph, but when I looked back to the weird business of
the "Sign of the Four," and the extraordinary circumstances connected with
the "Study in Scarlet," I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed
which he could not unravel.

I left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the conviction
that when I came again on the next evening I would find that he held in
his hands all the clews which would lead up to the identity of the
disappearing bridegroom of Miss Mary Sutherland.

A professional case of great gravity was engaging my own attention at the
time, and the whole of next day I was busy at the bedside of the sufferer.
It was not until close upon six o'clock that I found myself free, and was
able to spring into a hansom and drive to Baker Street, half afraid that I
might be too late to assist at the _dénouement_ of the little mystery. I
found Sherlock Holmes alone, however, half asleep, with his long, thin
form curled up in the recesses of his armchair. A formidable array of
bottles and test-tubes, with the pungent, cleanly smell of hydrochloric
acid, told me that he had spent his day in the chemical work which was so
dear to him.

"Well, have you solved it?" I asked as I entered.

"Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta."

"No, no; the mystery!" I cried.

"Oh, that! I thought of the salt that I have been working upon. There was
never any mystery in the matter, though, as I said yesterday, some of the
details are of interest. The only drawback is that there is no law, I
fear, that can touch the scoundrel."

"Who was he, then, and what was his object in deserting Miss Sutherland?"

The question was hardly out of my mouth, and Holmes had not yet opened his
lips to reply, when we heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and a tap at
the door.

"This is the girl's stepfather, Mr. James Windibank," said Holmes. "He has
written to me to say that he would be here at six. Come in!"

The man who entered was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some thirty years
of age, clean shaven, and sallow-skinned, with a bland, insinuating
manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and penetrating gray eyes. He shot
a questioning glance at each of us, placed his shiny top hat upon the
sideboard, and, with a slight bow, sidled down into the nearest chair.

"Good evening, Mr. James Windibank," said Holmes. "I think this
typewritten letter is from you, in which you made an appointment with me
for six o'clock?"

"Yes, sir. I am afraid that I am a little late, but I am not quite my own
master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland has troubled you about
this little matter, for I think it is far better not to wash linen of the
sort in public. It was quite against my wishes that she came, but she is a
very excitable, impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not
easily controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I
did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the official
police, but it is not pleasant to have a family misfortune like this
noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless expense, for how could you
possibly find this Hosmer Angel?"

"On the contrary," said Holmes, quietly, "I have every reason to believe
that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel."

Mr. Windibank gave a violent start, and dropped his gloves. "I am
delighted to hear it," he said.

"It is a curious thing," remarked Holmes, "that a typewriter has really
quite as much individuality as a man's handwriting. Unless they are quite
new no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than
others, and some wear only on one side. Now, you remark in this note of
yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some little slurring
over the _e_, and a slight defect in the tail of the _r_. There are
fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more obvious."

"We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no
doubt it is a little worn," our visitor answered, glancing keenly at
Holmes with his bright little eyes.

"And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr.
Windibank," Holmes continued. "I think of writing another little monograph
some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a
subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four
letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all
typewritten. In each case, not only are the _e_'s slurred and the _r_'s
tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens,
that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there
as well."

Mr. Windibank sprung out of his chair, and picked up his hat. "I cannot
waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes," he said. "If you
can catch the man, catch him, and let me know when you have done it."

"Certainly," said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in the door.
"I let you know, then, that I have caught him!"

"What! where?" shouted Mr. Windibank, turning white to his lips, and
glancing about him like a rat in a trap.

"Oh, it won't do--really it won't," said Holmes, suavely. "There is no
possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is quite too transparent,
and it was a very bad compliment when you said that it was impossible for
me to solve so simple a question. That's right! Sit down, and let us talk
it over."

Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face, and a glitter of
moisture on his brow. "It--it's not actionable," he stammered.

"I am very much afraid that it is not; but between ourselves, Windibank,
it was as cruel, and selfish, and heartless a trick in a petty way as ever
came before me. Now, let me just run over the course of events, and you
will contradict me if I go wrong."

The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his breast,
like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his feet up on the corner of
the mantelpiece, and, leaning back with his hands in his pockets, began
talking, rather to himself, as it seemed, than to us.

"The man married a woman very much older than himself for her money," said
he, "and he enjoyed the use of the money of the daughter as long as she
lived with them. It was a considerable sum, for people in their position,
and the loss of it would have made a serious difference. It was worth an
effort to preserve it. The daughter was of a good, amiable disposition,
but affectionate and warm-hearted in her ways, so that it was evident that
with her fair personal advantages, and her little income, she would not be
allowed to remain single long. Now her marriage would mean, of course, the
loss of a hundred a year, so what does her stepfather do to prevent it? He
takes the obvious course of keeping her at home, and forbidding her to
seek the company of people of her own age. But soon he found that that
would not answer forever. She became restive, insisted upon her rights,
and finally announced her positive intention of going to a certain ball.
What does her clever stepfather do then? He conceives an idea more
creditable to his head than to his heart. With the connivance and
assistance of his wife, he disguised himself, covered those keen eyes with
tinted glasses masked the face with a mustache and a pair of bushy
whiskers, sunk that clear voice into an insinuating whisper, and doubly
secure on account of the girl's short sight, he appears as Mr. Hosmer
Angel, and keeps off other lovers by making love himself."

"It was only a joke at first," groaned our visitor. "We never thought that
she would have been so carried away."

"Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very decidedly
carried away, and having quite made up her mind that her stepfather was in
France, the suspicion of treachery never for an instant entered her mind.
She was flattered by the gentleman's attentions, and the effect was
increased by the loudly expressed admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel
began to call, for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as far
as if would go, if a real effect were to be produced. There were meetings,
and an engagement, which would finally secure the girl's affections from
turning toward anyone else. But the deception could not be kept up
forever. These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous. The
thing to do was clearly to bring the business to an end in such a dramatic
manner that it would leave a permanent impression upon the young lady's
mind, and prevent her from looking upon any other suitor for some time to
come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and hence
also the allusions to a possibility of something happening on the very
morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss Sutherland to be so
bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to his fate, that for ten years
to come, at any rate, she would not listen to another man. As far as the
church door he brought her, and then, as he could go no farther, he
conveniently vanished away by the old trick of stepping in at one door of
a four-wheeler and out at the other. I think that that was the chain of
events, Mr. Windibank!"

Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes had been
talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold sneer upon his pale
face.

"It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes," said he; "but if you are so
very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is you who are
breaking the law now, and not me. I have done nothing actionable from the
first, but as long as you keep that door locked you lay yourself open to
an action for assault and illegal constraint."

"The law cannot, as you say, touch you," said Holmes, unlocking and
throwing open the door, "yet there never was a man who deserved punishment
more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip
across your shoulders. By Jove!" he continued, flushing up at the sight of
the bitter sneer upon the man's face, "it is not part of my duties to my
client, but here's a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat
myself to--" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could
grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, the heavy hall
door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. James Windibank running
at the top of his speed down the road.

"There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!" said Holmes, laughing as he threw
himself down into his chair once more. "That fellow will rise from crime
to crime until he does something very bad and ends on a gallows. The case
has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest."

"I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning," I remarked.

"Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr. Hosmer Angel
must have some strong object for his curious conduct, and it was equally
clear that the only man who really profited by the incident, as far as we
could see, was the stepfather. Then the fact that the two men were never
together, but that the one always appeared when the other was away, was
suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious voice, which
both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My suspicions were
all confirmed by his peculiar action in typewriting his signature, which,
of course, inferred that his handwriting was so familiar to her that she
would recognize even the smallest sample of it. You see all these isolated
facts, together with many minor ones, all pointed in the same direction."

"And how did you verify them?"

"Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration. I knew the
firm for which this man worked. Having taken the printed description, I
eliminated everything from it which could be the result of a
disguise,--the whiskers, the glasses, the voice,--and I sent it to the
firm with a request that they would inform me whether it answered to the
description of any of their travelers. I had already noticed the
peculiarities of the typewriter, and I wrote to the man himself at his
business address, asking him if he would come here. As I expected, his
reply was typewritten, and revealed the same trivial but characteristic
defects. The same post brought me a letter from Westhouse & Marbank, of
Fenchurch Street, to say that the description tallied in every respect
with that of their employee, James Windibank. _Voilà tout!_"

"And Miss Sutherland?"

"If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian
saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also
for whoso snatcheth a delusion from a woman.' There is as much sense in
Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world."





_A Scandal in Bohemia_


I

To Sherlock Holmes she is always _the_ woman. I have seldom heard him
mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion
akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly,
were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was,
I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world
has seen; but as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false
position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a
sneer. They were admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing
the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to
admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted
temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a
doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a
crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing
that a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one
woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and
questionable memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from
each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centered interests
which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own
establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention; while Holmes,
who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained
in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and
alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness
of the drug and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as
ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense
faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those
clews, and clearing up those mysteries, which had been abandoned as
hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague
account of his doings; of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff
murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson
brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had
accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of
Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely
shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former
friend and companion.

One night--it was on the 20th of March, 1888--I was returning from a
journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my
way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door,
which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the
dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to
see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary
powers. His rooms were brilliantly lighted, and even as I looked up, I saw
his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind.
He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his
chest, and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood
and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work
again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams, and was hot upon the
scent of some new problem. I rang the bell, and was shown up to the
chamber which had formerly been in part my own.

His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to
see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to
an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case
and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire, and looked me
over in his singular introspective fashion.

"Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have put on
seven and a half pounds since I saw you."

"Seven," I answered.

"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy,
Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you
intended to go into harness."

"Then how do you know?"

"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself
very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant
girl?"

"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly have been
burned had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country
walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess; but as I have changed
my clothes, I can't imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is
incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice; but there again I fail to
see how you work it out."

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long nervous hands together.

"It is simplicity itself," said he, "my eyes tell me that on the inside of
your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored
by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by some one
who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to
remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you
had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant
boot-slicking specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a
gentleman walks into my rooms, smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of
nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the side of
his top hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull
indeed if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical
profession."

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he, explained his process
of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I remarked, "the thing
always appears to me so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it
myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled,
until you explain your process. And yet, I believe that my eyes are as
good as yours."

"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down
into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is
clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from
the hall to this room."

"Frequently."

"How often?"

"Well, some hundreds of times."

"Then how many are there?"

"How many? I don't know."

"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my
point. Now, I know there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and
observed. By the way, since you are interested in these little problems,
and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling
experiences, you may be interested in this." He threw over a sheet of
thick pink-tinted note paper which had been lying open upon the table. "It
came by the last post," said he. "Read it aloud."

The note was undated, and without either signature or address.

"There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o'clock," it
said, "a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very
deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of Europe
have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which
are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you
we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber, then, at that
hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wears a mask."

"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that it
means?"

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has
data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of
theories to suit facts. But the note itself--what do you deduce from it?"

I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.

"The man who wrote it was presumably well to do," I remarked, endeavoring
to imitate my companion's processes. "Such paper could not be bought under
half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff."

"Peculiar--that is the very word," said Holmes. "It is not an English
paper at all. Hold it up to the light"

I did so, and saw a large _E_ with a small _g_, a _P_ and a large _G_ with
a small _t_ woven into the texture of the paper.

"What do you make of that?" asked Holmes.

"The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather."

"Not all. The _G_ with the small _t_ stands for 'Gesellschaft,' which is
the German for 'Company.' It is a customary contraction like our 'Co.'
_P_, of course, stands for 'Papier.' Now for the _Eg_. Let us glance at
our 'Continental Gazetteer'." He took down a heavy brown volume from his
shelves. "Eglow, Eglonitz--here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking
country--in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. 'Remarkable as being the scene
of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous glass factories and
paper mills.' Ha! ha! my boy, what do you make of that?" His eyes
sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.

"The paper was made in Bohemia," I said.

"Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the
peculiar construction of the sentence--'This account of you we have from
all quarters received'? A Frenchman or Russian could not have written
that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only
remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes
upon Bohemian paper, and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And
here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts."

As he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses' hoofs and grating wheels
against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Holmes whistled.

"A pair, by the sound," said he. "Yes," he continued, glancing out of the
window. "A nice little brougham and a pair of beauties. A hundred and
fifty guineas apiece. There's money in this case, Watson, if there is
nothing else."

"I think I had better go, Holmes."

"Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And
this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it."

"But your client--"

"Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he comes. Sit
down in that armchair, doctor, and give us your best attention."

A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the
passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and
authoritative tap.

"Come in!" said Holmes.

A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in
height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich with a
richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste.
Heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and front of his
double-breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his
shoulders was lined with flame-colored silk, and secured at the neck with
a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended
halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with rich brown
fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by
his whole appearance. He carried a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he
wore across the upper part of his face, extending down past the
cheek-bones, a black visard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that
very moment, for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. From the
lower part of the face he appeared to be a man of strong character, with a
thick, hanging lip, and a long, straight chin, suggestive of resolution
pushed to the length of obstinacy.

"You had my note?" he asked, with a deep, harsh voice and a strongly
marked German accent. "I told you that I would call." He looked from one
to the other of us, as if uncertain which to address.

"Pray take a seat," said Holmes. "This is my friend and colleague, Doctor
Watson, who is occasionally good enough to help me in my cases. Whom have
I the honor to address?"

"You may address me as the Count von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman. I
understand that this gentleman, your friend, is a man of honor and
discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most extreme
importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate with you alone."

I rose to go, but Holmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me back into my
chair. "It is both, or none," said he. "You may say before this gentleman
anything which you may say to me."

The count shrugged his broad shoulders. "Then I must begin," said he, "by
binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years; at the end of that
time the matter will be of no importance. At present it is not too much to
say that it is of such weight that it may have an influence upon European
history."

"I promise," said Holmes.

"And I."

"You will excuse this mask," continued our strange visitor. "The august
person who employs me wishes his agent to be unknown to you, and I may
confess at once that the title by which I have just called myself is not
exactly my own."

"I was aware of it," said Holmes, dryly.

"The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution has to be
taken to quench what might grow to be an immense scandal, and seriously
compromise one of the reigning families of Europe. To speak plainly, the
matter implicates the great House of Ormstein, hereditary kings of
Bohemia."

"I was also aware of that," murmured Holmes, settling himself down in his
armchair, and closing his eyes.

Our visitor glanced with some apparent surprise at the languid, lounging
figure of the man who had been, no doubt, depicted to him as the most
incisive reasoner and most energetic agent in Europe. Holmes slowly
reopened his eyes and looked impatiently at his gigantic client.

"If your majesty would condescend to state your case," he remarked, "I
should be better able to advise you."

The man sprung from his chair, and paced up and down the room in
uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore
the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground.

"You are right," he cried, "I am the king. Why should I attempt to conceal
it?"

"Why, indeed?" murmured Holmes. "Your majesty had not spoken before I was
aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein,
Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia."

"But you can understand," said our strange visitor, sitting down once more
and passing his hand over his high, white forehead, "you can understand
that I am not accustomed to doing such business in my own person. Yet the
matter was so delicate that I could not confide it to an agent without
putting myself in his power. I have come incognito from Prague for the
purpose of consulting you."

"Then, pray consult," said Holmes, shutting his eyes once more.

"The facts are briefly these: Some five years ago, during a lengthy visit
to Warsaw, I made the acquaintance of the well-known adventuress Irene
Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you."

"Kindly look her up in my index, doctor," murmured Holmes, without opening
his eyes. For many years he had adopted a system for docketing all
paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to name a
subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish information. In
this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew
rabbi and that of a staff commander who had written a monograph upon the
deep-sea fishes.

"Let me see!" said Holmes. "Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year 1858.
Contralto--hum! La Scala--hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw--yes!
Retired from operatic stage--ha! Living in London--quite so! Your majesty,
as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some
compromising letters, and is now desirous of getting those letters back."

"Precisely so. But how--"

"Was there a secret marriage?"

"None."

"No legal papers or certificates?"

"None."

"Then I fail to follow your majesty. If this young person should produce
her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to prove their
authenticity?"

"There is the writing."

"Pooh-pooh! Forgery."

"My private note paper."

"Stolen."

"My own seal."

"Imitated."

"My photograph."

"Bought."

"We were both in the photograph."

"Oh, dear! That is very bad. Your majesty has indeed committed an
indiscretion."

"I was mad--insane."

"You have compromised yourself seriously."

"I was only crown prince then. I was young. I am but thirty now."

"It must be recovered."

"We have tried and failed."

"Your majesty must pay. It must be bought."

"She will not sell."

"Stolen, then."

"Five attempts have been made. Twice burglars in my pay ransacked her
house. Once we diverted her luggage when she traveled. Twice she has been
waylaid. There has been no result."

"No sign of it?"

"Absolutely none."

Holmes laughed. "It is quite a pretty little problem," said he.

"But a very serious one to me," returned the king, reproachfully.

"Very, indeed. And what does she propose to do with the photograph?"

"To ruin me."

"But how?"

"I am about to be married."

"So I have heard."

"To Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meiningen, second daughter of the King of
Scandinavia. You may know the strict principles of her family. She is
herself the very soul of delicacy. A shadow of a doubt as to my conduct
would bring the matter to an end."

"And Irene Adler?"

"Threatens to send them the photograph. And she will do it. I know that
she will do it. You do not know her, but she has a soul of steel. She has
the face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute
of men. Rather than I should marry another woman, there are no lengths to
which she would not go--none."

"You are sure she has not sent it yet?"

"I am sure."

"And why?"

"Because she has said that she would send it on the day when the betrothal
was publicly proclaimed. That will be next Monday."

"Oh, then we have three days yet," said Holmes, with a yawn. "That is very
fortunate, as I have one or two matters of importance to look into just at
present. Your majesty will, of course, stay in London for the present?"

"Certainly. You will find me at the Langham, under the name of the Count
von Kramm."

"Then I shall drop you a line to let you know how we progress."

"Pray do so; I shall be all anxiety."

"Then, as to money?"

"You have _carte blanche_."

"Absolutely?"

"I tell you that I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to have
that photograph."

"And for present expenses?"

The king took a heavy chamois-leather bag from under his cloak, and laid
it on the table.

"There are three hundred pounds in gold, and seven hundred in notes," he
said.

Holmes scribbled a receipt upon a sheet of his notebook, and handed it to
him.

"And mademoiselle's address?" he asked.

"Is Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St. John's Wood."

Holmes took a note of it. "One other question," said he, thoughtfully.
"Was the photograph a cabinet?"

"It was."

"Then, good-night, your majesty, and I trust that we shall soon have some
good news for you. And good-night, Watson," he added, as the wheels of the
royal brougham rolled down the street. "If you will be good enough to call
to-morrow afternoon, at three o'clock, I should like to chat this little
matter over with you."


II

At three o'clock precisely I was at Baker Street, but Holmes had not yet
returned. The landlady informed me that he had left the house shortly
after eight o'clock in the morning. I sat down beside the fire, however,
with the intention of awaiting him, however long he might be. I was
already deeply interested in his inquiry, for, though it was surrounded by
none of the grim and strange features which were associated with the two
crimes which I have already recorded, still, the nature of the case and
the exalted station of his client gave it a character of its own. Indeed,
apart from the nature of the investigation which my friend had on hand,
there was something in his masterly grasp of a situation, and his keen,
incisive reasoning, which made it a pleasure to me to study his system of
work, and to follow the quick, subtle methods by which he disentangled the
most inextricable mysteries. So accustomed was I to his invariable
success that the very possibility of his failing had ceased to enter into
my head.

It was close upon four before the door opened, and a drunken-looking
groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and
disreputable clothes, walked into the room. Accustomed as I was to my
friend's amazing powers in the use of disguises, I had to look three times
before I was certain that it was indeed he. With a nod he vanished into
the bedroom, whence he emerged in five minutes tweed-suited and
respectable, as of old. Putting his hands into his pockets, he stretched
out his legs in front of the fire, and laughed heartily for some minutes.

"Well, really!" he cried, and then he choked, and laughed again until he
was obliged to lie back, limp and helpless, in the chair.

"What is it?"

"It's quite too funny. I am sure you could never guess how I employed my
morning, or what I ended by doing."

"I can't imagine. I suppose that you have been watching the habits, and,
perhaps, the house, of Miss Irene Adler."

"Quite so, but the sequel was rather unusual. I will tell you, however. I
left the house a little after eight o'clock this morning in the character
of a groom out of work. There is a wonderful sympathy and freemasonry
among horsey men. Be one of them, and you will know all that there is to
know. I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the
back, but built out in the front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb
lock to the door. Large sitting room on the right side, well furnished,
with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English
window fasteners which a child could open. Behind there was nothing
remarkable, save that the passage window could be reached from the top of
the coach-house. I walked round it and examined it closely from every
point of view, but without noting anything else of interest.

"I then lounged down the street, and found, as I expected, that there was
a mews in a lane which runs down by one wall of the garden. I lent the
hostlers a hand in rubbing down their horses, and I received in exchange
twopence, a glass of half and half, two fills of shag tobacco, and as much
information as I could desire about Miss Adler, to say nothing of half a
dozen other people in the neighborhood, in whom I was not in the least
interested, but whose biographies I was compelled to listen to."

"And what of Irene Adler?" I asked.

"Oh, she has turned all the men's heads down in that part. She is the
daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. So say the Serpentine Mews,
to a man. She lives quietly, sings at concerts, drives out at five every
day, and returns at seven sharp for dinner. Seldom goes out at other
times, except when she sings. Has only one male visitor, but a good deal
of him. He is dark, handsome, and dashing; never calls less than once a
day, and often twice. He is a Mr. Godfrey Norton of the Inner Temple. See
the advantages of a cabman as a confidant. They had driven him home a
dozen times from Serpentine Mews, and knew all about him. When I had
listened to all that they had to tell, I began to walk up and down near
Briony Lodge once more, and to think over my plan of campaign.

"This Godfrey Norton was evidently an important factor in the matter. He
was a lawyer. That sounded ominous. What was the relation between them,
and what the object of his repeated visits? Was she his client, his
friend, or his mistress? If the former, she had probably transferred the
photograph to his keeping. If the latter, it was less likely. On the issue
of this question depended whether I should continue my work at Briony
Lodge, or turn my attention to the gentleman's chambers in the Temple. It
was a delicate point, and it widened the field of my inquiry. I fear that
I bore you with these details, but I have to let you see my little
difficulties, if you are to understand the situation."

"I am following you closely," I answered.

"I was still balancing the matter in my mind, when a hansom cab drove up
to Briony Lodge, and a gentleman sprung out. He was a remarkably handsome
man, dark, aquiline, and mustached--evidently the man of whom I had heard.
He appeared to be in a great hurry, shouted to the cabman to wait, and
brushed past the maid who opened the door, with the air of a man who was
thoroughly at home.

"He was in the house about half an hour, and I could catch glimpses of him
in the windows of the sitting room, pacing up and down, talking excitedly
and waving his arms. Of her I could see nothing. Presently he emerged,
looking even more flurried than before. As he stepped up to the cab, he
pulled a gold watch from his pocket and looked at it earnestly. 'Drive
like the devil!' he shouted, 'first to Gross & Hankey's in Regent Street,
and then to the Church of St. Monica in the Edgeware Road. Half a guinea
if you do it in twenty minutes!'

"Away they went, and I was just wondering whether I should not do well to
follow them, when up the lane came a neat little landau, the coachman with
his coat only half buttoned, and his tie under his ear, while all the tags
of his harness were sticking out of the buckles. It hadn't pulled up
before she shot out of the hall door and into it. I only caught a glimpse
of her at the moment, but she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man
might die for.

"'The Church of St. Monica, John,' she cried; 'and half a sovereign if you
reach it in twenty minutes.'

"This was quite too good to lose, Watson. I was just balancing whether I
should run for it, or whether I should perch behind her landau, when a cab
came through the street. The driver looked twice at such a shabby fare;
but I jumped in before he could object. 'The Church of St. Monica,' said
I, 'and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes.' It was
twenty-five minutes to twelve, and of course it was clear enough what was
in the wind.

"My cabby drove fast. I don't think I ever drove faster, but the others
were there before us. The cab and landau with their steaming horses were
in front of the door when I arrived. I paid the man, and hurried into the
church. There was not a soul there save the two whom I had followed, and
a surpliced clergyman, who seemed to be expostulating with them. They were
all three standing in a knot in front of the altar. I lounged up the side
aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a church. Suddenly, to my
surprise, the three at the altar faced round to me, and Godfrey Norton
came running as hard as he could toward me.

"'Thank God!' he cried. 'You'll do. Come! Come!'

"'What then?' I asked.

"'Come, man, come; only three minutes, or it won't be legal.'

"I was half dragged up to the altar, and, before I knew where I was, I
found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear, and
vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally assisting in
the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor.
It was all done in an instant, and there was the gentleman thanking me on
the one side and the lady on the other, while the clergyman beamed on me
in front. It was the most preposterous position in which I ever found
myself in my life, and it was the thought of it that started me laughing
just now. It seems that there had been some informality about their
license; that the clergyman absolutely refused to marry them without a
witness of some sort, and that my lucky appearance saved the bridegroom
from having to sally out into the streets in search of a best man. The
bride gave me a sovereign, and I mean to wear it on my watch chain in
memory of the occasion."

"This is a very unexpected turn of affairs," said I; "and what then?"

"Well, I found my plans very seriously menaced. It looked as if the pair
might take an immediate departure, and so necessitate very prompt and
energetic measures on my part. At the church door, however, they
separated, he driving back to the Temple, and she to her own house. 'I
shall drive out in the park at five as usual,' she said, as she left him.
I heard no more. They drove away in different directions, and I went off
to make my own arrangements."

"Which are?"

"Some cold beef and a glass of beer," he answered, ringing the bell. "I
have been too busy to think of food, and I am likely to be busier still
this evening. By the way, doctor, I shall want your cooperation."

"I shall be delighted."

"You don't mind breaking the law?"

"Not in the least."

"Nor running a chance of arrest?"

"Not in a good cause."

"Oh, the cause is excellent!"

"Then I am your man."

"I was sure that I might rely on you."

"But what is it you wish?"

"When Mrs. Turner has brought in the tray I will make it clear to you.
Now," he said, as he turned hungrily on the simple fare that our landlady
had provided, "I must discuss it while I eat, for I have not much time. It
is nearly five now. In two hours we must be on the scene of action. Miss
Irene, or Madame, rather, returns from her drive at seven. We must be at
Briony Lodge to meet her."

"And what then?"

"You must leave that to me. I have already arranged what is to occur.
There is only one point on which I must insist. You must not interfere,
come what may. You understand?"

"I am to be neutral?"

"To do nothing whatever. There will probably be some small unpleasantness.
Do not join in it. It will end in my being conveyed into the house. Four
or five minutes afterwards the sitting-room window will open. You are to
station yourself close to that open window."

"Yes."

"You are to watch me, for I will be visible to you."

"Yes."

"And when I raise my hand--so--you will throw into the room what I give
you to throw, and will, at the same time, raise the cry of fire. You quite
follow me?"

"Entirely."

"It is nothing very formidable," he said, taking a long, cigar-shaped roll
from his pocket. "It is an ordinary plumber's smoke-rocket, fitted with a
cap at either end, to make it self-lighting. Your task is confined to
that. When you raise your cry of fire, it will be taken up by quite a
number of people. You may then walk to the end of the street, and I will
rejoin you in ten minutes. I hope that I have made myself clear?"

"I am to remain neutral, to get near the window, to watch you, and, at the
signal, to throw in this object, then to raise the cry of fire and to wait
you at the corner of the street."

"Precisely."

"Then you may entirely rely on me."

"That is excellent. I think, perhaps, it is almost time that I prepared
for the new role I have to play."

He disappeared into his bedroom, and returned in a few minutes in the
character of an amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman. His
broad, black hat, his baggy trousers, his white tie, his sympathetic
smile, and general look of peering and benevolent curiosity were such as
Mr. John Hare alone could have equaled. It was not merely that Holmes
changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to
vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor,
even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in
crime.

It was a quarter past six when we left Baker Street, and it still wanted
ten minutes to the hour when we found ourselves in Serpentine Avenue. It
was already dusk, and the lamps were just being lighted as we paced up and
down in front of Briony Lodge, waiting for the coming of its occupant. The
house was just such as I had pictured it from Sherlock Holmes's succinct
description, but the locality appeared to be less private than I expected.
On the contrary, for a small street in a quiet neighborhood, it was
remarkably animated. There was a group of shabbily dressed men smoking and
laughing in a corner, a scissors grinder with his wheel, two guardsmen who
were flirting with a nurse girl, and several well-dressed young men who
were lounging up and down with cigars in their mouths.

"You see," remarked Holmes, as we paced to and fro in front of the house,
"this marriage rather simplifies matters. The photograph becomes a
double-edged weapon now. The chances are that she would be as averse to
its being seen by Mr. Godfrey Norton as our client is to its coming to the
eyes of his princess. Now the question is--where are we to find the
photograph?"

"Where, indeed?"

"It is most unlikely that she carries it about with her. It is cabinet
size. Too large for easy concealment about a woman's dress. She knows that
the king is capable of having her waylaid and searched. Two attempts of
the sort have already been made. We may take it, then, that she does not
carry it about with her."

"Where, then?"

"Her banker or her lawyer. There is that double possibility. But I am
inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, and they like to
do their own secreting. Why should she hand it over to anyone else? She
could trust her own guardianship, but she could not tell what indirect or
political influence might be brought to bear upon a business man. Besides,
remember that she had resolved to use it within a few days. It must be
where she can lay her hands upon it. It must be in her own house."

"But it has twice been burglarized."

"Pshaw! They did not know how to look."

"But how will you look?"

"I will not look."

"What then?"

"I will get her to show me."

"But she will refuse."

"She will not be able to. But I hear the rumble of wheels. It is her
carriage. Now carry out my orders to the letter."

As he spoke, the gleam of the sidelights of a carriage came round the
curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to the
door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up one of the loafing men at the corner
dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a copper, but was
elbowed away by another loafer who had rushed up with the same intention.
A fierce quarrel broke out which was increased by the two guardsmen, who
took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissors grinder, who was
equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and in an instant the
lady, who had stepped from her carriage, was the center of a little knot
of struggling men who struck savagely at each other with their fists and
sticks. Holmes dashed into the crowd to protect the lady; but, just as he
reached her, he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood
running freely down his face. At his fall the guardsmen took to their
heels in one direction and the loungers in the other, while a number of
better-dressed people who had watched the scuffle without taking part in
it crowded in to help the lady and to attend to the injured man. Irene
Adler, as I will still call her, had hurried up the steps; but she stood
at the top, with her superb figure outlined against the lights of the
hall, looking back into the street.

"Is the poor gentleman much hurt?" she asked.

"He is dead," cried several voices.

"No, no, there's life in him," shouted another. "But he'll be gone before
you can get him to the hospital."

"He's a brave fellow," said a woman. "They would have had the lady's purse
and watch if it hadn't been for him. They were a gang, and a rough one,
too. Ah! he's breathing now."

"He can't lie in the street. May we bring him in, marm?"

"Surely. Bring him into the sitting room. There is a comfortable sofa.
This way, please." Slowly and solemnly he was borne into Briony Lodge, and
laid out in the principal room, while I still observed the proceedings
from my post by the window. The lamps had been lighted, but the blinds had
not been drawn, so that I could see Holmes as he lay upon the couch. I do
not know whether he was seized with compunction at that moment for the
part he was playing, but I know that I never felt more heartily ashamed of
myself in my life than when I saw the beautiful creature against whom I
was conspiring, or the grace and kindliness with which she waited upon the
injured man. And yet it would be the blackest treachery to Holmes to draw
back now from the part which he had intrusted to me. I hardened my heart,
and took the smoke-rocket from under my ulster. After all, I thought, we
are not injuring her. We are but preventing her from injuring another.

Holmes had sat upon the couch, and I saw him motion like a man who is in
need of air. A maid rushed across and threw open the window. At the same
instant I saw him raise his hand, and at the signal I tossed my rocket
into the room with a cry of "Fire!" The word was no sooner out of my mouth
than the whole crowd of spectators, well dressed and ill--gentlemen,
hostlers, and servant maids--joined in a general shriek of "Fire!" Thick
clouds of smoke curled through the room, and out at the open window. I
caught a glimpse of rushing figures, and a moment later the voice of
Holmes from within assuring them that it was a false alarm. Slipping
through the shouting crowd, I made my way to the corner of the street, and
in ten minutes was rejoiced to find my friend's arm in mine, and to get
away from the scene of uproar. He walked swiftly and in silence for some
few minutes, until we had turned down one of the quiet streets which led
toward the Edgeware Road.

"You did it very nicely, doctor," he remarked. "Nothing could have been
better. It is all right."

"You have the photograph?"

"I know where it is."

"And how did you find out?"

"She showed me, as I told you that she would."

"I am still in the dark."

"I do not wish to make a mystery," said he, laughing. "The matter was
perfectly simple. You, of course, saw that everyone in the street was an
accomplice. They were all engaged for the evening."

"I guessed as much."

"Then, when the row broke out, I had a little moist red paint in the palm
of my hand. I rushed forward, fell down, clapped my hand to my face, and
became a piteous spectacle. It is an old trick."

"That also I could fathom."

"Then they carried me in. She was bound to have me in. What else could she
do? And into her sitting room, which was the very room which I suspected.
It lay between that and her bedroom, and I was determined to see which.
They laid me on a couch, I motioned for air, they were compelled to open
the window, and you had your chance."

"How did that help you?"

"It was all-important. When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her
instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. It is a
perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken advantage
of it. In the case of the Darlington Substitution Scandal it was of use to
me, and also in the Arnsworth Castle business. A married woman grabs at
her baby--an unmarried one reaches for her jewel box. Now it was clear to
me that our lady of to-day had nothing in the house more precious to her
than what we are in quest of. She would rush to secure it. The alarm of
fire was admirably done. The smoke and shouting were enough to shake
nerves of steel. She responded beautifully. The photograph is in a recess
behind a sliding panel just above the right bell-pull. She was there in an
instant, and I caught a glimpse of it as she drew it out. When I cried out
that it was a false alarm, she replaced it, glanced at the rocket, rushed
from the room, and I have not seen her since. I rose, and, making my
excuses, escaped from the house. I hesitated whether to attempt to secure
the photograph at once; but the coachman had come in, and as he was
watching me narrowly, it seemed safer to wait. A little over-precipitance
may ruin all."

"And now?" I asked.

"Our quest is practically finished. I shall call with the king to-morrow,
and with you, if you care to come with us. We will be shown into the
sitting room to wait for the lady, but it is probable that when she comes
she may find neither us nor the photograph. It might be a satisfaction to
his majesty to regain it with his own hands."

"And when will you call?"

"At eight in the morning. She will not be up, so that we shall have a
clear field. Besides, we must be prompt, for this marriage may mean a
complete change in her life and habits. I must wire to the king without
delay."

We had reached Baker Street, and had stopped at the door. He was searching
his pockets for the key, when some one passing said:

"Good night, Mister Sherlock Holmes."

There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the greeting
appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by.

"I've heard that voice before," said Holmes, staring down the dimly
lighted street. "Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been?"


III

I slept at Baker Street that night, and we were engaged upon our toast and
coffee in the morning, when the King of Bohemia rushed into the room.

"You have really got it?" he cried, grasping Sherlock Holmes by either
shoulder, and looking eagerly into his face.

"Not yet."

"But you have hopes?"

"I have hopes."

"Then come. I am all impatience to be gone."

"We must have a cab."

"No, my brougham is waiting."

"Then that will simplify matters." We descended, and started off once more
for Briony Lodge.

"Irene Adler is married," remarked Holmes.

"Married! When?"

"Yesterday."

"But to whom?"

"To an English lawyer named Norton."

"But she could not love him."

"I am in hopes that she does."

"And why in hopes?"

"Because it would spare your majesty all fear of future annoyance. If the
lady loves her husband, she does not love your majesty. If she does not
love your majesty, there is no reason why she should interfere with your
majesty's plan."

"It is true. And yet--Well, I wish she had been of my own station. What a
queen she would have made!" He relapsed into a moody silence, which was
not broken until we drew up in Serpentine Avenue.

The door of Briony Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood upon the
steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as we stepped from the
brougham.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I believe?" said she.

"I am Mr. Holmes," answered my companion, looking at her with a
questioning and rather startled gaze.

"Indeed! My mistress told me that you were likely to call. She left this
morning, with her husband, by the 5:15 train from Charing Cross, for the
Continent."

"What!" Sherlock Holmes staggered back, white with chagrin and surprise.

"Do you mean that she has left England?"

"Never to return."

"And the papers?" asked the king hoarsely. "All is lost!"

"We shall see." He pushed past the servant, and rushed into the
drawing-room, followed by the king and myself. The furniture was scattered
about in every direction, with dismantled shelves, and open drawers, as if
the lady had hurriedly ransacked them before her flight. Holmes rushed at
the bell-pull, tore back a small sliding shutter, and plunging in his
hand, pulled out a photograph and a letter. The photograph was of Irene
Adler herself in evening dress; the letter was superscribed to "Sherlock
Holmes, Esq. To be left till called for." My friend tore it open, and we
all three read it together. It was dated at midnight of the preceding
night, and ran in this way:

    "MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES,--You really did it very well. You
    took me in completely. Until after the alarm of the fire, I had
    not a suspicion. But then, when I found how I had betrayed
    myself, I began to think. I had been warned against you months
    ago. I had been told that if the king employed an agent, it would
    certainly be you. And your address had been given me. Yet, with
    all this, you made me reveal what you wanted to know. Even after
    I became suspicious, I found it hard to think evil of such a
    dear, kind old clergyman. But, you know, I have been trained as
    an actress myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often
    take advantage of the freedom which it gives. I sent John, the
    coachman, to watch you, ran upstairs, got into my walking
    clothes, as I call them, and came down just as you departed.

    "Well, I followed you to the door, and so made sure that I was
    really an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock
    Holmes. Then I, rather imprudently, wished you good night, and
    started for the Temple to see my husband.

    "We both thought the best resource was flight when pursued by so
    formidable an antagonist; so you will find the nest empty when
    you call to-morrow. As to the photograph, your client may rest in
    peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he. The king may
    do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly
    wronged. I keep it only to safeguard myself, and preserve a
    weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might
    take in the future. I leave a photograph which he might care to
    possess; and I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes, very truly
    yours,

    "IRENE NORTON, _née_ ADLER."

"What a woman--oh, what a woman!" cried the King of Bohemia, when we had
all three read this epistle. "Did I not tell you how quick and resolute
she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that
she was not on my level?"

"From what I have seen of the lady, she seems indeed to be on a very
different level to your majesty," said Holmes coldly. "I am sorry that I
have not been able to bring your majesty's business to a more successful
conclusion."

"On the contrary, my dear sir," cried the king, "nothing could be more
successful. I know that her word is inviolate. The photograph is now as
safe as if it were in the fire."

"I am glad to hear your majesty say so."

"I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in what way I can reward
you. This ring--" He slipped an emerald snake ring from his finger, and
held it out upon the palm of his hand.

"Your majesty has something which I should value even more highly," said
Holmes.

"You have but to name it."

"This photograph!"

The king stared at him in amazement.

"Irene's photograph!" he cried. "Certainly, if you wish it."

"I thank your majesty. Then there is no more to be done in the matter. I
have the honor to wish you a very good morning." He bowed, and turning
away without observing the hand which the king had stretched out to him,
he set off in my company for his chambers.

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of
Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a
woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I
have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or
when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honorable title
of _the_ woman.





_The Red-Headed League_


I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of
last year, and found him in deep conversation with a very stout,
florid-faced elderly gentleman, with fiery red hair. With an apology for
my intrusion, I was about to withdraw, when Holmes pulled me abruptly into
the room and closed the door behind me.

"You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear Watson," he
said, cordially.

"I was afraid that you were engaged."

"So I am. Very much so."

"Then I can wait in the next room."

"Not at all. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been my partner and helper in
many of my most successful cases, and I have no doubt that he will be of
the utmost use to me in yours also."

The stout gentleman half rose from his chair and gave a bob of greeting,
with a quick little questioning glance from his small, fat-encircled eyes.

"Try the settee," said Holmes, relapsing into his armchair, and putting
his finger tips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods. "I
know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and
outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life. You have
shown your relish for it by the enthusiasm which has prompted you to
chronicle, and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so
many of my own little adventures."

"Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest to me," I observed.

"You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into
the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for
strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself,
which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination."

"A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting."

"You did, doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for
otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you, until your reason
breaks down under them and acknowledge me to be right. Now, Mr. Jabez
Wilson here has been good enough to call upon me this morning, and to
begin a narrative which promises to be one of the most singular which I
have listened to for some time. You have heard me remark that the
strangest and most unique things are very often connected not with the
larger but with the smaller crimes, and occasionally, indeed, where there
is room for doubt whether any positive crime has been committed. As far as
I have heard, it is impossible for me to say whether the present case is
an instance of crime or not, but the course of events is certainly among
the most singular that I have ever listened to. Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you
would have the great kindness to recommence your narrative. I ask you, not
merely because my friend, Dr. Watson, has not heard the opening part, but
also because the peculiar nature of the story makes me anxious to have
every possible detail from your lips. As a rule, when I have heard some
slight indication of the course of events I am able to guide myself by the
thousands of other similar cases which occur to my memory. In the present
instance I am forced to admit that the facts are, to the best of my
belief, unique."

The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of some little
pride, and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the inside pocket of
his greatcoat. As he glanced down the advertisement column, with his head
thrust forward, and the paper flattened out upon his knee, I took a good
look at the man, and endeavored, after the fashion of my companion, to
read the indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance.

I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor bore
every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese,
pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd's check trousers, a
not overclean black frock coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab
waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of
metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top hat and a faded brown
overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him.
Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man
save his blazing red head and the expression of extreme chagrin and
discontent upon his features.

Sherlock Holmes's quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head
with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. "Beyond the obvious
facts that he has at some time done manual labor, that he takes snuff,
that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a
considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else."

Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the
paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

"How, in the name of good fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?" he
asked. "How did you know, for example, that I did manual labor? It's as
true as gospel, for I began as a ship's carpenter."

"Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than your
left. You have worked with it and the muscles are more developed."

"Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?"

"I won't insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that,
especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an
arc and compass breastpin."

"Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?"

"What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five
inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you
rest it upon the desk."

"Well, but China?"

"The fish which you have tattooed immediately above your wrist could only
have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks, and
have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of
staining the fishes' scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China.
When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch chain, the
matter becomes even more simple."

Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. "Well, I never!" said he. "I thought at
first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing
in it after all."

"I begin to think, Watson," said Holmes, "that I make a mistake in
explaining. '_Omne ignotom pro magnifico_,' you know, and my poor little
reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid. Can
you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?"

"Yes, I have got it now," he answered, with his thick, red finger planted
halfway down the column. "Here it is. This is what began it all. You just
read it for yourself, sir."

I took the paper from him and read as follows:

    "To the Red-headed League: On account of the bequest of the late
    Ezekiah Hopkins, of Lebanon, Pa., U.S.A., there is now another
    vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a salary of
    four pounds a week for purely nominal services. All red-headed
    men who are sound in body and mind and above the age of
    twenty-one years are eligible. Apply in person on Monday, at
    eleven o'clock, to Duncan Ross, at the offices of the League, 7
    Pope's Court, Fleet Street."

"What on earth does this mean?" I ejaculated, after I had twice read over
the extraordinary announcement.

Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when in high
spirits. "It is a little off the beaten track, isn't it?" said he. "And
now, Mr. Wilson, off you go at scratch, and tell us all about yourself,
your household, and the effect which this advertisement had upon your
fortunes. You will first make a note, doctor, of the paper and the date."

"It is _The Morning Chronicle_ of April 27, 1890. Just two months ago."

"Very good. Now, Mr. Wilson."

"Well, it is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said
Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead, "I have a small pawnbroker's business
at Saxe-Coburg Square, near the City. It's not a very large affair, and of
late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I used to be
able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep one; and I would have a
job to pay him but that he is willing to come for half wages, so as to
learn the business."

"What is the name of this obliging youth?" asked Sherlock Holmes.

"His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he's not such a youth either. It's
hard to say his age. I should not wish a smarter assistant, Mr. Holmes;
and I know very well that he could better himself, and earn twice what I
am able to give him. But, after all, if he is satisfied, why should I put
ideas in his head?"

"Why, indeed? You seem most fortunate in having an employee who comes
under the full market price. It is not a common experience among employers
in this age. I don't know that your assistant is not as remarkable as your
advertisement."

"Oh, he has his faults, too," said Mr. Wilson. "Never was such a fellow
for photography. Snapping away with a camera when he ought to be improving
his mind, and then diving down into the cellar like a rabbit into its hole
to develop his pictures. That is his main fault; but, on the whole, he's a
good worker. There's no vice in him."

"He is still with you, I presume?"

"Yes, sir. He and a girl of fourteen, who does a bit of simple cooking,
and keeps the place clean--that's all I have in the house, for I am a
widower, and never had any family. We live very quietly, sir, the three of
us; and we keep a roof over our heads, and pay our debts, if we do nothing
more.

"The first thing that put us out was that advertisement. Spaulding, he
came down into the office just this day eight weeks, with this very paper
in his hand, and he says:

"'I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a red-headed man.'

"'Why that?' I asks.

"'Why,' says he, 'here's another vacancy on the League of the Red-headed
Men. It's worth quite a little fortune to any man who gets it, and I
understand that there are more vacancies than there are men, so that the
trustees are at their wits' end what to do with the money. If my hair
would only change color here's a nice little crib all ready for me to step
into.'

"'Why, what is it, then?' I asked. You see, Mr. Holmes, I am a very
stay-at-home man, and, as my business came to me instead of my having to
go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting my foot over the door
mat. In that way I didn't know much of what was going on outside, and I
was always glad of a bit of news.

"'Have you never heard of the League of the Red-headed Men?' he asked,
with his eyes open.

"'Never.'

"'Why, I wonder at that, for you are eligible yourself for one of the
vacancies.'

"'And what are they worth?' I asked.

"'Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the work is slight, and it
need not interfere very much with one's other occupations.'

"Well, you can easily think that that made me prick up my ears, for the
business has not been over good for some years, and an extra couple of
hundred would have been very handy.

"'Tell me all about it,' said I.

"'Well,' said he, showing me the advertisement, 'you can see for yourself
that the League has a vacancy, and there is the address where you should
apply for particulars. As far as I can make out, the League was founded by
an American millionaire, Ezekiah Hopkins, who was very peculiar in his
ways. He was himself red-headed, and he had a great sympathy for all
red-headed men; so, when he died, it was found that he had left his
enormous fortune in the hands of trustees, with instructions to apply the
interest to the providing of easy berths to men whose hair is of that
color. From all I hear it is splendid pay, and very little to do.'

"'But,' said I, 'there would be millions of red-headed men who would
apply.'

"'Not so many as you might think,' he answered. 'You see it is really
confined to Londoners, and to grown men. This American had started from
London when he was young, and he wanted to do the old town a good turn.
Then, again, I have heard it is of no use your applying if your hair is
light red, or dark red, or anything but real, bright, blazing, fiery red.
Now, if you cared to apply, Mr. Wilson, you would just walk in; but
perhaps it would hardly be worth your while to put yourself out of the way
for the sake of a few hundred pounds.'

"Now it is a fact, gentlemen, as you may see for yourselves, that my hair
is of a very full and rich tint, so that it seemed to me that, if there
was to be any competition in the matter, I stood as good a chance as any
man that I had ever met. Vincent Spaulding seemed to know so much about it
that I thought he might prove useful, so I just ordered him to put up the
shutters for the day, and to come right away with me. He was very willing
to have a holiday, so we shut the business up, and started off for the
address that was given us in the advertisement.

"I never hope to see such a sight as that again, Mr. Holmes. From north,
south, east, and west every man who had a shade of red in his hair had
tramped into the City to answer the advertisement. Fleet Street was choked
with red-headed folk, and Pope's Court looked like a coster's orange
barrow. I should not have thought there were so many in the whole country
as were brought together by that single advertisement. Every shade of
color they were--straw, lemon, orange, brick, Irish setter, liver, clay;
but, as Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real vivid
flame-colored tint. When I saw how many were waiting, I would have given
it up in despair; but Spaulding would not hear of it. How he did it I
could not imagine, but he pushed and pulled and butted until he got me
through the crowd, and right up to the steps which led to the office.
There was a double stream upon the stair, some going up in hope, and some
coming back dejected; but we wedged in as well as we could, and soon found
ourselves in the office."

"Your experience has been a most entertaining one," remarked Holmes, as
his client paused and refreshed his memory with a huge pinch of snuff.
"Pray continue your very interesting statement."

"There was nothing in the office but a couple of wooden chairs and a deal
table, behind which sat a small man, with a head that was even redder than
mine. He said a few words to each candidate as he came up, and then he
always managed to find some fault in them which would disqualify them.
Getting a vacancy did not seem to be such a very easy matter after all.
However, when our turn came, the little man was much more favorable to me
than to any of the others, and he closed the door as we entered, so that
he might have a private word with us.

"'This is Mr. Jabez Wilson,' said my assistant, 'and he is willing to fill
a vacancy in the League.'

"'And he is admirably suited for it,' the other answered. 'He has every
requirement. I cannot recall when I have seen anything so fine.' He took a
step backward, cocked his head on one side, and gazed at my hair until I
felt quite bashful. Then suddenly he plunged forward, wrung my hand, and
congratulated me warmly on my success.

"'It would be injustice to hesitate,' said he. 'You will, however, I am
sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.' With that he seized my
hair in both his hands, and tugged until I yelled with the pain. 'There is
water in your eyes,' said he, as he released me. 'I perceive that all is
as it should be. But we have to be careful, for we have twice been
deceived by wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler's
wax which would disgust you with human nature.' He stepped over to the
window and shouted through it at the top of his voice that the vacancy was
filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below, and the folk all
trooped away in different directions, until there was not a red head to be
seen except my own and that of the manager.

"'My name,' said he, 'is Mr. Duncan Ross, and I am myself one of the
pensioners upon the fund left by our noble benefactor. Are you a married
man, Mr. Wilson? Have you a family?'

"I answered that I had not.

"His face fell immediately.

"'Dear me!' he said, gravely, 'that is very serious indeed! I am sorry to
hear you say that. The fund was, of course, for the propagation and spread
of the red heads as well as for their maintenance. It is exceedingly
unfortunate that you should be a bachelor.'

"My face lengthened at this, Mr. Holmes, for I thought that I was not to
have the vacancy after all; but, after thinking it over for a few
minutes, he said that it would be all right.

"'In the case of another,' said he, 'the objection might be fatal, but we
must stretch a point in favor of a man with such a head of hair as yours.
When shall you be able to enter upon your new duties?'

"'Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business already,' said I.

"'Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson!' said Vincent Spaulding. 'I shall
be able to look after that for you.'

"'What would be the hours?' I asked.

"'Ten to two.'

"Now a pawnbroker's business is mostly done of an evening, Mr. Holmes,
especially Thursday and Friday evenings, which is just before pay day; so
it would suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings. Besides, I
knew that my assistant was a good man, and that he would see to anything
that turned up.

"'That would suit me very well,' said I. 'And the pay?'

"'Is four pounds a week.'

"'And the work?'

"'Is purely nominal.'

"'What do you call purely nominal?'

"'Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the building, the
whole time. If you leave, you forfeit your whole position forever. The
will is very clear upon that point. You don't comply with the conditions
if you budge from the office during that time.'

"'It's only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,' said I.

"'No excuse will avail,' said Mr. Duncan Ross, 'neither sickness, nor
business, nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose your
billet.'

"'And the work?'

"'Is to copy out the "Encyclopædia Britannica." There is the first volume
of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and blotting
paper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be ready to-morrow?'

"'Certainly,' I answered.

"'Then, good-by, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you once more
on the important position which you have been fortunate enough to gain.'
He bowed me out of the room, and I went home with my assistant hardly
knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased at my own good fortune.

"Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in low
spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair must
be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I could not
imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that anyone could make such a
will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple as
copying out the 'Encyclopædia Britannica.' Vincent Spaulding did what he
could to cheer me up, but by bed time I had reasoned myself out of the
whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look at it
anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a quill pen and seven
sheets of foolscap paper I started off for Pope's Court.

"Well, to my surprise and delight everything was as right as possible. The
table was set out ready for me, and Mr. Duncan Ross was there to see that
I got fairly to work. He started me off upon the letter A, and then he
left me; but he would drop in from time to time to see that all was right
with me. At two o'clock he bade me good-day, complimented me upon the
amount that I had written, and locked the door of the office after me.

"This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on Saturday the manager came
in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my week's work. It was the
same next week, and the same the week after. Every morning I was there at
ten, and every afternoon I left at two. By degrees Mr. Duncan Ross took to
coming in only once of a morning, and then, after a time, he did not come
in at all. Still, of course, I never dared to leave the room for an
instant, for I was not sure when he might come, and the billet was such a
good one, and suited me so well, that I would not risk the loss of it.

"Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about Abbots, and
Archery, and Armor, and Architecture, and Attica, and hoped with diligence
that I might get on to the Bs before very long. It cost me something in
foolscap, and I had pretty nearly filled a shelf with my writings. And
then suddenly the whole business came to an end."

"To an end?"

"Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as usual at
ten o'clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of
cardboard hammered onto the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is,
and you can read for yourself."

He held up a piece of white cardboard, about the size of a sheet of note
paper. It read in this fashion:

    "THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED.
    Oct. 9, 1890."

Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face
behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped
every consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.

"I cannot see that there is anything very funny," cried our client,
flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. "If you can do nothing
better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere."

"No, no," cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from which he had
half risen. "I really wouldn't miss your case for the world. It is most
refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you will excuse my saying so,
something just a little funny about it. Pray what steps did you take when
you found the card upon the door?"

"I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called at the
offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything about it. Finally,
I went to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the ground floor,
and I asked him if he could tell me what had become of the Red-headed
League. He said that he had never heard of any such body. Then I asked him
who Mr. Duncan Ross was. He answered that the name was new to him.

"'Well' said I, 'the gentleman at No. 4.'

"'What, the red-headed man?'

"'Yes.'

"'Oh,' said he, 'his name was William Morris. He was a solicitor, and was
using my room as a temporary convenience until his new premises were
ready. He moved out yesterday.'

"'Where could I find him?'

"'Oh, at his new offices. He did tell me the address. Yes, 17 King Edward
Street, near St. Paul's.'

"I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that address it was a
manufactory of artificial knee-caps, and no one in it had ever heard of
either Mr. William Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross."

"And what did you do then?" asked Holmes.

"I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took the advice of my assistant.
But he could not help me in any way. He could only say that if I waited I
should hear by post. But that was not quite good enough, Mr. Holmes. I did
not wish to lose such a place without a struggle, so, as I had heard that
you were good enough to give advice to poor folk who were in need of it, I
came right away to you."

"And you did very wisely," said Holmes. "Your case is an exceedingly
remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it. From what you have
told me I think that it is possible that graver issues hang from it than
might at first sight appear."

"Grave enough!" said Mr. Jabez Wilson. "Why, I have lost four pound a
week."

"As far as you are personally concerned," remarked Holmes, "I do not see
that you have any grievance against this extraordinary league. On the
contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some thirty pounds, to say
nothing of the minute knowledge which you have gained on every subject
which comes under the letter A. You have lost nothing by them."

"No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what
their object was in playing this prank--if it was a prank--upon me. It was
a pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost them two-and-thirty pounds."

"We shall endeavor to clear up these points for you. And, first, one or
two questions, Mr. Wilson. This assistant of yours who first called your
attention to the advertisement--how long had he been with you?"

"About a month then."

"How did he come?"

"In answer to an advertisement."

"Was he the only applicant?"

"No, I had a dozen."

"Why did you pick him?"

"Because he was handy and would come cheap."

"At half wages, in fact."

"Yes."

"What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?"

"Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, though
he's not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon his forehead."

Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. "I thought as
much," said he. "Have you ever observed that his ears are pierced for
earrings?"

"Yes, sir. He told me that a gypsy had done it for him when he was a lad."

"Hum!" said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. "He is still with you?"

"Oh, yes, sir; I have only just left him."

"And has your business been attended to in your absence?"

"Nothing to complain of, sir. There's never very much to do of a morning."

"That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an opinion upon
the subject in the course of a day or two. To-day is Saturday, and I hope
that by Monday we may come to a conclusion."

"Well, Watson," said Holmes, when our visitor had left us, "what do you
make of it all?"

"I make nothing of it," I answered frankly. "It is a most mysterious
business."

"As a rule," said Holmes, "the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious
it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are
really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to
identify. But I must be prompt over this matter."

"What are you going to do, then?" I asked.

"To smoke," he answered. "It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that
you won't speak to me for fifty minutes." He curled himself up in his
chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawklike nose, and there he sat
with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill
of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped
asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his
chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind, and put his pipe
down upon the mantelpiece.

"Sarasate plays at St. James's Hall this afternoon," he remarked. "What do
you think, Watson? Could your patients spare you for a few hours?"

"I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very absorbing."

"Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the City first, and we
can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal of
German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than
Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. Come
along!"

We traveled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk took
us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we had
listened to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel place,
where four lines of dingy, two-storied brick houses looked out into a
small railed-in inclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass, and a few clumps
of faded laurel bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and
uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with JABEZ
WILSON in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place where
our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in
front of it with his head on one side, and looked it all over, with his
eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the
street, and then down again to the corner, still looking keenly at the
houses. Finally he returned to the pawnbroker's and, having thumped
vigorously upon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he went up
to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a bright-looking,
clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step in.

"Thank you," said Holmes, "I only wished to ask you how you would go from
here to the Strand."

"Third right, fourth left," answered the assistant, promptly, closing the
door.

"Smart fellow, that," observed Holmes as we walked away. "He is, in my
judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not sure
that he has not a claim to be third. I have known something of him
before."

"Evidently," said I, "Mr. Wilson's assistant counts for a good deal in
this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your
way merely in order that you might see him."

"Not him."

"What then?"

"The knees of his trousers."

"And what did you see?"

"What I expected to see."

"Why did you beat the pavement?"

"My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are
spies in an enemy's country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let
us now explore the parts which lie behind it."

The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the corner from
the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a contrast to it as the
front of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main arteries which
convey the traffic of the City to the north and west. The roadway was
blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide
inward and outward, while the footpaths were black with the hurrying swarm
of pedestrians. It was difficult to realize, as we looked at the line of
fine shops and stately business premises, that they really abutted on the
other side upon the faded and stagnant square which we had just quitted.

"Let me see," said Holmes, standing at the corner, and glancing along the
line, "I should like just to remember the order of the houses here. It is
a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is Mortimer's,
the tobacconist; the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City
and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane's
carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the other block. And
now, doctor, we've done our work, so it's time we had some play. A
sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is
sweetness, and delicacy, and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients
to vex us with their conundrums."

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very
capable performer, but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon
he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving
his long thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face
and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the
sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal
agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual
nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and
astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the
poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The
swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy;
and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on
end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his
black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would
suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise
to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his
methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that
of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music
at St. James's Hall, I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those
whom he had set himself to hunt down.

"You want to go home, no doubt, doctor," he remarked, as we emerged.

"Yes, it would be as well."

"And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This business
at Saxe-Coburg Square is serious."

"Why serious?"

"A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to believe
that we shall be in time to stop it. But to-day being Saturday rather
complicates matters. I shall want your help to-night."

"At what time?"

"Ten will be early enough."

"I shall be at Baker Street at ten."

"Very well. And, I say, doctor! there may be some little danger, so kindly
put your army revolver in your pocket." He waved his hand, turned on his
heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I was always
oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock
Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen,
and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what
had happened, but what was about to happen, while to me the whole
business was still confused and grotesque. As I drove home to my house in
Kensington I thought over it all, from the extraordinary story of the
red-headed copier of the "Encyclopædia" down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg
Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was
this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going,
and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced
pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man--a man who might play a deep
game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the
matter aside until night should bring an explanation.

It was a quarter-past nine when I started from home and made my way across
the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker Street. Two hansoms were
standing at the door, and, as I entered the passage, I heard the sound of
voices from above. On entering his room, I found Holmes in animated
conversation with two men, one of whom I recognized as Peter Jones, the
official police agent; while the other was a long, thin, sad-faced man,
with a very shiny hat and oppressively respectable frock coat.

"Ha! our party is complete," said Holmes, buttoning up his pea-jacket, and
taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack. "Watson, I think you know Mr.
Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you to Mr. Merryweather, who is
to be our companion in to-night's adventure."

"We're hunting in couples again, doctor, you see," said Jones, in his
consequential way. "Our friend here is a wonderful man for starting a
chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him do the running down."

"I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase," observed
Mr. Merryweather gloomily.

"You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir," said the
police agent loftily. "He has his own little methods, which are, if he
won't mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical and fantastic, but
he has the makings of a detective in him. It is not too much to say that
once or twice, as in that business of the Sholto murder and the Agra
treasure, he has been more nearly correct than the official force."

"Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right!" said the stranger, with
deference. "Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the first
Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber."

"I think you will find," said Sherlock Holmes, "that you will play for a
higher stake to-night than you have ever done yet, and that the play will
be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather, the stake will be some thirty
thousand pounds; and for you, Jones, it will be the man upon whom you wish
to lay your hands."

"John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He's a young man,
Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his profession, and I would
rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London. He's a
remarkable man, is young John Clay. His grandfather was a Royal Duke, and
he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his
fingers, and though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never know
where to find the man himself. He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week,
and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next. I've been
on his track for years, and have never set eyes on him yet."

"I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to-night. I've had
one or two little turns also with Mr. John Clay, and I agree with you that
he is at the head of his profession. It is past ten, however, and quite
time that we started. If you two will take the first hansom, Watson and I
will follow in the second."

Sherlock Holmes was not very communicative during the long drive, and lay
back in the cab humming the tunes which he had heard in the afternoon. We
rattled through an endless labyrinth of gaslit streets until we emerged
into Farringdon Street.

"We are close there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow Merryweather
is a bank director and personally interested in the matter. I thought it
as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an
absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as
brave as a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws
upon anyone. Here we are, and they are waiting for us."

We had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in which we had found
ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and following the
guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a narrow passage, and through
a side door which he opened for us. Within there was a small corridor,
which ended in a very massive iron gate. This also was opened, and led
down a flight of winding stone steps, which terminated at another
formidable gate. Mr. Merryweather stopped to light a lantern, and then
conducted us down a dark, earth-smelling passage, and so, after opening a
third door, into a huge vault or cellar, which was piled all round with
crates and massive boxes.

"You are not very vulnerable from above," Holmes remarked, as he held up
the lantern and gazed about him.

"Nor from below," said Mr. Merryweather, striking his stick upon the flags
which lined the floor. "Why, dear me, it sounds quite hollow!" he
remarked, looking up in surprise.

"I must really ask you to be a little more quiet," said Holmes severely.
"You have already imperiled the whole success of our expedition. Might I
beg that you would have the goodness to sit down upon one of those boxes,
and not to interfere?"

The solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself upon a crate, with a very
injured expression upon his face, while Holmes fell upon his knees upon
the floor, and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens, began to examine
minutely the cracks between the stones. A few seconds sufficed to satisfy
him, for he sprang to his feet again, and put his glass in his pocket.

"We have at least an hour before us," he remarked, "for they can hardly
take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely in bed. Then they will
not lose a minute, for the sooner they do their work the longer time they
will have for their escape. We are at present, doctor--as no doubt you
have divined--in the cellar of the City branch of one of the principal
London banks. Mr. Merryweather is the chairman of directors, and he will
explain to you that there are reasons why the more daring criminals of
London should take a considerable interest in this cellar at present."

"It is our French gold," whispered the director. "We have had several
warnings that an attempt might be made upon it."

"Your French gold?"

"Yes. We had occasion some months ago to strengthen our resources, and
borrowed, for that purpose, thirty thousand napoleons from the Bank of
France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to unpack the
money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The crate upon which I
sit contains two thousand napoleons packed between layers of lead foil.
Our reserve of bullion is much larger at present than is usually kept in a
single branch office, and the directors have had misgivings upon the
subject."

"Which were very well justified," observed Holmes.

"And now it is time that we arranged our little plans. I expect that
within an hour matters will come to a head. In the meantime, Mr.
Merryweather, we must put the screen over that dark lantern."

"And sit in the dark?"

"I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I thought
that, as we were a _partie carrée_, you might have your rubber after all.
But I see that the enemy's preparations have gone so far that we cannot
risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must choose our
positions. These are daring men, and, though we shall take them at a
disadvantage, they may do us some harm, unless we are careful. I shall
stand behind this crate, and do you conceal yourself behind those. Then,
when I flash a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson,
have no compunction about shooting them down."

I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case behind which
I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front of his lantern, and
left us in pitch darkness--such an absolute darkness as I have never
before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that the
light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment's notice. To me,
with my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something
depressing and subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold, dank air of
the vault.

"They have but one retreat," whispered Holmes. "That is back through the
house into Saxe-Coburg Square. I hope that you have done what I asked you,
Jones?"

"I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door."

"Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent and wait."

What a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards, it was but an hour
and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must have almost gone,
and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs were weary and stiff, for I
feared to change my position, yet my nerves were worked up to the highest
pitch of tension, and my hearing was so acute that I could not only hear
the gentle breathing of my companions, but I could distinguish the deeper,
heavier inbreath of the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note of the
bank director. From my position I could look over the case in the
direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught the glint of a light.

At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then it
lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any
warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared, a white,
almost womanly hand, which felt about in the center of the little area of
light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers,
protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it
appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark, which marked
a chink between the stones.

Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, tearing
sound, one of the broad white stones turned over upon its side, and left a
square, gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a lantern. Over
the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish face, which looked keenly about
it, and then, with a hand on either side of the aperture, drew itself
shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge. In
another instant he stood at the side of the hole, and was hauling after
him a companion, lithe and small like himself, with a pale face and a
shock of very red hair.

"It's all clear," he whispered. "Have you the chisel and the bags? Great
Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it!"

Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar. The
other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of rending cloth as Jones
clutched at his skirts. The light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver,
but Holmes's hunting crop came down on the man's wrist, and the pistol
clinked upon the stone floor.

"It's no use, John Clay," said Holmes blandly, "you have no chance at
all."

"So I see," the other answered, with the utmost coolness. "I fancy that my
pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails."

"There are three men waiting for him at the door," said Holmes.

"Oh, indeed. You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must
compliment you."

"And I you," Holmes answered. "Your red-headed idea was very new and
effective."

"You'll see your pal again presently," said Jones. "He's quicker at
climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the derbies."

"I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands," remarked our
prisoner, as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists. "You may not be
aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness also, when
you address me, always to say 'sir' and 'please.'"

"All right," said Jones, with a stare and a snigger. "Well, would you
please, sir, march upstairs where we can get a cab to carry your highness
to the police station?"

"That is better," said John Clay serenely. He made a sweeping bow to the
three of us, and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.

"Really, Mr. Holmes," said Mr. Merryweather, as we followed them from the
cellar, "I do not know how the bank can thank you or repay you. There is
no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most complete manner
one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery, that have ever come
within my experience."

"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John
Clay," said Holmes. "I have been at some small expense over this matter,
which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am amply repaid
by having had an experience which is in many ways unique, and by hearing
the very remarkable narrative of the Red-headed League."

       *       *       *       *       *

"You see, Watson," he explained, in the early hours of the morning, as we
sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, "it was perfectly
obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather
fantastic business of the advertisement of the League, and the copying of
the 'Encyclopædia,' must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of
the way for a number of hours every day. It was a curious way of managing
it, but really it would be difficult to suggest a better. The method was
no doubt suggested to Clay's ingenious mind by the color of his
accomplice's hair. The four pounds a week was a lure which must draw him,
and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands? They put in the
advertisement, one rogue has the temporary office, the other rogue incites
the man to apply for it, and together they manage to secure his absence
every morning in the week. From the time that I heard of the assistant
having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong
motive for securing the situation."

"But how could you guess what the motive was?"

"Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar
intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The man's business was a
small one, and there was nothing in his house which could account for such
elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure as they were at. It must
then be something out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the
assistant's fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the
cellar. The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clew. Then I made
inquiries as to this mysterious assistant, and found that I had to deal
with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in London. He was doing
something in the cellar--something which took many hours a day for months
on end. What could it be, once more? I could think of nothing save that he
was running a tunnel to some other building.

"So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I surprised
you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was ascertaining whether
the cellar stretched out in front or behind. It was not in front. Then I
rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant answered it. We have had
some skirmishes, but we had never set eyes upon each other before. I
hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see. You must
yourself have remar

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2038