1To Sherlock Holmes she was always the woman. He had no emotion akin to love for Irene Adler, for all emotions were abhorrent to his cold, precise mind. And yet there was but one woman to him.2Watson's marriage had drifted the two friends apart. Holmes remained alone in their old lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his books, alternating between the drowsiness of cocaine and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.3On the night of the twentieth of March, 1888, Watson passed the well-remembered door. Looking up, he saw Holmes's tall, spare silhouette pacing swiftly behind the blind. He was at work again.4Holmes was not effusive, but he was glad to see his old friend. With hardly a word he waved Watson to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and pointed to the spirit case and gasogene in the corner.5Holmes stood before the fire and looked his friend 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.”6Holmes went further: Watson was in practice again, had lately been soaked through, and kept a clumsy servant girl. “This is too much,” Watson protested. “You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago.”7“It is simplicity itself.” Where the firelight struck Watson's left shoe, six almost parallel cuts scored the leather, left by someone scraping off crusted mud: vile weather, and a malignant boot-slitting London slavey.8As for his practice: Watson smelled of iodoform, had a black stain of nitrate of silver on his right forefinger, and a bulge in his top hat where he hid his stethoscope.9“You see, but you do not observe,” said Holmes, lighting a cigarette. Watson had climbed the stairs to this room hundreds of times, yet could not say how many steps there were. Holmes knew: seventeen.10Holmes threw over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted notepaper that had come by the last post. It was undated and unsigned, and announced a masked visitor at a quarter to eight on a matter of the very deepest moment.11Watson held the paper up to the lamp. Woven into its texture he saw a large “E” with a small “g”, a “P”, and a large “G” with a small “t”. “It is not an English paper at all,” said Holmes.12Holmes took down a heavy brown Continental Gazetteer. “Egria. It is in a German-speaking country, in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad, famous for its glass-factories and paper-mills. Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make of that?”13The writer was a German, for only a German is so uncourteous to his verbs. Holmes sent up a great blue triumphant cloud of smoke. “And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts.”14Hoofs and grating wheels sounded at the curb. Holmes glanced 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.”15Watson rose to leave, but Holmes would not hear of it. “Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best attention.”16After a loud, authoritative tap, a giant of a man entered, six and a half feet tall, in a cloak lined with flame-coloured silk and boots trimmed with fur. A black vizard mask covered the upper part of his face.17Below the mask he had a thick, hanging lip and a long, straight chin suggestive of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy. A single flaming beryl fastened his cloak at the throat.18“You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman,” he said in a deep, harsh German accent. He wished to speak with Holmes alone.19Watson rose to go, but Holmes caught him by the wrist and pushed him back into his chair. “It is both, or none.” The Count swore them to absolute secrecy for two years, for the matter might influence European history.20The matter touched the House of Ormstein, hereditary kings of Bohemia. “I was also aware of that,” murmured Holmes, settling into his armchair and closing his eyes, to the visible surprise of his gigantic client.21Holmes slowly reopened his eyes and looked impatiently at his visitor. “If your Majesty would condescend to state your case,” he remarked, “I should be better able to advise you.”22The man sprang up and paced the room in uncontrollable agitation. Then 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?”23Holmes had known all along that he addressed Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, King of Bohemia. The King sat down, passing his hand over his high white forehead. He had come incognito from Prague to consult him.24Five years before, in Warsaw, the King had known the adventuress Irene Adler. “Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor,” murmured Holmes without opening his eyes. Watson found her between a rabbi and a writer on deep-sea fishes.25“Born in New Jersey in 1858. Contralto. La Scala. Prima donna of the Imperial Opera of Warsaw. Living in London.” The King, Holmes gathered, had written her compromising letters and now wanted them back.26Writing could be forged, notepaper stolen, a seal imitated. But Holmes had no answer to the King's last admission. “We were both in the photograph.” “Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an indiscretion.”27“I was mad, insane. I was only Crown Prince then.” The photograph could not be bought. Burglars in his pay had twice ransacked her house, her luggage had been diverted, she had twice been waylaid. Nothing was found.28Holmes laughed. “It is quite a pretty little problem.” “But a very serious one to me,” returned the King reproachfully.29The King was to marry a princess of Scandinavia, and Irene Adler threatened to send her the photograph. “She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men.”30She would send it on the day the betrothal was proclaimed, next Monday. “Oh, then we have three days yet,” said Holmes with a yawn. The King would stay at the Langham as the Count Von Kramm.31“I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to have that photograph.” For present expenses he laid a heavy chamois leather bag on the table: three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in notes.32The lady lived at Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St. John's Wood. As the royal brougham rolled away, Holmes turned to Watson. “If you will call to-morrow afternoon at three o'clock, I should like to chat this little matter over.”33At three o'clock precisely Watson was at Baker Street, but Holmes had been out since eight in the morning. Watson sat down beside the fire, resolved to wait however long it took.34Close upon four, a drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes, walked in. Watson had to look three times before he was certain it was Holmes.35Five minutes later he emerged tweed-suited and respectable, stretched his legs before the fire, and laughed until he lay back limp in his chair. “I am sure you could never guess how I employed my morning.”36Disguised as a groom out of work, Holmes had found Briony Lodge: a bijou villa of two stories, built right up to the road, with long sitting-room windows and window fasteners a child could open.37In the mews he helped the ostlers rub down their horses, and received twopence, a glass of half-and-half, two fills of shag tobacco, and all he could desire about Miss Adler and her one frequent visitor, Mr. Godfrey Norton.38Soon a hansom drove up and a gentleman sprang out: remarkably handsome, dark, aquiline and moustached. Shouting to the cabman to wait, he brushed past the maid like a man thoroughly at home.39For half an hour Holmes glimpsed him through the sitting-room windows, pacing up and down, talking excitedly and waving his arms. Of the lady nothing could be seen.40Norton came out more flurried than before and pulled out a gold watch. “Drive like the devil, first to Gross & Hankey's in Regent Street, and then to the Church of St. Monica. Half a guinea if you do it in twenty minutes!”41Up the lane came a neat little landau, its coachman half-buttoned with his tie under his ear. She shot out of the hall door and into it, a lovely woman with a face a man might die for. “The Church of St. Monica, John!”42A cab came through the street. The driver looked twice at such a shabby fare, but Holmes jumped in before he could object. “The Church of St. Monica, and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes.”43The cab and landau stood steaming at the church door. Inside there was not a soul but the two he had followed and a surpliced clergyman, who seemed to be expostulating with them before the altar. Holmes lounged up the side aisle.44Suddenly the three turned round, and Godfrey Norton came running towards him. “Thank God! You'll do. Come, man, come, only three minutes, or it won't be legal.”45Half-dragged to the altar, Holmes found himself mumbling whispered responses and witnessing the marriage of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor. The bride gave him a sovereign, which he meant to wear on his watch chain.46At the church door the couple 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.47Over cold beef and beer, Holmes asked for Watson's help. “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!”48Watson must not interfere, come what may. Holmes would be carried into the house; the sitting-room window would open. “And when I raise my hand—so—you will throw into the room what I give you, and raise the cry of fire.”49“It is nothing very formidable,” he said, taking a long cigar-shaped roll from his pocket, “an ordinary plumber's smoke-rocket, fitted with a cap at either end to make it self-lighting.”50Holmes vanished into his bedroom and returned as an amiable, simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman, with broad black hat, baggy trousers, white tie and sympathetic smile. The stage lost a fine actor when he became a specialist in crime.51At dusk they paced before Briony Lodge as the lamps were being lit. For a quiet street it was remarkably animated: shabby men smoking in a corner, a scissors-grinder with his wheel, two guardsmen flirting with a nurse-girl, and loungers with cigars.52The photograph, Holmes reasoned, was too large to carry and too precious to hand to a banker or lawyer. It must be in her house. “But how will you look?” “I will not look. I will get her to show me.”53The sidelights of a landau came round the curve. As it pulled up, two loafers fought to open the door for a copper; guardsmen and scissors-grinder took sides, and in an instant the lady was the centre of a struggling knot of men.54Holmes dashed into the crowd to protect the lady, but as he reached her he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, blood running down his face. The brawlers scattered in both directions.55Irene Adler had hurried up the steps, but she stood at the top, her superb figure outlined against the lights of the hall, looking back into the street. “Is the poor gentleman much hurt?”56“He's a brave fellow,” said a woman. “They would have had the lady's purse and watch but for him.” “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.”57From his post by the window Watson saw Holmes laid on the couch, and the grace and kindliness with which she tended him. He had never felt more ashamed. Yet he hardened his heart and took the rocket from under his ulster.58Holmes sat up and motioned for air; a maid threw open the window. At his raised hand Watson tossed in the rocket with a cry of “Fire!” and the whole crowd took up the shriek as thick smoke curled through the room.59Believing her house on fire, she rushed to the thing she valued most: a recess behind a sliding panel just above the right bell-pull. Holmes glimpsed the photograph as she half drew it out.60Arm in arm in a quiet street, Holmes explained. Everyone in the street had been hired, the blood was red paint, and the false alarm had made her show him. “You did it very nicely, Doctor. It is all right.”61At the Baker Street door, as Holmes searched for his key, a slim youth in an ulster hurried by. “Good-night, Mister Sherlock Holmes.” “I've heard that voice before,” said Holmes, staring down the dim street.62Next morning, over toast and coffee, the King of Bohemia rushed in and grasped Holmes by either shoulder. “You have really got it!” “Not yet.” “But you have hopes?” “I have hopes.”63In the brougham Holmes told him Irene Adler was married, and hoped she loved her husband, for then she would leave the King in peace. “And yet—! What a queen she would have made!” He fell into moody silence.64An elderly woman watched them sardonically from the steps of Briony Lodge. Her mistress had left that morning with her husband by the 5:15 train from Charing Cross, never to return. Holmes staggered back, white with chagrin.65Holmes rushed into the ransacked sitting room, tore back the sliding shutter above the bell-pull, and pulled out a photograph and a letter. The photograph was of Irene Adler herself, in evening dress.66The letter was addressed to Sherlock Holmes. “You really did it very well. You took me in completely,” she wrote. She was an actress too, had followed him home in male costume, and had fled with her husband.67She kept the photograph only to protect herself, for she loved and was loved by a better man. “What a woman!” cried the King. “Is it not a pity she was not on my level?” “She seems indeed on a very different level,” said Holmes coldly.68The King, content that her word was inviolate, offered an emerald snake ring as reward. “Your Majesty has something I should value even more highly,” said Holmes. “This photograph!”69“I have the honour to wish you a very good morning.” Holmes bowed and, without noticing the hand the King stretched out to him, set off with Watson for his chambers.70So the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He no longer made merry over the cleverness of women, and when he spoke of Irene Adler, it was always under the honourable title of the woman.
The Red-headed League
1One autumn morning Dr. Watson called at Baker Street and found Sherlock Holmes deep in talk with a stout, florid, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair. As Watson turned to withdraw, Holmes pulled him abruptly into the room and shut the door behind him.2'You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear Watson,' said Holmes, and introduced his friend as his partner in many successful cases. The stout visitor half rose and bobbed a greeting, with a quick questioning glance from small, fat-encircled eyes.3Holmes sank back into his armchair and put his fingertips together, as he always did in judicial moods. Life itself, he reminded Watson, was far more daring than any effort of the imagination, and this morning's story was among the most singular he had ever heard.4Mr. Jabez Wilson puffed out his chest with a little pride and pulled a dirty, wrinkled newspaper from his greatcoat. As he spread it on his knee and searched the advertisement column, Watson looked him over, trying to read the man as Holmes would.5Watson saw only an ordinary British tradesman, obese, pompous and slow, in a shabby frock-coat with a heavy brassy watch-chain. There was nothing remarkable about him except his blazing red head and a look of deep chagrin and discontent.6Holmes smiled and shook his head at his friend's puzzled glances. 'Beyond the obvious facts that he has done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done much writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.'7Wilson sat bolt upright, his forefinger still on the paper but his eyes fixed on Holmes. 'How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?' It was true as gospel, for he had started out as a ship's carpenter.8Holmes explained each point. Work had made the right hand a size larger than the left. An arc-and-compass breastpin gave away the Freemason. A shiny right cuff and a smooth patch at the left elbow told of long hours at a desk.9'The fish tattooed above your right wrist could only have been done in China,' said Holmes. The delicate pink staining of the scales was peculiar to that country, and a Chinese coin hanging from the watch-chain made the matter simpler still.10Wilson planted a thick red finger halfway down the column, and Watson read it out. By the bequest of the late Ezekiah Hopkins of Pennsylvania, the Red-headed League offered £4 a week for purely nominal services. Applicants were to call at 7 Pope's Court, Fleet Street.11'What on earth does this mean?' cried Watson. Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as he did in high spirits. The paper was the Morning Chronicle of April 27, 1890, just two months old. 'Now, Mr. Wilson, off you go at scratch.'12Mopping his forehead, Wilson explained that he kept a small pawnbroker's shop in Saxe-Coburg Square, near the City. Trade was poor, and he could afford only one assistant, who had agreed to work for half wages to learn the business.13The assistant was Vincent Spaulding, a smart fellow of uncertain age who could have earned twice as much elsewhere. Wilson saw no reason to put ideas in his head. 'I don't know that your assistant is not as remarkable as your advertisement,' Holmes observed.14Spaulding's one fault was photography. He was forever snapping away with his camera, then diving into the cellar like a rabbit into its hole to develop his pictures. Apart from a girl of fourteen who cooked and cleaned, the household lived very quietly.15Eight weeks earlier, Spaulding had come into the office with that very newspaper in his hand. 'I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a red-headed man,' he sighed. There was another vacancy in the League, worth a little fortune to whoever got it.16Wilson rarely set foot outside his own door and had never heard of the League. Spaulding explained that an eccentric American millionaire, red-headed himself, had left his fortune to provide easy posts for red-headed men: a couple of hundred a year for very little work.17Only grown Londoners need apply, said Spaulding, and only men whose hair was a real bright, blazing, fiery red. Wilson's hair was of a very full and rich tint, and he began to think he stood as good a chance as any man alive.18So Wilson told Spaulding to put up the shutters for the day. The assistant was glad of the holiday, and together they closed the shop and set off for the address in the advertisement.19Fleet Street was choked with red-headed men who had tramped in from every direction, and Pope's Court looked like a coster's orange barrow. Every shade was there, from straw, lemon and brick to Irish-setter, liver and clay, but few had the true flame colour.20Wilson would have given up in despair, but Spaulding would not hear of it. He pushed, pulled and butted until he had got his employer through the crowd and up the stair, past a double stream of men going up in hope and coming down dejected.21The bare office held two wooden chairs and a deal table, behind which sat a small man whose head was even redder than Wilson's. He found some fault with every candidate. But when Wilson's turn came, he shut the door so that they could speak privately.22'He has every requirement. I cannot recall when I have seen anything so fine,' said the little man. He cocked his head and gazed at Wilson's hair until the pawnbroker felt quite bashful, then plunged forward and wrung his hand in warm congratulation.23'You will excuse me for taking an obvious precaution,' said he, and seized Wilson's hair in both hands, tugging until he yelled. 'We have twice been deceived by wigs and once by paint.' Satisfied, he called from the window that the vacancy was filled.24The manager introduced himself as Mr. Duncan Ross, himself a pensioner of the fund. When Wilson admitted he had no wife or family, Ross's face fell. 'Dear me! That is very serious indeed,' he said gravely, for the fund was meant to spread the red-heads too.25After some thought Ross relented and stretched a point for such a fine head of hair. When Wilson worried about leaving his business, Spaulding stepped in at once: 'Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson! I should be able to look after that for you.'26The hours were ten to two and the pay £4 a week, but there was one condition. 'If you leave, you forfeit your whole position forever,' said Ross sternly. Neither sickness nor business nor anything else would excuse leaving the office.27And the work? 'Is to copy out the Encyclopædia Britannica,' said Ross, pointing to the first volume in the press. Wilson must supply his own ink, pens and blotting-paper. He went home hardly knowing what to say, he was so pleased with his good fortune.28By evening Wilson was in low spirits, sure it must all be a great hoax, though he could not imagine its object. Spaulding did what he could to cheer him up, but by bedtime Wilson had talked himself out of the whole thing.29In the morning he decided to go and see anyway. He bought a penny bottle of ink, a quill pen and seven sheets of foolscap, and set off for Pope's Court.30To his surprise and delight, all was in order. The table was set ready, and Mr. Duncan Ross started him on the letter A, looking in now and then to see that all was well. At two o'clock he locked the door behind him.31On Saturday the manager planked down four golden sovereigns for the week's work, and so it went on week after week. Gradually Ross stopped looking in at all, yet Wilson never dared leave the room for an instant.32Eight weeks went by. He had written on Abbots and Archery, Armour, Architecture and Attica, and had nearly filled a shelf with his pages. He hoped to reach the B's before long, and then suddenly the whole business came to an end.33That very morning Wilson arrived at ten to find the office door shut and locked, with a little square of white cardboard tacked to the middle of the panel.34He held the card up for Holmes and Watson to read. It said only: 'THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED. October 9, 1890.'35Holmes and Watson looked from the curt notice to the rueful face behind it, until the comedy of the thing got the better of them and they both burst into a roar of laughter.36'I cannot see that there is anything very funny,' cried Wilson, flushing to the roots of his flaming hair and half rising to go. Holmes pushed him back into his chair. 'I really wouldn't miss your case for the world. It is most refreshingly unusual.'37Wilson had gone to the landlord, an accountant on the ground floor, who had never heard of the League. The red-headed man, he said, was a solicitor named William Morris who had moved out the day before. The new address he gave turned out to be a factory of artificial knee-caps.38Spaulding could only suggest waiting for a letter. But Wilson would not lose such a place without a fight, so he had come straight to Holmes. 'Your case is an exceedingly remarkable one,' said Holmes. 'Graver issues may hang from it than might at first appear.'39'Grave enough! Why, I have lost four pound a week,' said Wilson. Holmes pointed out that he was some £30 richer and knew a great deal about everything under the letter A. Still, Wilson wanted to know who had played this prank, and why.40Holmes asked about the assistant, who had come a month before the advertisement, cheap and at half wages. 'What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?' Small, stout, quick, clean-shaven though nearly thirty, said Wilson, with a white splash of acid on his forehead. Holmes sat up in great excitement.41'I thought as much,' said Holmes. 'Have you ever noticed that his ears are pierced for earrings?' They were; a gipsy had done it when he was a boy. Holmes sank back in deep thought and promised an opinion by Monday.42When their visitor had gone, Watson admitted he could make nothing of it. '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.'43'It is quite a three pipe problem,' he said, and asked not to be spoken to for fifty minutes. He curled up in his chair with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, his black clay pipe sticking out like the bill of some strange bird.44Watson was nodding off himself when Holmes sprang up and laid his pipe on the mantelpiece. 'Sarasate plays at the St. James's Hall this afternoon. Could your patients spare you for a few hours?' They would go by way of the City first.45The Underground to Aldersgate and a short walk brought them to Saxe-Coburg Square, a poky, shabby-genteel place of dingy brick houses around a railed patch of weedy grass. Three gilt balls on a corner house marked Jabez Wilson's shop.46Holmes studied the houses keenly, walking up the street and back again. Then he returned to the pawnbroker's, thumped hard on the pavement with his stick two or three times, and went up to the door and knocked.47A bright-looking, clean-shaven young man opened the door at once. Holmes asked the way to the Strand. 'Third right, fourth left,' the assistant answered promptly, and closed the door.48'Smart fellow, that,' observed Holmes as they 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.'49Watson supposed Holmes had wanted to see the man. 'Not him,' said Holmes. 'The knees of his trousers.' And what had he seen? 'What I expected to see.' This was a time for observation, not talk; they were spies in an enemy's country.50Round the corner lay a complete contrast: one of the great arteries of the City, its roadway blocked by a double tide of traffic and its pavements black with hurrying crowds. Its fine shops and stately offices backed right onto the faded square.51Holmes stood at the corner fixing the order of the buildings in his mind: Mortimer's the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, McFarlane's carriage depot. 'And now, Doctor, it's time we had some play.'52All afternoon Holmes sat in the stalls in perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, his eyes dreamy and languid. Watson knew he was never so dangerous as after such a mood, and sensed an evil time coming for those he hunted.53Outside, Holmes turned grave. 'A considerable crime is in contemplation. I shall want your help tonight, at ten. And, Doctor, there may be some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket.' Then he vanished into the crowd.54Driving home to Kensington, Watson felt oppressed by his own stupidity. He had heard and seen everything Holmes had, yet it still seemed confused and grotesque. Why go armed? Where to, and against whom? He gave up and waited for night to explain.55At ten Watson found two hansoms at the Baker Street door. Upstairs Holmes was talking with Peter Jones of Scotland Yard and Mr. Merryweather, a long, thin, sad-faced man with a very shiny hat and an oppressively respectable frock-coat.56Jones described their quarry: 'John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher and forger.' He was the grandson of a royal duke, educated at Eton and Oxford, with a brain as cunning as his fingers. 'I've been on his track for years and have never set eyes on him yet.'57Holmes lay back in the second cab, humming the afternoon's tunes as they rattled through an endless maze of gas-lit streets. Merryweather was a bank director, he said, and Jones, though hopeless as a detective, was brave as a bulldog and tenacious as a lobster.58Back in the busy thoroughfare of the morning, Merryweather let them in by a side door, through a massive iron gate and down winding stone steps. By the light of his lantern they followed a dark, earth-smelling passage to a third door.59It opened into a huge vault piled all round with crates and massive boxes. 'You are not very vulnerable from above,' Holmes remarked, holding up the lantern. 'Nor from below,' said Merryweather, striking his stick on the flagstones.60'Why, dear me, it sounds quite hollow!' cried the director. 'I must really ask you to be a little more quiet!' said Holmes severely. 'You have already put the whole expedition at risk.' The offended Merryweather perched himself on a crate.61Holmes dropped to his knees and examined the cracks between the stones with lantern and magnifying lens. A few seconds satisfied him. They had at least an hour, he said, since the thieves would wait until the pawnbroker was safely in bed.62They were in the cellar of the City branch of a great London bank. 'It is our French gold,' whispered the director. Thirty thousand napoleons borrowed from the Bank of France lay here unpacked; the crate he sat on held two thousand, packed in lead foil.63Holmes placed them behind the crates; no light could be risked now. 'When I flash a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson, have no compunction about shooting them down.' Jones had an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door.64Watson laid his cocked revolver on top of the case he crouched behind. Holmes slid the shutter across his lantern and left them in utter darkness, with only the smell of hot metal to show that the light was ready to flash out.65It was only an hour and a quarter, yet it felt like the whole night. Stiff and afraid to move, Watson could hear Jones breathing heavily and the director sighing thinly. Then, looking over the case, he saw the glint of a light on the floor.66The spark grew into a yellow line, then a gap opened and a white, almost womanly hand appeared, feeling about in the patch of light. For a minute its writhing fingers stuck up out of the floor. Then it withdrew, and all was dark again.67With a tearing, grinding sound one broad white stone tipped over onto its side, leaving a square hole streaming with lantern light. A clean-cut, boyish face peered over the edge and looked keenly about, and its owner pulled himself up and out onto the floor.68He hauled up after him a companion, small and lithe 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!'69Holmes sprang out and seized the intruder by the collar. The other dived back down the hole, and Jones was left clutching a torn strip of coat-tail. A revolver flashed in the light, but Holmes's hunting crop came down on the man's wrist and the pistol clattered onto the stone.70'It's no use, John Clay,' said Holmes blandly. 'So I see,' the other replied with the utmost coolness. Three men were waiting at the door for his friend. 'I must compliment you.' 'And I you,' said Holmes. 'Your red-headed idea was very new and effective.'71As the handcuffs snapped onto his wrists, Clay asked Jones not to touch him with his filthy hands. He had royal blood in his veins and should be addressed as 'sir' and 'please.' With a snigger, Jones invited 'your Highness' to march upstairs.72'That is better,' said John Clay serenely. He made a sweeping bow and walked quietly off in the detective's custody, while Merryweather poured out the bank's thanks to Holmes for defeating so bold an attempt.73In the early hours, over whisky and soda at Baker Street, Holmes explained. The League and the Encyclopædia could only be meant to get the dim-witted pawnbroker out of the way for hours each day, while an assistant working for half wages got on unseen.74'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 clue.' Whatever he did there took hours a day for months. He must be digging a tunnel to some other building.75The thumps on the pavement showed that the cellar ran behind the shop, not in front. The worn, stained knees meant burrowing. Round the corner stood the bank. Closing the League meant the tunnel was finished, and Saturday gave the thieves two days to escape.76'You reasoned it out beautifully,' said Watson. 'It saved me from ennui,' Holmes answered with a yawn. Called a benefactor of the race, he shrugged: 'Perhaps it is of some little use. L'homme c'est rien, l'œuvre c'est tout, as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.'
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
1On the second morning after Christmas, Dr. Watson called at Baker Street to wish his friend the compliments of the season. He found Sherlock Holmes lounging on the sofa in a purple dressing-gown among a pile of crumpled morning papers.2On the back of a chair beside the couch hung a very seedy, disreputable hard-felt hat, cracked in several places. A lens and a pair of forceps lay on the seat, so plainly the hat was there to be examined.3Watson warmed his hands at the crackling fire and guessed that the homely thing had some deadly story behind it. Holmes laughed. “No, no. No crime,” he said. It was only one of the whimsical little things that happen when four million people jostle together.4The hat belonged to nobody they knew. Peterson, the commissionaire, had found it at four o'clock on Christmas morning, walking home down Tottenham Court Road, with a tallish man carrying a white goose over his shoulder just ahead of him.5At the corner of Goodge Street a gang of roughs set on the stranger and knocked off his hat. He swung his stick over his head to defend himself and smashed the shop window behind him.6Peterson ran up to help, but the man was shocked at the broken window and scared by the uniform. He dropped his goose and ran off into the side streets. The roughs ran too, leaving Peterson with a battered hat and a fine Christmas goose.7A card tied to the bird's left leg read “For Mrs. Henry Baker”, and the initials “H. B.” were in the hat's lining. But London held hundreds of Henry Bakers. Peterson's family was now roasting the goose, and the hat was left to Holmes.8“You know my methods,” said Holmes, handing over his lens. Watson turned the tattered hat over rather ruefully, trying to find out what kind of man had worn it.9It was an ordinary black hat. The red silk lining was badly discoloured, the brim was pierced for a hat-securer whose elastic was gone, and someone had smeared ink over the stains. “I can see nothing,” Watson admitted.10Holmes took the hat and gazed at it in his inward-looking way. The owner, he said, was highly intellectual and had come down in the world. Drink was probably at work on him, and his wife had stopped loving him.11“My dear Holmes!” cried Watson. Holmes took no notice and went on: the man was middle-aged, lived a quiet life indoors, had grizzled hair lately cut and dressed with lime-cream, and almost certainly had no gas in his house.12Asked how he knew the man was intellectual, Holmes clapped the hat on his own head. It came right down over his forehead and settled on the bridge of his nose. “A man with so large a brain must have something in it.”13The hat was of the best quality but three years out of date, so the man had fallen on hard times. Ordering a hat-securer showed foresight. Letting the elastic break showed a weakening nature. The ink-daubed stains showed some self-respect left.14The dust was the fluffy brown dust of a house, and nobody had brushed the hat for weeks. That, said Holmes, was why he thought the wife had lost her affection. The goose was a peace-offering for her. Five tallow stains showed the man went upstairs by candle, not gas.15Watson laughed and called it all a waste of energy, since no crime had been done. Before Holmes could reply, the door flew open and Peterson rushed in, red in the face and dazed with astonishment.16“See what my wife found in its crop!” gasped Peterson. On his open palm lay a blue stone smaller than a bean, so pure and bright that it twinkled like an electric spark in the hollow of his hand.17Holmes sat up with a whistle. “It is the precious stone,” he said. “Not the Countess of Morcar's blue carbuncle!” cried Watson. It was, and The Times had been advertising a thousand-pound reward for it every day.18“A thousand pounds! Great Lord of mercy!” The commissionaire sat down heavily in a chair and stared from one gentleman to the other.19Holmes dug out a newspaper and read the report. Five days before, a plumber named John Horner had been charged with stealing the gem from the Countess's jewel-case at the Hotel Cosmopolitan.20James Ryder, the upper-attendant, said he had shown Horner up to the Countess's dressing-room to solder a loose bar of the grate. Then he had been called away.21When he came back, Ryder said, Horner was gone, the bureau was forced, and the little morocco casket lay empty on the dressing-table. At his cry the maid, Catherine Cusack, came running in.22Horner was arrested that evening, though the stone was never found on him. He had a previous conviction for robbery, so the magistrate sent the case to the Assizes, and the prisoner fainted in the dock.23Holmes tossed the paper aside. The chain now ran from a rifled jewel-case to a goose on Tottenham Court Road, and they had to find Henry Baker. He wrote an advertisement asking Baker to call at 221B at half-past six.24He sent Peterson to put it in every evening paper, the Globe, the Star, the Pall Mall and the rest. “Just buy a goose on your way back,” he added, to replace the one Peterson's family was eating.25Alone with Watson, Holmes held the stone to the light. “It's a bonny thing,” he said. Not yet twenty years old, it had already caused two murders, a suicide and several robberies. Good stones, he said, were the devil's pet baits.26Holmes thought Baker was very likely innocent and planned a simple test. Watson went off on his rounds, promising to come back at the appointed hour. “There is a woodcock, I believe,” said Holmes. Perhaps Mrs. Hudson should check its crop.27It was a little after half-past six when Watson reached Baker Street again. A tall man in a Scotch bonnet, his coat buttoned to the chin, stood waiting in the half-moon of light from the fanlight.28“Mr. Henry Baker, I believe,” said Holmes, rising with easy cheerfulness and offering him the chair by the fire. “Is that your hat?” “Yes, sir, that is undoubtedly my hat.”29He was a big man with a massive head and a broad, intelligent face above a grizzled beard. The red in his nose and the tremor in his hand bore out Holmes's guess. He had the look of a scholar badly used by fortune.30“By the way, about the bird, we were compelled to eat it.” Baker half rose from his chair, but he sank back with relief when Holmes pointed to a fresh goose of the same weight waiting on the sideboard.31Holmes offered him the feathers, legs and crop of his own bird. Baker laughed heartily and said he would stick to the excellent bird on the sideboard. Holmes glanced at Watson with a slight shrug. The man knew nothing.32Tucking the goose under his arm, Baker explained that it came from a goose club at the Alpha Inn, near the British Museum, where he and his friends paid a few pence a week. Then he bowed with comic pomposity and strode off.33Holmes proposed they follow the clue while it was hot. On a bitter, starry night they walked in their ulsters through Wimpole Street and Harley Street, their breath puffing out like pistol smoke.34In a quarter of an hour they were in the private bar of the Alpha Inn in Bloomsbury. Holmes ordered two beers from the ruddy, white-aproned landlord and praised his geese.35“Them's not our geese,” said Windigate, surprised. He had bought the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden. “Breckinridge is his name.”36Out in the frosty air Holmes buttoned his coat. There was a goose at one end of this chain, he said, and at the other a man facing seven years in prison. “Faces to the south, then, and quick march!”37Through Holborn and a zigzag of slums they came to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge. Its sharp-faced owner was helping a boy put up the shutters.38“Sold out of geese, I see,” said Holmes, pointing at the bare marble slabs. Breckinridge offered him five hundred in the morning, but Holmes said the landlord of the Alpha had recommended him.39When Holmes asked where the Alpha's geese had come from, the salesman flared up. “Now, then, mister, what are you driving at?” He was sick, he said, of people pestering him about those geese.40Holmes shrugged and bet a fiver that the bird he had eaten was country-bred. “You've lost your fiver, for it's town bred!” snapped Breckinridge, and he took a sovereign on it.41“Bring me the books, Bill,” said the salesman with a grim chuckle. The boy laid out a thin little volume and a great greasy ledger under the hanging lamp.42Among the town suppliers was “Mrs. Oakshott, 117, Brixton Road.” On December 22nd she had sold twenty-four geese at seven and six, and they had gone on to Mr. Windigate of the Alpha.43Holmes looked deeply chagrined. He threw a sovereign on the slab and turned away as if too disgusted to speak.44A few yards off, under a lamp-post, he laughed in his hearty, silent way. You could always draw a man with whiskers of that cut and the sporting paper in his pocket by offering him a bet.45Suddenly there was an uproar at the stall behind them. A little rat-faced fellow cringed in the circle of lamplight while Breckinridge shook his fists at him from the doorway.46“You bring Mrs. Oakshott here and I'll answer her!” roared the salesman. “One of them was mine all the same,” whined the little man. Breckinridge rushed at him, and he ran off into the darkness.47Holmes strode after him through the loungers and touched him on the shoulder. The man spun round, and in the gaslight every bit of colour had drained from his face.48Holmes calmly traced the geese from Mrs. Oakshott to Breckinridge, to the Alpha, and to Henry Baker's club. “Oh, sir, you are the very man whom I have longed to meet,” cried the little fellow, his fingers trembling.49Holmes hailed a four-wheeler and asked his name. “John Robinson,” said the man, with a sidelong look. “No, no; the real name,” said Holmes sweetly. The man flushed. “My real name is James Ryder.”50They drove back to Baker Street without a word. The whole way, Ryder's high, thin breathing and the clasping and unclasping of his hands showed how tense he was.51Holmes put on his slippers and settled Ryder in the basket-chair by the fire. He guessed Ryder was after one bird in particular, “white, with a black bar across the tail.” Ryder shook with emotion.52The goose had come here, said Holmes, and laid an egg after it died. He unlocked his strong-box and held up the blue carbuncle, which shone like a star. Ryder staggered up and clutched the mantelpiece.53“The game's up, Ryder,” said Holmes quietly. The man nearly fell into the fire. Watson helped him back to his chair and gave him a dash of brandy, which brought a little colour to his cheeks.54Holmes laid out the plot. Ryder had heard of the stone from Catherine Cusack. Together they had arranged for Horner, a man with a record, to be sent to the room. Then they rifled the case and had him arrested.55Ryder threw himself on the rug and clutched Holmes's knees. “For God's sake, have mercy! Think of my father! Of my mother!” he shrieked. “Get back into your chair!” said Holmes sternly.56Ryder confessed. After Horner's arrest he fled with the stone to his sister's house in the Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls. There he stood in the back yard smoking a pipe, wondering what to do.57Then he had an idea. His sister had promised him a goose for Christmas. Behind the shed he caught a big white bird with a barred tail and pushed the stone down its throat until he felt it pass into the crop.58The bird struggled free and fluttered back into the flock just as his sister came out. “Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?” Ryder insisted on having that barred-tailed one, and Maggie, a little huffed, told him to kill it and take it.59Ryder carried the bird all the way to his pal Maudsley in Kilburn. Maudsley laughed till he choked. They cut the goose open, and there was no sign of the stone. Ryder's heart turned to water.60He ran back to Brixton, but the yard was empty. The geese had gone to Breckinridge of Covent Garden. “There were two barred-tailed ones,” said Maggie, “and I could never tell them apart.”61Breckinridge would never tell him where the geese had gone. “And now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth,” Ryder sobbed, and he buried his face in his hands.62There was a long silence, broken only by Holmes tapping his fingertips on the table. Then he rose and threw open the door. “Get out!” he said.63“Oh, Heaven bless you!” No more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter on the stairs, the bang of a door, and the sound of running feet in the street.64“I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies,” said Holmes, reaching for his clay pipe. Ryder would never testify, and Horner would go free. “It is the season of forgiveness.” Now, he said, they could start on another bird, the woodcock.
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
1Of all the strange cases Dr. Watson recorded in his years beside Sherlock Holmes, none was more singular than that of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. Long bound to secrecy, he could at last set down the truth about Dr. Grimesby Roylott's terrible death.2Early one April morning in 1883, Watson woke to find Holmes, fully dressed, standing beside his bed. The clock on the mantelpiece showed only a quarter past seven, and Holmes was usually a late riser.3“No; a client,” Holmes explained. A young lady had arrived in a great state of agitation and insisted on seeing him. It might be an interesting case, so he had woken Watson to follow it from the very start.4Watson dressed in minutes and followed Holmes down to the sitting-room. A lady dressed in black and heavily veiled, who had been sitting by the window, rose as they came in.5Holmes greeted her cheerfully and drew her close to the fire, for she was shivering. “It is not cold which makes me shiver,” she said in a low voice. “It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.”6She raised her veil. Her face was drawn and grey, her eyes restless and frightened like a hunted animal's. She had the features of a woman of thirty, yet her hair was already shot with premature grey.7Holmes patted her arm and remarked that she had come by train that morning. She was amazed, but he had simply noticed the second half of a return ticket tucked into the palm of her left glove.8The left arm of her jacket was spattered with fresh mud in seven places. Only a dog-cart threw up mud like that, Holmes explained, and only onto someone sitting on the driver's left. She had driven hard along heavy roads.9“I shall go mad if it continues,” she cried. She had left home before six and caught the first train to Waterloo. She had no one to turn to and could not pay him yet, but she begged him to bring some light to her darkness.10Holmes unlocked his desk and looked in a small case-book, recalling her friend Mrs. Farintosh and an opal tiara. His profession was its own reward, he told her. Then he asked her to lay everything before them.11“My name is Helen Stoner,” she began. She lived with her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, last of an ancient Saxon family whose fortune had been gambled away. All that remained was a mortgaged old manor at Stoke Moran in Surrey.12To rebuild his fortunes, Roylott had studied medicine and built a large practice in Calcutta. But in a rage over some robberies he beat his native butler to death. He narrowly escaped hanging and served a long prison term.13In India he had married the young widow Mrs. Stoner, mother of the twins Helen and Julia. Her money was left to him, with a yearly share for each girl on her marriage. After she died in a railway accident, he took the sisters to Stoke Moran.14Then a terrible change came over him. He shut himself away and came out only to pick ferocious quarrels. A man of immense strength and ungovernable temper, he became the terror of the village, and people fled when he approached.15Only last week he had thrown the local blacksmith over a parapet into a stream. Helen had given away all the money she could gather to keep the matter quiet.16His only friends were wandering gipsies, whom he let camp on his bramble-covered acres. He also kept Indian animals sent over by a correspondent: a cheetah and a baboon that roamed the grounds, feared almost as much as their master.17No servant would stay, so the sisters did all the housework themselves. Then, two Christmases ago, Julia met a half-pay major of marines at their aunt's house near Harrow and became engaged. Their stepfather raised no objection.18Holmes, eyes closed, asked her to be precise. Only one wing was lived in, she said. Its three ground-floor bedrooms, Roylott's first, then Julia's, then Helen's, all opened onto one corridor, with no doors between them.19On the fatal night, Julia was bothered by the smell of Roylott's strong Indian cigars, so she came to sit in Helen's room and talk about her coming wedding. At eleven o'clock she rose to leave.20At the door she paused and looked back. “Tell me, Helen, have you ever heard anyone whistle in the dead of the night?” For several nights, she said, a low, clear whistle had woken her at about three in the morning.21Helen blamed the gipsies. Julia smiled, closed the door, and a moment later Helen heard her key turn in the lock. Because of the cheetah and the baboon, both sisters always locked themselves in at night.22Helen could not sleep. A gale howled and rain lashed the windows. Suddenly a woman's terrified scream rang out above the storm. It was her sister's voice. Helen sprang up, threw a shawl around her and rushed out.23She seemed to hear a low whistle, then a clang, as though something metal had fallen. Julia's door swung slowly open. In the lamplight Julia appeared, her face white with terror, hands groping, swaying like a drunkard.24Julia fell into her arms, writhing in agony. “Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!” she shrieked. She stabbed a finger towards the Doctor's room before a fresh convulsion choked her words.25Roylott hurried from his room in his dressing-gown. He poured brandy down Julia's throat and sent to the village for help, but she slowly sank and died without regaining consciousness.26Holmes pressed her for details. Julia had been in her night-dress, with the burnt stump of a match in her right hand and a match-box in her left. “Showing that she had struck a light and looked about her. That is important.”27Yet the coroner found no cause of death. The door was locked on the inside and the shutters were barred with iron. The walls and floor were solid, the chimney was stapled shut, and there was no poison or violence. Julia had been entirely alone.28Helen believed her sister had died of pure fright. Perhaps the 'band' was only delirium, or perhaps it meant a band of people, like the gipsies, whose spotted handkerchiefs might explain the word 'speckled'.29Holmes shook his head like a man far from satisfied, his long fingers pressed together beneath his chin. “These are very deep waters,” he said. “Pray go on with your narrative.”30Now Helen was engaged herself, to Percy Armitage. Two days ago, repairs to her wall forced her into her dead sister's room and bed. Last night, lying awake, she heard the same low whistle. She lit the lamp, but the room was empty.31“You have not told me all,” said Holmes. “You are screening your stepfather.” He pushed back the black lace at her cuff. Five livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed on her white wrist.32The lady blushed deeply and covered her injured wrist. “He is a hard man,” she said, “and perhaps he hardly knows his own strength.”33Holmes stared long into the crackling fire. There was not a moment to lose. Roylott would be in town all day, so Holmes and Watson would come to Stoke Moran that very afternoon and see the rooms unobserved.34Already relieved, Miss Stoner declined breakfast. She dropped her thick black veil over her face and slipped quietly from the room, promising to meet them that afternoon.35Alone, the friends weighed the puzzle: the whistles, the gipsies, the dying words, the metallic clang, and a stepfather with every reason to prevent a marriage. Every theory had objections. They must see Stoke Moran for themselves.36Suddenly the door burst open. A huge man filled the doorway, his top hat brushing the frame. He wore a frock coat and high gaiters, and a hunting-crop swung in his hand. “Which of you is Holmes?”37His large face was seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow by the sun and marked with every evil passion. With his deep-set, bloodshot eyes and thin, high nose, he looked like a fierce old bird of prey. It was Dr. Grimesby Roylott.38“What has she been saying to you?” Roylott screamed. Holmes, perfectly calm, remarked that it was a little cold for the time of year, though he had heard the crocuses promised well.39Roylott shook his crop and raged: Holmes the meddler, the busybody, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office! Holmes only chuckled. “Your conversation is most entertaining. When you go out, close the door, for there is a decided draught.”40“I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here.” Roylott seized the steel poker from the hearth and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.41“See that you keep yourself out of my grip,” he snarled. He hurled the twisted poker into the fireplace and strode out of the room.42“He seems a very amiable person,” laughed Holmes. He picked up the poker and, with a sudden effort, straightened it again. After breakfast he set off for Doctors' Commons to find some useful facts.43He came back near one o'clock with a sheet of blue paper covered in figures. He had read the mother's will. Each daughter's marriage would take a large share of Roylott's shrinking income, so he had the strongest motive to prevent any wedding.44“This is too serious for dawdling,” said Holmes. He asked Watson to put his revolver in his pocket. An Eley's No. 2, he said, was an excellent argument with gentlemen who twist steel pokers into knots.45They took the train to Leatherhead and hired a trap to drive through the lovely Surrey lanes. It was a perfect spring day, with the hedges just turning green. It felt strange beside their sinister errand. Holmes sat hunched in deep thought.46Suddenly Holmes pointed across the meadows. The grey gables and high roof of a very old mansion rose from a wooded park. “Yes, sir, that be the house of Dr. Grimesby Roylott,” said the driver.47The driver left them at a stile so they could take the footpath across the fields. There, hurrying towards them with a joyful face, came Miss Stoner. The Doctor had gone to town and would not be back before evening.48When Holmes told her of Roylott's visit, she went white to the lips. “Good heavens! He has followed me, then.” Holmes told her to lock herself in that night, and asked to see the rooms at once.49Stoke Moran was built of grey, lichen-blotched stone, with two curving wings like a crab's claws. One wing lay in ruins; the other was lived in. Scaffolding stood against its end wall, yet no workmen were to be seen.50Holmes paced the untidy lawn, studying the three windows. Miss Stoner admitted that the end wall had needed no repairs at all. “I believe that it was an excuse to move me from my room.” “Ah,” said Holmes, “that is suggestive.”51He had her bar the shutters from inside, then tried every way to force them open. No blade could slip through, and the iron hinges were set firmly into solid stone. “My theory certainly presents some difficulties,” he murmured.52Inside, they entered the room where Julia had died and Helen now slept: a homely little chamber with a low ceiling, worm-eaten oak panelling and a gaping fireplace. Holmes sat silent in a corner, taking in every detail.53His eye fell on a thick bell-rope hanging beside the bed, its tassel lying on the pillow. It was newer than everything else and had been put up two years ago, yet Julia had never asked for it or used it.54Holmes threw himself down with his lens and crawled quickly back and forth, examining the cracks between the floorboards, then the panelling, and at last the wall above the bed.55He gave the bell-rope a brisk tug. “Why, it's a dummy!” It was attached to no wire, only to a hook beside a small ventilator. The ventilator, oddly, opened not to the outside air but into the next room.56Roylott's own room was plainly furnished: a camp-bed, a shelf of technical books, an armchair, a wooden chair, a round table and a large iron safe. Holmes examined each one with the keenest interest.57“There isn't a cat in it, for example?” Holmes asked of the safe. Helen laughed at the idea. Yet on top of it stood a small saucer of milk. They kept no cat, only a cheetah and a baboon.58Holmes squatted before the wooden chair and studied its seat very closely through his lens. “Thank you,” he said, rising. “That is quite settled.”59Then something else caught his eye: a small dog-lash hanging on a corner of the bed, its end curled back and tied into a loop. “It's a wicked world,” said Holmes, “and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all.”60Watson had never seen his friend's face so grim. They paced the lawn in silence until Holmes roused himself. “Your life may depend upon your compliance,” he told Miss Stoner. “Follow my advice in every respect.”61“My friend and I must spend the night in your room.” He pointed to the Crown Inn beyond the trees. When her stepfather went to bed, she must open her shutters, put her lamp in the window as a signal, and slip into her old room.62Miss Stoner laid her hand on his sleeve. “For pity's sake, tell me what was the cause of my sister's death.” Holmes would not say yet, but he did not believe it was mere fright. Something more tangible had killed her.63From an upper room at the Crown Inn they watched the manor gate. At dusk Roylott drove past, roaring and shaking his fists at the boy struggling with the heavy iron gates. Soon a lamp was lit among the trees.64Holmes warned Watson of real danger, but Watson insisted on coming. Holmes had guessed there was a ventilator before they arrived. How else could Julia smell her stepfather's cigar? A ventilator was made, a cord hung, and the lady in the bed died.65The bed was clamped to the floor. The lady could never move it, so it always stood beneath the ventilator and the rope, a rope clearly never meant to ring a bell.66“We are only just in time to prevent some subtle and horrible crime,” Watson cried. “When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals,” said Holmes. Then he lit a quiet pipe to pass the hours.67At nine o'clock the light among the trees went out. Two hours dragged by. Then, at the stroke of eleven, a single bright light shone out ahead of them. “That is our signal,” said Holmes, springing to his feet.68They set out along the dark road, a chill wind in their faces and one yellow light twinkling ahead through the gloom. They slipped through a gap in the old park wall and made their way among the trees.69As they crossed the lawn, a hideous, twisted figure like a child darted out of the laurel bushes, threw itself writhing on the grass, and raced away into the darkness.70Holmes's hand closed like a vice on Watson's wrist. Then he gave a low laugh and put his lips to Watson's ear. “It is a nice household,” he murmured. “That is the baboon.”71With their shoes off, they climbed in through the window. Holmes closed the shutters and whispered so softly Watson could barely hear: “The least sound would be fatal. We must sit without light. He would see it through the ventilator.”72“Do not go to sleep; your very life may depend upon it.” Watson laid his revolver on the corner of the table. Holmes placed a long thin cane on the bed beside him, with matches and a candle stump, then turned down the lamp.73Watson would never forget that dreadful vigil. They sat in total darkness. A night-bird cried, and once a catlike whine at the window told them the cheetah was loose. The parish clock struck twelve, then one, two and three.74Suddenly a light gleamed briefly at the ventilator, followed by a smell of burning oil and hot metal. Someone in the next room had lit a dark-lantern. Half an hour later came a soft sound, like steam escaping from a kettle.75At once Holmes sprang from the bed, struck a match and lashed furiously at the bell-pull with his cane. “You see it, Watson?” he yelled. “You see it?” But Watson, dazzled by the glare, heard only a low, clear whistle.76Holmes stood deadly pale, staring up at the ventilator with horror and disgust. Then out of the silence burst the most horrible cry Watson had ever heard, a hoarse yell of pain, fear and rage that woke sleepers even in the distant village.77“It means that it is all over,” said Holmes. “And perhaps, after all, it is for the best.” With a grave face he lit the lamp and led the way down the corridor to Roylott's door, Watson close behind with his pistol cocked.78They saw a strange sight. A half-open dark-lantern threw its beam on the iron safe, whose door stood ajar. In the wooden chair sat Roylott in a grey dressing-gown, the dog-lash across his lap, his eyes fixed in a rigid stare at the ceiling.79A strange yellow band with brownish speckles was bound around his brow. “The band! The speckled band!” whispered Holmes. As Watson stepped forward, the band moved, and the squat, diamond-shaped head of a snake rose from Roylott's hair.80“It is a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India!” cried Holmes. “The schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.” He slipped the looped dog-whip around the snake's neck, carried it at arm's length and shut it in the iron safe.81They broke the sad news to the frightened girl and took her by the morning train to her aunt at Harrow. The official inquiry decided that the Doctor had died while carelessly playing with a dangerous pet.82On the way home Holmes explained. The gipsies and the word 'band' had first misled him. But the dummy rope and the clamped bed made him suspect the rope was a bridge for something coming through the ventilator: a snake, whose poison no chemical test could detect.83Roylott had trained the snake with milk to return when he whistled, and stood on his chair to reach the ventilator. The clang Helen heard was the safe door shutting. Sooner or later, on some night, the snake was bound to strike.84“My cane drove it back through the ventilator,” said Holmes, “and made it angry, so it flew at the first person it saw. I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Roylott's death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.”
Adapted from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, public domain. Pictures are AI illustrations drawn for this edition.
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