AI-Generated Graded Readers 　　Masaru Uchida, Gifu University 　　 　　Publication webpage: 　　https://www1.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/a1/ai-generated_graded_readers.html 　　 　　Publication date: April 16, 2026 　　 　　About This Edition 　　 　　This book is a simplified English adaptation created for extensive reading practice. 　　The text was generated using ChatGPT and prepared for intermediate English learners as part of an educational project. 　　 　　Target reading level: CEFR A2-B1 　　 　　This edition aims to support fluency development through accessible vocabulary, expanded narration, and improved readability while preserving the original story structure. 　　 　　Source Text 　　 　　Original work: The Return of Sherlock Holmes 　　Author: Arthur Conan Doyle 　　 　　Source: Project Gutenberg 　　https://www.gutenberg.org/ 　　 　　Full text available at: 　　https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/108/pg108.txt 　　 　　The original text is in the public domain. 　　 　　Copyright and Use 　　 　　This simplified edition is intended for educational and non-commercial use only. 　　 　　The source text is provided by Project Gutenberg under its public domain policy. 　　Users should refer to the Project Gutenberg License for full terms: 　　 　　https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html 　　 　　This adaptation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and edited for readability and educational purposes. 　　 　　Disclaimer 　　 　　This edition is an educational adaptation and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Project Gutenberg.

　　Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Simplified Edition, Adapted and Simplified by ChatGPT)

CONTENTS

The Adventure of the Empty House
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
The Adventure of the Priory School
The Adventure of Black Peter.
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
The Adventure of the Three Students
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
The Adventure of the Second Stain


The Adventure of the Empty House

Part 1

　　It was in the spring of 1894. At that time, all London was talking about the death of the Honourable Ronald Adair. The case was strange from the first hour, and many people spoke about it in clubs and drawing rooms. Some facts came out at the public inquiry, but not all of them. I can now tell the story more fully, because many years have passed since that strange time.
　　To me, however, the death of Ronald Adair was important for another reason too. It came during the sad years after the loss of Sherlock Holmes. Even then, I still found myself reading every account of a difficult crime and asking what Holmes would have thought of it. More than once I tried to use his methods, though I never did so with great success. Still, the habit stayed with me. So when I read of the Park Lane mystery, I could not keep my mind away from it.
　　The facts were these. Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, who was at that time serving as governor of one of the Australian colonies. His mother had come back to England because of her health, and she lived with Ronald and his sister Hilda in Park Lane. Ronald was young, rich enough, and well known in good society. No one spoke of him as a man with dangerous enemies or wild habits.
　　He had once been engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, but that had ended quietly, and no public quarrel had followed. In general, people described him as calm, polite, and rather quiet. He played cards often, but not in a foolish or careless way. He belonged to several clubs, among them the Baldwin, the Cavendish, and the Bagatelle. This interest in cards later became important, though at first it did not seem enough to explain a violent death.
　　On the day of the murder, Ronald Adair had played cards at the Bagatelle Club in the afternoon and again in the evening. The men who played with him said that nothing unusual had happened. The game had been ordinary, and his losses had been small. Indeed, it was said that he had lately won a fairly large sum in partnership with Colonel Moran. No one, however, thought that these games had led to any open trouble.
　　That night Adair returned home at about ten o’clock. His mother and sister were out visiting a relation, so he went into the house alone. A servant later said that she heard him go into the front sitting-room on the second floor, a room that he often used. She had lit the fire there earlier, but it had smoked badly, so she had opened the window. After that, the house was quiet.
　　At about eleven-twenty, Lady Maynooth and Miss Hilda came home. They wished to say good night to Ronald and went up to his room. To their surprise, the door was locked from the inside. They knocked and called to him, but there was no answer. At last the door had to be forced. When it opened, Ronald Adair was found dead inside the room.
　　His head had been terribly injured by a revolver bullet. Yet no revolver was found in the room. That was the first great mystery. If he had killed himself, where was the weapon? If another person had killed him, how had that person escaped from a room locked on the inside? These questions troubled everyone from the beginning.
　　There were other strange details. On the table lay two bank notes of ten pounds each, and beside them were seventeen pounds and ten shillings in silver and gold. The money had been arranged in little piles. Near it lay a sheet of paper on which Adair had written several names and numbers, as if he had been adding up the money won and lost at cards. So robbery was clearly not the reason for the crime. The money had not been touched.
　　Then there was the window. Since the door was locked from the inside, many people thought that the murderer must have escaped that way. But the room was on the second floor, and below it there was a flower-bed and a strip of grass between the house and the road. Neither the flowers nor the grass showed any sign that a man had climbed down or jumped. There were no marks at all. This made escape by the window seem almost impossible.
　　Another idea was that the shot had come from outside. But that, too, seemed very hard to believe. Park Lane is a busy street, and there was even a cab stand not far away. Yet no one had heard the sound of a shot. Also, the man who fired would have had to send a bullet through an open second-floor window with great skill. It was not impossible, but it seemed very unlikely. And still, there was the dead man and the bullet in his body.
　　I thought over the matter again and again. Every time I believed I had found one answer, some other fact destroyed it. If the crime had been done by a stranger, why had nothing been stolen? If it had been done by a friend, how had that friend entered and left unseen? If Adair had feared anyone, why had he said nothing? His life seemed so ordinary and so safe that the sudden violence of his end looked even darker against it.
　　During those years I was still living a busy life, though not a very happy one. I had known deep loss, and there were many evenings when work ended and silence came down too heavily upon me. In such hours my thoughts often went back to Baker Street, to the old adventures, and to the man whose mind had once seemed able to bring light into any darkness. The Park Lane case affected me more strongly because it was exactly the sort of case in which Holmes would have been at his best. There was something hard, sharp, and hidden in it that would at once have woken his full interest.
　　At last my curiosity became too strong to remain quiet. One evening, after my professional duties were done, I walked across the Park and came out near the Oxford Street end of Park Lane. It was about six o’clock. As I drew nearer to the house, I saw a small crowd standing on the pavement and looking up at one particular window. I knew at once that I had reached the scene of Ronald Adair’s death.
　　Among the people stood a tall, thin man with coloured glasses, who seemed to be explaining the mystery to those around him. His manner suggested that he was one of the plain-clothes detectives who so often enjoy speaking before they know very much. I moved closer and listened for a short time, hoping to hear some useful point, but what he said seemed foolish to me. It was no better than the weak guesses that had already filled the newspapers. I turned away, tired of empty talk and still carrying the whole dark problem in my mind. At that moment I did not know that before the evening ended, my life itself would be changed.

Part 2

　　I stood for a short time near the crowd and looked up at the house. People were still talking in low voices, and now and then someone pointed at the window on the second floor. Every face showed the same mix of interest and fear. London always loves a mystery, but it loves it even more when the victim is rich, young, and well known. I had already read every newspaper report, so there was little more for me to learn there. Even so, I could not bring myself to leave at once.
　　At last I turned away and stepped back toward the pavement. As I did so, I accidentally struck against an old man who was standing close behind me. He was carrying several books in his arms, and they fell at once to the ground with a heavy sound. I bent down quickly to help him gather them up. One of the books lay open for a moment under the street-lamp, and I noticed its title. It was The Origin of Tree Worship. The title seemed so strange that I looked with some surprise from the book to its owner.
　　He was a tall, thin, elderly man with a sharp nose and a grey beard. He wore dark clothes that were old but clean, and his back was bent as if age had pressed heavily upon him. There was something nervous and irritable in his face, and when he saw his books on the ground, he gave a small cry of anger. I apologized at once and handed them back to him one by one. Besides the book on tree worship, I saw others on British birds, old holy wars, and the history of some lost Roman town. They were the sort of books which few people now buy and still fewer people read.
　　The old man looked at me sharply, and for a moment I thought he would say something rude. Then his expression softened a little. He muttered a few words that may have meant thanks, though he did not sound grateful. A second later he turned away and disappeared into the moving crowd. The whole meeting had lasted no more than a minute, yet I remembered it afterward very clearly, because there had been something odd in the man’s face and voice. At that moment, however, I thought no more about him.
　　I walked slowly home, still thinking about Ronald Adair and his locked room. My mind moved round and round the same facts without finding any true opening. The card scores on the table, the open window, the missing weapon, the silent street below, all stood before me like separate pieces which refused to join. I remember that evening as cold and grey, though it may be that my thoughts gave it that colour. By the time I reached my house, I was more tired in mind than in body. I wanted only a quiet room and a little time alone.
　　My servant had already lit the lamp in my study. The room looked warm and familiar after the street outside, with my books on the walls and the fire burning low in the grate. I had hardly sat down when the servant entered and said that an old gentleman wished to see me. This surprised me, since I was not expecting any patient at that hour. I told her to show him in, and in another moment my visitor entered. To my astonishment, it was the same old book collector with whom I had collided outside Ronald Adair’s house.
　　He stood in the doorway with his arms full of books once more and bowed in a stiff, awkward way. He said that he hoped I would forgive his following me. His conscience had troubled him, he explained, because he had spoken sharply in the street after I had kindly helped him with his books. He had seen me go into my house and had wished to say that he was sorry. His voice was thin and broken, and yet, even as he spoke, something in it touched my memory in a strange way. Still, the disguise was so complete that I did not understand the truth.
　　I told him that there was nothing to forgive and asked him to take a chair. Instead of sitting at once, he looked round my study with the quick eye of a man who notices many things in a moment. Then he began to speak of books. Since he kept, he said, a small shop near the corner of Church Street, he had thought that perhaps I might be interested in buying a few useful volumes. He held up the books one by one and praised them in a learned but rather fussy way. The whole scene was so unexpected that I could only stare at him.
　　Then he made a remark that stopped me at once. He pointed toward one part of my shelf and said that there was a gap there which would be filled very nicely by a few books of the right sort. I turned my head without thinking and looked toward the place he had named. It was true that there was a small open space there between two groups of volumes. But what struck me most was not the fact itself. It was the quick, exact way in which the old man had seen it. Only one person I had ever known could enter a room and in a single glance notice such a detail.
　　A sudden strange feeling passed through me. I looked back quickly at the visitor. He had put down the books upon the table. His bent back had straightened a little. One hand had risen to the white beard at his chin. Before my eyes, with a few rapid movements, the old man seemed to disappear. The beard came away. The bent shape was gone. The face changed. In the next instant Sherlock Holmes stood smiling quietly in the middle of my study.
　　For a few seconds I believe I could not think at all. The room swam round me, and all sound seemed to go far away. I remember Holmes’s face, pale and sharp, with the old bright eyes looking at me closely. I remember his hand reaching out toward me. Then everything went dark. It was the first and only time in my life that I ever truly fainted, and I do not feel ashamed to say so. The shock was greater than any words can easily describe.
　　When I came back to myself, my collar had been loosened and the taste of brandy was in my mouth. Holmes was leaning over me, one hand under my shoulder and the other holding a flask. There was real concern in his face. He said very gently that he had not guessed his sudden return would affect me so strongly. At that voice, the voice I had believed I would never hear again, all the mist cleared from my mind. I caught him by both arms and stared at him as if I still feared he might vanish.
　　“Holmes!” I cried. “Holmes!” It was all I could say at first. He laughed softly, though there was feeling in his eyes. I made him sit down opposite me, and then I looked at him again and again, hardly trusting my sight. He seemed thinner than before, and his face was more worn, but it was truly he. There was no mistake possible now. The man whom I had mourned as dead was sitting alive in my own room.
　　For a little time neither of us said very much. I think my mind was still trying to catch up with what my eyes had already accepted. Holmes at last lit a cigarette with his usual calm hand and said that there was much to explain, but that explanations must wait a little. He had come, he told me, because a dangerous piece of work lay before him that very night, and he wanted my help. He asked whether I was still the same Watson who had once stood by him in worse places than most men can imagine. I answered at once that I would go with him wherever he wished.
　　He gave me one of those quick warm looks which were rare with him, but always very real. Then he said that it was good to hear those words again. There would be time enough, he added, to speak of the past, of his escape, and of all that had happened since the dreadful day in Switzerland. For the moment, he asked only for my trust and my company. I told him that he had both, freely and fully. And so, with my heart still beating hard from the great shock of his return, I found myself once more seated face to face with Sherlock Holmes, while the old life that I had thought ended forever began to open before me again.

Part 3

　　Even so, I could not let the matter rest there. I told Holmes that I would go anywhere with him, but that he must first tell me one thing at least. How could he be alive after the fall at the Reichenbach? Holmes smiled a little at my impatience and said that he had expected no less. Then he leaned back in his chair, stretched out his long legs toward the fire, and began, in his quiet way, to tell the story of those lost years.
　　He said that he had never fallen into the great deep place at all. Professor Moriarty had, indeed, followed him to the narrow path above the falls, and he had clearly meant to kill him. Holmes had known then that there was little hope of help, and so he had written the note which I later found. After that, Moriarty had rushed at him with his hands, hoping to throw him over the edge even if he died himself. Holmes, however, had some knowledge of a kind of wrestling which allowed him to break free. With one quick movement, he turned his enemy aside, and Moriarty lost his footing and fell into the terrible water below.
　　I cried out that I myself had seen the footprints leading to the end of the path and none returning. Holmes answered that this was perfectly true, but that there had been another way. The rock wall beside the path, though it looked smooth from below, had a few very small holds. A man with care and strong hands could climb it. Holmes had done so at once and had reached a narrow ledge above, where he lay flat and hidden while I, poor fool that I was, believed him dead and walked away with a broken heart.
　　Even there, however, his danger had not ended. Moriarty had not come alone. Another man had been waiting higher up on the cliff. That man saw what happened and at once tried to finish the work. A great stone came crashing down and nearly struck Holmes where he lay hidden. A second followed, and only then did Holmes fully understand that one more enemy remained to him. It was because of that man, he said, that he let the world go on believing that Sherlock Holmes was dead.
　　Once darkness fell, he climbed down again and escaped across the mountains. Later he made his way to Florence, where he felt safe enough to think clearly about his position. He had beaten Moriarty, but the Professor’s strong network still remained, and at least one deadly enemy was free in London. If all those men believed Holmes dead, they would grow careless. For that reason he told no one the truth, except Mycroft, who could help him quietly with money and arrangements. “Not even you, Watson,” he said. “I knew your face too well. Your sorrow would be real, and that sorrow would protect me better than any lie.”
　　I could not blame him when he said this, though the thought of those empty years still hurt me. Holmes went on to tell me that he had travelled widely under other names. He had spent time in Tibet, passed through Persia, and seen other places far from Europe. At last he had returned to France and then watched London from a distance, waiting for the right moment to come back. That moment, he said, had come when he saw a certain old enemy moving once more. Then the strange death of Ronald Adair had made the matter even more urgent.
　　“You mean,” I said, “that the man who tried to kill you in Switzerland is still here in London?” Holmes nodded. “Yes,” said he. “And he is one of the most dangerous men alive.” He would not yet speak the name, but he said that this man was brave, clever, patient, and very ready to kill. He had also been closely connected with Moriarty. Holmes believed that the same hand which had attacked him abroad had now struck again in Park Lane. That was why he had returned to Baker Street that very day and had then come straight to me.
　　He next spoke of my own rooms in Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson, he said, had nearly fainted when he suddenly appeared there alive. Yet she had quickly recovered and had helped him with courage and loyalty. Mycroft had kept the old rooms exactly as they were, and Holmes had been able to step back into them as if only a week had passed. There was something deeply moving to me in that thought. The lamp, the violin, the books, the old chair by the fire, all had waited there while the world thought their owner dead.
　　Holmes then rose and asked me to make ready. A loaded revolver, he said, would be wise. I needed no second warning. In a very few minutes I had my weapon in my pocket and my coat upon my back. When I turned again, Holmes had taken up the old clothes and white beard of the bookseller and was putting them back into place. In less than a minute the bent old man stood before me once more. The change was so complete that I could hardly believe I had seen him become Holmes only a short time earlier.
　　We left my house together and took a cab through the dark London streets. Holmes spoke little during the drive. More than once I saw him look sharply through the window behind us to make sure that no one followed. At last we stopped near Cavendish Square and continued on foot. Holmes led me by narrow streets, dark lanes, and back passages in a way that showed great care and full knowledge of the ground. It was plain that he had planned every step before coming to me. The night was cold and still, and our footsteps sounded strangely loud on the stones.
　　At last we came to a small wooden gate and passed into a yard behind an old empty house. Holmes opened a back door with a key and led me inside. The place was dark, dusty, and silent. It had the cold dead feeling which empty houses always have, as if life had gone out of them long ago and left only walls behind. Holmes moved forward without hesitation and brought me at last into a large front room on the first floor. There he touched my arm and pointed through the dirty window across the street.
　　I looked out and at once caught my breath. On the far side stood the familiar house in Baker Street where Holmes had once lived and where I had once spent so many evenings with him. One upper window was brightly lit. The blind was down, and against it stood the dark shape of a man seated in a chair. Even from that distance, the line of the head and shoulders looked exactly like Sherlock Holmes. I turned quickly to my companion in surprise. He laughed very softly and seemed greatly pleased by my amazement.
　　He told me that the figure was a wax bust made for him by a French workman. Mrs. Hudson had placed it in the right position, and from time to time she moved the lamp so that the shadow seemed natural. Holmes then asked me the simple question whether I understood now why the light was there. I said that I did not fully understand, though I could guess that it was meant to deceive some watcher in the street. “Exactly,” said Holmes. “There is a watcher. In fact, there may be more than one. But one man matters above all the rest.”
　　He made me kneel beside him and look carefully through a narrow crack near the window frame. From there I could see not only the lighted blind in Baker Street, but also part of the street itself and the dark front of the empty house in which we sat. Holmes whispered that the man who watched from outside believed Sherlock Holmes to be sitting safely in his own room. If all went well, he would soon try to kill that shadow. “And then,” said Holmes in a low voice, “we shall have him.” I felt the old excitement rise in me again, sharp and clear as in former days.
　　Still, one question remained. I bent closer and whispered, “Who is the man?” Holmes’s face grew harder at once. “Colonel Sebastian Moran,” he said. “Once an officer, later the best hunter in India, and now the most dangerous servant that Moriarty ever had.” He added that Moran was not only brave and clever, but one of the finest shots in the world. That was why Ronald Adair had died in such a strange way, and why Holmes himself could not sit openly in Baker Street that night. We crouched together in the darkness after that, silent and waiting, while the false shadow of Sherlock Holmes still sat calmly in the light across the street.

Part 4

　　We waited in the dark room without moving. The street outside had grown quieter, and only now and then a late passer-by went by. The light still shone in the Baker Street window, and the black shape of Holmes’s head could still be seen against the blind. For a little time nothing happened. Then Holmes suddenly caught my arm and pressed it hard.
　　At first I heard nothing. Then, very softly, there came a sound from the back of the house in which we were hiding. A door opened and shut somewhere below us. After that came slow careful steps in the passage. The man who walked there was trying not to make any noise, but in an empty house even quiet feet can be heard.
　　Holmes drew me back into the darkest corner of the room. I had my revolver ready in my hand, and I felt his fingers touch my sleeve in warning. A black shape appeared in the doorway, darker even than the darkness behind it. For one moment it stood still, and then it moved forward, low and careful, like a hunting animal. He came so close that I could hear his breathing.
　　Only then did I understand that he had no idea we were there. His whole attention was fixed on the lighted window across the street. He went straight to our own window, raised it a little, and knelt down below it. As the clearer light from outside fell across his face, I saw a man of strong and terrible appearance. He was older, with a high bald forehead, a long hard nose, and a huge grey moustache.
　　He was dressed like a gentleman, but there was something wild and cruel in his face. His eyes shone with excitement. In one hand he carried what at first looked like a walking-stick, but when he laid it down, it gave a small sound of metal. Then he drew out another heavy piece, and with quick practised movements he joined the parts together. Even before Holmes had spoken the man’s name, I knew that this must be Colonel Sebastian Moran.
　　He worked with calm skill, though his face was alive with eagerness. There came a sharp click, then another, and I saw that he now held a strange gun with a thick body and a long barrel. He opened it, placed something inside, and closed it again. Then he settled himself more firmly, rested the gun on the window ledge, and aimed across the street. The barrel pointed straight at the black shadow in Baker Street.
　　He was as still as stone for one second. Then I heard a low whiz and the thin sound of breaking glass. At that exact instant Holmes sprang upon him from behind with the force of a tiger. The Colonel gave a cry of rage and fought like a madman. He was up in a moment and had both hands at Holmes’s throat before I struck him hard with the butt of my revolver.
　　He fell, rose again, and fell once more under our joint attack. Never have I felt such strength in a single man. Even on the floor he twisted and struggled so fiercely that for a moment I thought he might break free from us both. Then Holmes gave a sharp whistle. We heard feet running, and in another second policemen rushed into the room.
　　“That is enough, Colonel,” said Holmes, standing up and straightening his collar. “The game is over.” The man said nothing at first, but stared at Holmes with such hate that his whole face seemed to shake with it. At last he spoke, and the words came out almost like a whisper through his teeth. “You clever devil,” he said. “You clever devil.”
　　Holmes laughed quietly, though there was little joy in the sound. He told Lestrade to look well at the prisoner, because this was no common criminal. This was Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of the Indian Army, one of the best hunters in the East, and one of Professor Moriarty’s most trusted men. Under the fuller light, the Colonel’s face looked even more dangerous than before. He had the head of a thinker and the eyes of a killer.
　　Holmes then took up the weapon from the floor and showed it to Lestrade. It was, he said, a remarkable air-gun made by a blind German mechanic to the order of Moriarty himself. It was strong, exact, and almost silent. That was why no one in Park Lane had heard a shot on the night Ronald Adair died. What had seemed impossible now became clear. A man could kill from a distance and leave behind almost no sound at all.
　　Lestrade asked what charge he should make. He naturally thought first of the attempt upon Holmes’s own life. Holmes shook his head at once. He said that he did not wish to appear in the matter at all if it could be avoided. The true and much more important charge was another one. Colonel Sebastian Moran, he said, was the man who had killed the Honourable Ronald Adair.
　　These words had a great effect on everyone in the room. Even Lestrade, who had seen much in his life, looked startled for a moment. Holmes then said clearly that Moran had shot Ronald Adair from outside the house through the open second-floor window, using this very air-gun. The expanding bullet had killed the young man at once. The locked door, the missing weapon, and the silence in the street had all hidden the truth, but now the truth stood before us in flesh and blood.
　　When the police had taken the Colonel away, Holmes and I crossed back to Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson had done her part bravely, and the room itself looked wonderfully unchanged after all those years. The wax figure still stood where it had been placed, though the bullet had passed through its head and broken the glass behind it. Holmes picked up the soft bullet from the carpet and handed it to me with quiet satisfaction. Here, he said, was one more piece of proof.
　　We sat down at last in the old room, and for a little while I could hardly keep my eyes from moving over the familiar things around me. There was the chemical corner, the violin, the old shelves, the Persian slipper, and all the signs of the life that I had thought ended forever. Holmes saw what I felt, though he said little about it. Instead, he lit a cigar and asked me what part of the Park Lane mystery still remained dark to me. I answered at once that one question mattered above all others. Why had Moran killed Ronald Adair?
　　Holmes leaned back and explained it in his usual clear way. Moran, he said, was not only a hunter of animals. He was also a dishonest card-player. Some weeks before, Ronald Adair and Moran had won a large sum together. At some later point, Adair must have discovered that the Colonel cheated at cards. A young man of honour like Adair would not keep silent forever after learning such a thing.
　　Holmes believed that Adair had spoken privately to Moran and had told him that he could no longer play with him. He may also have said that Moran must leave the clubs quietly or face public shame. For a man like Moran, living by skill, daring, and secret cheating, such a threat was serious. It could ruin both his name and his way of life. So he chose murder instead.
　　On the night of his death, Ronald Adair had been sitting alone, adding up the card accounts and perhaps working out what money should be returned. That explained the names and numbers on the paper and the little piles of coins on the table. He had locked the door because he wished to be alone. He had no idea that someone outside was watching him through the open window. Moran, using the air-gun, fired from a distance and killed him where he sat.
　　“That is the whole story,” said Holmes at last. “At least, it is the whole story in all important points.” I told him that it was more than enough for me. The strange death in Park Lane had been explained, Colonel Moran had been taken, and Sherlock Holmes had returned to Baker Street. To anyone else, that evening might have seemed the ending of a case. To me, it felt like the beginning of life once more.


The Adventure of the Norwood Builder

Part 1

　　One morning, some months after Sherlock Holmes had returned to Baker Street, we were sitting at breakfast together when he said that London had become a much less interesting city since the death of Professor Moriarty. I answered that many honest people would not agree with him. Holmes smiled at that and said that I was right from the point of view of the public. The city was safer now, and that was certainly a good thing. Still, for a man whose work was to study crime, the great hidden mind behind so many dark acts had given even the smallest newspaper report a special meaning.
　　He said that in those earlier days, even a petty theft or a foolish act of violence might point toward something larger. A very small sign had often been enough for him. He would see a short report in the morning paper and know at once that some larger force was behind it. Now, he said, the great spider in the middle of the web was gone, and many crimes had become only what they seemed. There was less depth in them, and therefore less interest for him. He pushed back his chair with a half-laugh and said that he must not complain too much, since he himself had helped to bring about that quieter state of things.
　　At that time I had already given up my medical practice and had come back to live with Holmes in our old rooms. The return had been a great happiness to me, though I had not fully understood at first how it had been made possible. A young doctor named Verner had bought my small Kensington practice for a much better price than I had expected. Only later did I learn that he was related to Holmes and that it was Holmes himself who had quietly found the money. Such silent kindness was very like him. He never spoke much about his better actions.
　　Our life together had not been dull, whatever Holmes might say over breakfast. Even in those first months after his return, several strange and dangerous matters had already passed through our hands. Some of them I was still not free to tell. Holmes had strong views about what should and should not be made public, and I had long learned to respect them. So we sat quietly that morning, with the breakfast things still before us, when our peaceful hour was broken in the most sudden way.
　　The bell rang loudly below. There came the sound of feet running through the hall, then hurrying up the stairs. A moment later our door burst open, and a young man rushed into the room. His face was white, his fair hair was untidy, and his eyes were wide with fear. He was clearly well dressed, but everything about him showed that he had come in great haste and under great strain. For a second he stood gasping, with one hand on the edge of the table as if he needed support.
　　Then he cried out that he was very sorry to come in so violently, but that he could hardly think clearly and did not know where else to turn. He said that his name was John Hector McFarlane and that he was in the greatest trouble a man could know. Holmes motioned him to sit down and pushed the cigarette case toward him, though the young man was too shaken to touch it. In his calm voice Holmes said that our visitor was a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and a man who suffered from asthma, but that beyond these facts he knew nothing at all. The young man stared in amazement and said that every one of those points was true.
　　Holmes told him not to waste time being surprised. If he wanted help, he must speak clearly and quickly. McFarlane then said that he feared the police were close behind him and that he might be arrested at any moment. He begged Holmes to hear his story before that happened. Even if prison came, he said, he would be less unhappy if he knew that Holmes understood the truth and was working to save him. Holmes leaned forward at once and asked on what charge he expected to be arrested. The answer came like a blow. He said that he was to be taken for the murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre of Lower Norwood.
　　Holmes’s face changed at once. He had been half amused and only partly interested until then, but now his eyes grew bright. He said that this was indeed serious. It was also, he added, exactly the kind of case which London had lately failed to offer him. Then he asked whether our visitor had seen the morning newspapers. McFarlane answered that he had, and he snatched one up from the table with shaking hands. He turned it open and showed us the report with a finger that trembled so much that it could hardly rest still on the page.
　　Holmes handed the paper to me and told me to read it aloud. So I read. It said that Jonas Oldacre, a builder who had retired some years earlier and now lived in a house called Deep Dene House at Lower Norwood, had disappeared under very strange and terrible conditions. He had been seen the evening before in the company of a young solicitor named John Hector McFarlane. During the night, a pile of wood behind the house had caught fire. In the morning there were signs of violence in the dead man’s bedroom, including blood marks and evidence that a struggle had taken place. Worst of all, charred remains believed to be human had been found in the ashes of the burned woodpile.
　　The report then went on to say that the police strongly suspected murder. A stick found at the scene had been identified as belonging to McFarlane. There was also said to be evidence that the young man had a reason for wishing Oldacre dead. The article ended by saying that Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard had taken charge of the case and that an arrest was expected very soon. When I looked up from the paper, I found the young solicitor watching me with a face full of misery. It was hard to connect the frightened man before us with so savage a crime.
　　Holmes asked the obvious question first. If the police were already looking for him, how had he managed to stay free long enough to reach Baker Street? McFarlane answered that he had spent the night at an inn in Norwood after his business with Mr. Oldacre and had known nothing of the matter until he saw the newspaper on his way into town that morning. The moment he read it, he understood that he was in great danger. He had left the train at once and come straight to Holmes before going either to his office or to his home. He believed that if he had done either, the police would have found him there.
　　Holmes then asked him to begin at the true beginning and to leave nothing out, however small it might seem. McFarlane said that the whole strange business had started only the day before, and that before that day he had hardly known the name of Jonas Oldacre. The man, he said, had once known his parents many years earlier, but there had been no close friendship and no later connection. So when Mr. Oldacre walked into his office that afternoon, carrying papers in his hand and asking for legal help, the visit had come as a complete surprise. What followed had surprised him even more.
　　He had not yet had time to explain what that surprise was, because at that very moment there came once again the sound of feet on the stairs. This time the steps were heavier and slower. The young man half rose from his chair, and all the little colour left in his face. A knock came at the door, and before Holmes could answer, it opened. Inspector Lestrade stood there, with one or two policemen visible behind him on the landing. The case had come to Baker Street sooner than even our frightened visitor had feared.

Part 2

　　Lestrade came into the room with the firm look of a man who believes his work is almost done. Behind him, on the landing, I could see the dark shapes of policemen waiting. John Hector McFarlane gave one desperate glance toward Holmes and then sank back into his chair like a man who already heard the prison door closing. Lestrade spoke his name and said that he arrested him for the murder of Jonas Oldacre of Lower Norwood. The words sounded hard and final in the quiet room.
　　Holmes, however, raised his hand at once and asked Lestrade to wait. Half an hour, he said, could make no real difference to the police, while the young man was on the point of giving an account of the whole affair. That account might help to clear the matter up, or at least to place the facts in proper order. Lestrade answered grimly that he did not think there would be much difficulty in clearing it up. Even so, he added, he could not easily refuse Holmes, since Baker Street had once or twice been useful to Scotland Yard. He therefore agreed to remain with the prisoner present, while warning McFarlane that every word he spoke could later be used against him.
　　Our visitor answered that he wanted nothing better. All he asked was that the truth should be heard while there was still time to hear it. Lestrade looked at his watch and said that he would allow thirty minutes. Holmes sat back, steepled his fingers, and told McFarlane to begin at the true start. The young man said that, before the previous afternoon, he had known almost nothing of Jonas Oldacre. The name was not wholly strange to him, because many years earlier his parents had been acquainted with the man, but the connection had ended long ago.
　　For that reason, he said, he had been very surprised when Oldacre walked into his office in the City at about three o’clock the day before. He had been even more surprised when he learned the purpose of the visit. Oldacre had several sheets from a notebook in his hand, covered in rough writing, and he laid them down on the table. Then he told McFarlane that they were the draft of his will and that he wanted it put at once into proper legal form. He intended to sit there while the work was done.
　　McFarlane obeyed, as any solicitor would obey a client who came on business. Yet he soon found himself in great astonishment. When he read through the draft, he discovered that nearly the whole of Jonas Oldacre’s property was being left to him. He described the older man as a small, strange creature, sharp in face and movement, with white eyelashes and very keen grey eyes. While the will was being copied, those eyes rested on him with a curious look that was half amusement and half secret pleasure.
　　When McFarlane looked up in surprise, Oldacre explained the matter in a very easy way. He was an unmarried man, he said, with almost no near relations. He had known the young man’s parents in earlier years and had always heard well of their son. He believed that his money would be safe in honest hands. McFarlane said that he could only stammer out his thanks. The will was then properly copied, signed, and witnessed by the clerk in the office. The blue paper, he told us, was the fair copy, while the rough sheets he had brought with him were the first draft.
　　After that, Oldacre had gone on to say that many other papers still needed attention. There were building leases, title-deeds, mortgages, and securities which the young solicitor ought to see and understand. He declared that he would not feel easy in his mind until all this business had been settled. For that reason, he asked McFarlane to come out that very evening to his house in Norwood, bringing the will with him, so that the whole matter could be arranged. At the same time, he strongly requested that not a word should be said to the young man’s parents until everything was complete, because he wished the final news to come to them as a pleasant surprise.
　　McFarlane said that the request had seemed odd, but not suspicious. He had seen before that rich older men sometimes enjoy acting in unusual ways, and he thought Oldacre merely eccentric. He also admitted that the unexpected gift had greatly affected him. He had therefore given his promise, sent a telegram home saying that business would keep him late, and agreed to visit Deep Dene House that same night. Lestrade listened with a face that showed little sympathy, but Holmes followed every word closely.
　　Holmes interrupted only once. He asked whether Oldacre had seemed in any hurry while the will was written. McFarlane answered that he had. Indeed, the whole thing had been done more quickly than such a document usually would be. Holmes then took up the rough notebook pages and looked at them very carefully. He asked no explanation at that moment, but I saw from his eyes that even these untidy lines had begun to interest him. McFarlane then continued his story.
　　He said that he had gone down by train to Norwood and had found some difficulty in locating the house, so that it was nearly half-past nine when he arrived. He was admitted by a middle-aged woman, clearly the housekeeper. She led him first into a sitting-room, where a light supper had been laid out. After that, Oldacre took him into his own bedroom, where a large safe stood open. A number of papers were lying ready, and together they spent a long time going through them, sorting and examining them one by one. The business was serious enough, but nothing in it seemed to suggest danger.
　　Holmes again broke in with one small question. Had the housekeeper announced McFarlane by name when she opened the door? Our client answered that she had. Holmes nodded, as if that point had some importance to him, and let the story go on. It was nearly midnight, McFarlane said, when the work ended. Oldacre then remarked that the servants were already asleep and that there was no need to disturb them by opening the front door. He therefore showed his visitor out through the bedroom window, which looked onto the garden and was standing open.
　　In the hurry of leaving, McFarlane had forgotten his stick. Oldacre laughed and told him not to trouble, since no harm would come to it. As it was then too late for a return to Blackheath, the young man spent the night at the Anerley Arms, an inn not far away. There he slept in complete ignorance of the terrible shape that events would take before morning. Only when he saw the newspaper did he understand that the stick left behind in the bedroom had become one of the strongest pieces of evidence against him.
　　When he finished, there was silence in the room for a few moments. Lestrade looked as if the story had only confirmed what he already believed. Holmes, however, remained thoughtful and gave no sign either of belief or disbelief. At last Lestrade asked whether the account had ended. McFarlane answered that it had. Holmes then said quietly that the affair was certainly a curious one and that there were still one or two points he wished to examine in person. He added that, before anything else, he would like to inspect the rough draft of the will more closely.
　　Lestrade gave a short laugh and asked if Holmes really saw anything special in those pages. Holmes said that he did. He pointed out that the writing was much clearer in some places than in others, and that this change seemed to come at regular intervals. To him, it suggested that the draft had been written in a railway train. When the train stopped, the writing grew neat and strong. When it was moving, the lines became shaky. Since the changes came often, the train must have been running on a suburban line with many short stops. McFarlane stared at him in amazement, while Lestrade admitted, though unwillingly, that the idea was clever.
　　Clever or not, however, Lestrade still believed the main case was strong. Here was a young man who had suddenly been made heir to an older man’s property, had visited him privately that same night, and had left behind his own stick in the room where blood was later found. The detective thought that nothing more was really needed. Holmes only said that the whole thing looked, perhaps, a little too good. In his experience, when evidence arranged itself too neatly, it was wise to ask who had arranged it. Then, with a glance at the clock, he added that there was no time to lose. Our unhappy client was led away by the police, while Holmes took up the draft of the will once more and read it with a depth of attention that showed he had already begun to doubt the simple story which seemed so clear to Inspector Lestrade.

Part 3

　　After McFarlane had been taken away, Holmes stood for some time with the rough draft of the will in his hand. He read it again very carefully and then laid it on the table. I asked him what he thought of the case. He answered that it looked very bad for the young man, but that he did not like it. Everything, he said, seemed too ready, too simple, and too neatly arranged. In real life, guilt often leaves confused signs. Here, the signs looked almost prepared.
　　He reminded me how mild and nervous McFarlane seemed. That in itself proved nothing, because quiet men have sometimes done violent things. Even so, Holmes said that if we did not quickly find another explanation, the young man was lost. The police already had motive, opportunity, and a strong piece of evidence in the stick. Worse still, every new fact seemed likely to strengthen Lestrade’s hand. Unless something broke that line, the case would go heavily against our client.
　　Holmes then told me of one point which had begun to interest him strongly. While examining the papers, he had looked over Oldacre’s bank-book. He found that the low balance was mostly due to large cheques made out during the last year to a man named Mr. Cornelius. This, Holmes said, was very curious. Why should a retired builder pay such large sums to some unknown person? If Cornelius was only a broker, where were the matching papers and investments? There were none in the house, so far as anyone knew.
　　He said that this Mr. Cornelius might prove important. Perhaps he had some part in the affair. At present, however, that was only a guess. Holmes intended to inquire at the bank and find who this man was and where the cheques had been cashed. Still, even as he spoke, he admitted with unusual frankness that the case looked dark. “I fear,” he said, “that if we do nothing more than think about it, Lestrade will hang our client and call it good police work.” I could see that the matter had taken a strong hold on him.
　　I do not know how much Holmes slept that night, but when I came down in the morning I found him pale and tired, with cigarette-ends all round his chair and the early papers spread across the table. An open telegram lay beside his plate. He tossed it to me and asked what I made of it. I read it at once. It was from Lestrade, and it said that important fresh evidence had come to hand, that McFarlane’s guilt was now definitely established, and that Holmes had better abandon the case.
　　“That sounds serious,” I said. Holmes gave a bitter little smile and answered that it was only Lestrade’s song of victory. Still, he admitted that fresh evidence can cut in more than one direction. It may help the police, but it may also reveal the trick behind the police theory. He told me to eat quickly, because we were going at once to Norwood. He himself touched nothing. In hard moments of thought he often lived on nerves and tobacco alone, and I knew better than to argue with him when he was in one of those moods.
　　We reached Deep Dene House in the morning and found the usual crowd of curious people still gathered near the gate. It was exactly the sort of suburban house I had imagined from the reports, plain and respectable on the outside, with nothing in its look to suggest murder, fire, and hidden plots. Lestrade met us with great satisfaction on his face. He asked Holmes, in a tone full of triumph, whether he had yet proved Scotland Yard wrong. Holmes answered very quietly that he had reached no final conclusion at all. Lestrade laughed in a way which showed that he thought this was only another name for defeat.
　　Then he led us into the house and stopped in the hall with a dramatic air. Upon the wall, near the passage, there was a dark mark. He struck a match and held it close. It was the print of a thumb in blood. Lestrade then took from his pocket a wax impression of McFarlane’s thumb and showed us that it matched the mark exactly. Even to my untrained eyes the likeness was complete. I confess that my own heart sank at the sight of it.
　　Lestrade was delighted. He asked Holmes what he thought now. To my great surprise, Holmes did not show defeat at all. On the contrary, I saw a strange light come into his face. For one instant he looked almost amused. He said, in a tone of false sadness, that this was indeed a very serious matter. Then he asked who had found the print. Lestrade answered that it was the housekeeper, Mrs. Lexington, who had pointed it out to the night constable.
　　Holmes’s next questions were simple but sharp. Had the mark been seen on the day before? No. Had the constable been standing there through the night? Not all the time. Could anyone swear that the print had already been there when the police first examined the place? Lestrade answered impatiently that the mark was there now, and that was enough. Holmes only nodded. Then, when the detective had turned away for a moment, he said softly to me that the one important thing was this: he himself was certain the thumb-mark had not been there when he examined the hall on the earlier day.
　　That single statement changed the whole matter in my mind. If Holmes was right, then the evidence had been made afterward. Someone inside the house had added it in the night in order to make the case against McFarlane even stronger. Holmes seemed full of fresh life after that discovery. He began at once to inspect the whole building, moving slowly from room to room and then from floor to floor. He examined walls, floors, windows, and empty spaces with the deepest care. Most of the house was unfurnished, yet he looked at each part as if it might speak.
　　At last we came to the top floor. There, in the passage outside three empty bedrooms, Holmes stopped very suddenly. I saw him measure the corridor with his eye and then look again with great attention at the end wall. A curious expression passed over his face. It was not yet full satisfaction, but it was very near it. He turned at once and said that it was time to bring Lestrade fully into the matter. His tone was so firm that even I knew he had found something real at last.
　　We went back downstairs and found the detective busy with his notes. Holmes told him that he thought one important witness had not yet been examined. Lestrade stared and asked where such a witness was to be found. Holmes answered that, with a little help, he believed he could produce him. He then asked for a few police constables, two bundles of straw, and some buckets of water. Lestrade looked first surprised and then annoyed, but he had gone too far in the affair to refuse Holmes outright. So the men and the things were brought together, while I waited in great curiosity to see what strange move my friend would make next.

Part 4

　　Lestrade came into the room with a grave and satisfied face. He bowed shortly to Holmes and then looked hard at our frightened visitor. “Mr. John Hector McFarlane,” said he, “I am here to arrest you for the murder of Mr. Jonas Oldacre of Lower Norwood.” McFarlane half rose and then fell back into his chair again, white to the lips. It was clear that all his last hope now rested on Holmes.
　　Holmes, however, held up his hand at once. He asked Lestrade to wait for a few minutes. The young man was about to tell the whole story, and every minute might matter. Lestrade answered that he did not think the story would change very much, but he was not unwilling to hear it. He had worked with Holmes often enough to know that a case can turn on one small point. So he agreed to remain while McFarlane spoke, though he warned him that every word might later be used in court.
　　McFarlane said that he asked nothing better. Then he went on from the point where his story had been broken. Oldacre, he said, had made him heir to almost all his property. After the will had been copied and signed, the older man told him that there were many more papers to examine and begged him to come that same evening to Deep Dene House. He wished the whole business finished at once. He also strongly asked that nothing should be said to McFarlane’s parents until everything had been arranged. The young man admitted that he found this strange, but the thought of such unexpected good fortune had been enough to silence his doubts.
　　Holmes asked one or two quick questions. Had Oldacre seemed in a hurry? Yes, very much so. Had he shown any sign of fear? No, none at all. Did he speak kindly? Yes, though in a curious playful way that was hard to describe. Holmes then made McFarlane go on. He had taken the train to Norwood and found the house only with some difficulty, so that it was nearly half-past nine when he arrived. A middle-aged woman opened the door. She was clearly the housekeeper. She knew his name and led him in at once.
　　First he had been taken into a sitting-room, where a cold supper had been laid out. Then Oldacre brought him to the bedroom on the ground floor, where a safe stood open. Many papers were inside. For a long time they worked together, looking at deeds, leases, and business papers. Nothing in the room had seemed strange except the man himself. Oldacre had a way of smiling to himself as if some private thought amused him. Still, there had been no open cause for alarm. At last, near midnight, the business was done.
　　Oldacre then said that the servants were asleep and that there was no need to disturb the house. He therefore showed his visitor out through the French window of the bedroom, which stood open to the garden. In the hurry of leaving, McFarlane forgot his stick. Oldacre noticed it and told him not to trouble, since it would be safe there until his next visit. As it was too late to return to Blackheath, the young man slept at a nearby inn, the Anerley Arms, and knew nothing more until he saw the newspaper report in the morning.
　　When he finished, there was a short silence. Lestrade looked as if the story had only made the case stronger. Holmes, on the other hand, seemed more thoughtful than before. He took up the rough draft of the will and read it carefully. Then he pointed to the writing and said that it seemed to have been written in a railway carriage. Some lines were firm and clear, others were weak and shaky, and the changes came at short intervals. To Holmes, this meant that the writer had been in a train which stopped often. That detail, he said, supported one part of McFarlane’s story, since it suggested that Oldacre had indeed drawn up the will while travelling into London that very day.
　　Lestrade gave a short laugh and said that this might be clever, but it did not help the prisoner very much. Here was a man who had suddenly become heir to another man’s fortune, had visited him privately that same night, and had left behind his own stick in the room where blood was found. Holmes answered quietly that the case certainly looked bad, but that perhaps it looked a little too good. “Too good?” cried Lestrade. “To me it looks complete.” Holmes only said that complete cases sometimes make him uneasy. Then he rose and said that the proper place for discussion was Lower Norwood itself.
　　So Lestrade took his prisoner away for the moment, and Holmes and I went straight after him. We reached Deep Dene House in the morning. A small crowd still stood near the gate, for people had already learned that something dreadful had happened there. The house itself was plain enough, and the garden and timber-yard behind it looked ordinary and dull in the daylight. It was hard to connect so quiet a place with murder, fire, and hidden plans. Yet the moment we stepped inside, I felt the heavy dark air which always hangs round a house where fear has lived for a few hours.
　　Lestrade met us in the hall with a look of clear triumph. He said that fresh evidence had come to hand and that the case against McFarlane was now stronger than ever. Then he took us to one side of the hall wall and showed us a dark blood-mark there. It was a thumb-print, deeply and clearly made. He then produced a wax impression of McFarlane’s thumb and held it beside the mark. Even I could see that they were the same. It seemed a crushing piece of evidence.
　　To my surprise, Holmes did not look beaten. On the contrary, a strange light came into his face. He asked Lestrade when the mark had been found. The detective answered that the housekeeper had pointed it out to the night constable. Holmes then asked whether it had been seen during the first examination of the house. Lestrade said no, but that meant little, because people may miss such things in the confusion after a crime. Holmes asked no more then, but when Lestrade moved away for a moment, he leaned toward me and said in a low voice that he was certain the print had not been there on the previous day when he himself had looked at that very place.
　　That one remark changed the whole matter for me. If Holmes was right, then the print had been added later by someone in the house. A case which had seemed almost hopeless suddenly opened again. Holmes at once began to examine the building in full. He looked at the bedroom, the window, the path outside, the timber-yard, and every room on the ground floor. Then he moved slowly upstairs and inspected the whole house, though most of the rooms were empty and almost bare.
　　At first I could see no clear purpose in what he was doing. He seemed to look equally at walls, floors, passages, and corners, as if the very shape of the house mattered to him. Then, on the upper floor, he stopped. We were standing in a corridor outside three empty bedrooms. Holmes looked first one way, then the other, and then measured the passage with his eye in that careful manner of his. A sudden change came over his face. He had seen something important. He said nothing to me there, but turned and went quickly back downstairs.
　　We found Lestrade in the dining-room writing notes. Holmes said at once that he believed one very important witness had not yet been examined. Lestrade looked up sharply and asked where such a witness was to be found. Holmes answered that he thought he could produce him, but he would need the help of a few constables. He then asked for three policemen, two bundles of straw, and two buckets of water. Lestrade stared at him as if he thought he had gone mad. Holmes only repeated the order in the calmest voice. I knew from his manner that he now held the end of the thread firmly in his hand, and that before very long the strange case of the Norwood builder would begin to open in full.

Part 5

　　The men and the things were brought together, though Lestrade still looked doubtful and annoyed. Holmes ordered the straw to be laid in the passage on the upper floor, near the end wall where he had stopped before. Then he told one of the constables to set fire to it. As soon as the smoke rose, Holmes cried out in a loud voice, “Fire! Fire!” We all joined him and shouted the same words again and again. The sound ran through the empty house and must have reached the road outside.
　　For a few seconds nothing happened. Then, all at once, there came a sharp movement at the end of the passage. A secret door flew open in the wall, and a little white-faced man jumped out from it in wild fear. He blinked at us like some animal dragged into the light after hiding too long in a dark hole. Lestrade gave a cry of surprise, while Holmes pointed at the man and said, in his quiet clear voice, “There is your missing witness. There is Jonas Oldacre.”
　　The effect on everyone was extraordinary. For a moment Lestrade could only stare. Then he rushed forward with the constables, and the little man was seized before he could move more than a few steps. He began at once to protest that it was all a joke, nothing more than a joke, and that no real harm had been meant. But his voice shook badly, and the fear in his face showed that he knew very well how serious the matter had become. Holmes, on the other hand, looked as calm as if he had expected Oldacre to step out at exactly that second.
　　We entered the hidden place from which he had come. It was a narrow secret room built behind the wall, with enough space for one man to stay there in some comfort for quite a long time. There were books, food, bottles of water, and even a few blankets. Small openings had been left to let air come in. It was plain at once that the place had been carefully prepared and that Oldacre had meant to remain hidden until his plan was complete. A builder, Holmes said, naturally has some advantages when he wishes to hide a room inside his own house.
　　Lestrade now turned on Oldacre with great anger. He said that a man had nearly gone to prison, and perhaps even to the gallows, because of this wicked game. Oldacre still tried to smile and speak lightly, but the smile sat very badly on his face. He repeated that he had only wished to see what would happen when people thought him dead. Holmes cut him short and said that such words were foolish. A practical joke does not begin with a false will, pass through fake signs of murder, and end with an innocent man arrested for his life. No, this had been a planned and cruel attempt to destroy John Hector McFarlane.
　　Then Lestrade asked the question which most troubled him. How had Holmes known that the missing man was in the house at all? Holmes answered that the first sign had been the thumb-mark on the wall. He himself had examined that wall on the day before and was sure that no such mark had then been there. Therefore someone inside the house had placed it there during the night. Since McFarlane was already in custody, the mark could only have been made by Oldacre or with Oldacre’s help. That told Holmes that the man was not dead and that he still had some secret connection with the house.
　　The second sign had come from the shape of the upper part of the building. Holmes had found that the corridor upstairs was shorter than the rooms below should have allowed. In other words, there had to be some hidden space in the house. Once he saw that, the rest became simple. The smoke and the cries of fire were only meant to frighten the man into showing himself. “A hiding man,” said Holmes, “can bear many things, but he cannot easily bear the thought of being burned alive.” That was why Oldacre had burst out from behind the wall the moment he smelled smoke.
　　Lestrade then asked about the blood and the burnt remains in the woodpile. Holmes answered that these too were part of the trick. The blood was easy enough to provide, and the remains were almost certainly those of some animal, perhaps rabbits. The point was never to prove death clearly, but only to make people believe it quickly. Once they believed it, everything else could be arranged around that belief. The false will gave McFarlane a motive. The late-night visit gave him opportunity. The forgotten stick pointed straight toward him. It was all set like a trap.
　　Oldacre now began to understand that nothing was left hidden. He looked at Holmes with a bitter and ugly expression and said that perhaps the detective knew his heart as well as his actions. Holmes answered that he knew enough. Years earlier, Oldacre had wanted to marry McFarlane’s mother and had been refused. A decent man would have forgotten such a thing long ago. But Oldacre was not decent. He had carried his anger for years and had at last found a way to strike at the woman through her son.
　　Holmes added that there was almost certainly another reason as well. The payments to “Mr. Cornelius” showed that Oldacre had already been moving money under another name. He had likely intended to disappear completely after the false murder, leaving his debts behind and beginning a second life elsewhere. By making the world believe he was dead, he could escape his troubles. By making McFarlane appear guilty, he could enjoy his revenge at the same time. It was, Holmes said, a hateful plan, but a clever one in some parts.
　　Lestrade asked then why the thumb-mark had been added later, if the rest of the case was already strong. Holmes said that this was where Oldacre had failed. He had not known when to stop. The evidence against McFarlane was already heavy enough, but Oldacre wanted it to look still stronger. In trying to improve his own plan, he spoiled it. The new thumb-mark was too much, and because it had not been there before, it told Holmes that the dead man was not dead at all. “That,” said Holmes, “is often the way with clever villains. They destroy themselves by trying to be too clever.”
　　By this time the housekeeper, Mrs. Lexington, had also been secured. It was now clear that she had helped in the whole wicked business, whether out of loyalty, fear, or shared guilt. Lestrade was already speaking of charges and statements and seemed once more very much the official man of Scotland Yard. Holmes let him go on and said nothing more until John Hector McFarlane was brought back and the full truth was put before him. The poor young man could hardly believe the turn his fate had taken. A few hours earlier he had seemed lost. Now the man who had plotted against him stood alive before everyone.
　　Before we left, Lestrade admitted, with some unwilling honesty, that Holmes had once again seen farther than the police. Holmes answered lightly that the case had not been simple and that Lestrade had at least followed it with energy. But when we were driving back to Baker Street, he said more clearly what he thought. The dangerous thing in such cases, he told me, is not lack of intelligence, but too much love of the obvious. A thing may look complete and still be false. That is why one must always test the neat story against the facts themselves. So ended the strange business of the Norwood builder, and John Hector McFarlane, saved from ruin by the smallest crack in a carefully built lie, was free again.


The Adventure of the Dancing Men

Part 1

　　One morning Holmes was sitting at the table with some chemical work before him when he suddenly asked me whether I had decided not to put my money into South African shares. The question was so unexpected that I stared at him in surprise. He smiled at once and said that my face showed exactly what he expected. In a few minutes, he added, I would say that his reasoning was very simple. I answered that I was sure I would say nothing of the kind.
　　Holmes then explained it in his usual way. Chalk, he said, had been visible between my left finger and thumb when I came in the night before. I use chalk in that place only when I play billiards. I play billiards only with one man, Thurston. Some weeks earlier, I had told Holmes that Thurston wanted me to join him in some South African investment. Since I had not taken my cheque-book from its locked drawer, Holmes had decided that I had chosen not to invest. When he finished, I had to admit that the whole thing was indeed very simple once he had explained it.
　　Holmes only laughed and said that many problems seem easy after the answer is known. Then he pushed a small sheet of paper across the table and told me to look at that if I wanted a real puzzle. I picked it up and saw at once that it was covered with little pencil drawings of tiny men. They looked as if they were dancing, waving their arms, or standing in strange positions. I said at once that it seemed like the work of a child. Holmes asked whether that was my full opinion, and I answered that I could think of nothing else it could be.
　　He told me then that the paper had come that morning from a man named Hilton Cubitt of Riding Thorpe Manor in Norfolk. Mr. Cubitt, he said, had written that these little figures had frightened his wife very badly, though he himself could make nothing of them. Holmes had asked him to come to Baker Street and bring all the facts. He expected him very shortly. Even as Holmes spoke, there came the sound of steps on the stairs, and our visitor was shown in.
　　Hilton Cubitt was a tall, broad, sunburned man with clear eyes and the open face of an honest country gentleman. There was something strong and simple about him which made a good impression at once. He greeted us in a straightforward way and then saw the paper lying on the table. He said that it was the very sheet he had sent ahead by post so that Holmes could begin to study the matter before he arrived. Holmes asked him to sit down and tell the story from the true beginning, not leaving out even the smallest detail.
　　Mr. Cubitt said that he must first explain something about himself. His family, he told us, had lived for five centuries at Riding Thorpe in Norfolk. He was not a rich man, but the name was old and well known in that part of England. Last year he had come up to London for the Jubilee and had stayed in a boarding-house, because the vicar of his parish was then in town and had taken rooms there. In that house he met a young American lady named Elsie Patrick.
　　They soon became close, and before a month had passed they were married. I could see that Holmes was listening carefully, because he always watched closely when a case began with marriage and hidden pasts. Cubitt went on to say that before the marriage Miss Patrick had been very honest with him about one thing. She told him that there had been unpleasant parts in her earlier life, things which caused her pain and which she wished to leave behind forever. She asked him not to force her to speak of them unless she chose to do so herself.
　　She also told him very clearly that there was nothing in her past of which she needed to feel shame in a moral sense. If he married her, he must do so in trust. Cubitt said that he had done exactly that and had never regretted it. Their married life had been happy. His wife was kind, gentle, and deeply loved by all around her. Until recently, there had been no trouble between them at all.
　　Then, about a month before his visit to us, a letter had come to Mrs. Cubitt from America. She turned very pale when she read it and threw it at once into the fire. When her husband asked whether bad news had come, she answered only that it was from some old friends and that there was nothing of importance in it. He had kept his promise and had asked no more. Even so, he could see from that day onward that a shadow had fallen over her.
　　She became anxious, nervous, and full of sudden fear. More than once he found her starting at small sounds or looking out of the window with a worried face. Still she said nothing clearly, and he would not force her. At last, one morning, he found some odd marks drawn in chalk on the window-sill. They were a row of those same little dancing figures which lay before us on the table. He had laughed at them then and thought that some village boy had been making foolish signs during the night.
　　When he showed them to his wife, however, the effect was terrible. She looked at them as if she had seen death itself. She did not faint, but she turned so white that he had to catch her by the arm to keep her from falling. After a little while she grew calmer and begged him very earnestly that if any more such figures appeared, he must let her see them at once and must not destroy them before she had looked at them. This request seemed so strange that he became seriously troubled for the first time.
　　For nearly a week nothing more happened. Then one morning he found the small paper now on Holmes’s table lying on the sundial in the garden. It had clearly been placed there during the night. Again he took it to his wife. This time she gave one glance at it and fell senseless to the floor. After that, said Cubitt, he could remain quiet no longer. He did not know what the figures meant, but he knew that they came from some danger in his wife’s past and that the danger had now followed her to Norfolk.
　　Holmes asked whether there had been any strangers seen in the neighbourhood. Cubitt answered that none had been noticed, though in the country a man might easily pass if he was careful. Holmes then asked whether his wife had at last explained anything. Cubitt shook his head sadly and said no. She had only begged him to trust her and to believe that all would still be well if he let her act in her own way. He did trust her, he said, with all his heart, but he could not stand by while something unseen was frightening her almost out of her reason.
　　Holmes then told him that he had done the right thing by coming. The figures clearly had some meaning, and meaning can often be broken open if enough examples are gathered. The paper before us was too short by itself, but it might be the start of something larger. He advised Mr. Cubitt to return home at once, to watch carefully, and to copy exactly any new dancing figures that might appear. If possible, he should also learn whether any stranger was in the area. “Bring me more of these little men,” said Holmes, “and I may perhaps tell you who is making them, why he is making them, and why your wife is so afraid.”

Part 2

　　About two weeks passed before we heard from Hilton Cubitt again. During that time Holmes more than once took out the little paper with the dancing figures and studied it in silence. He did not say much, but I could see that the problem interested him deeply. Sometimes he would look at the figures for a long time and then write letters or numbers on another sheet. At other times he would throw himself back in his chair and close his eyes, as if he were trying to see some hidden pattern in his mind.
　　One afternoon he told me not to go out, because he expected Mr. Cubitt to come again. A telegram had reached Baker Street that morning, and Holmes said that it suggested new trouble. He was right. Before long our Norfolk visitor arrived, and I was shocked at the change in him. His fresh country face now looked tired and worried, and the clear calm in his eyes had been replaced by strain. It was plain that the last two weeks had not been easy for him.
　　Holmes asked at once whether his wife had spoken more openly. Cubitt shook his head and said no. She had more than once seemed ready to tell him everything, but each time she had stopped herself. She had asked him again and again to trust her and had said that she could not bear to bring pain or shame into his old family. Those words, he said, only made him more certain that she herself was innocent and that the danger came from some cruel part of her past. Still, her fear was growing, and that fear was now destroying the peace of the house.
　　Holmes then asked whether any more figures had appeared. Cubitt answered that they had, and in much greater number. He took several small sheets from his pocket and placed them on the table. Holmes spread them out before him at once and looked over them with the keenest attention. One of the messages was longer than the others, and more than one group of figures appeared again and again. I saw at once that Holmes was pleased to have this new material, though his face remained very serious.
　　Cubitt then told us what had happened. The morning after he returned home from Baker Street, he found another line of dancing figures in chalk on the black door of the tool-house near the lawn. This time he copied them before rubbing them out. A day or two later there came another short message. After that he decided that he could not remain quiet. One night he took his revolver, sat in his study, and watched the garden through the window, determined to catch the unknown man if he came again.
　　It was about two in the morning, he said, when his wife entered the room in her dressing-gown and asked him what he was doing. He told her the truth. She begged him at once to give up the watch and come to bed. If these foolish signs troubled him so much, she said, then they should leave the house for a time and travel together. Cubitt answered that he would not be driven from his own home by some sneaking stranger. While they were speaking, his wife gave a sharp little cry and caught his arm.
　　Looking toward the tool-house, Cubitt saw a dark man creeping along the shadow of the wall. The fellow bent over the door and began drawing there with chalk. Cubitt jumped up with his revolver and rushed toward the garden. But at that very moment his wife threw both her arms round him and held him back with desperate force. He could hardly believe the strength she showed. By the time he broke free and ran outside, the man had escaped.
　　Even so, the visit had not been useless. Another row of dancing figures now stood upon the door. Cubitt copied them carefully. When morning came and he looked again, he saw that still another message had been added on a different panel of the same door. Holmes at once asked whether he was sure of that point. Cubitt said that he was completely sure. Holmes’s eyes flashed, and he said in a low voice that this was most important. He would not explain why, but I could see that the detail had greatly helped him.
　　Cubitt then added one thing more. During the struggle in the study, he had for a moment been angry with his wife. Why had she held him back? Was it possible that she feared not for him, but for the man outside? Yet the thought had not lasted. Her face had shown too much real terror. She had clung to him, he said, like a woman trying to stop her husband from running into death itself. So he no longer believed that she wished to protect the stranger. He believed she wished to protect him.
　　Holmes sat with the papers spread before him and asked one or two more questions. Had Cubitt seen the man’s face? No, not clearly. He had only seen that he was of middle height and moved quickly. Had he come from the direction of the Hall or the road? That, too, Cubitt could not say. Holmes then told him that the case had now moved forward greatly. He still could not read every message, but he was beginning to understand the system behind them. That alone, he said, was a great step.
　　Our visitor asked plainly what he should now do. Holmes answered that he must return to Norfolk, remain watchful, and send at once any fresh message that might appear. Under no condition, Holmes said, should he attack the stranger alone if he saw him again. The matter had become more dangerous than before. “You have a brave heart, Mr. Cubitt,” said Holmes, “but brave men sometimes walk straight into traps.” Cubitt promised that he would be careful, though I could see that the thought of waiting quietly did not come easily to him.
　　After he had gone, Holmes at once pushed aside all other business and gave himself fully to the dancing men. For hours he sat at the table with the papers before him, writing letters, numbers, and guesses on sheet after sheet. Sometimes he muttered to himself. Sometimes he sprang up and paced across the room. Then he would sit again and study one repeated group of figures as if he were trying to force it to speak. I had seen him in such moods before and knew better than to interrupt him too much.
　　Late in the evening he said that he was now sure of one thing. The figures did not stand for whole words, but for letters. It was therefore a true code, not a set of private signs with meanings known only to two people. That made it possible to solve, but only if enough examples could be gathered. One group appeared often enough, he said, that it might stand for a common name. Another repeated sign was likely to be the letter E, because in English it comes more often than any other. Holmes added that if he could once find one certain word, the rest would begin to open quickly.
　　Before going to bed he sent a telegram abroad. He would not yet tell me its exact purpose, but he said that he needed information from America and that the answer might help to explain why Mrs. Cubitt was so frightened. The next morning he was still working when a letter arrived from Norfolk. Holmes opened it quickly. It contained another line of dancing figures, longer than before. He studied it for several minutes without speaking. Then he said that the danger was getting closer and that we might soon have to go down to Norfolk ourselves. His face was pale and very grave. “This is no longer a joke of chalk on a door, Watson,” said he. “A man is calling to a woman, and that call is full of threat.”

Part 3

　　We had hardly stepped out at North Walsham station and said where we were going when the station-master came quickly toward us. He looked first at Holmes and then at me and asked if we were the detectives from London. Holmes’s face darkened at once. He asked what had happened and why such a question should be put to us. The man answered that Inspector Martin from Norwich had already passed through, and that there had been terrible news from Riding Thorpe Manor.
　　Then he told us the worst. Mr. Hilton Cubitt had been shot and lay dead. His wife had also been shot and was still alive, though the servants feared she would die. The first story in the house, he said, was that she had killed her husband and then herself. Holmes said nothing at all when he heard this. He only turned and hurried at once to a carriage, and I followed him in silence.
　　During the long drive, Holmes hardly spoke. I had never seen him more troubled. He sat with his face drawn and his eyes fixed before him, as if he were blaming himself for coming too late. The Norfolk land lay wide and quiet around us, with green fields, low farms, and old church towers rising far across the flat country. But neither of us gave much thought to any of it.
　　At last the driver pointed with his whip and said that Riding Thorpe Manor lay ahead. We soon saw the old house among the trees, and in front of it the lawn, the black tool-house, and the sundial which had already become so familiar to us through Cubitt’s letters. A small active man with a trimmed moustache was just getting down from a dog-cart as we arrived. He introduced himself as Inspector Martin of the Norfolk police. He was clearly very surprised when he heard Holmes’s name.
　　He asked how Holmes could possibly have heard of the crime so quickly in London and reached the house almost as soon as he had. Holmes answered that he had not come because he had heard of it, but because he had feared it. He had hoped to stop the danger before it came. Martin then said that Holmes must know something important already, because the Cubitts had been thought a very close and happy couple. Holmes replied that he knew only the story of the dancing men, but that it might now help to explain the whole tragedy.
　　The inspector had the good sense to welcome him warmly and to ask for his help. Holmes answered that he was very ready to give it, if he could act freely and quickly. We were then told that the local doctor had just come down from Mrs. Cubitt’s room. Her wound was serious, but she was not yet dead. The bullet had passed through the front of her head, and it was impossible to know when, or even whether, she would wake and speak again. There was only one revolver in the room, and two shots had been fired.
　　We first heard the servants. The cook and the housemaid had both been woken in the night by the sound of a shot. One of them thought there had then been a second shot almost at once, though she could not speak with full certainty. When they rushed downstairs, they found the study door open. Mr. Cubitt lay dead on the floor. Mrs. Cubitt was wounded near the window. The room was full of smoke and the smell of powder.
　　Both women were sure that the window was shut and fastened when they entered. That point interested Holmes at once. He asked whether they had smelled the powder as soon as they reached the passage outside the room, and they answered yes. He then asked if they had heard any voices before the shots. No, they had heard nothing but the explosions. Both also said very strongly that husband and wife had always seemed deeply attached to each other.
　　We next went into the study itself. It was a small pleasant room with books, a writing-table, and a window looking out on the garden. Hilton Cubitt lay where he had fallen. His dressing-gown showed that he had risen quickly from sleep and had had no time to dress properly. The bullet had struck him from the front and passed straight through his heart.
　　Holmes examined the body closely and then turned to the doctor. He asked whether there were powder-marks on Cubitt’s hands or clothes. There were none. Mrs. Cubitt, however, had powder-stains on her face. Holmes said that this was important, though not yet enough by itself. Then, all at once, he bent down near the window and pointed to a small clean hole in the lower part of the window-sash.
　　The inspector gave a cry of surprise. A third bullet had passed through the wood there. That meant at once that a third shot had been fired and that some third person must have been present. Holmes said that he had looked for such a mark the moment he heard the servants’ account. If the smell of powder had spread so quickly through the house, then the door and the window must both have been open at the time of the shooting. Yet they had later been shut. Someone inside the room had therefore closed the window after the violence was over.
　　We went out at once into the garden below the study window. There the soft flower-bed showed what the room had hidden. The earth was trampled. Footprints were plain in the wet soil, and they were the prints of a man’s feet. Holmes went down on one knee and followed them with the greatest care. Then he suddenly picked up a small brass cartridge case and held it up in his fingers.
　　“That settles it,” he said. “The third man fired from outside, and he used a revolver that throws out the empty case.” Inspector Martin, who had begun the morning with a very simple theory of husband and wife shooting each other, now followed Holmes like a student following a master. He asked whether the whole thing was clear now. Holmes answered that much was clear, but one important thing still remained. We had to know who the man outside had been.
　　Then Holmes asked a question which sounded strange at first. Was there any place nearby called Elridge’s, or something like it? None of the servants knew such a name, but the stable-boy said that there was a farm belonging to a man named Elridge some miles away in the direction of East Ruston. Holmes asked if it was lonely. The boy said yes, very lonely indeed.
　　Holmes thought for a little while and then told the boy to saddle a horse. After that he spread all the dancing messages out on the table in the drawing-room and looked at them once more. He now seemed much surer of himself than before. With quick movements he wrote a short note in a rough hand, folded it, and addressed it to Mr. Abe Slaney, Elridge’s Farm, East Ruston. He told the stable-boy to place the note in the man’s hand and to answer no questions of any kind.
　　Inspector Martin looked puzzled when he heard the name, but Holmes did not explain it at once. Instead, he advised the inspector to send quietly for more police help, because we might soon need to arrest a very dangerous man. He also gave a careful order to the servants. If anyone came asking about Mrs. Cubitt, they were to say nothing about her condition, but were to show the visitor at once into the drawing-room. This instruction Holmes repeated very clearly, so that there could be no mistake.
　　When all this had been arranged, we waited in the drawing-room, and at last Holmes explained the dancing men to us. He said that he had solved the code by treating the little figures as letters, not as whole words. One figure appeared very often, and he judged that it must stand for E, the most common letter in English. The small flags showed the ends of words. From there he had slowly built the rest of the alphabet by comparing repeated groups and likely names.
　　The great step had come when he guessed that one repeated group must be the name ELSIE. Once that was clear, many other things followed. The first message could then be read as “AM HERE ABE SLANEY.” Another message was a call to Elsie to meet him. The long message sent from Norfolk before our journey had been the most terrible of all: “ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD.” Holmes said that when he read those words, he knew the danger had become very great.
　　He had also sent a telegram to America and had now received the answer. Abe Slaney, he told us, was a well-known criminal from Chicago and one of the most dangerous men in that city. That was why he had feared for the Cubitts and why he had travelled to Norfolk with such urgency. It now seemed clear that Elsie Cubitt had once known this man and had tried to escape him forever. Instead, he had followed her across the ocean and had now brought ruin to her house.
　　Holmes ended by saying that he believed the note would bring Abe Slaney to us very soon. The man would imagine that Elsie herself had written it, and he would come at once if he thought she still wished to see him. So we sat and waited, with the house quiet around us and the dark garden outside the window. The truth was now very near, but the price paid for it had already been terrible.

Part 4

　　We had not been waiting long when we heard steps outside. A tall dark man came quickly up the drive and rang the bell with a bold hand. Holmes had already placed Inspector Martin and me behind the door, while he himself stood where he could face the visitor at once. The man who entered was strongly built, with a dark face, black beard, and bright restless eyes. He wore good clothes, but there was something dangerous and violent in his whole manner.
　　Holmes stepped forward at once and said, “Abe Slaney, I think.” The man started hard at hearing his own name, and before he could move, Inspector Martin had seized one arm while I caught the other. In another moment the handcuffs were on him. For an instant he struggled like a wild animal, but then he stopped and looked from one of us to another with great anger and surprise. He said that we had trapped him well, but asked at once how we had got him there.
　　Holmes answered that the note had brought him. Slaney’s face changed at once, and all his rough courage seemed to leave him. He cried out that Elsie had not betrayed him and asked where she was. Holmes said very quietly that Mrs. Cubitt was badly wounded and that her husband was dead. At those words the man gave a terrible cry and fell into a chair as if his strength had gone from him.
　　For some minutes he could hardly speak. At last he looked up and said that if Elsie was truly hurt, then he did not care much what became of him. But he swore with great force that he had not meant harm to her. Holmes answered that this might be true, but that serious harm had certainly come. He then told Slaney that the best thing he could do now was to speak plainly and tell the full truth. If he lied, the lies would only make his position worse.
　　Slaney said that he would hide nothing. Elsie, he told us, had known him in Chicago when she was a girl. There had been a gang there, and her father had been their leader. That father had invented the dancing men as a secret code. Elsie had learned it when she was young, though she hated the criminal life around her. Slaney said that he had once hoped to marry her, but she wanted no part of him unless he gave up crime, and he never did.
　　Later she had escaped from that life and gone to England, where she married Hilton Cubitt. Slaney found out where she was and followed her across the sea. At first he wrote to her, but when she answered nothing, he began using the dancing men to force her to notice him. He admitted that he had frightened her badly, but said that he had loved her in his own rough way and had hoped to make her come back with him. Holmes answered coldly that such love was only another form of cruelty.
　　Slaney then told us of the last night. Elsie had sent him a letter begging him to stop and leave her in peace. She also said that she would come down at three in the morning and speak to him at the window if he would then go away forever. He had gone to the study window at the agreed time. She came as promised and even brought money, hoping to pay him to leave. That, he said, made him lose his temper, because he thought she was trying to buy him off like some common street man.
　　He caught her by the arm and tried to pull her toward him. At that very moment Hilton Cubitt rushed into the room with a revolver in his hand. Elsie dropped to the floor between them. Slaney said that Cubitt fired first and missed him. He himself then fired back almost at once, and Cubitt fell dead. In his panic he ran across the garden, and as he ran, he heard the window close behind him.
　　Holmes listened without speaking until the story was done. Then he said that the account agreed with what the room and garden had already told us. It also fully cleared Mrs. Cubitt from the false idea that she had shot her husband. Slaney answered that if Elsie lived, he was glad of that one thing at least. He asked in a lower voice whether he might see her once before he was taken away. Holmes shook his head and said that she was still unconscious and that no one could see her.
　　Soon after that, the police carriage came up the drive. Inspector Martin rose and placed his hand on the prisoner’s shoulder. Slaney stood up without resistance now. He looked like a man who had suddenly grown many years older. As he was led to the door, he turned once more and asked Holmes if Elsie would be told that he had not wished to hurt her. Holmes said that if she recovered and if the moment was right, the truth would be known to her.
　　After the prisoner had gone, Holmes picked up the note which had brought him there and handed it to me. He asked whether I could read it now. I looked at the little line of dancing men and, with the key he had already explained, I made out the words, “Come here at once.” Holmes said that he had known such a message would bring Slaney without fail. The man believed that only Elsie herself could write in that code with such ease. So the same little figures which had brought fear and death had at last also brought the criminal into our hands.
　　Before we left the house, Holmes said one more thing to Inspector Martin. The case, he said, should not be treated as some simple story of jealousy between husband and wife, because that would be a lie against an innocent woman. The truth was stranger, darker, and sadder. A woman had tried to escape her past, but the past had crossed the ocean after her. Inspector Martin agreed and said that Holmes had saved the honour of Mrs. Cubitt’s name, even if he had not been able to save her husband’s life.
　　There is only a little more to tell. Abe Slaney was later sentenced to death, though the sentence was changed because it was accepted that Hilton Cubitt had fired first. Mrs. Cubitt slowly recovered from her wound, though her life after that was naturally a very quiet one. She remained at Riding Thorpe and gave herself to good works among the poor. As for Holmes, he always spoke of this case with sadness, because he felt that he had read the danger correctly, yet had arrived only a little too late. So ended the adventure of the dancing men, one of the strangest and saddest of all the cases that ever came to Baker Street.


The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist

Part 1

　　From 1894 to 1901, Holmes was a very busy man. During those years, there was hardly any difficult public case in which he was not asked for advice. There were also many private cases, some of them very strange, in which he played an important part. I have not written down all of them, because some are too slight and others cannot yet be told. But the case of the solitary cyclist deserves a place in these papers, because it began in a quiet way and slowly showed a much darker shape.
　　It was on a Saturday morning in April of 1895 that Miss Violet Smith first came to Baker Street. Holmes was at that time deeply interested in another matter, and he was not pleased to be interrupted. Even so, the young lady who entered our room was not the sort of visitor one could easily send away. She was tall, graceful, and handsome, with a calm face and fine dark eyes. There was strength in her manner, but also worry, and it was plain that she had come because something had truly disturbed her.
　　Holmes put down the papers he had been reading and asked her to sit. Before she had spoken many words, he looked at her with that quick, exact attention which missed so little. Then he said that at least her health could not be the reason for her visit, because a woman who rode a bicycle as much as she did must be in very good condition. Miss Violet Smith looked down at her feet in surprise and asked how he could possibly know that. Holmes pointed to the side of one shoe, where the leather had been worn by constant pressure on the pedal. She smiled a little, even in her anxiety, and admitted that she did indeed cycle a great deal.
　　Holmes next took her hand for a moment and looked at it. He apologized at once, but said that such things were part of his work. At first, he had thought she might be a typist, but her fingers told him another story. The ends were shaped more like those of a musician. Her face, too, had a quiet inward look that matched music better than office work. Miss Smith answered that this was also correct. She was a music teacher.
　　He then asked whether she taught in the country, because she had the fresh colour of open air rather than the pale look of a London worker. Again she said yes. She lived during the week near Farnham, on the Surrey border, and came up to town only at weekends. Holmes told her to begin at the beginning and leave nothing out. She did so in a clear and sensible way which made a very good impression on both of us.
　　Her father, she said, had been James Smith, who once led the orchestra at the old Imperial Theatre. When he died, her mother and she had been left with very little money. There was only one known relation, an uncle named Ralph Smith, who had gone to Africa twenty-five years earlier and had never been heard from again. Then, one day, there appeared an advertisement in the newspaper asking for the address of Miss Violet Smith or her mother. Naturally, they were excited and wondered whether some unexpected good fortune had come at last.
　　They went at once to the office named in the advertisement and there met two men who had lately returned from South Africa. Their names were Carruthers and Woodley. These men told them that they had known Ralph Smith in Johannesburg and had been with him when he died in poverty. With his last breath, he had asked them to see that his sister and her daughter did not suffer want if they could help it. Miss Smith said that at first this sounded kind and honest, though one of the two men quickly made a very bad impression on her.
　　That man was Mr. Woodley. She described him as red-moustached, coarse, loud, and very unpleasant from the first minute. He stared at her in a way that made her uncomfortable and spoke far too freely. The other man, Mr. Carruthers, was quite different. He was older, dark, quiet, clean-shaven, and much better mannered. When he learned how hard the women’s life had become, he offered Miss Smith a post as music teacher to his little daughter, ten years old, at a place called Chiltern Grange, about six miles from Farnham.
　　Miss Smith said that at first she refused, because she did not wish to leave her mother. Carruthers then suggested that she should stay in his house only during the week and return to London every Saturday. He also offered a salary of one hundred pounds a year, which was very much higher than such work usually brought. Their need was great, and so she accepted. She went down to Chiltern Grange and there found a respectable housekeeper, Mrs. Dixon, a pleasant child, and a house that seemed peaceful enough. For a time she thought herself very fortunate.
　　Then Mr. Woodley came for a visit. Miss Smith’s face changed when she spoke of him, and I could see how deeply she disliked the man. She said that he stayed for a week, but the week seemed three times as long. He was rude to everyone, drank too much, and paid her great attention in a rough and shameful way. At last, one day after dinner, he caught her in his arms and swore that he would not let her go until she had kissed him.
　　She might have been seriously hurt if Mr. Carruthers had not entered the room at that moment. Carruthers dragged Woodley away and saved her. Then the two men fought, and Woodley struck Carruthers so violently that he cut his face open. After that, Woodley left the house. Carruthers apologized deeply and promised Miss Smith that she would never again be troubled by such a man under his roof. She believed him, and for a little while things became quiet again.
　　Holmes listened very carefully and then asked if this was the matter which had brought her to Baker Street. Miss Smith answered no. All that had been unpleasant, but it was not the true cause of her fear. The real trouble had begun later on the lonely road between Chiltern Grange and Farnham Station. Every Saturday she rode her bicycle there to catch the 12:22 train to London. The road was quiet, with open heath on one side and the grounds of Charlington Hall on the other. Very few people used it.
　　About two weeks before her visit to us, she happened to look behind her while riding along this road and saw a man on a bicycle following her at some distance. He had a beard and was of middle height. He did not try to come near her, and he did not speak. She thought very little of it then. But the next Saturday the same thing happened again, in the same place and in the same strange silent way.
　　On the third Saturday she decided to test him. She slowed down, and he slowed down too. She stopped, and he stopped also, still keeping the same distance behind her. Then she suddenly turned her bicycle and rode back toward him, hoping to force him to pass and show his face. To her surprise, he turned instantly and rode away. He was still gone by the time she reached the station road again. What troubled her most was not only that he followed her, but that he always stayed far enough away to keep his face hidden.
　　Holmes asked at once whether she had ever told Mr. Carruthers of this strange man. She said yes. Carruthers had seemed very disturbed and had advised her not to travel alone. Soon after that, he bought a horse and dog-cart so that she might be driven to the station instead of riding by herself. This was kind, she said, but it did not remove her uneasiness. The whole matter felt wrong. Why should a man silently follow her week after week and then fly the moment she turned to face him?
　　Holmes asked one or two more questions in a very quiet voice. Had she ever seen the cyclist near the house itself? No. Had she noticed whether he came from the direction of Charlington Hall? She could not be certain, but it might have been so. Had she spoken of this to the police? No, because there had been no direct attack, and she feared being laughed at. Holmes nodded and at last leaned back in his chair. “This is certainly curious,” he said. “It may be nothing serious, but it may also be the edge of something much worse. You have done wisely to come.”

Part 2

　　Holmes did not let Miss Violet Smith leave at once. He asked a few more questions in his quiet way. Was there any man to whom she was already promised? She blushed a little and said yes, there was. His name was Cyril Morton, and he was an electrical engineer. Holmes nodded and said that this was important, because it made one part of the case much clearer.
　　He then asked whether Mr. Carruthers knew of this engagement. Miss Smith said that he did. He had behaved with respect, but she could see that he was unhappy about it. Even so, she did not believe him capable of any cruel or dishonest act. Holmes answered that belief and proof are not always the same thing. Still, he agreed that Carruthers did not look like the chief danger in the matter.
　　At last Holmes told her what to do. She must go on exactly as before and tell no one that she had come to Baker Street. If the bearded cyclist appeared again, she must notice every small thing she could, but she must not try to stop him or speak to him. If there was any new event, she was to write at once. Holmes said that he would send someone to the district on the next Saturday to see the road with his own eyes. Miss Smith thanked him warmly and left us with a face that was a little less troubled than when she had come in.
　　The moment the door closed behind her, Holmes turned to me and said that I was the person who would go. I confess that I was pleased. There was something in the case which had already caught my imagination. A lonely road, a silent cyclist, a hidden past, and two strange men from South Africa made an odd and troubling picture. Holmes himself said that he could not yet leave his other work, but that a direct look at the road might tell us a great deal.
　　So on the following Saturday I went down to Farnham by the morning train. The country there was very pleasant, with woods, heath, and quiet roads lying under a clear spring sky. I made my way to the road which Miss Smith had described. It was just as lonely as she had said, with open land on one side and the trees of Charlington Hall on the other. I placed myself behind a clump of bushes from which I could see well in both directions without being seen myself.
　　After a short wait, I saw Miss Violet Smith come riding along the road on her bicycle. She sat very straight and looked calm, but I could not forget how much fear lay behind that calm face. A little way behind her came the solitary cyclist. He was indeed a bearded man of middle height, and just as she had said, he kept always at the same distance. He did not try to come near, and he clearly wished above all things to keep his face from her sight.
　　I watched the two of them for some minutes. Then Miss Smith suddenly slowed, stopped, and turned her bicycle sharply in the road. The man did the same. The moment she faced him, he turned too and rode quickly away from her, keeping his distance as before. There could now be no doubt that his strange conduct was planned. He wanted to follow her, but he did not want her to see him closely.
　　When Miss Smith had passed on toward the station, the cyclist came back slowly along the road. I kept hidden and watched him closely. As soon as he reached the edge of the grounds of Charlington Hall, he slipped from his bicycle, passed through a gap in the hedge, and disappeared among the trees. So the Hall was certainly connected with the matter. That much, at least, was clear.
　　I crossed the heath and tried to see more, but the trees were thick and the house stood well back from the road. I caught only one distant view of a large grey building half hidden among old branches. There was something dark and lonely about it, even in daylight. I could not remain there forever, so after marking the place well in my mind, I went back toward Farnham to see what more I could learn.
　　My first thought was to ask at a house agent’s office about the Hall. The man there was polite enough, but he knew little and cared less. He told me only that the house had been let some time earlier to a man named Williamson. He thought Williamson was elderly and respectable, but he could say nothing more. This was not much help, and I returned to London feeling that I had learned only half of what might have been learned.
　　Holmes listened closely when I reported the whole matter that evening. To my surprise, he was not pleased. He said that my hiding-place had been badly chosen, because from another position I might have seen the cyclist’s face. He also said that I had made one serious mistake after another. Since the man clearly came and went through the grounds of Charlington Hall, I should have spoken not to a London-style office clerk, but to the people of the district. The nearest public-house, Holmes said, would almost certainly have told me more in ten minutes than the house agent had told me in all his careful empty words.
　　I answered that this was easy to say after the event. Holmes laughed and admitted that I had at least proved one important point. The cyclist was real, and the Hall had something to do with him. That alone was useful. But he added that one thing now seemed nearly certain. The man followed Miss Smith because he knew her, and he kept his distance because he did not want her to know him. “That,” said Holmes, “is not the act of a lover, Watson. It is the act of a watcher.”
　　He was still thinking over the matter when a letter from Miss Smith reached Baker Street on the following day. In it she said that Mr. Carruthers had now openly asked her to marry him. She had refused him, of course, because of her promise to Cyril Morton. At the same time, she wrote that she had seen Mr. Woodley again in the neighbourhood, though not inside the house. Holmes read the letter twice and then said that the case was becoming darker. “There are too many men round this one woman,” he said, “and too much secrecy among them. We are not looking at a foolish country game. We are looking at a plan.”

Part 3

　　Two days later another letter came from Miss Violet Smith, and this one made the case more urgent. She wrote that she had decided to leave Chiltern Grange for good. Mr. Carruthers had bought a horse and dog-cart, so she would no longer need to ride alone to the station. On the coming Saturday she meant to go up to town and not return. She also said that Mr. Woodley had been seen again in the neighbourhood and that his face showed signs of a recent beating. Holmes read the letter in silence and then said that we must go down ourselves on Saturday morning. He did not like the look of things at all.
　　So we went to Surrey together and took our place near the lonely road. The morning was bright and clear after rain, and the country looked peaceful enough, but Holmes’s face was very serious. Before long we saw the dog-cart in the distance. At once Holmes gave a sharp cry. Something was wrong. The horse was coming quickly along the road, but there was no driver on the box and no passenger inside. The trap was empty.
　　Holmes ran out and caught the horse’s head just in time. The animal was excited, but he brought it under control at once. There was no sign of Violet Smith anywhere. Holmes said in a hard voice that violence had clearly been done and that we had come very near, but not quite near enough. Even as he spoke, we heard a bicycle coming fast behind us.
　　A bearded man rode round the bend, saw the empty cart, and looked so shocked that I knew at once this was the same silent watcher from the road. He jumped from his machine and cried out to know where Miss Smith was. Holmes answered quickly that we had found the cart empty and were trying to discover the truth. At once the man struck his hand against his forehead and cried that “they” had got her at last. He said that if we were really her friends, we must come with him without delay, because there might still be time.
　　There was such real pain in his voice that neither Holmes nor I doubted him any longer. He led us through a gap in the hedge and across a path through the woods. In a very short time we came upon a man lying among the bushes. It was the groom, Peter, badly injured and still senseless. Blood ran from a wound on his head, but Holmes said at once that his skull was not broken and that he would live. The bearded cyclist cried that there was no time to lose and pushed on again.
　　We followed the marks upon the wet path until we heard, suddenly and terribly, the scream of a woman. It came from ahead and a little to the left. We ran with all speed toward the sound and came out into an open place near an old church. There, under a large tree, stood Violet Smith, pale, weak, and half fainting, while beside her stood Woodley with his red moustache and violent face. Near them was an older man with white hair and a black coat, holding a book in his hand like a clergyman.
　　The meaning of the scene was clear at once. Some kind of marriage had just been forced upon the unhappy girl. Woodley burst into a shout of ugly triumph and cried that we were too late, because she was now his wife. At that the bearded cyclist gave a cry of rage, tore the false beard from his face, and showed us the features of Mr. Carruthers. In the same instant he drew a revolver and fired. Woodley fell with a bullet through his body.
　　Everything after that happened very fast. The false clergyman, who was a man named Williamson, tried to draw a weapon of his own, but Holmes had him covered before he could use it. I ran to Violet Smith, who was trembling so much that she could hardly stand. Holmes disarmed Williamson and then took the revolver from Carruthers as well. For a moment the whole open space seemed full of confusion, anger, and fear. Then Holmes, as always, brought order into it with a few sharp words.
　　Violet Smith was led to safety first. Then Holmes turned to Carruthers and demanded the full truth. The man, now white and shaken, said that he would tell everything. He admitted that from the beginning he and Woodley had come from South Africa with a plan. They knew that Miss Smith’s uncle Ralph was near death and that money would soon come to her. The plan had been that Woodley should marry her, and that the two men should then share the money between them.
　　Carruthers said that he had agreed to this ugly scheme at first. But after Violet came into his house, he fell truly in love with her and could not go on with it. He then tried to protect her from Woodley, though he had not the honesty to tell her the whole truth. It was he who had followed her on the lonely road with a false beard. He did it, he said, not to frighten her, but to watch over her and make sure that Woodley or some other danger did not reach her while she rode alone.
　　Holmes said coldly that even this better side of the story did not make him innocent. Carruthers admitted it. He had been part of the plot from the beginning, and he could not deny it. Even so, when the final danger came, he had tried to stop it. He explained that the news of Ralph Smith’s death had made the others move quickly. They knew the money would soon be real and ready to claim. Williamson, who had once been a clergyman, joined them in the plot. Together they had stopped the cart, struck down the groom, dragged Violet away, and forced the marriage.
　　Carruthers had followed as fast as he could, but he had arrived only just in time. When he saw Woodley beside Violet after the forced ceremony, he lost control and fired. Holmes asked whether he had meant to kill him. Carruthers answered that he had meant to stop him forever, and that he could not honestly say more than that. Woodley, however, was still alive, though badly wounded, and Williamson stood under guard in a dark and ugly silence.
　　In a short time the local police arrived. Holmes explained the matter clearly enough for immediate arrests to be made. Violet Smith, though deeply shaken, showed more courage than many stronger people might have shown. She thanked Holmes with tears in her eyes and said that she had never fully understood how great the danger was until that dreadful morning. Holmes told her that the only good thing left in the case was that the truth had come out before her life was fully ruined.
　　There was, in fact, one more good thing. The forced marriage could not stand, and the danger from Woodley and Williamson was over. Miss Smith returned safely to her mother in London, and later the money from her uncle did indeed come to her. Not long after that, she married Cyril Morton, the man she had loved from the beginning. As for Carruthers, his guilt was real, but so was his late attempt to save her. Holmes said only that human beings are rarely wholly black or wholly white.
　　The legal end of the matter followed in the usual way. Woodley and Williamson were punished for their crimes, and the whole ugly business was broken open at last. Yet what stayed most clearly in my mind was not the court or the punishment. It was the picture of that quiet country road, the silent cyclist following from a distance, and the hidden danger growing week by week around one innocent woman. So ended the adventure of the solitary cyclist, a case which began like a strange little mystery and ended in greed, violence, and one desperate attempt at rescue.


The Adventure of the Priory School

Part 1

　　We had seen many strange people come into our rooms in Baker Street, but I do not remember any entrance more sudden than that of Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable. His card came in first, covered with so many letters after his name that the small piece of paper seemed hardly large enough for them. Then the man himself followed. He was large, heavy, and very dignified, with the look of a person used to respect and control. Yet the moment the door shut behind him, he staggered, caught at the table, and then fell heavily to the floor on our bearskin rug.
　　Holmes and I were both on our feet at once. For a moment we could only stare, because such a large and impressive man looked very strange lying there helpless and silent. Then Holmes pushed a cushion under his head, while I poured a little brandy between his lips and felt his pulse. His face was white and lined with trouble. His collar and shirt were dusty from travel, his hair was rough and untidy, and his chin was unshaven, as if he had not rested or cared for himself for many hours.
　　Holmes at once picked a return railway ticket from the man’s pocket and said that it was from Mackleton, in the north of England. Since it was not yet noon, he added, our visitor must have started very early. The eyelids moved, and a moment later two grey, tired eyes opened and looked up at us. Almost at once the man struggled to his feet with surprising speed, and his face turned red with shame at his weakness. He apologized and said that he had been greatly overworked and upset. A glass of milk and a biscuit, he thought, would set him right at once.
　　Holmes told him that explanation could wait until he had recovered himself. The man, however, said that he had come in person because no telegram could show how urgent the matter was. He wished Holmes to return north with him by the very next train. Holmes answered, with some coldness, that he was already deeply engaged in important work and could not leave London for every stranger who came to Baker Street in a state of alarm. At that, the big man became even more serious and said that no more important matter could well be imagined. The only son of the Duke of Holdernesse had disappeared.
　　That name changed everything. Holmes sat up at once and repeated the title. The Duke of Holdernesse was one of the greatest men in England, rich, powerful, and well known in public life. Holmes reached for his big book of reference and quickly found the article. He read enough to remind himself of the Duke’s high position, his large estates, and the fact that he had only one child and heir, Lord Saltire. Then Holmes looked again at our visitor with much greater attention.
　　The man now introduced himself properly as Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, founder and head of the Priory School near Mackleton. He said that his school was one of the most respected in England and that boys from the highest families were educated there. Some weeks earlier, the Duke had placed his only son, Lord Saltire, in his care. It had seemed the greatest honour in the history of the school. Now it threatened to become the school’s worst disaster.
　　Lord Saltire, he said, was ten years old, a bright and charming boy, and at first had been happy enough. There had, however, been trouble in the Duke’s home. It was known that the Duke and Duchess were living apart, and the child loved his mother deeply. For that reason, the separation had affected him more than most boys of his age. Even so, after the first sadness, he had appeared to settle well into school life. No one had expected what came next.
　　On the morning three days earlier, the boy was found to be missing. His room was on the second floor. He could not have left by the door without passing through another room where two older boys slept, and those boys had heard nothing during the night. Therefore it seemed certain that he had gone by the window. The window had been open, and there was ivy on the wall outside. Yet no clear sign could be found below.
　　Worse still, one of the masters had disappeared at the same time. This was Heidegger, the German teacher. His bed had not been slept in, and his bicycle was gone. Since both boy and master had vanished in the same night, the first idea was that Heidegger had taken Lord Saltire away. Yet even this simple explanation was full of problems. The teacher had left behind most of his things, and nothing in his conduct earlier had suggested that he meant to run away.
　　The whole district had been searched. The local police had done what they could. The Duke himself and his secretary, Mr. James Wilder, had come at once to the school. Roads were watched, inquiries were made, and every effort had been used, but all had failed. Three full days had passed, and there was still no sign of the missing child. Dr. Huxtable said that he had at last come to Holmes because the honour of the school, and perhaps the life of the boy, might depend on one mind seeing what others had missed.
　　Holmes asked one or two quick questions. Had the Duchess been told? Yes, she had. Had there been any message asking for money? No, none at all. Had the boy shown any plan or wish to run away to his mother? Not openly, though he had always been deeply attached to her. Holmes then stood with his back to the fire and looked down at our visitor. The case, he said, was serious enough to put aside all other work. We would go north with Dr. Huxtable by the next train and see the school for ourselves.

Part 2

　　That same afternoon we left London with Dr. Huxtable and travelled north. Our companion was so tired that for part of the journey he could hardly keep his eyes open, yet even in his weakness he showed the habits of a man used to order and command. He answered Holmes’s questions as well as he could and gave us the few extra details which had come to his mind since breakfast. Lord Saltire had been cheerful enough the evening before he vanished, and nothing in Heidegger’s manner had seemed strange. That, said Holmes, made the case more interesting, not less.
　　By the time we reached the school, the light was already fading. The Priory was a large, quiet building standing in lonely country, with dark trees behind it and open land beyond. It looked more like a country house than a school, and there was about it an air of comfort and old respectability. Yet the whole place felt heavy and troubled. Even the servants moved in silence, and every face seemed to ask the same question.
　　We had hardly entered when Dr. Huxtable was told that the Duke of Holdernesse and his secretary were still in the house. A few minutes later we were shown into a study where both men were waiting. The Duke was a tall, severe-looking man, very pale, with a long beard and a face that seemed made to hide feeling. Beside him stood Mr. James Wilder, a much younger man, quick in movement and bright-eyed, with a sharp, nervous face. I thought at once that Wilder looked less calm than his master.
　　It was not the Duke but the secretary who first spoke. In a tone that was polite but clearly displeased, he said that Dr. Huxtable had acted rather boldly in going to London without first consulting his Grace. Holmes answered very quietly that the step had already been taken, and that the only question now was whether his services were wanted or not. Wilder looked as if he would gladly have sent us away. The Duke, however, raised one hand and ended the matter at once.
　　He said that since Holmes was already there, it would be foolish not to use him. He even offered us rooms at Holdernesse Hall, but Holmes answered that our proper place was at the school, where the first facts had appeared. The Duke accepted this and then replied to several questions. No message asking for money had come. He did not believe the Duchess had taken the boy. Yet when Holmes asked directly whether the child had strong love for his mother, the Duke admitted that he had. The answer was calm, but I could feel pain behind it.
　　Holmes next asked about a letter which the Duke had written to his son shortly before the disappearance. This point seemed to interest him very much. Wilder answered that he himself had posted the letter with others from the house. Holmes only nodded, though I saw that this small detail had fixed itself in his mind. When the interview ended, the Duke looked tired rather than angry, but Wilder still watched Holmes with open distrust.
　　As soon as they had gone, Holmes began work at once. We first examined Lord Saltire’s room. It was exactly as Dr. Huxtable had described, and it was clear that the boy could not have passed out by the inner door without waking the two boys in the next room. The open window, the ivy, and the position of the bed all pointed in one direction only. Holmes spent a long time there, looking not only at what was present, but at what was absent. Then we passed to Heidegger’s room.
　　There too the window was the important point. The bed had not been slept in, and the teacher’s ordinary clothes were still there, though he had clearly put on some outer things in haste. Holmes looked carefully below the window and found a mark in the grass where a man had dropped or jumped down. This pleased him, because it showed that the teacher had indeed gone out that way. It did not, however, tell us whether Heidegger had led the boy away or had followed him.
　　Later that evening Holmes went out alone for a long walk. He returned carrying a large map of the district, which he spread on the table and studied with great care. He showed me the school, the moor, the woods, the road, and the great house of Holdernesse Hall lying some miles away. If the boy and the German had gone by the road, Holmes said, someone should have seen them. Yet the police watch on one side and the inn on the other had seen no such travellers. That made the open land to the north much more important than the road.
　　Holmes woke me early the next morning, already dressed and full of energy. He had been outside since dawn and had looked over the lawn, the bicycle shed, and the edge of the woods before I was out of bed. Soon we were crossing the moor together with Dr. Huxtable, following the line which Holmes had marked on the map the night before. The ground was soft in places after rain, and Holmes said that if the missing pair had passed that way, the earth might still remember them. I had seen him in such a mood before and knew that no small sign would escape him.
　　At first our search brought nothing. We crossed one wet place after another and found only sheep tracks and the marks of animals. More than once Holmes stopped and looked disappointed, though never for long. Then, at last, beside a muddy stretch of ground, he gave a cry and pointed downward. A bicycle track was clear there. I thought we had found Heidegger’s line at once, but Holmes checked me and said that this was not the right machine. The tire pattern did not match the German master’s bicycle.
　　Even so, the track mattered. It showed that another cyclist had been out upon the moor that night, and that cyclist had ridden away from the school, not toward it. We followed the marks for some distance until they faded on harder ground. Then, at another soft patch, Holmes found a second bicycle track. This time he was satisfied. The tire matched the missing machine. “This is Heidegger,” he said. “Now we shall see whether he led the boy, followed the boy, or met something worse.”
　　We went on with greater speed after that. The track was plain in the wetter places and pointed across the moor away from the school. Then, very suddenly, Holmes stopped. On a bent branch of gorse there was blood. A little farther on the bicycle lay among the bushes, damaged and stained, and beyond it, in the heather, the body of the German master. His head had been terribly broken by one great blow. He wore shoes and an outer coat over his night-clothes, which strongly suggested that Holmes had been right from the start: he had not planned an escape, but had rushed out to follow someone into the night.

Part 3

　　For a little while Holmes stood over the dead man in deep thought. Then he said that, though the discovery was important, it did not solve the one question that mattered most. We had found Heidegger, but we had not found the boy. More than that, the very state of the dead man made one point clear. He had not gone out in the night as a willing partner in some secret plan. He had rushed out suddenly, half dressed, to follow someone. That agreed perfectly with Holmes’s earlier idea that the German master had seen Lord Saltire leaving the school and had gone after him on the bicycle.
　　Holmes then asked me to look carefully at the road by which Heidegger had come. The master had ridden hard, for the marks showed speed and urgency. There had then been some meeting or struggle, and after that one terrible blow had fallen. Yet there were no clear signs of another bicycle close by and no obvious footprints of a second man. This, Holmes said, was the point that still troubled him. “The boy is somewhere ahead,” he said, “and the hand that struck Heidegger is still tied to him.”
　　He now sent a labourer across the moor with orders that the police should be told at once where the body lay. After that, Holmes wasted no more time there. We moved on in the direction which the first unknown bicycle had taken. Before long, the land began to fall away toward a lonely road, and ahead of us stood a low public-house with a swinging sign. Holmes looked at it for some moments and then gave one of those little quiet laughs which always meant that something had suddenly become clearer in his mind. “There,” said he, “is one answer waiting for us.”
　　The house was called the Fighting Cock. It stood by itself in a rough place, with a stable-yard, a smithy, and a poor-looking garden. The landlord himself came to the door as we approached. He was a dark, heavy, thick-necked man with a rough face and angry eyes. Holmes later told me that the very look of him would have been enough to make him careful. Even before the man spoke, one could see violence in him. Still, Holmes greeted him in the easiest and friendliest way.
　　He said that he had hurt his foot on the moor and asked whether there might be some trap or horse to take him as far as Holdernesse Hall. At the mention of the Hall, I saw a quick change in the landlord’s face. He tried to hide it at once, but Holmes had seen it as clearly as I had. The man said his name was Reuben Hayes and answered that he had no trap to spare. Holmes then spoke carelessly of the missing Duke’s son and said that perhaps the boy had already been found in Liverpool. At that, the landlord stared hard and then became suddenly more civil.
　　He said that he had once worked for the Duke and had little reason to love that house, but that he was sorry to hear of the trouble. Holmes, still pretending pain in his foot, asked whether we might at least have something to eat and drink while he rested. Hayes agreed, though in a very unwilling way, and took us into the kitchen. The room was poor and dark, with a stone floor and a dirty window looking onto the yard. Holmes sat down, but I could see that even while he ate, his eyes were moving from one thing to another with great attention.
　　At last he asked a question which seemed strange enough. Had I noticed, he said, the many cattle-marks on the moor? I answered that I had. Holmes then asked the next question at once. Had I seen any cattle there? When I said no, he smiled and told me that that was exactly the point. We had seen many marks like those of cows, yet no cows. That meant, he thought, that the marks were false. Some horse had been shod in such a way that it left prints like those of cattle.
　　He then explained why this mattered. A boy carried away over the moor at night would most naturally be taken on horseback. If the horse wore shoes made to hide its true track, that would fit very well with a planned kidnapping. Holmes said that this was no country trick made by chance. Someone had thought very carefully ahead. He rose at once after that and asked to see the stable. Hayes objected, but Holmes laughed and said that an injured man may surely look at a horse if he wishes. The landlord could hardly refuse without showing too much fear.
　　In the stable Holmes quickly found what he wanted. One horse had recently been re-shod, and though the animal now stood in ordinary iron, there were signs enough in the smithy beside the yard that stranger work had been done there earlier. Holmes’s face grew brighter with every step. Then, while we were still in the yard, Reuben Hayes came back on us with a heavy stick in his hand and demanded to know what we meant by wandering where we pleased. His manner was so violent that for a moment I thought he would attack us at once.
　　Holmes, however, remained perfectly calm. He apologized in a light way and said that he had only wished to look at the horse which had carried him to the inn. Hayes answered with an oath that he was not a fool and knew spying when he saw it. Holmes then took my arm and led me quietly away, though I could see that he had no intention of giving up the place so easily. As soon as we were out on the road again, he said that the inn was certainly one centre of the whole business and that we must watch it before returning to the school.
　　So we climbed a little hillside from which we could see the house below. We had not been there long when a cyclist came flying along the road from the direction of Holdernesse Hall. Holmes pulled me down behind the rocks just in time. The rider stopped at the inn and ran inside. Even in that short look, I knew the face. It was James Wilder, the Duke’s secretary. Holmes whispered the name at once and said that now the matter had moved another great step forward. The man had the look of someone deeply troubled and in a hurry.
　　We lay hidden and watched in silence. The evening grew darker, and for some time nothing happened. Then a trap came out of the inn-yard and went off fast down the road. Holmes said little, but I could tell that every movement below was adding to his plan. A little later a light appeared in an upstairs room. Holmes then led me down under cover of darkness until we reached the wall itself. There, to my surprise, stood Wilder’s bicycle. Holmes struck a match and looked at the tire. It was the same pattern as the first unknown track on the moor.
　　He then did an even bolder thing. Using my bent back as a step, he looked through the lower edge of the lighted window above us. He dropped down again almost at once, but the quick look had clearly told him much. He said only that we had seen enough for one day and that the rest must be done by a faster and straighter road. We made our way back across the moor in the dark, and Holmes spoke little until we reached the school again.
　　Late that night he went out once more to send telegrams. When he returned, there was a look in his face which told me that the end was now in sight. He said that the whole case had begun to show its true shape at last. The inn, Reuben Hayes, the false cattle-tracks, the hidden horse, and the anxious secretary all belonged to one story. He would not yet tell me the whole of it, but he said that by tomorrow we would know whether the boy was still alive and whether the man behind the matter was as guilty as Holmes now believed. I went to bed with the strong feeling that the mystery of the Priory School had turned from a simple disappearance into something much darker and much nearer home.

Part 4

　　At eleven o’clock the next morning, Holmes and I were again walking up the great drive to Holdernesse Hall. The house looked even colder and more severe in full daylight than it had on our first visit. We were shown into the study, where James Wilder received us. He was polite enough, but there was something restless and uneasy in his face which I had not seen before. Holmes said at once that he must speak privately with the Duke.
　　Wilder answered that his Grace was much disturbed by the death of the German master and was not well enough to receive visitors. Holmes replied in his calm firm way that the matter was too important to wait. Either the Duke would see us in his room, or Holmes would speak before others and let the truth go where it might. At that, Wilder changed colour. He left the room without another word, and after some delay the Duke himself entered.
　　He looked older and more tired than on the day before. There were deep lines in his face, and though his manner was still proud, his strength seemed shaken. He sat down behind his writing-table and asked Holmes what he had to say. Holmes did not answer at once. He first looked at the door by which Wilder had gone out and then said that this was not a matter that should be discussed in front of the secretary. The Duke hesitated for a moment, then rang the bell and gave orders that no one should enter.
　　When we were alone, Holmes stood with his hands behind his back and asked one very strange question. Did the reward still hold good, he said, the reward offered for finding Lord Saltire and for naming the person who had taken him? The Duke looked at him with surprise and answered that it did. Holmes then said that in that case the matter was simple. He could tell the Duke where his son was, and he could also name the man responsible for carrying him away.
　　The Duke leaned forward in his chair. Holmes spoke very quietly. Lord Saltire, he said, had been at the Fighting Cock Inn. The Duke’s face changed at once, though he tried hard to control it. Holmes then went on and said that the boy had not been carried there by the German master, but by a man acting for another person. That other person was James Wilder. For one moment there was complete silence in the room. Then the Duke covered his face with both hands.
　　When he looked up again, all the proud hardness had gone from him. He asked Holmes how much he knew. Holmes answered that he knew enough. He knew that Wilder had visited the inn secretly. He knew that the false cattle-tracks on the moor had been made by a horse with specially altered shoes. He knew that the boy had been taken there under a trick. He also knew that the Duke himself had helped to hide part of the truth after he learned what had happened.
　　The Duke gave a deep unhappy sigh and said that all resistance was useless. He then made the whole matter clear. James Wilder, he told us, was not merely his secretary. He was his son, though not his lawful son. The Duke had cared for him since childhood and had given him every advantage. But Wilder had grown up bitter and jealous of Lord Saltire, the true heir. He could not bear that all the great name and fortune of Holdernesse should pass to the younger boy while he himself stood outside it.
　　At last, driven by this jealousy, Wilder had formed a cruel plan. He had persuaded Reuben Hayes, the rough landlord of the Fighting Cock, to help him. A false message had been sent to Lord Saltire in the name of his mother, asking him to come out at night if he wished to see her. The child, who loved the Duchess deeply, had believed it. He climbed down by the window and met the man waiting outside. Then he was taken away across the moor on horseback to the inn.
　　The Duke said that the purpose had not been to kill the boy, but to keep him hidden and force the Duke to make changes in his property and future plans. Wilder believed that fear for the child would make his father weak. The Duke admitted, with great shame, that when he learned the truth, he had not gone at once to the police. His first thought had been to get the boy back quietly and save Wilder from ruin. That weakness, he said, was now his deepest disgrace.
　　Holmes asked then about the German master. The Duke answered that Heidegger had not been part of the plan at all. He had seen the boy leaving and had followed on his bicycle. Somewhere on the moor he came up with Hayes, and Hayes, a violent and brutal man, struck him with his heavy stick and killed him. When Wilder heard this, he was horrified. Yet even then he had tried to save himself instead of making full confession. That was why he had ridden in such fear between the Hall and the inn.
　　Holmes listened without interruption until the story was done. Then he said that before anything else, the boy must be brought back at once. The Duke agreed. A carriage was ordered immediately, and Holmes insisted that the message be simple and direct. Lord Saltire was to be fetched from the inn and brought home without delay. The Duke said that the child had in fact already been moved from the inn after the danger there became too great and had been kept in a lonely farmhouse nearby under the care of Hayes’s wife, who had treated him kindly. Even so, Holmes did not relax until steps had been taken at once to secure the boy’s return.
　　Once that had been arranged, Holmes spoke more sternly than I had yet heard him speak to the Duke. He said that love for an older son, however strong, could not excuse leaving a younger one in danger or hiding the truth after a murder. The Duke received these words in silence. He did not defend himself. I think his own heart had already judged him more harshly than Holmes ever could. At last he said only that Wilder must leave England forever and that all ties between them, except those of private pity, must end.
　　There remained one small point which Holmes now explained to me fully. In one of the rooms at Holdernesse Hall there was a case of old horse-shoes preserved as family objects. Among them were strange old shoes shaped to leave the marks of cattle instead of horses. Holmes had seen at once that such a thing would be useful only for hiding movement across open ground. When he later found the false cattle-tracks on the moor and then saw the signs of recent shoeing at the inn, the whole device became clear to him. It was one of those old tricks that look foolish until the moment they become useful again.
　　Before we left the Hall, the Duke tried in a very unhappy way to thank Holmes and even to speak of money, but Holmes stopped him. He said that the immediate safety of the child mattered far more than fees. As for the rest, the law and the family would have enough to settle between them without his help. The Duke took Holmes’s hand then with more feeling than I would have thought possible in so cold a man. It was plain that he knew very well what had been saved and what had been lost.
　　Lord Saltire returned safely later that day. He had been frightened and confused, but not seriously harmed. As for Wilder, he was sent abroad and disappeared from English life. Hayes, whose hand had struck down the German master, met a far harder end, as such men often do. So the affair of the Priory School came to its close. It began with a missing boy and a missing master, but it ended by showing once again that the darkest dangers are not always found far away. Sometimes they begin inside a great house, close to the heart of a family itself.


The Adventure of Black Peter

Part 1

　　Among the younger men in the official police, there were a few whom Holmes liked better than the rest. He did not often praise anyone, but he respected energy, honesty, and a willingness to learn. One of the men who had won a place in his good opinion was Stanley Hopkins. He was young, keen, and full of work, though now and then he was too ready to follow the first clear idea that came to him. The case of Black Peter was the one in which he learned a very hard lesson.
　　It began one morning when I came down to breakfast and found Holmes already dressed, though his shirt-sleeves were still rolled up and his coat lay over the back of a chair. There was a bright excited look in his face which showed that he had already been busy over something unusual. I asked him what he had been doing so early. He answered, in the calmest voice, that he had spent the morning in a butcher’s yard.
　　Seeing my surprise, he went on at once. He had been trying an experiment, he said, and the butcher had kindly given him what he needed for it. With a heavy harpoon in his hands, he had been testing whether one strong man could drive such a weapon clean through a dead pig with a single blow. He spoke of this in the same quiet tone another man might use about gardening or the weather. I could only stare at him across the breakfast table.
　　Holmes seemed amused by my expression. He said that in some cases a man must not trust reason alone. If a crime depends upon strength and skill, then strength and skill must be tested. A thing which looks possible on paper may prove impossible in the hand. He even offered me the harpoon and asked whether I cared to try the same experiment myself. I refused at once, and he laughed softly at that.
　　Before he could explain more, our visitor was shown in. It was Stanley Hopkins, and one glance at him told us that he came on serious business. He was pale, tired, and plainly discouraged. Holmes greeted him kindly and asked whether he would take some coffee or eggs. Hopkins answered that he had no wish for food and that his mind was too full of one matter to think of anything else.
　　“You have failed, then?” said Holmes quietly. The young inspector gave a bitter little smile and said yes, he had failed badly. The case had looked fine at the start, and now it seemed to be slipping away from him. It was for that reason, he said, that he had come straight to Baker Street. He wanted Holmes to come with him and see the matter before it went wrong beyond repair.
　　Holmes told him to sit down and speak clearly. The inspector then said that the dead man was Peter Carey, better known in Sussex as Black Peter. He had once been a famous sealer and whaler, a captain from Dundee, and a very hard man. Some years earlier he had left the sea and bought a small place called Woodman’s Lee, near Forest Row. There he lived in a rough lonely way until his death a few days before.
　　The name “Black Peter,” Hopkins explained, had not been given to him only because of his dark beard and weather-beaten face. It had also been given because of his character. He was a violent man, heavy in drink, and feared by everyone around him. His wife and daughter had lived in terror of him for years. More than once he had driven them out of the house in the middle of the night, and the neighbours had heard his shouting and curses from far away.
　　Such a man, said Hopkins, could easily have many enemies. Yet the manner of his death was so unusual that it had turned a rough village killing into something much stranger. Peter Carey did not sleep in the house itself. Instead, he slept in a little wooden cabin some distance away in the grounds. He kept the key with him and allowed no one else to enter. Inside, the cabin was fitted out like a ship’s cabin, with sea-charts, sea-pictures, and the plain rough life of a sailor all around him.
　　Two nights before the body was found, a local stonemason had been walking late along the road when he saw a light in the cabin window and the shadow of a bearded man moving inside. As Peter Carey himself wore a thick beard, the man thought nothing of it at the time. Later, however, he came to believe that the beard had not been quite the same and that the figure might not have been Carey after all. Hopkins did not place too much weight on this, but he thought it worth remembering.
　　On the night of the murder, Peter Carey had been very drunk. His daughter, who slept in the house, said that she had heard him go out to the cabin as usual. Some time later, around two in the morning, she was woken by a dreadful cry from that direction. But such cries were not uncommon when Black Peter was in one of his drunken moods, and no one in the house had the courage to go out and see what was wrong. Only in the morning, when he still did not appear, did fear grow strong enough to make inquiry.
　　Even then, no one was ready to go into the cabin at once. At last, one of the servants looked through the open door from a distance and saw enough to bring the whole house to a stop. When the police entered, they found Peter Carey dead inside his own cabin. A steel harpoon had been driven through his chest and so deep into the wooden wall behind him that the body seemed fixed there. Hopkins said that the sight was one of the worst he had ever seen.
　　The room itself added to the strangeness. On the table stood a bottle of rum and two dirty glasses, showing clearly that Carey had not been alone. There were also other bottles in the room, but they had not been touched. A tobacco-pouch made of sealskin lay on the table, though no pipe was found. A sheath-knife was near the body, but the dead man’s own knife was still in it. The place was bloody, but not otherwise much disturbed.
　　Holmes asked one or two quick questions at once. Was Peter Carey known to smoke? Hopkins said that he did smoke, but not heavily. Were there signs of robbery? No, nothing of clear value had been taken. Had anyone seen a stranger in the area? No one reliable had. Then Hopkins added one more important point. Near the door there had been found a small notebook, stained with blood. On the first page were the letters “J. H. N.” and the date “1883.”
　　The notebook, he said, had made him think of business papers or securities. Certain pages contained figures and names which looked financial rather than personal. Holmes’s eyes brightened a little at that, but he said nothing more for the moment. Hopkins ended by saying that he had worked hard on the case and had even followed one or two lines, but the more he looked, the less certain he became. That was why he now wanted Holmes to see the place with his own eyes.
　　Holmes rose at once. He said that breakfast-table talk could take a man only so far and that the cabin itself would tell much more than any report. Within a short time we were on the train for Sussex, with Hopkins opposite us and the whole strange picture of Black Peter’s lonely life and savage death before our minds. Holmes spoke very little on the journey. Once only he said that the experiment with the harpoon had already told him one important thing. The man who had killed Peter Carey must have been not only strong, but used to such a weapon. That, he said, was a fact worth carrying with us to Woodman’s Lee.

Part 2

　　When we reached Forest Row, a dog-cart was waiting for us, and it soon carried us through the Sussex lanes to Woodman’s Lee. The place itself was lonely and rough, with a small house, untidy grounds, and beyond them a line of dark trees. Hopkins first took us to the widow and daughter of the dead man. They were pale, worn women, and it was plain that fear had ruled their lives for years. Neither seemed truly sad in the way a loving family would be sad. They were shocked, yes, but they were also free at last from a terrible man.
　　They had little to add to what Hopkins had already told us. Peter Carey often drank alone in the cabin, and now and then some unknown visitor met him there in secret. No one in the house ever dared ask questions. The dead man had lived like a sailor even on land, and he had never allowed any other person to come near his private place. His daughter said that the cry in the night had been dreadful, but so many dreadful sounds had come from the cabin before that no one had gone out. Holmes listened kindly, but I could see that he expected no great help from them.
　　We then walked out across the path to the little hut where Black Peter had met his end. Even before we entered, the place gave me a bad feeling. It stood by itself, with its low roof and rough walls, like some piece of hard northern sea-life dropped among quiet English fields. Hopkins was about to open the door when Holmes suddenly bent down and looked closely at the wood near the lock. There were fresh marks there, white and sharp against the darker paint. He then moved to the window and saw the same thing there. Someone had recently tried to force an entrance.
　　Hopkins was at once excited. He swore that those cuts had not been there the evening before. Holmes nodded and said that this was very good news indeed. A man who came in the night and tried to get into the cabin must want something still hidden there. If that man had failed once, he would probably come back better prepared. Holmes added that this gave us not only a clue, but perhaps a chance. Still, before any trap was set, he wished to inspect every part of the room in daylight.
　　Inside, the cabin was exactly as Hopkins had described it. The traces of the murder had been cleaned away, but the place still seemed full of the dead man’s rough presence. There was the bunk, the table, the charts, the sea-pictures, and the rack from which the harpoon had been taken. On the table stood the bottle of rum and the two dirty glasses. Holmes noticed at once that there were also bottles of whisky and brandy in the room, but neither had been touched. “That is worth remembering,” he said. “Men drink what they know.”
　　Hopkins next showed us the tobacco-pouch. It was made of sealskin, tied with a leather thong, and marked with the letters “P. C.” Holmes smelled the strong tobacco inside and then laid the pouch down again. He said that it might well belong to Peter Carey himself, though its position on the table showed that it had been in use during the meeting. After that Hopkins brought out what he clearly thought the most important object of all, the little blood-stained notebook found near the door. On the first page stood the initials “J. H. N.” and the date “1883.”
　　Inside the notebook were figures and names under headings such as “C.P.R.,” “Argentine,” “Costa Rica,” and “San Paulo.” Hopkins said that he believed these to be securities or stock-market entries. Holmes agreed at once that “C.P.R.” almost certainly meant Canadian Pacific Railway. Hopkins admitted that he had already searched the stock lists, but had found no broker whose initials matched “J. H. N.” Even so, he believed that the owner of the notebook had been in the cabin on the night of the crime and was therefore deeply important. Holmes answered that the notebook was indeed important, but that it did not fit easily with the harpoon.
　　For nearly two hours Holmes examined the room in silence. He studied the floor, the walls, the table, the sea-chest, and the shelf above the berth. At last he pointed to one place on that shelf where the dust was thinner than elsewhere. Something had stood there not long before, perhaps a book or a box. Hopkins said that he had noticed nothing missing. Holmes replied that something had certainly been removed, though whether before or after the crime he could not yet say. This was the only point in the room itself that seemed new to him.
　　When at last we came out into the open air again, Holmes admitted that the cabin had not given him all he wanted. Still, he said, one line of thought remained strong. The man who struck Black Peter had used a harpoon in one clean powerful movement. That was not the action of a city clerk or a young gentleman. It was the action of a seaman, and not only of a seaman, but of one used to whale-fishing. The rum, the pouch, and the whole sea-life of the room pointed the same way. Hopkins looked disappointed, because his notebook theory had begun to seem weaker in that light.
　　Holmes then suggested that we return later in the evening and wait near the cabin. If someone had already tried to force the door, that person might very well come again. Hopkins agreed at once, and arrangements were made. Until then, we walked about the fields and talked over the matter. Holmes said that the notebook could still belong to a second visitor, and that such a second visitor might have entered after the killing. If so, the notebook would explain fear and silence, but not the murder itself. This idea stayed with me strongly, because it gave a possible place in the story to both the harpoon and the little book.
　　That night we hid near the cabin and waited in the dark. The air was cold, and the woods around us were still. For a long time nothing happened. Then, at last, we heard very soft steps and saw a thin young man come out of the darkness. He moved nervously and kept looking over his shoulder. At the door he tried a knife or small tool in the lock. This time he succeeded, entered quickly, and lit a dark lantern inside.
　　We could see him moving about in great haste. He was not searching like a burglar for money. He was hunting for one particular thing. At last he reached the shelf above the berth, seized a notebook or logbook, and turned the pages fast. Then he gave a cry of disappointment and threw it down. In the next instant Hopkins sprang in and seized him by the collar. The young man screamed in terror, and Holmes and I rushed after the inspector. He was no killer in outward appearance, but a neat, fair young fellow with a weak frightened face and the manner of a man from better life than this.
　　When questioned, he gave his name as John Hopley Neligan. At the sight of the blood-stained notebook in Hopkins’s hand, he went very white and nearly broke down. He said that he had not come to steal. He had come only to find a logbook, the logbook of the Sea Unicorn, Peter Carey’s old ship. He wanted the entries for August of 1883. Hopkins asked why, and the young man answered that he would tell everything if given the chance, but that he begged us not to think he had killed Peter Carey. He had never harmed the man, he said, though he had feared him.
　　At the police station he made a full statement. His father, he said, had once been a banker whose name had been ruined many years earlier. Valuable securities had disappeared, and the elder Neligan had then vanished on a yacht and had never been seen again. The son had always believed that his father had not been a thief, but a ruined man trying to save something from disaster. Later he learned that Peter Carey’s ship might have crossed the path of that lost yacht in the northern seas in 1883. For that reason he had followed Carey to Sussex and had hoped either to question him or to search the ship’s log after his death.
　　Hopkins listened with little sympathy. To him, the blood-stained notebook, the secret visit, and the young man’s fear made a very strong case. Holmes, however, remained quiet and thoughtful. When we returned to Baker Street the next day, I said that the matter now looked almost settled. Holmes answered that it looked too settled for his taste. John Hopley Neligan might well have entered the cabin, but Holmes did not believe he had driven a harpoon through Black Peter’s body. “No, Watson,” said he, “the young man has his own story, but the hand that killed Peter Carey was another hand altogether.”

Part 3

　　Holmes was in very good spirits the next morning, though he still said little about what was in his mind. At breakfast he only remarked that one must never be too pleased by a neat police theory, because real life is rarely neat. Then he showed me a small advertisement which he had written out and sent to several places connected with the sea trade. It asked for an experienced harpooner for a northern voyage and offered good pay. When I asked why such a notice should matter, Holmes smiled and said that if our true man was what he seemed to be, he would find it hard to ignore such a chance.
　　He then explained a little more. The man who had killed Peter Carey had been very strong, and more than that, he had known exactly how to use a harpoon. Such knowledge does not belong to clerks, bankers’ sons, or ordinary landmen. It belongs to sailors, and especially to men from the whaling trade. If that man were now in London, poor, hidden, and in need of work, he might well answer an advertisement which promised quick pay and a northern ship. Holmes said that we would learn more from such a man walking into Baker Street than from ten more hours of argument about young Neligan and his notebook.
　　Before noon, a note came from Hopkins saying that his prisoner still held to the same story and that nothing new had been gained from him. Holmes wrote back at once and asked Hopkins to come to Baker Street later in the day. He said that if the young inspector wished to learn something useful, he should not miss what was about to happen. I saw then that Holmes had set a trap and was now only waiting for the quarry to enter it. He even told me to keep my revolver near, though he hoped it would not be needed.
　　By the afternoon, everything was ready. Holmes had laid out some papers on the table, as if he meant to sign a man on to a ship there and then. He had also prepared questions about the northern fisheries, Dundee ships, and harpoon work. “A false sailor may talk his way through one question,” said he, “but not through many.” We had not long to wait. One by one, three men came in answer to the notice, and Holmes spoke to each in turn.
　　The first two were quickly sent away. One had the rough hands of a sailor, but not the build Holmes wanted. The other had the build, but not the knowledge. At last the third man was shown in, and I saw by Holmes’s face that this was the person for whom he had been waiting. He was a large, broad man with a weather-beaten face, strong shoulders, a dark beard, and clear hard eyes. He moved like a seaman, and there was great power in him even when he stood still.
　　He gave his name as Patrick Cairns and said that he had worked as a harpooner on several northern ships. Holmes asked him one or two questions, and the man answered well and with confidence. When Holmes asked whether he had ever sailed on the Sea Unicorn of Dundee, the man said yes, he had. Holmes then told him that this was excellent, because such experience was exactly what was needed. If he would sign the agreement, he might start work almost at once. Patrick Cairns bent over the table to take up the pen.
　　In the same second Holmes sprang at him like a cat. One of his long arms went round the man’s neck, and with the other he tried to twist back the sailor’s arm. But Patrick Cairns was as strong as a bull and far quicker than any ordinary man. With one violent movement he threw Holmes off and would almost certainly have broken free if Hopkins had not entered the room at that exact moment. The inspector rushed in, and I threw myself into the struggle too.
　　For a short time the room was full of wild movement. Cairns fought with terrible force. Twice he nearly broke away from us all, and once he flung Hopkins so hard against the wall that I feared the young inspector had been badly hurt. At last, however, Holmes managed to bring one wrist down, Hopkins caught the other, and together we snapped the handcuffs shut. The sailor stood breathing hard, his chest rising like a great bellows, but the fight had gone out of him. He looked from one to another of us and then gave a short rough laugh.
　　“Well,” said he, “you’ve got me.” He did not seem like a frightened man, only an angry and defeated one. Holmes, straightening his coat, asked whether he wished to say anything. Cairns answered that he had plenty to say, but he wanted one thing understood first. If we accused him of murder, he would fight that word. If we said that he had killed Peter Carey, then that was true enough. Holmes nodded and said that this was exactly the point we wished to hear explained.
　　Once he saw that lies would do him little good, Patrick Cairns began to speak plainly. Years earlier, he said, he had served as harpooner on the Sea Unicorn, with Peter Carey as captain. During one voyage, in August of 1883, they had met a small yacht drifting far north in bad weather. There had been one man on board, with a tin box and certain papers. That man had been taken on to the Sea Unicorn. A little later, he disappeared from the ship. Officially, it was said that he had been lost at sea. In truth, said Cairns, Peter Carey had thrown him overboard in the night and had taken the tin box for himself.
　　Cairns had seen enough of that crime to understand what had happened, though he had kept silent at the time. Years later, after he learned where Peter Carey was living, he went down to Sussex to make use of what he knew. He meant, in simple words, to blackmail Black Peter. On the first visit, the captain had spoken fairly enough and had promised money. On the second visit, however, he had been drinking heavily. They sat together in the cabin with rum before them, and the talk turned ugly. Carey grew violent, cursed him, and suddenly reached for his knife.
　　Cairns said that in such a moment a man of the sea does not stop to think. There was a harpoon on the wall. He had used such weapons all his life. He snatched it and drove it through Peter Carey before the knife could be used. “It was him or me,” he said simply. I do not think he was lying in the main line of the story. There was no sorrow in him, but neither was there boastfulness. He spoke like a hard man telling of a hard moment.
　　After the killing, he said, he took the tin box which Peter Carey had stolen years before. In his hurry he left behind his tobacco-pouch. Then he slipped out into the dark. But before he was clear of the grounds, he heard another man coming. He hid, and from his hiding-place he saw a young gentleman go into the cabin. A moment later that man gave a cry of horror and ran away into the night. Holmes said quietly that this was John Hopley Neligan, and Cairns answered that he now supposed so. At the time, he had not known who the young man was.
　　When Cairns later opened the tin box, he found no money in it, only papers and securities which were of no use to him. So he had got little from the whole business except danger. He came up to London, poor as before, and was trying to find work when Holmes’s advertisement reached him. That, he said, was the whole story. Hopkins asked one or two questions, but the main shape of the case was now clear enough. The notebook, the second visitor, and the search for the old ship’s log all belonged to Neligan’s private effort to clear his father’s name. They did not explain the harpoon, because they had nothing to do with it.
　　Holmes then turned to Hopkins and laid the case out in the simplest way. From the first, he said, the killing itself had pointed toward a seaman. The force of the blow, the exact use of the weapon, the bottle of rum, the sealskin tobacco-pouch, and the whole sea-life of the cabin all led in the same direction. The notebook had almost certainly belonged to a later visitor who had come after the death, not before it. That later visitor had indeed behaved suspiciously, but suspicious behaviour is not the same thing as murder. “You had two men in the story,” said Holmes, “and you tried to make one man do the work of both.”
　　Hopkins took this lesson well. He admitted openly that Holmes had been right and that he himself had followed the wrong road too far. I liked him better for that honesty. Holmes answered in a friendly way that he had worked hard and that hard work is never wasted if a man learns from it. As for young Neligan, Holmes said that he must of course answer for any foolish silence or secret actions of his own, but the dark charge of murder should be lifted from him at once. Hopkins promised that it would be.
　　So ended the strange case of Black Peter. Patrick Cairns was taken away to answer for the killing, though whether the law would call it murder or self-defence was for others to decide. John Hopley Neligan was freed from the worst danger hanging over him, and there was at last some hope that his father’s name might not remain under a cloud forever. Holmes said, as we sat again that evening by our own fire, that the matter had begun in blood and ended in explanation, which is as much as one can ask of many human affairs. To me, it remained one of the clearest examples of his power to separate one dark thread from another when weaker eyes saw only a knot.


The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

Part 1

　　I have not often written about Holmes’s feelings, because as a rule he kept them under such strong control that most people never saw them at all. His mind was usually colder than that of any man I have known. He cared for facts, clear thought, and exact proof far more than for warm speech or open emotion. Yet there were a few rare times when some human act disgusted him so deeply that even he could not fully hide it. One evening I found him in exactly such a state.
　　He was sitting by the fire with his long thin hands locked together and his face harder than usual. There was a dark bright look in his eyes which always told me that some strong inward feeling had been touched. For some little time he said nothing. Then, all at once, he broke out that of all the men he had ever met in crime, one stood above the rest in the hatred he inspired. Holmes said that he had known murderers, thieves, poisoners, and blackmailers of smaller kind, but no one had ever filled him with such complete disgust as this man.
　　I naturally asked who this person could be. Holmes answered that his name was Charles Augustus Milverton. He then added, in a slow and very serious voice, that Milverton was the worst man in London. I was surprised at this, because I had never heard the name before. Holmes said that this was exactly how Milverton liked it. He did not want fame in newspapers. He wanted fear in private houses.
　　He then explained what kind of man Milverton was. He was a blackmailer, but not the common sort who tries rough threats and quick profit. He was patient, rich, careful, and wonderfully cruel. He bought private letters and papers from servants, maids, secretaries, and all the weak or dishonest people who move quietly through the lives of the rich. Once such things were in his hands, he waited. Then, at the exact moment when fear would be greatest and resistance weakest, he made his move.
　　Holmes said that there were women in London who changed colour at the very sound of Milverton’s name. There were men of high position who would have paid anything to keep one letter from reaching the wrong hand. Milverton knew this and built his life upon it. He had no pity, no shame, and no anger either. That, Holmes said, made him worse than many violent criminals. A man may kill in sudden rage and regret it later. Milverton ruined lives calmly, with his gloves on and a smile on his face.
　　I asked why the police did not stop such a man. Holmes answered that the law is often weaker than fear. A victim may win a case in court and still lose a name, a marriage, a home, or a career. Milverton understood this perfectly. He chose his cases with care. He did not attack the strong innocent. He attacked those who had once made some foolish mistake, written some warm letter, trusted the wrong person, or allowed private feeling to live on paper. Then he held that paper like a knife.
　　“And what brings him into our lives?” I asked. Holmes answered that a client had come to him in great trouble. The client was Lady Eva Blackwell, one of the most beautiful young women in London society. She was soon to marry the Earl of Dovercourt. Some years earlier, before that engagement, she had written a few affectionate letters to a poor young country gentleman. There was nothing truly shameful in them, Holmes said, but they were warm enough to destroy her marriage if they were shown to the Earl.
　　Those letters were now in Milverton’s hands. He had demanded a very large sum for their return. Lady Eva could not pay it, and even if she could, Holmes was not sure he would advise payment to such a man. Milverton, once paid, only grows stronger. Still, Lady Eva’s position was cruel. If she did not recover the letters, her future might be broken. Holmes had therefore agreed, very unwillingly, to meet Milverton and try first whether the matter could be settled in some less ugly way.
　　Even as Holmes finished this account, we heard the sound of wheels outside and then the ring at the bell. Holmes’s face grew colder still. A minute later our visitor was shown in. Charles Augustus Milverton was a heavy man of middle height, broad in the body and smooth in the face, with a large bald head and round shining glasses. His clothes were rich but quiet, and everything about him suggested comfort, good food, and careful habits. Yet the false kindness of his smile disappeared the moment one looked into his eyes.
　　Those eyes were pale, sharp, and watchful. They moved quickly and seemed always to measure the weakness of the person before him. He held out his hand to Holmes with easy confidence, but Holmes did not take it. Milverton seemed not at all troubled by this. He sat down in the best chair in the room as if he were calling on old friends and then gave me a quick questioning glance. Holmes said at once that I was his friend and could stay for every word.
　　Milverton bowed slightly and said that he was there on business of a delicate kind. Had Holmes authority, he asked, to speak fully on Lady Eva Blackwell’s behalf? Holmes answered that he had. Milverton then named his price without the smallest sign of shame. He wanted seven thousand pounds. He might as well have been naming the price of a horse or a house. Holmes asked what would happen if the money were not paid.
　　Milverton smiled and said that then the marriage would almost certainly not take place. Holmes answered that Lady Eva might still tell the Earl the whole truth and trust to his generosity. At this Milverton gave a soft little laugh which was somehow more offensive than open cruelty. He said that Holmes did not seem to know Lord Dovercourt very well. From the look that passed over Holmes’s face, I could tell that he knew that answer might well be true. Even so, he went on fighting for his client with all the weapons that reason could give him.
　　He said that seven thousand pounds was impossible. Milverton answered that the exact sum mattered less than the principle. He had a reputation to keep. If word spread among his other clients that Lady Eva had resisted him without suffering badly for it, then many more people might try the same thing. But if he struck hard once, all the others would pay more quickly. He said this with complete calm, like a businessman explaining why one cannot lower prices too far. That was the moment when I began truly to understand why Holmes hated him so deeply.
　　Holmes then tried another road. He pointed out that a woman’s whole future stood in the balance and that no decent man would take pleasure in such power. Milverton answered at once that pleasure had nothing to do with it. He was not sentimental. He dealt in facts, and the facts were that he held the letters, Lady Eva wanted them, and the market price was seven thousand pounds. He even opened his pocketbook as if to show that the papers were there beside him while he spoke.
　　More than once I thought Holmes would spring from his chair and seize the man by force. His hands were very still, but I had known him long enough to see how great the struggle was inside him. Milverton, however, felt wonderfully safe. He had come not only to demand money, but to enjoy the sight of a good woman’s helplessness and of Holmes forced into ordinary bargaining. That cool cruelty in him made the room itself seem unclean. Yet Holmes continued to argue, because as long as words were still possible, Lady Eva’s last chance remained.
　　At last Milverton rose. He said that he would give Lady Eva until the fourteenth, and not one day more. If the money was not paid by then, the letters would go forward. Holmes asked once again whether there could be no mercy, no delay, no lower sum. Milverton answered that there could not. Then, with the same false pleasant smile, he picked up his gloves, bowed to us both, and walked out. We heard his carriage roll away into the night.
　　For some little time Holmes did not move at all. He sat bent forward with his eyes fixed on the fire and his face hard as stone. At last he rose and said that ordinary dealing had failed, exactly as he had feared it would. There were some men, he said, with whom one cannot argue because they have put themselves outside all human feeling. Milverton was one of them. Then Holmes turned to me, and there was a dangerous quiet in his voice when he spoke. “Watson,” said he, “this matter is not ended. It is only beginning.”

Part 2

　　Holmes stood by the fire for some minutes after Milverton had gone. He did not speak, and I knew better than to interrupt him too soon. At last he turned away, went into his bedroom, and shut the door. A little later he came out again, but not as Sherlock Holmes. Before me stood a young workman with a black beard, bright eyes, and an easy bold way of moving. His clothes were cheap but neat, and he carried himself like a man who had lived by his hands all his life.
　　I stared at him in surprise, though by then I had already seen many of his disguises. He only smiled and said that he might be late that night. Then he went out, leaving me with the clear feeling that some dangerous plan had already begun in his mind. For several days after that, he came and went at strange hours and always in the same working-man’s dress. Each time he returned, he looked pleased with himself, but he would tell me very little. He only said that Hampstead had become a place of great interest to him.
　　On the fourth evening he threw himself into a chair and laughed quietly. There was real pleasure in his face. The weather outside was wet and wild, but Holmes looked as if the whole world had just become much brighter. Then he asked me, in the calmest voice, whether I thought him likely to marry. I said at once that I did not. He answered that, in that case, I would be surprised to hear that he was engaged.
　　I looked at him in complete astonishment. He seemed delighted by my expression. Then he explained. His working-man’s name, it seemed, was Escott, and as Escott he had won the good opinion of one of the maids in Milverton’s house. Indeed, he had done more than that. He had made her believe that he loved her and hoped to marry her. I could not help protesting that this was going rather far, even for Holmes. He shrugged and said that when a woman’s whole future hangs on a few stolen letters, one may have to do things that are not pleasant.
　　He added, however, that he had been as gentle as he could and that some rough fellow from the servants’ hall would probably take his place the moment he disappeared. In any case, the important point was not the girl’s feelings, but what she had unknowingly told him. Holmes now knew the house well. He knew where Milverton slept, where the study lay, when the servants went to bed, and even where the dangerous dog in the garden was usually kept. All that remained was the final step.
　　“And what is the final step?” I asked. Holmes looked at me steadily and said, “I shall go there tonight and take Lady Eva’s letters from Milverton’s safe.” For a moment I thought he was joking, but there was no smile in his face. He meant exactly what he said. He had tried reason and failed. He had tried negotiation and failed. There was now, in his view, only one road left.
　　I told him plainly that this was burglary. Holmes answered that it was. Then he asked whether the law can always protect the weak against the clever cruel man who stays just inside it. Milverton, he said, was safe because his victims feared shame more than they trusted justice. If one cannot strike such a man through the courts, then one must strike at the tools of his trade. Holmes said that he would take no money, no jewels, nothing that belonged to Milverton except the letters by which he ruined other lives.
　　Even so, I could not let him go alone. I told him that if he truly meant to do this thing, then I would go with him. At first he refused. The danger, he said, was real, and the whole business lay outside our usual work. I answered that I did not care. If he ran such a risk, I would share it. At last he laughed and gave way. He said that if we were caught, our long friendship might end in a prison cell, but at least it would end there together. Then he opened a drawer and showed me a small leather case filled with fine steel tools of many strange shapes.
　　He handled them almost lovingly and said that a man who works against criminals sometimes has to understand criminal tools as well as legal ones. He then laid out the whole plan. We would dress as men coming home late from an evening out and drive to Hampstead after dark. The dog would be shut away, because the housemaid expected her “Escott” to come by the garden side. Milverton, who trusted too much in his own safety, often sat late in his study. Behind that study lay his bedroom. Somewhere in the study stood the safe which held Lady Eva’s letters and many other papers too.
　　We ate a cold supper and said little while we did so. Holmes was thinking ahead, and I was thinking not only of the danger before us, but of the strange road that had brought us to it. I had gone with him into dark places before, but never into quite such a one as this. Yet I could not tell myself that the cause was unworthy. Lady Eva had made a mistake, but the punishment waiting for her was out of all measure. If Milverton could not be reached by honest means, then perhaps honest men might be forgiven for using less honest ones.
　　At the proper hour we dressed, put dark coats over our evening clothes, and drove by cab as far as Holmes thought wise. From there we went on foot through the wet night. The road lay quiet before us, and the trees dripped softly in the wind. Holmes moved fast and with complete certainty, as if he had walked the same path many times. At last he stopped near a wall and told me to put on the black silk mask which he handed to me. He put on another himself. “From now on,” said he, “we are no longer gentlemen. We are shadows.”
　　We climbed the wall and crossed the garden in silence. No dog came at us. Holmes had judged rightly there. A moment later we reached a greenhouse and passed through it into a dark room beyond. From there Holmes led me into a passage and then into a larger room where the faint red light of a fire still showed the outline of furniture. This, he whispered, was Milverton’s study. The air held the smell of cigar smoke and leather. I could see the desk, the heavy curtains, and, in one corner, the tall green safe.
　　Holmes listened for a moment at the inner door leading to the bedroom. All was quiet. He then moved to the safe, took out his tools, and bent over the lock. I stood near the outer door to warn him if anyone came. It was strange to watch him at such work. He had the same calm face, the same exact touch, and the same full attention that he would have shown in opening a medical case or examining a footprint. For him, once the moral question had been settled in his own mind, the rest became only a problem of skill and time.
　　For nearly half an hour he worked there without a word. Then at last I heard a faint click, and the door of the safe moved. Holmes had just begun to draw out one of the packets inside when he suddenly froze. He lifted one finger in warning. I heard it then too: a sound somewhere in the house, very small, but enough. A door had closed. There followed slow footsteps. Holmes shut the safe again as well as he could, swept his tools into his pocket, and darted behind the long curtain by the window. I joined him there just as the study door opened.
　　Charles Augustus Milverton came in. He was in a smoking-jacket and slippers and looked more comfortable and self-satisfied than ever. He switched on the electric light, sat down in the great red leather chair, and began to read a paper, with a cigar between his lips. We were hidden so close behind him that I could see the smooth skin of his broad bald head and the pale glitter of his glasses. It was at once clear that we had made one serious mistake. Milverton had not gone to bed. He had remained awake in the house for some reason of his own.
　　We hardly dared breathe. More than once I thought his eyes must fall upon the half-shut safe, but he never looked toward it. He read lazily, smoked, and now and then glanced at his watch. Then, after some minutes, there came a very soft tap at the outer door. Milverton rose at once and opened it. A woman entered, dressed in dark clothes with a veil over her face. Her whole body seemed tense with strong feeling. Milverton, with his usual hateful good manners, told her that she was late and asked whether she had brought the papers. At the sound of her first answer, even before I could see her face, I knew that this was no frightened victim come to bargain. Something far more dangerous had entered the room.

Part 3

　　The woman stood in the full light, and Milverton stared at her with sudden fear in his face. She had dropped her veil, and now we could see her clearly. She was dark, handsome, and very still, but every line of her body showed strong feeling held in hard control. Her eyes shone, and the set of her mouth was terrible. “It is I,” she said. “I am the woman whose life you ruined.”
　　Milverton tried to smile, but it was no longer his old smooth smile. He said that she had been foolish and stubborn and had forced him to act. He had only done business, nothing more. The woman answered that he had sent letters to her husband, and that those letters had broken the heart of the best man she had ever known. Her husband had died because of him. Milverton began to speak again, perhaps to frighten her, perhaps to bargain. He never had the chance.
　　She drew a small revolver from beneath her cloak and pointed it straight at his face. Even then, he did not move quickly enough. There came one shot, and then another, and then another. Milverton gave a terrible cry and fell backward in the great red chair. A fourth shot followed, and then all was still except for the woman’s hard breathing and the wild beating of my own heart. Holmes had caught my arm the moment the first shot was fired, and I understood at once why. If we rushed out now, we would only be dragged into the whole horrible scene.
　　For a few seconds the woman stood looking down at the dead man. Then she put the revolver away and took a packet of papers from the desk. She held them near the lamp and read a name on one of them. After that she threw the packet into the fire. One by one she took more packets, glanced at them, and fed them to the flames. Holmes whispered in my ear that the woman was doing for many people what the law could not do. I said nothing, but I felt that he was right.
　　The fire burned high as the papers curled, blackened, and vanished. The woman worked quickly and with great care, as if she knew exactly what sort of things she was destroying. At last she gave one long look at the dead man and then left the room without another word. The outer door closed softly behind her. We waited only a few seconds after that. Holmes then stepped out from behind the curtain and moved at once to the fire.
　　He pulled open several half-burned packets and looked at the names on them. There were letters from all kinds of people, men and women, rich and poor, all caught in Milverton’s cruel trade. Holmes worked rapidly, feeding some packets deeper into the flames and checking others for one name only. At last he gave a short cry of satisfaction. He had found Lady Eva Blackwell’s letters. In another moment they too were burning in the fire and turning to ash before our eyes.
　　“That is done,” said Holmes quietly. “And now, Watson, we must think of ourselves.” I did not need a second warning. Already voices were sounding somewhere in the house, and feet were moving fast. The shots had brought the servants awake. Holmes crossed the room, turned the key in the outer door, and then led me back the way we had come. We moved quickly and in silence through the dark passages and out into the wet garden.
　　The house behind us was now full of life. Lights shone in one window after another. Men were shouting, and someone cried that the murderer was in the house. Holmes ran low among the bushes, choosing the darkest line and never wasting one movement. I followed as closely as I could. Once or twice I heard someone coming near behind us, and I knew that if we lost even a few seconds, we would be caught.
　　At last the garden wall rose in front of us. Holmes was over it in a moment. I followed, but as I climbed, a hand seized my ankle from below. For one terrible second I thought I was lost. Then I kicked hard, the grip slipped away, and I rolled over the wall into the bushes on the far side. Holmes was waiting for me there, and together we ran across the dark open ground until the sounds behind us grew weaker and then died away altogether.
　　We did not stop until we were far from the house. The night wind was strong on the heath, and the rain struck cold against our faces. Holmes at last slowed, listened, and said that we were safe. We walked back toward Baker Street in silence. I was full of many thoughts, and none of them were easy ones. We had gone out to commit a crime, had seen another crime committed before our eyes, and had escaped only by great luck and speed. Yet I could not feel simple shame. Milverton had died by a road which no jury would have chosen, but there was a dark kind of justice in what had happened.
　　Holmes himself spoke little on the way home. Once only he said that the woman had done what many had dreamed of doing. He did not praise her exactly, but he did not condemn her either. “There are crimes,” he said, “which the law can hardly touch, and wrongs which the law can never truly repair.” After that we were silent again, and I think each of us was glad of the silence.
　　On the following morning we were at breakfast when Lestrade was shown in. He looked very important and very serious. He said that a remarkable murder had taken place in Hampstead during the night and that he had come to ask for Holmes’s help. Milverton, it seemed, had been found dead in his study. A large number of private papers had been burned in the fire. The police believed that burglars had entered the house and that the killing had taken place during the crime. Lestrade looked at Holmes as if expecting him to spring up with interest.
　　Holmes did not do so. He listened calmly and then said that he knew Milverton by name and had always thought him one of the most dangerous men in London. As for the present case, he added, his sympathies were not with the dead man. Lestrade stared at him in surprise. Holmes then said even more clearly that, if he were honest, he must confess that he felt more pity for Milverton’s unknown visitors than for Milverton himself. For that reason, he would not touch the case.
　　Lestrade argued a little, but in the end he had to go without Holmes’s help. After he had left, my friend sat for some time in deep thought. Then, very suddenly, he rose and told me to come with him at once. We walked quickly through the streets until we reached a photographer’s shop. Holmes stopped there and pointed to a portrait in the window. It showed a dark handsome woman in court dress, with a proud face and strong eyes. I looked from the portrait to Holmes, and then I understood. The woman in the study and the woman in the photograph were one and the same.
　　Beneath the picture was the name of a great lady whose husband had once died under sudden and unhappy circumstances. Holmes put one finger to his lips and said nothing. Nor did I. We turned away from the window and walked back in silence. No word of that woman’s name ever passed my lips then, and it will not pass them now. So ended the strange adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, in which Holmes and I stepped outside the law, saw a darker justice at work, and returned with one good woman’s future saved and one evil man gone forever.


The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

Part 1

　　It was not unusual for Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard to visit us in the evening. Holmes always liked such visits, because they kept him close to what was happening at police headquarters. In return for the news that Lestrade brought, Holmes was always ready to listen to the details of any case on which the detective was working. Sometimes he would do no more than ask one or two questions. Even that could be useful.
　　On one particular evening, Lestrade had first talked only about common things. He spoke of the weather, the newspapers, and the ordinary work of the day. Then he became silent and sat smoking with a thoughtful look on his face. Holmes watched him closely for a little while and then asked if anything unusual was on hand. Lestrade answered at once that there was nothing very important. Holmes told him to say no more nonsense and to tell us about it.
　　Lestrade laughed and admitted that there was indeed something in his mind. He had almost not spoken of it, he said, because the business seemed too foolish to trouble Holmes with. And yet, though foolish, it was certainly strange. In fact, it might perhaps suit my line more than Holmes’s. I asked if he meant disease. “Madness, perhaps,” said Lestrade, “and a very queer madness too.”
　　He then asked whether we could imagine that anyone in our own day could still hate Napoleon the First so deeply that he would destroy any image of him that came before his eyes. Holmes leaned back in his chair at once and said that this did not sound like his business. Lestrade agreed, but added that the matter moved from the doctor’s world to the policeman’s world when the man began breaking not only his own images, but other people’s, and even committed burglary in order to do it. That changed Holmes’s face at once. “Burglary?” said he. “Then the thing is more interesting. Let me hear it properly.”
　　Lestrade took out his notebook and began. The first event had happened four days earlier at the shop of Morse Hudson in the Kennington Road. Hudson sold pictures and statues. One of his assistants had stepped away from the front of the shop for only a moment when he heard a crash. When he ran back, he found that a plaster bust of Napoleon, which had been standing on the counter, was broken into pieces upon the floor. He rushed out into the street, and several people said they had seen a man run from the shop, but no one could describe him well enough for the police.
　　At first the whole thing seemed no more than one of those foolish acts of destruction which happen now and then in London. The bust was worth only a few shillings, and the matter looked too childish for serious police work. But the second event was both more serious and more strange. It had taken place the night before. In the same district there lived a well-known doctor named Barnicot, who was a great admirer of Napoleon and had filled his house with books, pictures, and other things connected with the Emperor.
　　Some time earlier, Dr. Barnicot had bought from Morse Hudson two plaster busts of Napoleon, both taken from the same mould. One he placed in the hall of his house in Kennington Road. The other he put in his surgery in Lower Brixton Road, about two miles away. When he came down that morning, he found that his house had been entered in the night. Yet nothing had been taken except the bust from the hall. It had been carried outside and smashed against the garden wall.
　　This alone would have been odd enough. But when Dr. Barnicot went later to his surgery, he found that the second bust had also been destroyed. In that case, the window had been opened in the night, and the plaster head had been smashed where it stood, with the broken pieces lying all over the room. In neither place had anything else been taken. No money, no silver, no instrument, nothing. It looked as if the criminal had wanted only one thing: to destroy these plaster heads of Napoleon.
　　Holmes rubbed his hands and said that the matter was certainly new, if nothing else. He then asked whether the three broken busts were exact duplicates. Lestrade answered that they were, since they had all come from the same mould. Holmes said at once that this fact was important. If the man were simply mad with some general hatred of Napoleon, there were hundreds of images of Napoleon in London for him to attack. It was too much to believe that pure chance had led him to begin with three examples of one exact bust.
　　Lestrade said that he too had thought of that. Still, he pointed out that Morse Hudson was the only regular seller of such objects in that district and that those three busts had probably been the only ones of that kind in the area. A local lunatic, therefore, might easily have begun with them. He then turned to me and asked what I thought. I said that strange fixed ideas are certainly possible and that a man may be fully sensible in every other part of his mind and still behave wildly on one single point.
　　Holmes shook his head. He said that no fixed idea, however strong, would help our unknown man know exactly where these busts were standing. “Then how do you explain it?” I asked. Holmes answered that he did not yet explain it fully. He only said that there seemed to be method in the man’s behaviour. At Dr. Barnicot’s house, where noise might wake the family, the bust had been carried outside before being broken, while in the surgery it had been smashed at once where it stood. This suggested care and purpose, not mere blind rage.
　　Holmes added that the affair looked small and even laughable, but he had learned long ago never to laugh too soon. Some of his most serious cases had begun from smaller things than this. Lestrade answered that if any fresh event came, he would certainly tell us at once. That promise was fulfilled much sooner, and in a much darker way, than any of us expected. For on the very next morning, while I was still dressing, Holmes came into my room with a telegram in his hand.
　　He read it aloud. It was short and urgent: “Come instantly, 131 Pitt Street, Kensington. — Lestrade.” I asked what he thought it meant. Holmes said that it might mean almost anything, but that he strongly suspected it was the next step in the matter of the broken busts. If so, he added, the strange business had likely stopped being only foolish and had turned serious. We made ready at once to go to Kensington and see what new thing had happened there.

Part 2

　　We reached Pitt Street in Kensington in less than half an hour. Even before the cab stopped, Holmes saw the little crowd at the railings and said that the case had clearly grown more serious. A broken plaster head may amuse a street, but a dead man draws it fast. Lestrade met us at the door and brought us into a sitting-room, where a thin, worried man in a dressing-gown was walking up and down in great excitement. This was Mr. Horace Harker, a newspaper man and the owner of the house.
　　Harker told us his story in a rapid, nervous way. He had been working late in a room at the back of the top floor when, about three in the morning, he thought he heard a sound below. At first he paid little attention, because it did not come again at once. Then, a few minutes later, there came a cry from downstairs so dreadful that it drove the blood from his face. He seized the poker, ran down, and found that the front room window was open and the plaster bust of Napoleon which stood there was gone.
　　He at once opened the front door to see what had happened outside. There, in the darkness, he almost fell over a body lying on the step. When he brought a light, he saw a man stretched on his back with his throat cut from ear to ear. The place was full of blood, and Harker was so shocked that he blew his police-whistle and nearly fainted. Lestrade then added that the dead man was not Harker’s visitor or servant, but an outsider, badly dressed though strong and clearly not poor in the common way.
　　Nothing of value had been taken from the house. The only missing thing was the plaster bust. That, however, had already been found. It lay broken into pieces in the front garden of an empty house in Campden House Road, only a short distance away. Holmes asked at once to be taken there. He said that, until they saw where the bust had been broken, they could not hope to understand why it had been carried off at all.
　　The empty house stood in a dark quiet street not far from Pitt Street. In the front garden, among the weeds and poor grass, lay the broken white pieces of the Emperor’s head. Holmes bent over them with the greatest care and picked up fragment after fragment. He turned each one to the light and looked not only at the outside, but at the rough inner surface. When he had examined enough to satisfy himself, he stood up and looked slowly round the little garden and the road beyond.
　　He then pointed to the street lamp above us and said that this was the first useful thing we had yet found. If the man had wanted only to smash the bust, he could have done it inside Harker’s house, or on the doorstep, or in a dozen darker places nearer at hand. Instead, he had carried it to a spot where the light fell clearly on the fragments. That meant he wanted to see what lay inside. Lestrade stared at him and said that the same thing had been true at Dr. Barnicot’s house, where one bust had also been broken under a lamp.
　　Holmes answered that this point must be remembered very carefully. Our man was not acting from simple rage against Napoleon. He was searching the broken plaster for something small and valuable enough to need good light. The question was no longer why he hated the Emperor, but what he believed had been hidden inside those six busts. Lestrade admitted that this was a much more sensible line, though he still cared greatly about the murdered man and wanted first to know who he was.
　　Holmes said that the dead man’s name would be useful, but not enough by itself. What mattered equally was the history of the busts. He therefore asked Lestrade to meet him that evening at Baker Street and said that, before then, he himself would visit the shop from which Harker had bought his bust. We then went to Harding Brothers near the High Street Station. The owner was out, but an assistant was able to tell us that the bust had been one of three received from Gelder & Co. of Stepney.
　　Holmes’s face brightened at once. He asked where the other two had gone. The young assistant looked through the books and said that one had been sold to Mr. Josiah Brown of Laburnum Lodge, Laburnum Vale, Chiswick, and the other to Mr. Sandeford of Lower Grove Road, Reading. Holmes wrote down both addresses very carefully. He also asked whether there had been anything unusual about the three busts when they arrived. The assistant answered no, nothing at all. They were ordinary plaster heads and worth only a few shillings each.
　　From there Holmes went on to Gelder & Co. in Stepney. When he returned that afternoon, he had the look of a man who has found the right road at last. He told me that the six busts had all come from one mould and had all been made at about the same time. More important still, one of the workmen in the factory had been an Italian named Beppo, a clever modeller with a bad name, who had later been arrested for a knife attack and sent to prison. Holmes also learned that Beppo had some connection with another Italian criminal named Pietro Venucci.
　　When Lestrade arrived that evening, Holmes laid the whole matter before him in order. The dead man in Pitt Street had now been identified as Pietro Venucci, one of the most dangerous Italians in London. Beppo, the factory workman, was still missing. Holmes said that the shape of the case was now plain in broad outline. Beppo must have hidden something inside one of these six busts while the plaster was still soft. Before he could recover it, he was sent to prison. When he came out, the six Napoleons had already been sold and scattered. He was therefore forced to hunt them down one by one and break them open until he found the one he wanted.
　　Lestrade asked what the hidden object could be. Holmes answered that he did not yet know, though he felt sure it must be something small and valuable. A paper, a jewel, or some other object of that sort would fit the facts. Pietro Venucci, he thought, had either shared the secret or discovered enough to follow Beppo and try to profit from the hunt. That explained why Pietro had been outside Harker’s house that night. He was not there for Harker at all. He was there for Beppo.
　　Holmes then said that of the six busts, five had already been broken. One remained in Chiswick and one in Reading. Since Chiswick was nearer, Beppo would almost certainly go there next if he had not yet found what he wanted. Holmes had therefore already visited Mr. Josiah Brown and arranged matters. Mr. Brown was suspicious and not at all pleased by strangers, but Holmes had offered him ten pounds for a plaster bust worth only a few shillings, on one condition: the bust was not to be sold or moved before that night. Brown had agreed and had signed a paper to that effect.
　　“Then we wait for him at Chiswick,” said Lestrade. Holmes nodded and said yes, that was the plan. If Beppo came and broke the bust, they would catch him at the act. If nothing was found inside, they would know with certainty that the last bust in Reading held the answer. So, later that night, the three of us made our way to Laburnum Vale and took our places near the garden of Laburnum Lodge. Holmes chose the darkest point from which both house and gate could be watched, and there we waited in silence for the man who had already broken five Napoleons across London and killed once in the search.

Part 3

　　We waited a long time in the dark outside Laburnum Lodge. The little house stood quiet under the night sky, with only one dim light showing for a while and then going out. Mr. Brown himself had gone to bed, and the bust still stood where Holmes had arranged it should remain. Lestrade grew impatient once or twice and whispered that perhaps our man had chosen Reading first after all. Holmes answered only that patience is often the best part of police work.
　　At last, a little after two, Holmes touched my arm. A dark figure had slipped along the road and now moved close to the wall of the garden. He opened the gate softly, crossed the path like a shadow, and vanished for a moment beside the front window. Then came the faint sound of a window being raised. Not long after that, the man appeared again with something white in his arms. It was the plaster bust of Napoleon.
　　He carried it to the far end of the garden, where the street lamp threw a clear yellow light on the ground. There he dropped to one knee and smashed the bust against the stones. At once he bent over the broken pieces, searching through them with both hands in great haste. That was enough for Holmes. He sprang forward, and Lestrade and I followed him.
　　The man gave a cry and tried to run, but he had not gone three steps before Holmes was on him. He fought wildly, twisting and striking like an animal in a trap. Lestrade caught one arm, I caught the other, and together we forced him down. He was smaller than I had expected, but very quick and strong. Even after the handcuffs were on, his dark eyes burned with hate and fear.
　　Under the lamp, we could now see him clearly. He had a sharp face, black hair, and that restless watchful look which often belongs to criminals from the southern countries of Europe. Lestrade said at once that this must be Beppo. The prisoner answered nothing, but stared at Holmes as if he understood that this was the mind which had beaten him. Holmes, however, gave him very little attention. His eyes were on the broken plaster at our feet.
　　He knelt down and began turning over the pieces one by one. He looked at the inside of each fragment with the greatest care, while Lestrade held the prisoner and watched in silence. At last Holmes stood up with a small disappointed movement and said that there was nothing there. This had not been the right bust. Beppo broke into a stream of angry Italian, but that only confirmed what Holmes already knew.
　　Lestrade asked whether the man should now be taken in for the murder of Pietro Venucci. Holmes answered that he certainly should. The evidence was not yet complete in every legal detail, but it was strong enough to hold him. Pietro had followed Beppo. Beppo had a knife and a violent nature. The dead man had been found where Beppo had been working. All this fitted too well to be chance. Still, Holmes added, the true end of the case was not in Chiswick, but in Reading.
　　“Then the last bust is the one,” said Lestrade. Holmes answered that it must be so. Five had now been broken, and the thing hidden in the plaster had not appeared. Therefore the sixth and last head of Napoleon contained what Beppo had been searching for across London. Holmes said that we should go to Reading by the first train in the morning. There was no longer any need for guesses. The truth waited for us in Lower Grove Road.
　　So it happened that next morning Holmes, Lestrade, and I found ourselves once more on a railway journey, this time westward. Holmes was in excellent spirits. He had the calm bright look of a man whose hard work is almost done. Lestrade, for his part, was full of curiosity, because though he now accepted Holmes’s main idea, he still wished to see with his own eyes what thing could be worth so much effort and blood.
　　At Reading we went directly to the house of Mr. Sandeford, the owner of the last remaining bust. He was a respectable middle-aged man and received us politely, though with some surprise. Holmes asked whether he had bought from Harding Brothers, some months earlier, a plaster bust of Napoleon the First. Mr. Sandeford answered that he had and pointed at once to the white head standing on a side table in his room. It looked harmless enough there, quiet and foolish, and it was hard to believe that murder had followed its brothers across London.
　　Holmes then asked whether the bust was for sale. Sandeford said that he did not care much about it and would certainly sell it for the right price. Holmes asked what he had paid for it. The answer was fifteen shillings. Holmes at once offered him ten pounds. The man stared in astonishment, but he was not so foolish as to refuse such a bargain. Holmes then asked one more favour. He wished Mr. Sandeford to write and sign a short statement saying that he had sold the bust, with all rights in it, to Mr. Sherlock Holmes for that sum.
　　Sandeford did so, though he laughed and said that he had never seen a gentleman so careful over a bit of common plaster. Holmes folded the paper and placed it safely in his pocket. Then he took up the bust with both hands, carried it to the hearthrug, and laid it down. He looked once at Lestrade and once at me. “Now,” said he, “we shall see whether the little Corsican still keeps his secret.” With that, he struck the bust sharply with his walking-stick.
　　The plaster flew into pieces. We all bent down at once and looked among the white fragments. For one second I saw nothing but dust and broken bits. Then something dark and round rolled out upon the rug and lay there shining softly in the light. Holmes picked it up between finger and thumb and held it toward us. It was a pearl, large and deep in colour, almost black, yet rich and full of light. Even I, who know little of jewels, could see that it must be worth a great fortune.
　　Lestrade gave a cry of delight. Holmes said very quietly, “The black pearl of the Borgias.” He then explained everything in order. Some months earlier, this famous pearl had been stolen from a great lady staying at a London hotel. Suspicion had fallen on an Italian maid named Lucretia Venucci, and behind her stood her brother Pietro, the same man later found dead outside Harker’s house. Beppo, also an Italian and a worker in plaster, had somehow come into possession of the pearl.
　　At that time, he was employed in the workshop of Gelder & Co., where these six busts of Napoleon were being made. He knew that the police were close behind him for another crime, the knife attack which later sent him to prison. He had to hide the pearl quickly. So, while the plaster was still soft in one of the busts, he pressed the pearl inside and closed the surface again. Before he could recover it, he was arrested and the six busts were sold in different directions.
　　When he came out of prison, he had only one road open to him. He had to trace all six busts and break them one by one until he found the right one. That explained the smashed head in Morse Hudson’s shop, the two broken busts of Dr. Barnicot, the bust stolen from Harker’s room, the broken one at Chiswick, and now this last head at Reading. He always broke them where there was enough light to search the pieces, because he was not mad and he did not hate Napoleon. He was only hunting the pearl.
　　Pietro Venucci, Holmes went on, had likely learned enough to follow Beppo and hope to take the jewel for himself. That was why he had appeared in Pitt Street on the fatal night. Beppo, carrying the bust away to break it under the lamp, met his rival there. A quarrel followed, and Pietro died by the knife. The strange little case of the six Napoleons was therefore not a case of madness at all, but of a stolen jewel hidden in plaster and hunted by desperate men.
　　Lestrade could not say enough in praise of Holmes after that. Holmes only smiled and answered that the case had become simple once the first true point was seen. The man had not been breaking busts because they were busts. He had been opening them because one of them held something hidden inside. From that, everything else followed. Even the murder, ugly as it was, belonged naturally to the same line.
　　The black pearl was, of course, handed over through the proper official way and later returned to its owner. Beppo was taken back to London to answer for Pietro Venucci’s death. As for Holmes, he seemed less pleased by the pearl itself than by the clean shape of the reasoning which had led to it. The whole affair had begun as a foolish little story about broken plaster heads and had ended in the recovery of one of the most famous jewels in Europe. That, to Holmes, was exactly the sort of turn which made life worth watching.


The Adventure of the Three Students

Part 1

　　It was in the year 1895 that a small but very strange case came to Holmes and me in one of the great university towns of England. We were not there on ordinary holiday. Holmes was busy with some difficult work in an old library, and for that reason we had taken rooms for a few weeks near the college buildings. Even in such a quiet place, however, trouble found him, as it always seemed to do.
　　One evening, after dinner, a man came to our rooms in a state of deep worry. He was Mr. Hilton Soames, a lecturer and tutor at one of the colleges. I knew him a little by sight, but not well. He was tall, thin, and nervous by nature, with quick movements and a face that easily showed every feeling. That night his anxiety was so great that it had taken full control of him.
　　He begged Holmes at once to help him in a matter of the greatest importance. Holmes was not pleased at being interrupted, because he was then working hard on some old historical papers. Even so, when he saw how shaken the man was, he put his work aside and asked him to speak clearly. Soames said that he dared not go to the police, because the whole thing must be kept as quiet as possible. If it became public, the honour of the college would suffer greatly.
　　Holmes asked what the matter was. Soames answered that on the next day there was to be an important examination for the Fortescue Scholarship. He himself was one of the examiners, and the first paper was in Greek. The printed proof of the questions had reached him that afternoon, and he had taken it to his room to read through it carefully. Since the paper was of great value to any student who might see it before the examination, the strictest secrecy was necessary.
　　He had been reading the proof in his room at about half-past four when he was called away for tea. He was gone for rather more than an hour. When he returned, he found at once that something was wrong. One of the first things that struck him was that a key had been left in the outer door. For a moment he thought it was his own, but when he felt in his pocket, he found that his own key was still there. The key in the door was the duplicate used by his servant Bannister.
　　Soames explained that Bannister had been with him for many years and had always seemed completely honest and trustworthy. The servant had later told him that he had come to ask whether tea should be brought in and had then, by mistake, left his key in the door when he went away. On any ordinary day such a mistake would have mattered very little. On that day it was a disaster. The moment Soames looked at his table, he saw that the examination proof had been touched.
　　The proof consisted of three long slips of paper. When he had left the room, they had all been together on his writing-table. When he came back, one was on the floor, one was on the side table near the window, and the third was still where he had left it. Holmes at once repeated the positions of the papers in the same order, which greatly surprised our visitor. To Holmes, however, the meaning was already beginning to show. Someone had clearly taken the sheets one by one and had worked with them in haste.
　　Soames said that his first thought had been that Bannister himself must have handled the paper. Yet the servant denied this very strongly, and his manner seemed full of real shock. The other explanation was worse. Some student, passing by the window or the door, had seen the chance, entered the room, and copied the questions. The side table by the window, Soames said, gave a view over the college court. A man sitting there could keep watch and still work.
　　Holmes then asked whether any further signs had been found. Soames answered yes. On the side table there were several small pencil cuttings and the broken tip of a soft lead pencil. It was plain that the intruder had been writing quickly, had broken his pencil, and had sharpened it again there in the room. On the red leather top of the main writing-table there was also a cut, not a mere light scratch, but a clean little tear in the surface. Near it lay a small black lump of clay with a few grains of sawdust or fine earth stuck to it.
　　These things had frightened Soames even more, because they showed that the crime had truly taken place and was not merely a mistake in memory. He then told us that the matter was made still more serious by the fact that only three students were in a position to profit from it. They all lived on the stair above his rooms. One was a brilliant but careless young man named Miles McLaren. Another was an Indian student named Daulat Ras. The third was a fine scholar and athlete named Gilchrist, a young man of good character but small means.
　　Holmes asked whether any one of these three had reason to come to Soames’s room that afternoon. Soames said yes. The Indian student, Daulat Ras, had come in to ask a question about the examination. At that moment, the proof sheets had been lying rolled up on the table. Soames did not think the student could have seen clearly what they were, but he could not be sure. Holmes nodded and said that uncertainty is often where cases begin.
　　Then Soames gave one more piece of news. The examination was to begin very early the next morning. If he stopped it now, he would have to explain why. That explanation might become public, and the college would be shamed. If he said nothing and let the examination go on, then one guilty student might gain a great prize by dishonest means. It was for that reason that he had come to Holmes rather than to the police. He needed help at once, and he needed silence even more than help.
　　Holmes stood up immediately when the story ended. He said that the case was a small one in outward appearance, but delicate and important. He would go with Mr. Soames at once and see the room before anything else was touched or moved. Soames looked greatly relieved, and within a very short time the three of us were walking through the old college streets toward the tutor’s rooms. Holmes said little on the way, but I could see from his face that the matter had already begun to interest him deeply.

Part 2

　　Mr. Soames’s rooms were on the ground floor of one of the old college staircases, with three students living above him, one on each floor. The building looked ancient and quiet from the outside, but as we entered the tutor’s sitting-room, I felt at once that the whole place had become full of hidden danger. The examination proof itself was now locked away, but the room still showed the signs of what had happened. Holmes stood quite still for a moment, taking everything in with one rapid glance.
　　He then began his work in his usual careful way. First he looked at the large writing-table in the middle of the room. Then he crossed to the small side table near the window. From that place a man could indeed see across the quadrangle and watch whether Mr. Soames was returning. Holmes said at once that this part of the story was clear. The intruder had taken one sheet at a time from the main table to the side table, because there he could copy and still keep watch.
　　Mr. Soames showed us exactly where the three sheets had been found. One had fallen to the floor. One had been left on the side table. The third remained near the place where he had first put it. Holmes said that this proved the man had been interrupted before he could finish his work or put things back properly. The whole business had therefore taken place in great haste and under sudden fear.
　　He next examined the little pencil cuttings and the broken tip of lead. These lay near the side table. Holmes picked them up and looked at them very closely. He said that the pencil had been larger than ordinary and very soft, and that only a short piece of it now remained. He also believed that the maker’s name had once been printed in silver on the outside. One or two letters seemed still faintly visible. This, he said, might later help us.
　　After that he bent over the red leather top of the main writing-table and studied the cut in it. It was not a straight scratch, but a little tear which began lightly and then went deeper. Near it lay the small black lump with grains of fine earth or sawdust mixed through it. Holmes picked it up and rolled it between his fingers. Then he asked whether Mr. Soames had ever seen anything of the same kind before. The tutor answered that he had not.
　　Holmes then went into the bedroom which opened from the sitting-room. He examined the floor, the curtain, the space under the bed, and every corner in that quiet exact way of his. At first I could see nothing to reward him. Then, near the edge of the room, he found another small black lump exactly like the first. This pleased him much more than anything else so far. He held it up and said that this was very important indeed.
　　Mr. Soames suggested that the intruder might perhaps have entered or escaped by the bedroom window. Holmes shook his head. He said that this was not likely. The simpler explanation was better. The man had hidden in the bedroom when Mr. Soames returned unexpectedly. That explained why one of the black lumps had been left there. The tutor looked deeply troubled when he heard this, because it meant that the guilty person had been very near him while he himself stood in the next room.
　　We then spoke of Bannister. Mr. Soames repeated that his servant had been with him for ten years and had always proved honest and careful. Even so, he agreed that Bannister’s conduct had been odd. The man had been badly upset, had asked for brandy, and had then sat not in the nearest chair, but in the chair by the window. Holmes said that this point interested him very much. A man who is faint usually sits where he is. He does not choose another place for no reason.
　　Holmes asked that Bannister be sent for. The servant came in pale and nervous, with shaking hands and an unhappy face. He said again that he had entered only to ask whether tea was wanted and had then, by mistake, left his key in the door. He denied touching the paper. He also denied seeing any person in the room. When Holmes asked why he had sat in the chair by the window instead of the chair near the door, Bannister could give no clear answer. He only said that he had been much upset and had hardly known what he was doing.
　　Holmes did not press him hard at that moment. Instead, he let the man go and then asked about the three students upstairs. Mr. Soames described them one by one. The Indian student, Daulat Ras, was quiet, hard-working, and weak in Greek. Gilchrist was a fine student and a famous athlete, tall, fair, and poor, though the son of a man once well known. Miles McLaren was very clever, but wild in character, with a record of laziness and trouble. Of the three, said Soames, McLaren seemed the easiest to suspect, though he had no proof against him.
　　Holmes then asked to see the staircase and the rooms above. We first looked up from the quadrangle below. In one window, Holmes pointed out the Indian student moving quickly up and down as he learned his work. This did not strike him as strange. Many men walk while trying to fix words in memory. Still, he said, we must see all three rooms if it could be done without raising open suspicion.
　　Mr. Soames therefore took us upstairs under the excuse of showing some old college carving. Gilchrist received us politely and without any sign of trouble. He was indeed a fine tall young man, with the look of one who lived much in the open air. Holmes admired the old woodwork and, while doing so, broke the point of his own pencil. He then borrowed a pencil and knife from Gilchrist and looked at them for a moment before handing them back. Nothing more was said, and we went on.
　　Daulat Ras also received us quietly. He looked at us with some surprise, but he was respectful and calm. Holmes used the same little trick with the pencil there too. Once again he learned something, though he did not explain it at once. When we came to McLaren’s door, however, the matter changed. The student would not open. He answered from within in a loud angry voice that he could not be disturbed and that tomorrow was the examination. Mr. Soames looked annoyed and embarrassed, but Holmes only smiled slightly and led us away.
　　As we came down the stairs again, Holmes asked one question which seemed at first unimportant. How tall, exactly, was McLaren? Mr. Soames said that he was shorter than Gilchrist and taller than the Indian, perhaps about five feet six. Holmes nodded and said that this also had value. Then, to the tutor’s great surprise, he announced that he would go no farther that night. The tutor protested that the examination must begin in the morning and that a decision was needed at once. Holmes answered that he now knew enough to act, but he wished to be quite certain before speaking. He would return early the next morning. When we were alone again, he told me that the most puzzling person in the whole case was not one of the three students at all, but Bannister.

Part 3

　　Holmes was out before I woke the next morning. When he came into my room a little later, he was already dressed and looked full of quiet energy. He told me to get ready at once, because Mr. Soames would be in deep trouble until we brought him an answer. I asked whether he truly had one. Holmes replied that he had gone for an early walk and had found exactly what he wanted. He would say no more until we were back in the tutor’s rooms.
　　We found Mr. Soames in a state of great anxiety. The examination was to begin very soon, and every minute of delay made him more unhappy. Holmes told him calmly that the matter could be settled, but only if he would do exactly as asked. He then requested that Bannister should be sent for and that one of the students, Mr. Gilchrist, should also be called down. The tutor stared in complete surprise, but he obeyed at once.
　　Before they came, Holmes explained one or two points. The first was the black clay. He had gone that morning to the athletic grounds and found there, near the jumping-pit, the same black earth mixed with fine sawdust or tan. He took some up in his hand and brought it back with him. It matched perfectly the two little lumps found in Mr. Soames’s rooms. Therefore the man who entered the room had recently been at the jumping-ground.
　　The second point was height. Holmes had yesterday stood outside the tutor’s window and tested the view for himself. A man of ordinary size could not easily see what lay on the central writing-table. But a very tall man could. Among the three students, only Gilchrist was tall enough for this to be natural and easy. The Indian student was too short. McLaren was also too short. This did not prove guilt by itself, but it narrowed the matter very strongly.
　　Then there was the cut in the leather top of the desk. Holmes said that it began as a light mark and ended in a deeper tear, as if something sharp had been dragged across it in sudden movement. If a man had placed spiked jumping-shoes on the table while copying the paper and then snatched them up in panic, such a mark would be exactly what one would expect. Mr. Soames listened with growing distress, for he could now already see where Holmes’s reasoning was leading.
　　Bannister came in first. He looked pale and unhappy, and I think from the first moment he guessed that the end had come. Holmes spoke kindly, not harshly, and asked him again why he had sat in the chair by the window instead of the one near the door. Bannister gave the same weak answer as before. He had been shocked and hardly knew what he was doing. Holmes shook his head and said that this would not do. A man in weakness drops where he stands. He does not cross a room for no reason.
　　Holmes then asked him one direct question. When Mr. Soames had gone out for the brandy, had Bannister, during those few moments, allowed a person hidden in the bedroom to leave the room? At this the old servant turned so white that I thought he would fall. He still tried to say no, but there was no strength in the word. Holmes told him that it was useless to struggle longer. The truth would be easier for everyone if Mr. Gilchrist were present too.
　　The student entered a moment later. He was pale but controlled, and he looked first at Soames and then at Bannister with surprise. Holmes asked him to shut the door and stand by the table. Then for some seconds he said nothing at all, but only looked at him. Under that steady gaze, the young man’s face changed. He tried to keep firm, but the effort showed plainly in every line of him.
　　Holmes began very gently. He said that no word of this matter need ever go beyond the room if honesty came in time. He added that Mr. Gilchrist was not a hardened wrongdoer, and that the pain in his face showed it clearly. Then Holmes said that he would tell the story as he believed it had happened, and the young man could correct him if he were wrong. Gilchrist gave a broken little movement of the head, and Holmes went on.
　　On the previous afternoon, he said, Gilchrist had returned from the athletic grounds carrying his jumping-shoes. As he passed Mr. Soames’s window, his great height allowed him to see the examination proof lying on the table inside. At the door he found the key left there by Bannister. Temptation came suddenly and strongly. He entered, laid his shoes on the writing-table, placed his gloves on the chair near the window, and began to copy the paper one sheet at a time at the side table where he could watch the quadrangle.
　　Then Mr. Soames returned unexpectedly by the side door. Gilchrist had no time to escape in an ordinary way. He caught up his jumping-shoes, but as he did so, one of the spikes dragged across the leather table-top and made the cut. The clay from the sports field fell first on the writing-table and then, as he rushed into the bedroom, a second piece fell there. In his panic he forgot the gloves completely. He hid in the bedroom while Mr. Soames entered the room and noticed that the papers had been touched.
　　Bannister then came in. He saw the gloves on the chair and knew at once whose they were. He also understood that the young man himself must still be hidden in the bedroom. That, Holmes said, explained the servant’s strange choice of chair. He had sat on the gloves to hide them from his master. Later, when Mr. Soames had gone out, Bannister let Gilchrist escape. “Is that not the truth?” Holmes asked quietly.
　　For a moment Gilchrist stood still. Then all his strength seemed to leave him at once. He dropped to his knees beside the table and covered his face with his hands. Mr. Soames gave a cry of pain and anger, while Bannister turned away with tears in his eyes. The young man then drew a letter from his pocket and handed it silently to the tutor. It was written that morning. In it Gilchrist said that he would not sit for the examination, that he had acted dishonourably, and that he had accepted a post in the Rhodesian Police and meant to leave at once.
　　Bannister now spoke through his tears. Many years earlier, he said, he had been butler to Sir Jabez Gilchrist, the student’s father. When the father was ruined, Bannister had gone into other service, but he had never forgotten the family. So when he saw the gloves on the chair, he knew that the son of his old master was in terrible danger. He hid the gloves not because he approved of the act, but because he wanted to save the young man from instant public ruin. Yet, he added, he had spoken to Gilchrist very strongly afterward and had reminded him of his father’s name and of what honour meant.
　　Gilchrist lifted his face then and said that this was true. It was Bannister’s words, more than fear of discovery, which had brought him back to his better self. He had not slept all night. He had hated himself for what he had done. Before Holmes came that morning, he had already decided not to sit for the examination and to leave the university forever. He asked Mr. Soames’s pardon in a voice so full of real shame that even the tutor’s anger softened at once.
　　Holmes told him that one great fall in life need not destroy a man forever if he truly learns from it. Mr. Soames, after a painful silence, said that the examination could now go forward safely, since the guilty man had chosen to withdraw. No scandal need touch the college, and the matter would remain private. Gilchrist thanked him with all the feeling of a man who has been near ruin and suddenly sees a road still open before him. Bannister, too, was forgiven, for his fault had come from loyalty and pity rather than selfishness.
　　So the affair ended. As we walked back through the old college streets, Holmes said that small cases often show human nature most clearly. Here there had been no violence, no blood, and no great criminal mind. There had only been weakness, temptation, loyalty, shame, and at last the wish to do right before it was too late. To me, that made the case memorable in its own quiet way. It showed that Holmes could be just without being cruel, and that sometimes the best ending of an inquiry is not punishment, but the chance for a young man to begin again honestly.


The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez

Part 1

　　Some of the cases that came to Holmes were large from the very beginning. They arrived with great names, great danger, and many people already in motion. Others began in a much quieter way and only later showed how deep and strange they really were. The case of the golden pince-nez belonged to that second kind. It opened with the death of a young man in a lonely country house and with one small object lying near his body.
　　It was Stanley Hopkins who brought it to us. He had grown older and steadier since the affair of Black Peter, and Holmes liked him well, though he still found him a little too ready to hold the first strong idea that came to hand. On this occasion, however, the young inspector showed real caution. He came to Baker Street early, with a tired face and a look which told me that he had already done much work and had found no easy answer. Holmes welcomed him warmly and asked what trouble had now come out of the country.
　　Hopkins said that the matter had taken place at a house called Yoxley Old Place in Kent. There lived Professor Coram, an elderly scholar who had spent many years in foreign study and was now weak in body but very active in mind. He employed as secretary a young man named Willoughby Smith. This Smith was quiet, hard-working, and by all accounts a most respectable person. Nothing in his life, so far as the police could see, gave any reason why anyone should wish him harm.
　　The crime had happened only the day before. In the morning, one of the maids heard a cry from the professor’s room and then a heavy fall. When the servants ran in, they found Willoughby Smith lying on the floor of the study, badly wounded in the neck. He had only a few moments of life left in him. According to the housekeeper, he made an effort to speak and gave the words, “The professor—it was she.” Then he died before anything more could be learned.
　　Holmes at once sat up more straight in his chair. He asked if the wounded man had indeed said “she.” Hopkins answered that both the housekeeper and the maid were clear on that point. It had not been “he.” It had been “she.” That, said Hopkins, was one of the strangest features of the case. The second was that near the dead man’s hand there had been found a pair of gold pince-nez, the kind of glasses which pinch the nose and are used without side arms.
　　Holmes asked several quick questions at once. Had the professor himself heard anything? Yes, but little. He was in the next room and had not left his bed, being old and not strong. Had anyone else been seen in or near the house? No one. Was anything stolen? That, Hopkins said, was another puzzle. Some papers in the room had been disturbed, but nothing of clear value appeared to be missing. There was no plain sign of robbery.
　　The inspector then gave us the shape of the household. Besides Professor Coram, there were the housekeeper, Mrs. Marker, a maid named Susan, the gardener, his wife, and Willoughby Smith. The house stood lonely, with very few neighbours near enough to see much. The professor himself was known as a learned man, but not a friendly one. He lived almost entirely among books, papers, and old memories. To the servants he was not cruel, but he was distant and difficult.
　　Willoughby Smith had been with him only a short time. He was the son of an old clergyman, well educated, and in need of work. No one had ever heard a bad word against him. Hopkins said that this point greatly troubled him. If the dead man had had enemies, one might begin there. But everything about him seemed clean and ordinary. The crime therefore looked less like private revenge and more like some hidden matter connected with the house itself.
　　Holmes then asked exactly how the body had been found. Hopkins answered that Smith had been discovered in the study, close to the door leading to the passage. His wound had been made by a knife or some other sharp instrument, and there were signs that he had struggled hard. One hand had caught at the attacker, because in it were found the broken pieces of a woman’s eyeglasses string and the pince-nez themselves lay close by. Holmes’s face brightened a little at that. “Ah,” said he, “then the dead man at least took something from the person who struck him.”
　　Hopkins answered that this had been his own view too. Yet the clue had not taken him as far as he hoped. The glasses were unusual, certainly, but no woman in the house used them. Nor had any neighbour come forward to claim or identify them. Holmes asked if the police had examined the glasses closely. Hopkins said yes, but he had brought them to Baker Street because he knew that Holmes often saw a whole page where other men saw only a letter.
　　He then took from his pocket a case and laid it on the table. Holmes opened it very carefully and lifted out the glasses. They were gold, delicate, and of uncommon shape, with broad lenses and a thin black silk cord attached. Holmes held them to the light, turned them in his fingers, and then looked through them toward the window. For several minutes he said nothing. I knew from long habit that each second of that silence had value. Hopkins sat leaning forward with all his attention fixed on Holmes’s face.
　　At last Holmes placed the pince-nez on the table and began speaking in a quiet measured voice. The owner, he said, was certainly a woman. She was a person of education and refinement, since the glasses were of good quality and carefully chosen. She was also a woman of strong character, because the nose-clip had been adjusted firmly and for long use. Her sight was very poor, especially at close range. The distance between the lenses and the marks on the bridge suggested that she had a broad nose, and the wearing of the cord showed that she moved actively enough to fear losing them.
　　Hopkins stared in open admiration, while I confess that I too felt the old pleasure of hearing Holmes build a living figure out of metal and glass. Holmes went on to say that the woman was probably middle-aged or older. The glasses had been changed and repaired more than once, which suggested long use. One lens was stronger than the other, so the two eyes were not equally weak. Finally, the shape and setting hinted that the owner was a woman of some intelligence and taste, not a servant and not a village woman of the common sort.
　　“Then we are looking for an educated lady with very bad sight,” said Hopkins. Holmes answered that we were, but not only that. We were also looking for a woman who had had some secret business in Professor Coram’s room and had been interrupted by Willoughby Smith. The young man had tried to stop her, had seized at her glasses, and had paid with his life. Holmes added that the dying words now looked much more natural. Smith had not meant to accuse the professor himself. He had tried to say that the person in the professor’s room had been a woman.
　　Hopkins said that this was all of the greatest value, but one question still stood before every other. Why had the woman been in the room at all? Holmes answered that this we could not know yet. Papers had been disturbed, and papers therefore were probably the centre of the matter. Whether she came to steal, to recover, or to destroy them was another question. But it was very unlikely that she came for money or silver, since nothing of that kind seemed to interest her and the room held many easier things to take than old papers.
　　“Then you will come?” asked Hopkins. Holmes smiled and said that after such a beginning he could hardly stay in Baker Street. A lonely house, a dead secretary, an old scholar, and a woman known first by her glasses alone were exactly the sort of things that make life worth close attention. He told Hopkins that we would start at once for Yoxley Old Place. Within a very short time we were on our way into Kent, carrying with us that one small golden clue from which Holmes had already drawn the shadow of a living woman and the promise of a far darker story still hidden ahead.

Part 2

　　We reached Yoxley Old Place in the cold clear morning. A constable was waiting for us at the garden gate, and from him we learned that nothing new had happened in the night. The house stood quiet among trees and fields, with no sign of the violence that had taken place there. Yet there was something heavy in the stillness, as if the place itself knew that blood had been spilled inside it. Holmes said very little as we walked in, but I could see from his face that his whole mind was awake and working.
　　Stanley Hopkins first took us over the ground outside. A path led from the house through the little garden to the road. Holmes asked at once whether any clear footprints had been found there. Hopkins answered with some annoyance that the weather had ruined everything. Rain and wind had beaten across the ground since the crime, and the path itself was partly hard and partly trampled. There were marks, but nothing that could be read with safety.
　　Holmes next wanted to know exactly where the dead man had fallen and in what direction the wound had been made. Hopkins showed him a rough plan of the study and explained the position of the body. The knife had entered from behind and on the right side of the neck, which made self-murder almost impossible. The dead man had fallen near the writing-table, close to the bureau where the papers were kept. Holmes listened closely and then said that, whatever else the case might be, it was certainly not simple.
　　We then entered the study itself. The body had already been removed, but enough remained to make the scene clear. On the carpet there was still the dark mark where Willoughby Smith had lain. The writing-table stood near the window, and the bureau with its drawers and central cupboard was beside it. Everything in the room looked neat and almost untouched. There was none of that disorder which robbery usually leaves behind it.
　　Holmes asked at once whether anything had been taken. Hopkins answered no. The drawers had long been left open, and nothing of value had been kept in them. The cupboard in the middle had contained important papers, but there was no sign that it had been forced. Professor Coram insisted that nothing was missing. Holmes repeated those last words softly, as if they interested him more than the rest. Then he turned to the pince-nez, which lay in its case upon the table.
　　He took them out and examined them once again, this time in the room where they had fallen. He held them to the light, looked through them, and then placed them lightly on the bridge of his own nose. After that he moved closer to the window and read a few printed words from a paper on the desk. At last he handed the glasses to Hopkins and said that they told a great deal. They belonged, he repeated, to a woman of education and good taste. She was very short-sighted, and her two eyes were not equally weak.
　　He went further than he had the day before. One cork pad on the bridge had been replaced more recently than the other, which meant that the owner had returned at least once to the same optician. The strong lenses and the shape of the frame suggested a woman whose eyes had troubled her for many years. Such long use, Holmes said, changes the whole face. The forehead, eyelids, and even the shoulders often tell the story. Hopkins listened in open admiration, though I confess that even by then I could not see how glasses alone could take us much nearer to the killer.
　　Holmes then walked slowly across the room, looking at the carpet, the bureau, and the window-sill. He stopped at the sill and bent very low. For a few moments he said nothing. Then he gave a small sound of interest and called me over. There was no clear footprint there, but he said that the wood still held a faint mark and something more than a mark. When I leaned close, I caught a very slight scent, delicate but still present. “A perfume,” Holmes said quietly. “Not a common one, either.”
　　Hopkins stared and said that he had never thought to look for such a thing. Holmes answered that the eye and the nose must both work if one wishes to see the full truth. The woman who had worn those glasses, he said, had also used a strong scent. That was another sign that she did not belong to the servant class. A village woman or a maid in such a house would not likely wear perfume of that kind. Again Holmes’s thinking seemed to move, not away from the house, but deeper into it.
　　We then saw Professor Coram again. He sat in his chair wrapped in a dressing-gown, pale, thin, and weak-looking, yet with very sharp eyes. He answered Holmes’s questions carefully, though not warmly. He had heard the cry, he said, and had rung his bell at once, but he had seen nothing of the attacker. He knew nothing of the glasses and had never seen them before. The old man’s voice was controlled, but I thought more than once that there was some strain behind it.
　　Holmes asked him whether Willoughby Smith had had any private trouble, any love affair, any hidden enemy. The professor said that so far as he knew, the young man had led a very simple life. He had worked faithfully, spoken little, and shown himself honest in all matters. Holmes then asked whether any woman had called at the house in recent weeks. Coram said no. He gave the answer a little too quickly, and I noticed that Holmes noticed it too.
　　We next spoke to the housekeeper, Mrs. Marker, a serious capable woman who had served there for many years. She repeated the facts already known. The cry had come from the study. She had found Smith dying. The professor had been in his own room, weak and shaken. No stranger had been seen near the house, and no woman answering Holmes’s description was known in the neighbourhood. Susan, the maid, had even gone into the village after the murder to ask whether anyone had noticed an unknown lady on the roads. No one had.
　　Holmes then wanted to see the arrangement of the professor’s private rooms for himself. The bedroom lay next to the study, and beyond it was another small room which was seldom used. The bed stood near the wall, and a heavy curtain hung close beside it. Books and papers lay about in the careless way of an old scholar who lives more with his mind than with his furniture. Holmes moved about in silence, looking not only at the objects, but at the spaces between them. He always seemed to read a room best when he was least speaking in it.
　　At one point he bent very low over the carpet near the bed. He called me to him and showed me that the surface there had been more pressed than elsewhere. The mark was slight, but it suggested that someone had stood there for some little time. The feet, Holmes said, were small. He did not claim too much from it, but he stored the fact away with the others. Then he opened the door into the little unused room beyond and passed inside.
　　The air there was close and a little stale. The room had clearly not been much lived in. Holmes looked round it and then stooped to pick up a small object from the floor near the bed. It was no more than a torn scrap of paper. He glanced at it once and slipped it into his pocket. When Hopkins asked what it was, Holmes only answered that it might or might not matter later. But I saw from the way he kept it that it mattered already.
　　When we came out again into the garden, Hopkins asked where all this left us. Holmes answered that it left us exactly where we ought to be: not at the door or the window, but at the person of the woman herself. She had not come for money. She had come for papers. She was no servant, no village woman, and no chance thief. She knew the house, or knew enough about it to come to the right room. Above all, Holmes added, he was now more certain than ever that Professor Coram knew much more than he had admitted.
　　“Then you think he protects her?” I asked. Holmes did not answer at once. He looked back toward the quiet house, where the old scholar sat hidden among his books and weakness. At last he said that guilt and pity are sometimes very near each other in old hearts. The professor’s manner, the untouched papers, the scent, the hidden strain in every answer, all pointed in one direction. “No,” said Holmes softly, “the real question is not how she got out of the house. The real question is whether she ever got out at all.”

Part 3

　　Holmes said very little as we drove away from Yoxley Old Place, but I knew from his face that his thoughts were moving fast. At last he turned to Hopkins and said that he no longer cared much about roads, gates, or village gossip. The woman had not escaped far, because in his opinion she had never truly escaped at all. Hopkins cried out that the house had already been searched from top to bottom. Holmes answered that country searches are often wide and honest, but not always exact.
　　He then asked the inspector to think quietly of the facts. A woman with such bad sight could not move fast or easily without her glasses. She had lost them in the struggle. The weather was bad, the ground outside had told us little, and no one in the district had seen or heard of any strange lady. Yet perfume had been found in the study, and signs in the inner rooms suggested that a woman had recently stood there. Where, then, had she gone? Holmes said that the simplest answer was still the best one: she had stayed in the house.
　　Hopkins found this hard to accept. How could a woman remain hidden there for so many hours after the murder, with servants moving about and police already asking questions? Holmes replied that she could do so only with help, and that there was one person in the house who had both the chance and the motive to give such help. “Professor Coram,” said he. “He lies in the middle of the house, too weak to be suspected of violence, too important to be searched like a common servant, and too careful in his answers for my liking.”
　　We went back at once and began once more with Mrs. Marker, the housekeeper. Holmes asked her, not about the murder, but about the professor’s daily life. What did he eat? Did he eat much? Was he difficult in his habits? She answered that he ate well for a weak man and that his meals were often sent up to him in his room. He had many strange ways, but then old learned men often do. Holmes listened closely and then asked how many cigarettes the professor smoked in a day.
　　Mrs. Marker said that she could not say exactly, but that he smoked a great deal and always kept a full box near him. Holmes then asked who carried his meals. The answer was Susan, the maid. When Susan was called in, Holmes asked the same questions in a different form. Had the professor’s trays come back empty? Not always, but often nearly so. Did he drink much tea or coffee? Yes, enough. Did she ever enter the little room beyond his bedroom? No, hardly ever. The professor did not like people going there.
　　Holmes thanked her and said no more. But when we were alone again, he told Hopkins that this helped him greatly. Professor Coram was a thin old man with a weak body and failing strength. Yet the amount of food and drink leaving his room suggested more than one person making use of it. That by itself proved nothing, he admitted, but it agreed too well with the rest. “We are feeding someone,” said Holmes, “and we are hiding someone, and I think we are doing both in the professor’s rooms.”
　　Hopkins now began to share his view, though still unwillingly. He asked what should be done next. Holmes answered that one must not rush too soon at a frightened animal in its hole. The woman was desperate, perhaps wounded, almost certainly exhausted, and quite possibly armed still. If she believed herself trapped, she might kill again or destroy the papers for which she had already risked so much. The better way was to force the truth gently but firmly into the open.
　　Holmes then asked to see Professor Coram once more. We found the old man wrapped in his dressing-gown, pale and sharp-eyed, sitting among his books with a face that looked weaker than before and yet more watchful. Holmes spoke very politely and even with something like sympathy. He said that the case had now advanced a good deal and that one or two final questions remained. The professor answered that he was tired of questions, but he would do what he could.
　　Holmes then surprised him by asking not about the dead secretary, but about Russia. Had the professor lived there long? Yes, for many years. Had he known political people there? Many. Had he ever had enemies in that country? At this the old man’s face changed, though only for a second. He answered that any man with ideas may gather enemies, especially in troubled times and troubled lands. Holmes nodded as if this answer pleased him very much.
　　He next drew the golden pince-nez from his pocket and laid them on the table. “These,” said he, “belong to a woman from your past, Professor Coram.” The old man’s hand shook, and one of the books beside him slipped to the floor. He recovered himself quickly and answered that Holmes was dreaming. He knew nothing of the glasses and less of any woman. Holmes replied that this was unfortunate, because he had hoped to save the professor some pain by allowing him to speak first.
　　There was a silence after that. Holmes stood with his back to the fire and watched the old scholar very steadily. Then he spoke again, more softly than before. He said that the woman was in the house still, that she was nearly blind without her glasses, and that she had not escaped because the professor had hidden her. If the professor continued to deny it, the police would search every room and every cupboard until they found her. If, however, he behaved like an honest man for one minute, much needless suffering might still be avoided.
　　At these words, Professor Coram seemed suddenly to grow older before our eyes. The sharpness went out of his face, and in its place came deep weariness and something like despair. He passed one thin hand over his forehead and said in a low voice that Holmes knew too much. Then, after another moment, he turned slowly toward the inner room and called a name which meant nothing to me at that time. His voice was full of strange feeling as he spoke it.
　　There was no answer at first. Holmes stepped quickly to the door of the little unused room and opened it wide. In the dimness beyond stood a woman. She was dark, thin, and no longer young, with a strong worn face and eyes which searched blindly before her. She held one hand out in front of her as if she moved through darkness. The moment I saw her, I understood how true Holmes’s reading of the glasses had been. Without them, she was almost helpless.
　　She came forward unsteadily, and it was plain that she had been suffering greatly. Her face was pale with hunger and strain, and yet there was great courage in it too. When Hopkins moved as if to arrest her, Holmes stopped him with a gesture. “No,” said he. “We shall have the truth first.” The woman turned her head toward his voice and said that the truth had cost many people enough already. If they wanted it, she would tell it all. And so, in the quiet room where Willoughby Smith’s blood had hardly dried, the hidden woman from Professor Coram’s past stepped at last out of the shadows, and the deepest part of the case was ready to begin.

Part 4

　　Holmes at once asked for food and wine to be brought. He said that no true account could be expected from a starving woman who had been hiding in a dark room for many hours. Mrs. Marker hurried away, and while we waited, the woman sank into a chair and pressed one hand over her eyes. Without her glasses she could hardly see us, and her face showed pain, weakness, and long suffering. Even Hopkins, who had come there as a police officer, looked at her with more pity than suspicion.
　　When she had taken a little wine and eaten a few mouthfuls, her strength seemed to come back enough for speech. Holmes asked her name. She answered that in England it would mean little, but that long ago in Russia it had meant danger to certain men. He then said gently that names could wait if the story itself was ready. She nodded and turned her face toward Professor Coram. “He knows it all,” she said. “He knows what he did, and he knows why I came.”
　　The old man gave a low broken sound and covered his face with his hands. Holmes then asked the woman to begin where the truth truly began, not with the secretary’s death, but many years earlier. She said that she and the professor had once belonged to the same political circle in Russia. There had been secret work, secret writing, and secret danger. She had married another man from that group, a brave man who trusted Professor Coram as a friend. Coram, however, had loved her himself, and that love had turned at last into jealousy and treachery.
　　When the police came close to their group, Professor Coram saved himself by betraying the others. Men were arrested. Some were sent away to long punishment and death. Her husband was among them. She escaped only by chance, and even then not freely. In the confusion of those terrible days, one paper had come into her hands, a paper written by Coram himself which proved his betrayal beyond doubt. It was, she said, the one true weapon left to her.
　　Coram had fled Russia and later lived in England under another name. She had searched for him for years. Time had changed both of them. He had become an old scholar hidden among books, and she had become a poor worn woman with weak eyes and little strength left. Yet she had never forgotten. She came to Yoxley because she knew that the paper, or something connected with it, was still in his possession. She wished to recover it before she died, so that the truth about her husband and the professor might not be lost forever.
　　On the morning of the crime, she had made her way into the study while the professor was still in bed. She found the bureau and began searching among the papers. It was while she was doing this that Willoughby Smith entered. He had surprised her without warning. She tried to get past him. He seized her, and in the struggle she caught up a small knife from the table and struck wildly. She said with tears in her voice that she never meant to kill him. She only wanted to escape.
　　The blow, however, was enough. Smith fell, and she realized at once what she had done. In that same struggle he had torn her glasses from her face. Half blind and in terror, she could not find her way to safety. Instead, she stumbled into the inner room and hid there. A little later, Professor Coram himself found her. He had recognized at once who she was and what old past had stepped back into his house. Whatever evil he had once done, he had not lost all feeling for her.
　　He hid her, fed her, and refused to give her up, not because he was innocent, but because guilt and old love were still alive in him together. Holmes said quietly that this explained everything which had seemed so strange. It explained why the professor had been too calm, why the food sent to his room had been too much for one man, why the little inner room had not been truly empty, and why the old scholar had shown fear each time the investigation turned toward his private rooms. The house had not held one secret, but two: the living woman and the old betrayal between her and Coram.
　　Hopkins then asked the question which still remained. Where was the paper? The woman answered that she had not found it. Coram raised his head at that and said weakly that he had it. He reached with trembling hands toward a drawer near his chair and took out a folded document. Holmes opened it, read a few lines, and gave it at once to the inspector. It was indeed enough to show that Professor Coram had once sold the freedom and lives of his own friends.
　　The old man then broke down completely. He said that all of it was true. He had loved the woman and had betrayed the man she married. He had lived long enough to become rich in books, learning, and safety, but never long enough to become free of what he had done. When she appeared in his room that day, he said, it was as if the dead had come back to judge him. If he hid her, it was not from courage, but because he could not bear to hand her over after all that had already passed between them.
　　Holmes listened without triumph. He said only that old sins have long shadows and that those shadows had now reached across many years to strike an innocent man down. The true pity in the case, he added, was for Willoughby Smith, who had died because he happened to walk into another person’s old crime. The woman bowed her head and said that this was true and that she would carry that sorrow with her to the end. She had meant to confront only Coram. Instead, another life had been broken by the past.
　　Hopkins now had the full truth before him and could at last do his duty clearly. Yet even he moved with care and not with hardness. The woman was weak, exhausted, and plainly near the end of her strength. Professor Coram looked more like a dying man than a criminal. Holmes therefore advised that all should be handled with as much mercy as the law allowed. He also said that the case had never been one of common theft or simple violence. It was the last movement of a story that had begun many years earlier in fear, politics, love, and betrayal.
　　When we left Yoxley Old Place, the afternoon light was already fading over the quiet fields. Hopkins carried with him the paper that proved the old guilt, and the police would now have no difficulty in understanding what had happened in the study. Holmes walked beside me in silence for some time. At last he said that the glasses had led us truly enough. They had shown not only a woman’s face, but the whole path of a life worn down by memory, suffering, and the need to reach one last truth before death.
　　So ended the case of the golden pince-nez. It began with one small object glittering on a carpet near a dying man’s hand, and it ended by opening a dark passage back into another land and another age. Holmes said later that the saddest part was not the crime itself, but the way in which one false act had gone on living through the years until it struck down a man who had never shared in it at all. To me, that seemed exactly right. In this case, as in some others, the deadliest thing in the room was not the knife, but the past.


The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter

Part 1

　　During the years after Holmes returned to Baker Street, there were some cases which touched not only private homes or dark streets, but the wider life of England itself. One of these began in a very unusual way, with a young man’s sudden disappearance before an important football match. At first the matter looked almost too small for Holmes. Then, as often happened, the small beginning opened into something much stranger. I still remember that morning clearly, because our own plans were broken by it in a most unexpected way.
　　We had arranged to go together to Windsor for a little fresh air. Holmes had finished one piece of hard work and had given himself a rare half-day of rest. The breakfast things had been cleared away, and I was standing with my gloves in my hand when Mrs. Hudson brought in a card. Holmes looked at it and gave a little cry of surprise. The name on it was Cyril Overton. He added at once that the name was known to him, though only from the sporting papers.
　　A moment later the owner of the card came into the room, and he was one of the largest young men I have ever seen in ordinary clothes. He was very tall, broad, and powerfully built, with the open face of an athlete and the restless worried manner of a man under great strain. His clothes were good, but roughly put on, and there was no doubt that he had come in great haste. He stood for a moment near the door, breathing hard, as if even his great strength was not enough for the fear inside him. Then he came straight to Holmes and held out a large hand in a quick, almost desperate way.
　　Holmes asked him to sit down and speak quietly. Overton answered that quietness was the very thing he could not manage. He was captain of the Cambridge rugby team, and one of his men had disappeared. Not just any man, he added, but the best man in the side. The match with Oxford was to be played the next day, and if this player did not return, Cambridge would be badly weakened. Even while he spoke, it was clear that his worry was not only for the match. There was real fear in him too.
　　Holmes asked for the missing man’s name. Overton answered at once: Godfrey Staunton. Even I, who care little for games, knew the name. Staunton was one of the finest players in England, and his place in the team was of the highest importance. Holmes nodded and said that he had heard of him. He then asked the first practical question: when had Staunton last been seen?
　　Overton said that the team had gone down together to Cambridge and was staying at Benton’s private hotel. All had gone well until the previous afternoon. At about four-thirty, a telegram arrived for Godfrey Staunton. The young man read it, turned very pale, and put it into his pocket. He said nothing clear to the others, but it was plain that the message had deeply shaken him. A little later he went out of the hotel and was not seen again.
　　Holmes asked whether the telegram had been kept. Overton said no. Staunton had taken it with him, and no one now knew what was written in it. That alone, Holmes said, made the message important above everything else. He then asked whether Staunton had any known trouble, any debt, any love affair, or any bad habit that might explain sudden flight. Overton answered strongly that he had none of these, at least none known to his friends. He was a fine fellow, popular, steady, and honourable.
　　Holmes pointed out that honourable men may still have private troubles. Overton admitted this, but said that the whole thing remained most unlike Staunton. If he had needed to go somewhere suddenly, he would surely have left some word for the team or for himself, the captain. Instead, he had vanished in silence. The police had already been told, but they were doing little and moving slowly. For that reason Overton had come to Baker Street. He begged Holmes to help at once.
　　Holmes then asked for every exact detail of the last movements of the missing man. Overton said that after reading the telegram, Staunton had gone to his room and then come down again dressed to go out. A cab had been seen near the hotel door, but no one could swear that Staunton had taken it. He had simply disappeared into Cambridge. No letter had been left. No bag had been packed. His football things and other clothes all remained behind. That, Holmes said, was a strong point against any idea of planned flight.
　　He then asked whether anyone unusual had been seen about the hotel. Overton thought for a moment and said yes, there had been one thing. A rough-looking man with a short beard had been standing in the street and looking toward the hotel that afternoon. No one had thought much of him at the time, but now the memory seemed more important. Holmes nodded and said that such men often become important only after the event. He asked whether Staunton had any family. Overton answered that his father and mother were dead and that he had no close relatives, except a married sister who lived in another part of England.
　　Holmes grew more thoughtful at that and asked whether the missing man was in the habit of receiving letters often. Overton said that he was not. Indeed, he was rather private and did not talk much about home matters or his own personal life. Holmes then asked one more thing. Was Staunton ever ill? Overton looked surprised and said no, not seriously, though he had once or twice seemed worried and tired during the term. Holmes did not explain why he asked. He only sat back and looked at the big athlete in front of him with narrow thoughtful eyes.
　　At last Holmes said that the matter was certainly curious and that, despite its sporting beginning, it might well hide something more serious. He could not promise success, but he would look into it at once. Overton seized his hand and thanked him warmly. Holmes then said that we must go first to Cambridge and see the hotel for ourselves. Our little trip to Windsor was at an end before it had begun, and I confess that I was not sorry. Holmes in pursuit of a fresh mystery was always better company than Holmes in search of rest.
　　So it happened that within a short time we were in the train with Cyril Overton opposite us, huge, anxious, and full of helpless movement. Holmes spoke little during the journey. Once or twice he asked for the exact wording of any message already sent to the police, and once he repeated again the importance of the lost telegram. Apart from that, he sat with his eyes half closed, while I knew from long experience that his mind was already arranging the few facts in their proper order. We were still some distance from Cambridge when I felt that this was no longer only the case of a missing football player. It had already become the case of a man who had read one telegram, turned pale, gone out, and vanished from the world.

Part 2

　　At Cambridge we drove at once to Benton’s private hotel, where the team was staying. The manager received us with the worried face of a man who knows that something bad has happened under his roof and fears blame may fall on him. Holmes asked for the room in which Godfrey Staunton had slept, and for a clear account of every movement on the afternoon before. The manager did his best, though he was nervous and more ready to guess than to state facts. Holmes quickly stopped all guessing and made him keep to what had truly been seen.
　　The telegram had arrived, the man said, a little after four-thirty. It was brought up at once. Staunton read it in the sitting-room where several of the players were gathered. Those present all agreed that the effect on him was immediate and very strong. He changed colour, bit his lip, and stood for some moments with the paper in his hand as if he hardly knew where he was. Then he put the telegram in his pocket and went upstairs alone.
　　After a little time he came down again dressed for going out. He had on his ordinary coat and hat and carried no bag of any kind. He spoke to no one clearly, though one of the players thought he heard him say that he might be back later. Then he left the hotel, and from that moment no friend of his saw him again. Holmes asked whether the team had searched the town that evening. Overton answered that they had done so for hours, but without result.
　　Holmes next wanted to know if any stranger had asked for Staunton before the telegram came. At first the manager said no. Then, after thinking harder, he remembered that a rough man with a short beard had indeed been hanging about the door and looking in more than once. He had not entered the hotel, but he had seemed to be waiting for someone. Holmes asked for the best description possible, but it was a poor one: middle height, dark coat, rough face, short beard. Such a man, Holmes said, might be found in any street in England.
　　We then went to Staunton’s room. It was plain at once that he had not meant to leave for long. His clothes, boots, books, and football things were all there. Nothing had been packed. Holmes looked carefully at the washstand, the table, the fireplace, and the window, and then opened the little drawer in which letters were kept. There were one or two ordinary notes there, nothing more. The bed had not been slept in that night. “This,” said Holmes, “is not the room of a man who goes away by plan. It is the room of a man suddenly called out by something stronger than his own wishes.”
　　He then turned back to the lost telegram. That, he said, remained the true centre of the whole business. If we could not recover the paper, we must at least discover where it came from. The manager had the envelope still, which was fortunate. Holmes took it up and examined it with the closest care. It had been handed in at the Cambridge post office, and the address was written in a disguised hand, one of those hands which try to look rough and common and therefore become more noticeable than an ordinary one. The message itself was gone, but the shell that had carried it still had something to say.
　　Holmes asked if the office copy of the telegram could be found. We went at once to the telegraph office, where after some delay and official trouble the clerk produced the record. The message had been given in from the village of Cambridge, not from some distant town. Its words were simple enough, but very serious: “Come at once. Your help is needed.” There was no name signed. Holmes read it twice and handed it back without comment. To me it seemed only to make the mystery deeper, but to Holmes it had already done more than that.
　　“The message,” said he as we stepped back into the street, “is not from an enemy. An enemy would call him away by fear, threat, or lie. This calls him by duty.” Overton cried out that this must mean some friend in danger. Holmes answered that it meant either that, or someone who knew exactly what string to pull in Staunton’s nature. He then asked whether the missing man had any close friend in Cambridge besides the football men. Overton hesitated and answered that there was one person with whom Staunton had of late been much connected: Dr. Leslie Armstrong.
　　We drove at once to the doctor’s house. Leslie Armstrong was well known in Cambridge, not only as a physician of great skill, but as a man of very strong character and very bad temper. He received us in his consulting-room with clear annoyance and hardly allowed Holmes to explain before he broke in. Yes, he knew Godfrey Staunton. Yes, he had seen him now and then. No, he would not answer private questions about his patients or friends to every stranger who chose to knock at his door. His manner was rude enough to make even Holmes’s eyes grow cold.
　　Holmes, however, remained perfectly polite. He said that a young man had disappeared under serious conditions and that Dr. Armstrong might help to save him by speaking plainly. The doctor answered that he would not be forced into gossip by any detective from London, however famous. He then rang the bell and showed us out with a face so red and angry that I think he was close to throwing us out by force. Overton was greatly troubled by this scene and said that it made the doctor look very bad. Holmes answered that it made him look important, which is not always the same thing.
　　We had hardly turned from the house when Holmes stopped short in the street and laughed softly. “He has given us more than if he had sat and talked for an hour,” said he. I asked what he meant. Holmes answered that Dr. Armstrong was hiding something, and hiding it badly. The question now was whether he was hiding a crime or a secret sorrow. He then added that another fact was well known in Cambridge: the doctor was in the habit of driving out every evening in his dog-cart at a fixed hour, sometimes far into the country. That habit, Holmes said, might now become worth watching.
　　So we spent the evening in quiet inquiry and soon learned two useful things. First, Dr. Armstrong’s evening drives were real and regular. Second, he had for the last few days gone farther than usual and had often taken lonely country roads. Holmes then laid his plan before me. On the next evening we would watch the doctor’s house, follow his dog-cart if he went out, and see where this private road led. “If Staunton is still alive,” said Holmes, “I begin to think that Armstrong knows where he is. If Staunton is dead, Armstrong knows that too.”
　　That night Holmes sat long in our sitting-room at the hotel and smoked in silence while Overton walked up and down in misery, thinking of the match and of his missing friend. At last Holmes said that the match no longer interested him at all. The sporting side of the case had dropped away almost from the first. What now stood before him was some hidden tie between Staunton and Dr. Leslie Armstrong, strong enough to bring the young man out by one short telegram and strong enough to make a violent, proud doctor lose all control when asked a few plain questions. “Tomorrow,” said Holmes quietly, “we follow the doctor. Then we shall see whether the road ends in a crime, or in something even harder to speak of.”

Part 3

　　The next evening Holmes and I took our place near Dr. Leslie Armstrong’s house before the usual hour of his drive. The sky was grey, and there was rain in the air, but the light still lasted enough for us to see the door clearly. Holmes had arranged everything with great care. I was to keep to one side of the road and follow at a distance if the dog-cart came out, while he himself would remain where he could watch both house and road and move as needed. He said that the doctor was a strong, clever man and would not be easy to follow if once he guessed that he was watched.
　　We had not long to wait. At the expected time the door opened, and Dr. Armstrong came out, wearing his coat and gloves and carrying his whip. He got into the dog-cart and drove away at his usual quick pace. I started after him on a hired bicycle, keeping well back and taking care not to look too fixedly at the road ahead. For some distance all went well. Then, to my great surprise, the doctor suddenly checked his horse, turned half round on the seat, and looked straight toward me.
　　There was no doubt that he had recognized the game. In another moment he had turned the dog-cart sharply and was driving directly back at me. I had only just time to get out of the road. He pulled up beside me with a face full of anger and triumph and demanded to know what I meant by following him. I answered that the road was free to all men. He laughed in a very unpleasant way and said that if I chose to ride that same road every evening after him, he would know how to deal with it. Then he turned his horse again and drove off at great speed, leaving me with nothing gained except the certain knowledge that he was indeed a man with something to hide.
　　I returned to the meeting-place in some disappointment. Holmes heard my story without the least sign of blame. On the contrary, he seemed more pleased than cast down. The doctor’s anger, he said, was itself a valuable fact. An innocent man annoyed by being watched may protest, but he does not usually lose all control. Leslie Armstrong had shown fear as well as temper. That meant we were on the right road. Holmes then added that it would now be foolish to follow the dog-cart in the same simple way again. We must change our method.
　　The following day he set that new method in motion. He learned from the stable-boy at the doctor’s house that Armstrong drove out every evening to some lonely part of the country, but the horse always came back tired and often muddy. That suggested distance and rough roads. Holmes also discovered that the doctor’s servants knew nothing at all of these visits and believed them to be ordinary medical work. “Which,” said Holmes, “may still be true, though not in the way they think.” He then hired another bicycle and a country boy besides, so that more than one pair of eyes might be on the road.
　　That evening his plan succeeded better. The doctor once more drove out, but this time Holmes was not the man nearest him. The hired boy, who knew nothing of the deeper business, simply watched from a turning-point far ahead and reported which road the dog-cart had taken. Holmes and I then followed by another way and found ourselves at last near a lonely cottage standing back from the road among trees. There was no village close by, and no other house stood near enough to hear a cry from it. “This,” said Holmes quietly, “is the end of the doctor’s road.”
　　We could see no movement at first, but after some time the dog-cart came out from behind the trees and drove away again toward Cambridge. Holmes waited until it was safely gone and then led me to the cottage. The place was plain and poor from the outside, yet there was care in the little garden and neatness about the windows. Holmes knocked. A woman servant opened the door and looked frightened the moment she saw two strangers standing there. Holmes said in his firm quiet voice that he had come on a matter of life and death and must be shown in at once.
　　The servant tried to refuse, but Holmes had already stepped inside. In the little sitting-room beyond stood Dr. Armstrong himself, who had clearly doubled back after leaving the cottage and had returned by another path. His anger when he saw us was greater than ever. He said that this was beyond all patience and that Holmes had no right to force himself into a private house. Holmes answered that he would leave the very moment the doctor told him one thing plainly: whether Godfrey Staunton was inside. Armstrong’s face changed at once. For one moment he looked as if he might still deny it. Then the whole struggle seemed to go out of him.
　　He admitted that Staunton was there. Holmes then asked why the young man had vanished so suddenly and why his friends and captain had been left in cruel ignorance. The doctor passed one tired hand over his face and said that he had not acted from guilt, but from pity. He begged Holmes to remember that some sorrows are private and that not every disappearance hides a crime. Then, seeing that no half-truth would now do, he asked us to come with him upstairs. “You have forced the door,” said he. “Now you shall see why it was closed.”
　　He led us into a small upper room where a young woman lay in bed, white as the pillow beneath her head. Beside her, holding one of her hands in both his own, sat Godfrey Staunton. He rose when we entered and turned toward us with a face so full of grief that I understood at once that all our guesses of crime had been wrong. The woman on the bed looked scarcely alive. Her breathing was weak and uneven, and the whole room had that quiet terrible air which hangs round the bed of one who is passing out of life. On a table beside her lay medicines, glasses, and all the signs of long nursing and little hope.
　　Staunton stared from Holmes to Armstrong and then asked if the whole truth was now known. Holmes answered that enough was known to free him from every ugly suspicion. The young man then spoke openly. This woman, he said, was his wife. They had been secretly married, because her family and his own position made an open marriage difficult at the time. Only Dr. Armstrong had known. The telegram which had called him from the hotel had brought the news that she was dying and that if he wished to see her again, he must come at once. Nothing else in the world could have held him back after reading such words.
　　He had not told his football friends because his wife’s very existence was a secret from most of the world, and in that first hour of shock he had thought only of reaching her bedside. Once there, he could not leave her. Match, reputation, college talk, all these had become nothing to him beside the sight of her face. Dr. Armstrong said that he had protected the secret because he was not only the wife’s doctor, but an old friend to both husband and wife. He had hoped every hour that she might rally enough for some message to be sent. Instead, she had steadily grown weaker, and he had gone back and forth in silence between Cambridge and the cottage, trying to do the work of both doctor and messenger without betraying what was hidden.
　　Holmes answered that he now understood the whole matter, though he could not say the handling of it had been wise. A few plain lines to Overton or to the hotel would have spared much useless fear. Staunton bowed his head and said that this was true, but he had been half mad with grief and had thought clearly of nothing. At that very moment the woman on the bed moved a little and opened her eyes. She saw her husband, smiled faintly, and tried to speak. No sound came. A minute later she gave one long soft breath, and it was over. Staunton dropped beside the bed and hid his face in the coverlet, while Armstrong stood by in that helpless silence which belongs even to the most skilled doctor when skill can do no more.
　　We left the room quietly and went downstairs again with Armstrong. He said that he himself would now send the necessary messages and make the position plain to those who had a right to know it. Holmes agreed. There was no need for further pressure, and no mystery remained. What had looked from outside like flight, secrecy, and perhaps even crime had been no more than a husband’s wild rush to the death-bed of the woman he loved. “You see, Watson,” Holmes said as we stepped out into the evening air, “there are times when private sorrow puts on the mask of public guilt.”
　　Cyril Overton was told the truth as gently as possible. The match was lost to Cambridge, but even that huge athlete could not keep his mind on games after hearing what had really happened. As for Godfrey Staunton, he was left to his grief in peace. Holmes never spoke of the case lightly afterward. He said it was one more example of the danger of building dark explanations too soon when life itself already holds enough sadness without crime. So ended the adventure of the missing three-quarter, and though no villain stood at the end of the road, I have always remembered it as one of the cases in which Holmes’s clear reason served not only truth, but mercy too.


The Adventure of the Abbey Grange

Part 1

　　It was one of those cold mornings in winter when even Baker Street seems darker and less friendly than usual. Holmes and I had been asleep only a few hours when Mrs. Hudson knocked at my door and said that a gentleman had come on urgent business. I heard Holmes’s step in the passage almost at once, quick and light as always when work called him. A minute later we were both in our sitting-room, only half dressed, with the fire burning low and the grey morning not yet fully come through the windows.
　　Our visitor was Stanley Hopkins. He looked tired, wet, and full of strong feeling, as if he had travelled hard and fast through the night. His face, however, showed something more than simple tiredness. There was excitement in it, and something like triumph too. Holmes saw this at once and smiled. He said that Hopkins would not have broken our sleep so early unless he believed he had a case good enough to repay the trouble.
　　The young inspector answered that he did indeed believe so. A most serious crime had taken place in Kent, at a large house called Abbey Grange near Chislehurst. Sir Eustace Brackenstall had been murdered there during the night. His wife, Lady Brackenstall, had been found tied to a chair, badly treated, and almost out of her senses with shock. The whole affair, Hopkins said, looked at first sight like the work of common burglars, but there were points in it which had made him want Holmes before anyone else had time to disturb the scene.
　　Holmes lit a cigarette and told him to begin at the true beginning. Hopkins did so in his clear eager way. Abbey Grange, he said, was the home of Sir Eustace Brackenstall, a man of old family and some wealth, though not, by all accounts, a pleasant one. He had married Lady Brackenstall, a beautiful woman from Australia, about a year earlier. The marriage had not been happy. There was even talk, quiet but steady, that Sir Eustace drank too much and had a violent temper at home.
　　During the previous night, the house had been entered, as it seemed, by burglars. In the morning the maid Teresa, who had come from Australia with her mistress, found Lady Brackenstall in a terrible state in the dining-room. She was tied to a chair by the bell-rope, one side of her face was bruised, and she was hardly able to speak. Sir Eustace lay dead upon the floor near the fireplace, struck down by a heavy weapon. Some silver had been taken, and there were signs which pointed strongly to robbery.
　　Holmes asked at once whether the police had any idea which robbers might be concerned. Hopkins said yes. There was a well-known gang, the Randall gang, father and two sons, who had lately been working in that part of the country. They were bold men and not new to violence. At first the case had seemed to fit them well enough. Yet Hopkins had felt from the start that one or two things did not sit quite right, and so, before he let the ordinary police methods roll too far ahead, he had come to Baker Street.
　　Holmes looked pleased by that answer. He said that the worst thing in police work is to build too fast on the first possible story. If the first story is wrong, then every fresh fact is forced the wrong way and the truth grows harder to reach. Hopkins nodded warmly, because this was exactly the lesson Holmes had tried to teach him before. Then he begged us to come at once. The train, he said, could still be caught if we moved quickly, and nothing at Abbey Grange had yet been touched beyond what human need required.
　　In a very short time we were on our way to Kent. The winter fields lay white under a weak pale sky, and the bare trees looked black against the morning. Hopkins used the journey to give us more detail. Lady Brackenstall had said that she could not sleep and had gone down late into the dining-room for a glass of wine. There, she had surprised three burglars who had already entered the house through the French window. One of them had seized her, the others had called in Sir Eustace when he came down to her cries, and then one of the men had struck him dead with a poker.
　　After that, the story ran, the burglars had tied Lady Brackenstall to a chair, taken some silver from the sideboard, and drunk wine before leaving. Teresa, the maid, had heard nothing until the morning because her room was far away and the wind had been high in the night. Holmes listened to every word without interruption. Once only he asked whether the wine-bottle and glasses were still on the table. Hopkins answered that they were. Holmes said nothing more, but I knew from old experience that such quiet questions often meant much more to him than louder ones.
　　Abbey Grange proved to be a large gloomy house standing among trees, with broad lawns falling away from it on one side. There was something cold and proud in its appearance, and even before we entered it seemed to me an unhappy place. A local inspector met us there, but Holmes wasted almost no time on formalities. He wished first to see the room itself and then to hear Lady Brackenstall’s own words before the impression of others had become too strong.
　　The dining-room was large and handsome, with dark wood, silver on the sideboard, and long windows opening onto the terrace. In the middle of it stood the chair to which Lady Brackenstall had been tied. The bell-rope had been cut from above and used to bind her wrists and body. Sir Eustace’s body had been removed, but the place where he had lain was clear enough. Near the hearth was the heavy poker, bent by the force of the blow, and on the table stood a wine-bottle with three glasses. One or two drawers and cupboards had been opened, and several pieces of old silver were missing.
　　Holmes moved round the room slowly and in complete silence. He looked at the rope, the chair, the windows, the table, the carpet, and the fireplace. Then he bent low over the wine-glasses and the bottle. After that he crossed to the bell-rope and examined the place above where it had been cut. I saw at once from his face that the room interested him greatly, though he had not yet spoken a single opinion. Hopkins watched him with open hope, while the local inspector watched him with something much closer to doubt.
　　At last Holmes said that before he went farther, he wished to hear Lady Brackenstall. We were shown upstairs to a bedroom where she lay on a couch with Teresa near her. I had heard she was beautiful, but I was not prepared for the effect of her face even in suffering. She was tall and dark, with fine strong features and large eyes that seemed now full of pain and shame together. The bruise on her cheek stood out cruelly against her pale skin. Teresa, a dark eager woman, watched us all like a dog guarding its hurt mistress.
　　Lady Brackenstall told the story in a low tired voice. She had come down because she could not sleep. On entering the dining-room, she had at once seen men at the sideboard. Before she could escape, one of them had caught her. She cried out, and Sir Eustace came running in. He attacked the burglars bravely enough, but one of them struck him with the poker and killed him instantly. After that, she was tied to the chair and left there while the men drank wine and took silver before escaping through the window.
　　Holmes asked whether she could describe them. She answered that one was older and two younger, which agreed with the Randall gang. Teresa broke in passionately and said that this must be the truth, because Lady Brackenstall had no reason to lie. Holmes bowed slightly and said that he had not suggested that she lied. He only wished to understand every movement in the room. Still, I could see that he was already thinking less about what had been said than about what had been seen.
　　When we came downstairs again, Holmes asked to be left alone in the dining-room for a little time. He passed once more from the bell-rope to the French window, from the window to the wine-table, and from the wine-table to the hearth. At last he straightened himself and looked at Hopkins with that quiet bright expression which always meant that the case had begun to open. He said that the police theory might possibly be right, but it had one great weakness. Too many things in the room looked arranged after the event. “And when a room begins to look arranged,” said Holmes softly, “I begin to ask who arranged it.”

Part 2

　　Holmes began with the bell-rope. He stood on a chair and examined the place where it had been cut from above. Then he asked Hopkins for the poker and laid it against the rope to measure the height. At once he said that this was one of the points which troubled him most. A burglar in a hurry, he explained, would have cut the rope where he could easily reach it. But this rope had been cut much higher than was natural. A tall man standing quietly and taking trouble might do it. A man acting fast after a murder would not.
　　He then looked closely at the end of the rope itself. The cut was clean, not rough. Holmes said that the work had been done carefully with a sharp knife, and not in the wild confused way one expects from common house-breakers surprised in the middle of a crime. Hopkins asked whether that alone was enough to break the whole story. Holmes answered no. A case never turns on one fact alone. But when one fact looks false, he said, one begins to test all the others more closely.
　　He next turned to the wine on the table. There stood the bottle and three glasses, just as Lady Brackenstall had said. Holmes poured a little wine from the bottle and looked at the bottom in the light. Then he picked up the glasses one by one and smelled them. After that he smiled in a very quiet way which I knew well. He told Hopkins that here was another point against the story of three burglars. Three glasses had indeed been used, but not by three equal drinkers.
　　The inspector looked puzzled, so Holmes explained. The bottle contained a heavy old wine in which the dust settles at the bottom. If three men had poured honestly from it, the last glass would have held much more of that dark dust than the first two. But the glasses on the table did not show that natural order. One glass had far more deposit than the other two, and the two cleaner ones were too much alike. Holmes said that this suggested that only two people had really drunk the wine and that the third glass had been arranged afterward to fit the story.
　　Hopkins was greatly struck by this, though he still fought for his first idea. He said that burglars are not always neat or thoughtful men and might have poured carelessly. Holmes answered that carelessness may explain much, but not everything. Here the rope was too carefully cut, the glasses too carefully placed, and the whole room too ready with its evidence. Each point alone might mean little. Taken together, they meant a great deal. “No,” said Holmes, “the story has been built. It has not simply happened.”
　　We then went back to Lady Brackenstall and Teresa. Holmes’s manner was very gentle, but his questions became much sharper. He asked Lady Brackenstall to show exactly where each man had stood, where Sir Eustace had entered, and which of the three had struck the fatal blow. She answered without much change in her account, yet more than once she hesitated in small points of movement. Teresa watched every word with fierce attention and once or twice broke in too quickly, as if she feared her mistress might say the wrong thing.
　　Holmes then asked a question which changed the whole feeling of the room. Had Sir Eustace been a kind husband? For a moment there was silence. Lady Brackenstall’s face flushed and then went white. Teresa broke out at once and said that Sir Eustace had been a devil, a drunkard, and a beast to any woman under his roof. The housekeeper later confirmed enough of this to show that the words, though violent, were not false. Holmes bowed slightly and said that he had only wished to understand the full truth of the house in which the crime had happened.
　　This new fact did not by itself answer the murder, but it changed its colour. A woman cruelly treated by a drunken husband may hide many things after his death which a happy wife would never think to hide. Holmes knew this, and so did I. Still, when he asked Lady Brackenstall once more whether the whole tale of the three Randalls was perfectly true, she answered firmly that it was. Holmes did not press her further then. He only said that if she wished later to tell him anything more, she would find him ready to hear it.
　　When we had left her room, Hopkins asked plainly whether Holmes thought Lady Brackenstall herself had killed her husband. Holmes said that he thought nothing so foolish. The blow that killed Sir Eustace had been far too strong for that, and the bent poker showed great force in the hand that used it. No, if the tale of the burglars was false, then some other man had been in the dining-room that night. The true question was who that man was, how he entered, and why both women were protecting him.
　　Holmes then asked whether any trace had been found outside the French window. Hopkins answered that the ground was hard there, and that no clear footprints remained. Even so, the shutters and fastening suggested that the window had indeed been opened from inside. Holmes nodded and said that this fitted his new view very well. The unknown man had not forced his way in with two companions like a thief. He had likely been let in, or had come by arrangement, and had later been hidden under the story of a common burglary.
　　We spent some time afterward in the servants’ rooms and among the silver cupboards. Holmes wished to know exactly which pieces had been taken. The list was a curious one, because the missing silver was not the easiest to carry and not the most valuable in the house. It was just enough, Holmes said, to give shape to a robbery without looking too greedy. Again the hand behind the scene seemed to be choosing signs rather than spoils. That made the story of the Randall gang weaker still.
　　At last Holmes said that he needed one more line of inquiry before he could speak with confidence. He wished to know where the real Randall gang had been that night and whether their names had been used only because they were already feared in the district. Hopkins promised at once to make inquiries by wire. Holmes himself then sat down in the dining-room with a long silence upon him, staring at the bent poker and the chair by the window as if he saw there not only what had happened, but what had been felt.
　　By the time evening drew in, the shape of the case had changed completely in my mind. We had come to Abbey Grange thinking of burglars and broken silver. We now stood much nearer to some private scene of violence and protection. Lady Brackenstall had been tied, yes, but perhaps not by enemies. Sir Eustace had been killed, yes, but perhaps not by robbers. Teresa’s fierce loyalty, the false third glass, and the carefully cut rope all pointed one way. Someone had come into that house for a reason far deeper than theft, and two women were now risking much to keep his name from the police.

Part 3

　　Early the next morning, Holmes received the answer to the inquiries he had set in motion. It was exactly what he had expected. The Randall gang, whose name had been used so freely in the case, could not possibly have been at Abbey Grange that night. They had been seen far away, and their movements were fully known. Holmes folded the telegram and said quietly that the last support had now gone from the burglary story. We must, therefore, return at once and ask Lady Brackenstall for the truth.
　　When we reached the house again, Holmes asked that Lady Brackenstall and Teresa should both come down to the dining-room. He chose that room because, as he said, the walls there had already heard the true story, and perhaps they might help to bring it out again. The two women entered together. Teresa stood close to her mistress, dark, strong, and ready to fight for her if needed. Lady Brackenstall herself looked pale but calmer than on the day before. She knew at once, from Holmes’s face, that the end of concealment had come.
　　Holmes began very gently. He said that he now knew the story of the three burglars was false. He also knew that Lady Brackenstall had not killed her husband. There had been another man in the room that night, and that man had struck the fatal blow. Holmes added that he did not wish to force pain upon her, but that truth was now the only safe road left. If she still hid the facts, she might destroy not only herself, but the man she wished to protect.
　　Teresa cried out at once that no gentleman would press a wounded lady in such a cruel way. Holmes answered that he was trying to save her mistress, not hurt her. Then he laid the whole false story to pieces one point after another. The rope had been cut too neatly and too high. The three glasses had not been used by three men. The silver taken was only enough to make a show of robbery. And now, with the Randall gang proved innocent of this crime, there was nothing left of the burglary tale at all.
　　For a little while Lady Brackenstall sat silent, with her hands clasped tightly together. Then all the strength seemed to go out of her. She turned to Teresa and gave a little broken movement of the head, as if asking pardon for no longer being able to go on. Teresa fell on one knee beside her and begged her not to speak. Holmes waited without pressing. At last Lady Brackenstall lifted her face and said in a low steady voice that she would tell everything.
　　She began by saying that all we had heard of Sir Eustace’s cruelty was true, and less than the truth. He drank heavily, and when he drank he became not only rough, but savage. Many times he had struck her, insulted her, and treated her in ways no woman should bear. Teresa, who had come with her from Australia, had seen this suffering from the first. For months Lady Brackenstall had lived more in fear than in marriage. Holmes listened with deep attention, but without surprise, as if this too had already stood in his mind.
　　Then she spoke of the man whom she had tried to hide. His name, she said, was Captain Jack Croker. He had been an officer on the ship by which she and Teresa came from Australia to England. During that voyage he had shown great kindness and honour. He had loved her then, she believed, but he had kept silence because he was a gentleman and because she was free only in name, not in heart. Later, after her unhappy marriage, he learned enough of her life to know that she was deeply unhappy.
　　He had come to Abbey Grange that night, not as a thief, but because he could no longer bear to stand away while she suffered. The meeting had been planned only to speak through the French window after the house was quiet. He came in, however, and they were talking in the dining-room when Sir Eustace entered suddenly. He was drunk and wild with rage. He seized a bottle and struck Lady Brackenstall across the face with it, making the bruise which we had seen. Then he turned upon Croker with the poker in his hand.
　　What followed took only a few moments. Croker, strong and quick, caught up the poker in self-defense and struck back. The blow killed Sir Eustace at once. Lady Brackenstall said that she herself had hardly understood what had happened until her husband lay dead at her feet. Croker had wished to give himself up then and there, but Teresa and she both saw at once that the law would not easily believe the full truth. They feared that the man who had tried only to protect her would hang for murder. So together they made the false story of the burglars.
　　Teresa now spoke with great force. She said that she had cut the bell-rope, helped tie her mistress to the chair, and set out the glasses and wine. She had done it without shame, because she would do the same again to save the life of the one honest man who had ever stood between Lady Brackenstall and misery. Holmes asked whether the silver had indeed been thrown into the pond, as he had already guessed. Teresa answered yes, and Hopkins later found that this was true. Every part of the false burglary had been their own work.
　　Holmes then asked one last question. Why had Captain Croker not left England at once? Lady Brackenstall answered that he would not run. He had gone because she and Teresa forced him to go, but he had stayed near and had written to learn whether she was safe. Holmes said quietly that this answer was in the man’s favour. A guilty coward runs far and fast. A brave man stays where the truth may still reach him. Then Holmes rose and asked Hopkins to leave him alone for a short time with the women.
　　When we were outside, Hopkins was greatly troubled. He said that the case had become both clearer and harder. The story now made full sense, but what was he to do with it? Holmes answered that before deciding anything, one thing more was needed. The character of Captain Croker must be tested. If he was the sort of man the women described, that would matter greatly. If he were not, then the law must take its ordinary course. Hopkins agreed, though he looked doubtful and unhappy.
　　Holmes then sent a message which brought Captain Croker to a private meeting. He was a strong, open-faced seaman, deeply tanned by weather, with honest eyes and the quiet self-control of a man used to command. He did not try to lie. The moment Holmes told him that the truth was known, he admitted everything. He had loved Lady Brackenstall for a long time, but had behaved honourably. That night he had gone only to see her and to learn whether anything could be done to free her from her cruel life. When Sir Eustace attacked her, he had struck in one blind moment to save her.
　　Holmes watched him very closely during this confession. Then he asked whether Croker would be willing to stand trial if it were proved that he had acted to save a woman from death or terrible injury. The captain answered at once that he would face anything, if by doing so he could spare Lady Brackenstall further shame. He only begged that Teresa should not suffer for what she had done afterward, since the plan of the false burglary had been made by the women in the first shock of horror and fear. Holmes turned away after hearing this, and I knew from his face that he had already judged the man.
　　Later, when Holmes and Hopkins were alone, the inspector said that the law seemed plain enough. A man was dead, and another man had killed him. Holmes answered that the law is made for the protection of life and the punishment of wickedness, but that it is not always wise enough to tell justice from accident when the heart of a case lies in suffering. Sir Eustace had been a brutal husband. Croker had struck to protect a woman from a drunken attack. Holmes therefore believed that if the case went to a jury in all its truth, no English jury would convict him. Hopkins was silent for a long time after hearing this.
　　At last Holmes said that, if Hopkins wished to do his duty in the narrow official sense, he would not stop him. But if he wished to do justice in the larger human sense, then he should leave Abbey Grange as it stood and let the false burglary story die quietly away. Hopkins, who had learned much from Holmes in earlier years, chose the larger path. He said that he would take that responsibility upon himself. Holmes only answered that some responsibilities are worth taking.
　　So the matter ended. Sir Eustace Brackenstall was buried as a man killed in a house robbery, and no court ever heard the fuller truth. Captain Croker returned to the sea for a time, and later, when the season of mourning had passed and the wounds of that dreadful house had begun to close, I learned that he and Lady Brackenstall were married. Holmes never spoke of the case as one in which he had defeated the police or solved a puzzle. He spoke of it only as one of those rare matters in which truth had to bow a little before mercy, and in which the most important thing was not that a man had died, but that a woman at last had been allowed to live in peace.


The Adventure of the Second Stain

Part 1

　　I cannot tell this story with every name and detail exactly as they were. Even now, after many years, there are strong reasons why some parts should remain covered. The events touched not only private lives, but the peace of Europe, and even a small error in telling them too openly would not be wise. Yet the matter is too remarkable to leave out of these papers altogether. I must therefore ask the reader to be content if I change a little what can safely be changed while keeping the truth of the case itself.
　　It was one of those close heavy mornings in summer when the air in Baker Street seemed to hang still and warm even before noon. Holmes had been at work since early daybreak and was already restless with the want of a case large enough for his full powers. I had been reading in the window when Mrs. Hudson brought in two cards together. Holmes took them, looked once, and at once rose from his chair. There was a brightness in his face which told me that the quiet morning had suddenly become important.
　　The first card was that of the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope, Secretary for European Affairs. The second bore the name of the Right Honourable Lord Bellinger, twice Prime Minister of England. Even I, who had seen many strange visitors at Baker Street, felt a stir of surprise at the sight of those names. Holmes said quietly that if men so placed came together to a private consulting room in Baker Street, the matter in hand was likely to be no small one. A moment later both were shown in.
　　Lord Bellinger was a large, strongly built man with a broad forehead, heavy features, and the grave self-control of one long used to great office and great pressure. There was power in every line of him. Beside him, Trelawney Hope looked younger, thinner, and more finely made, with a face of great intelligence and also, at that moment, of very deep anxiety. He was handsome in a dark serious way, but all the colour had gone from his cheeks, and his hand, as he laid his hat on the table, was not wholly steady. It was plain that the older man had brought authority, but the younger man had brought pain.
　　Holmes bowed and waited. It was not Lord Bellinger but Trelawney Hope who spoke first. His voice was low, careful, and under strong control, but I could hear in it the effort that control cost him. He said that he and Lord Bellinger had come because a most serious disaster threatened the country. He could not state the whole matter at once in open words, but enough must be said to show Holmes why immediate help was necessary. Holmes answered that no confidence placed in him had ever yet been lightly used and that he would listen with the greatest care.
　　Lord Bellinger then spoke in his deep measured voice. He said that a paper of the very highest importance had disappeared. It was not an ordinary government document, not a report, not a treaty in regular form, but a private letter from a person of very high position abroad to one equally high in England. The letter had reached the Secretary’s hands by a road so private and delicate that hardly any living men knew of its arrival. Yet it was now gone. If it were made public, the result, said Lord Bellinger, might be very grave indeed.
　　Holmes asked in the simplest way whether he was to understand that the peace of Europe might be affected. Lord Bellinger answered at once that he was to understand exactly that. The letter, if published, would make such trouble between two great powers that war itself might follow. Holmes’s eyes grew very bright, but his voice remained perfectly calm. He said that such a case must be handled not only with speed, but with absolute silence. Had the police been told? The answer was no. Nor, said Lord Bellinger, must they be told unless every other road failed.
　　Trelawney Hope now gave the facts. The letter had come to him six days earlier. He had read it, understood at once its terrible importance, and locked it in his official despatch-box. That box he took home with him as was sometimes his duty with very private papers. It had remained in his bedroom that night. In the morning the letter was gone. No other paper had been touched. The box itself showed no sign of force. Everything else in it remained exactly as before. Only that one letter had vanished.
　　Holmes asked whether anyone outside the room knew the letter was there. Trelawney Hope answered that, to the best of his belief, no one did. He himself had said nothing to any human being except Lord Bellinger. The contents of the letter were known only to those two men and to the person who wrote it. Holmes then asked whether Lady Hilda Hope, the Secretary’s wife, had known that something unusual was in the box. Hope answered that she knew only that he often brought state papers home and guarded them carefully. She could not, however, have known the nature of this one letter.
　　The younger statesman then made one point very clear. If the letter had been stolen by a common thief, it was useless to him and might yet be recovered. But if it had been taken by an agent acting for some foreign interest, then every hour mattered. It was not money the thief wanted. It was the effect that the paper might have once placed in certain hands abroad. Lord Bellinger added that this was why they had come straight to Holmes. Time lost might mean much more than the loss of a paper. It might mean the loss of peace itself.
　　Holmes then asked a series of quick exact questions. Had the bedroom been locked? No. Was there a servant sleeping near? No one near enough to hear a very quiet movement. Had the Secretary left the room during the evening? Yes, more than once, but never for long. Had any stranger called at the house? None known. Had there been any sign of disturbance in the room? Not the least. Had Lady Hilda behaved with any special surprise when the loss was discovered? Trelawney Hope hesitated very slightly before answering that his wife had been deeply shocked and distressed, but had known no more than any innocent person might know.
　　Holmes noticed that hesitation, though he did not show it openly. He asked instead about the letter itself. Was it in a sealed envelope? Yes. Was the envelope official? No. Was the handwriting known to the Secretary? Yes, instantly. Was the matter of the letter likely to tempt a political enemy in England as well as abroad? At that question Lord Bellinger exchanged one quick glance with Hope. He then answered that there were certainly men in London who would pay much for such a paper, not because they hated England, but because they loved danger, intrigue, or personal power more than peace.
　　Holmes leaned back and joined his hands. He said that the first steps were already clear. He must see the room, the despatch-box, the road by which the paper had come, and every person in the household who might have seen or heard anything. But before going farther he wished one thing understood. If any fact, however painful or private, were hidden from him, the whole effort might fail. In such a case there could be no separate boxes for politics and for family life. Everything touched everything else. Trelawney Hope flushed a little and answered that nothing relevant would be hidden.
　　Lord Bellinger then rose. He said that he must return at once to his official duties, but that Trelawney Hope would place every needed fact before Holmes and obey every reasonable request. Holmes bowed and said that he asked nothing more. The older statesman held out his hand with grave courtesy and added that if Holmes could recover the letter before it passed beyond English hands, he would have done a service greater than any public honour could repay. Then he left us, and the room felt smaller the moment his great heavy presence was gone.
　　Holmes turned at once to the younger man, who now seemed even more worn and anxious than before. The strain of holding together both state danger and private fear had plainly been too much for him. Holmes’s voice softened a little as he asked him to begin again from the exact hour when the letter entered his possession and to tell the story minute by minute if possible. Trelawney Hope sat down, passed one hand across his brow, and began. As he spoke, I felt more and more strongly that the case, though wrapped in affairs of Europe, was not wholly a matter of chancelleries and cabinets. There was something personal in it too, something that touched the man before us more closely and more painfully than public duty alone could explain.

Part 2

　　Trelawney Hope then told the story in full order. The letter had come to him in the afternoon through a private and trusted hand. He had read it alone and at once understood how dangerous it was. Then he placed it in the despatch-box and locked the box himself. He took that box home to Whitehall Terrace, as he sometimes did when papers were too important to leave elsewhere. During the evening the box remained in his bedroom, and he believed that no human being knew what it contained.
　　Holmes asked him to describe the whole evening minute by minute. Hope said that he had dined at home with Lady Hilda and had later spent some time in the drawing-room. More than once he had gone upstairs to his bedroom, because he had one or two other papers to look at before sleeping. The despatch-box was there each time, standing where he had left it. At last, near midnight, he went to bed. In the morning, when he opened the box again, the letter alone was gone.
　　Nothing else in the box had been moved. No lock was broken, no drawer forced, and no servant had been seen near the room under suspicious conditions. Holmes asked whether the bedroom was ever entered by the housemaid in the early morning. Hope answered that the room was not usually disturbed until after he and Lady Hilda had come downstairs. Could Lady Hilda herself have gone into the room during the night? Certainly, since she slept in the same room. Yet he spoke that answer with visible reluctance, and I saw once again that the case was beginning to press on him in a way more private than he wished to admit.
　　Holmes then asked whether Lady Hilda had shown any unusual behaviour during the evening or the following morning. Hope answered that she had seemed anxious when he told her of the loss, but that such anxiety was natural enough when she learned how serious the matter was. Holmes replied that natural anxiety and special anxiety are not always the same thing. He did not press the point there, but he let it remain between them. Then he rose and said that they must go at once to Whitehall Terrace.
　　The Secretary’s house was one of those handsome official residences in which everything looks proper, polished, and secure. Holmes, however, has often said that security is one of the most dangerous feelings a man can have when he keeps secrets. We were shown into the bedroom, and there the famous despatch-box stood upon a small table near the bed. Hope unlocked it for Holmes, who examined it with the greatest care. The lock, the leather, the hinges, and the inner arrangement all told the same story. The box had not been forced. It had been opened in the ordinary way by someone with the key.
　　Holmes next asked to see the key itself. Hope produced it. It had never, so far as he knew, been out of his own possession. Holmes asked whether he kept it on his watch-chain. No, he carried it loose in his pocket. Had he ever left his clothes lying where another person might easily search them? Hope answered that this was possible in his own dressing-room, though he had never thought such a thing important. Holmes said quietly that in this case it might be very important indeed.
　　We then saw Lady Hilda Hope. I had heard of her beauty, but hearing and seeing are different things. She was one of those women whose face, manner, and voice all seem made to calm and please those around them. She was fair, graceful, and perfectly dressed, with a sweet steady expression which would have made suspicion seem almost an insult. Yet when Holmes first spoke of the missing letter, I thought I saw a sudden deeper fear pass through her eyes before she mastered herself. If Holmes saw it too, he gave no sign.
　　He asked her very gently whether she had noticed anything unusual in her husband’s manner on the previous evening. She answered that she had seen at once that something important had reached him, but he had said nothing of its nature. Had she entered the bedroom after he fell asleep? No. Had she heard anyone moving in the room during the night? No. Had she ever before known him to bring home papers of the highest secrecy? Yes, more than once. Her answers were clear, but to me they seemed almost too clear, as if she had thought about them in advance.
　　Holmes next spoke to the servants. Nothing useful came from them. No stranger had called. No unusual sound had been heard. No one had seen the despatch-box except in its ordinary place. A maid had indeed entered the room in the morning, but only after Hope himself had found the loss. Everything in the household seemed normal. Yet the more normal it all seemed, the less Holmes was satisfied. When we left the house, he walked for some distance in complete silence.
　　At last he said that one point was now certain. The letter had not floated away of its own accord. Someone had opened the box, taken that one paper, and closed the box again. Since no sign of outside entry could be found, the act must have been done either by someone inside the house or by someone admitted there under conditions still hidden from us. Hope answered unhappily that this was obvious enough, but it did not help him much. Holmes replied that obvious facts are often the hardest ones to accept when they stand close to the heart.
　　We had hardly returned to Baker Street when Holmes picked up the evening paper. He had not read more than a few lines before he gave a small sound of interest and turned the page toward me. There had been another dramatic event in London on the same night the letter vanished. A man named Eduardo Lucas, well known in society and foreign circles, had been found murdered in his house in Godolphin Street. The killing had been done by a knife, and the circumstances were still confused. Holmes’s eyes grew bright at once.
　　He asked Hope whether he knew the name. The Secretary answered that he did. Eduardo Lucas was a man of polished manners and wide connections, but not one whom he personally trusted or liked. Holmes then asked whether Lucas was known to have political friendships abroad. Hope admitted that he was exactly the sort of man who moved easily between embassies, salons, and private intrigues. In another case, such a person might be merely unpleasant. In this case, he might be much more.
　　Holmes now became very alert. He said that he did not yet claim a connection between the two events, but that the time was too close to ignore. A letter vanishes from a minister’s box during the night, and a man of foreign political ties is stabbed that same night in London. It would be poor work indeed, Holmes said, not to ask whether one event throws light on the other. He therefore sent a message at once to Scotland Yard asking for the latest facts about the Lucas murder.
　　The answer brought only part of what he wanted, but enough to deepen his interest. Lucas had been killed in his own room after a struggle. A woman was suspected, though no one had been arrested. The room had later shown signs of disturbance beyond the struggle itself, as if something had been sought or moved there after the crime. Holmes read this more than once and then stood with the paper in his hand, staring into the fire. At last he turned to us and said that the public side of the case and the private side might be much nearer together than they looked.
　　Hope asked what he meant by “private side.” Holmes answered that he meant the side which lives in drawing-rooms and bedrooms rather than offices. The missing letter was a state danger, yes. But if it had passed through hands inside the house first, then human feeling, fear, love, jealousy, or blackmail might stand between the document and the political disaster. Hope went very pale at that and asked whether Holmes spoke of his wife. Holmes answered with complete calm that he was speaking of possibilities only and that a wise man does not blind himself to possibilities because they hurt him.
　　Trelawney Hope then rose and began to walk the room in great agitation. He said that he trusted Lady Hilda completely and would hear no word against her without proof. Holmes replied that trust is honourable, but proof is necessary. He had no wish to accuse an innocent woman. At the same time, if Lady Hilda knew anything, even something meant kindly, then every hour of silence increased the danger. Hope answered that he would question her again if Holmes thought it necessary. Holmes said no, not yet. Questions asked too early may only drive the truth deeper under cover.
　　Instead, Holmes announced that his next step would be Godolphin Street. He must see the room where Eduardo Lucas had died and learn what had been searched for there after the murder. If the missing letter had ever passed through Lucas’s hands, that room might still hold some trace of it. Hope asked in a low voice whether there was real hope left. Holmes answered that there was always hope while the paper had not yet appeared abroad. “If it were already in the wrong capital,” said he, “we should not be speaking so quietly in Baker Street. We should be hearing the storm already.”
　　So the day ended with the case darker than before, but also more sharply shaped. The missing letter no longer stood alone. Beside it now stood Lady Hilda’s hidden fear, Eduardo Lucas lying dead in Godolphin Street, and the possibility that a secret of the heart had crossed the path of a secret of Europe. Holmes said little more that evening, but I knew from his face that he had ceased to see the matter as one of official papers only. Somewhere behind the great public danger, a private hand had moved, and until that hand was found, neither peace nor truth would be safe.

Part 3

　　Holmes and I went first to Godolphin Street, where Eduardo Lucas had been killed. The police there knew Holmes well enough to let him see the room without delay. It was a handsome room, with rich curtains, good furniture, and the signs of a man who lived with comfort and taste. Yet the comfort had been broken by sudden violence. The marks of the struggle were still clear, and the place where Lucas had fallen could easily be seen.
　　The local inspector told us what was already known. Lucas had been stabbed by a woman who had later been identified as his wife, from whom he had long lived apart. She was a jealous and violent woman and had found him with another lady, or had believed so. In a rage she had struck him down and then fled. This explained the murder itself well enough, but it did not explain why the room had later been disturbed or how that disturbance might touch the missing letter.
　　Holmes listened with care and then began to examine the room for himself. He looked first at the writing-table, then at the fireplace, and then at the carpet on the floor. It was the carpet which most interested him. He bent down, touched it, walked round it, and finally asked one sudden question. Had it been moved after the murder? The inspector answered that he did not think so. Holmes then pointed silently to the floor beneath the table.
　　There was a dark blood-stain there, but the stain on the carpet did not lie over it as it should have done if the carpet had remained in the same position from the moment of the crime. The carpet had clearly been turned or shifted after the blood fell. That meant someone had come into the room later and had moved it. The inspector stared at this with great surprise and admitted that he had entirely missed it. Holmes said that such a thing does not happen by accident in a room already under police attention. It happens because someone is searching for something.
　　He then asked whether any person had entered the room after the murder and before the police took full control. The answer was yes, one woman had been brought in. She had said she knew Lucas and wished to see the place where he died. In fact, said the inspector, she had seemed so deeply shaken that she nearly fainted and had to be helped away. Holmes asked what sort of woman she was. The inspector answered that she was a fine-looking lady of high position, though he did not then know her name.
　　Holmes’s face changed at once, though only for a moment. He then bent over the carpet again and ran his fingers lightly along the edge. At last he lifted one corner and showed the inspector a small cut in the wood beneath, almost hidden by the pattern. It was the mark of a secret compartment. The boards there had been made to open, and someone had opened them recently. Holmes raised them very gently. The little hiding-place below was now empty.
　　“That,” said he quietly, “is where the missing paper rested, if only for a short time.” The inspector looked from the empty hiding-place to Holmes with open admiration. Holmes explained that the matter now grew much clearer. Lady Hilda, or some other lady of her sort, had not come to Lucas’s room because of love or curiosity. She had come because she knew that something hidden there belonged to her or threatened her. She had searched under the carpet, found what she wanted, and left again.
　　On our way back to Whitehall Terrace, Holmes said very little. At last he told me what he now believed. Lady Hilda Hope had taken the dangerous letter from her husband’s box. She had passed it to Eduardo Lucas, probably because Lucas held some power over her. Later, when Lucas was killed, she had gone to his house, found the letter hidden in the floor, and taken it back. That, Holmes said, would explain both her fear and her silence. It would also explain why the letter had vanished without any sign of outside theft.
　　I asked what power Lucas could possibly have had over such a woman. Holmes answered that it was almost certainly some old private letter or other foolish writing from the days before her marriage. Such things, harmless enough in themselves, can become cruel weapons in the hands of a man like Lucas. Lady Hilda would then have faced a terrible choice. She could betray her husband’s trust and save her own honour, or keep faith with him and risk disgrace. Holmes said that many good people make one bad step when fear grips them in private.
　　We found Trelawney Hope at home again, pale and worn with waiting. Holmes asked him, with more kindness than before, to leave his wife alone with us for a little time. The Secretary looked surprised and troubled, but there was something in Holmes’s manner which forced obedience. He went out at last, though not willingly. A few moments later Lady Hilda entered. She looked from one of us to the other and seemed to know at once that the hour of concealment had ended.
　　Holmes did not accuse her harshly. He said only that he now knew the whole line of the matter from the despatch-box to Godolphin Street. He knew that she had taken the letter, that she had carried it to Lucas, and that after Lucas’s death she had gone to recover it from his hiding-place. If she still denied this, then he would be forced to bring her husband and perhaps the police into the room. If she spoke the truth, much pain might still be spared. Lady Hilda stood very still while he spoke, but all the colour left her face.
　　For some seconds she said nothing. Then she took one step toward the table and laid both hands on it as if she needed support. Her eyes filled, not with weakness, but with the misery of a woman who has struggled too long alone. At last she asked in a low voice whether her husband knew. Holmes answered that he did not, and that Holmes wished, if possible, to keep it so. The only hope of that, however, was full honesty now.
　　That broke the last of her self-control. She covered her face with her hands and said that she would tell everything. Yes, she had taken the letter. Yes, she had gone to Lucas. Yes, she had later recovered the paper from his room. She had done all this not because she cared for Lucas, but because Lucas had held over her the threat of another letter, an old private letter which would have ruined her in her husband’s eyes. Holmes bowed his head slightly and said that this was what he had expected to hear.
　　He then asked only one final question before letting her continue. Where was the missing state letter now? Lady Hilda lowered her hands and looked at him with the face of a woman who sees both hope and judgment before her at once. She said that it was safe, still in her own keeping, and that if Holmes could save her husband from disgrace and Europe from danger, she would place it in his hands that very minute. The whole case, which had begun with cabinets and ministers, had at last come where Holmes had long known it must come: into the heart of a marriage.

Part 4

　　Lady Hilda then told the rest in a low broken voice. Some years before her marriage, she had written one foolish letter, warm in feeling but not evil in itself, to a man whom she later saw in his true and ugly character. That man was Eduardo Lucas. After her marriage, he had held the old letter over her and had threatened to show it to Trelawney Hope if she refused him. For a long time she had resisted him. Then, on the very day the state letter came into her husband’s hands, Lucas sent word that he would now show her old letter unless she brought him the government paper in exchange.
　　She had fought against it with all her strength. Yet in the end she had not found courage enough to risk losing her husband’s trust. That night, while Trelawney Hope slept, she took the key from his clothes, opened the despatch-box, and stole the one paper Lucas wanted. She carried it to Lucas and gave it to him, believing that he would then return her own letter. Instead, he played a double game. He gave her fair words, but kept the state paper hidden and told her that she must trust him for the rest. It was then, she said, that she first understood how completely she had put herself in his power.
　　The next morning, when her husband discovered the loss, she had almost confessed everything. But the terror of what would follow stopped the words on her lips. Then came the news that Eduardo Lucas had been murdered. She saw at once that the state letter might still be in his house, and that if she could recover it before others found it, she might yet save both her husband and herself. It was for that reason that she had gone to Godolphin Street and had forced her way into the room under the excuse of grief and shock. While the police watched her face, she had searched with her hands and found the hidden place under the carpet.
　　Holmes asked one quiet question. Had Lucas returned her own letter before his death? Lady Hilda answered yes. That letter was now destroyed. The state paper, however, had remained hidden where Lucas put it, and she had taken it away when she found it under the boards. Holmes then held out his hand and asked for it. For a moment she looked at him with desperate uncertainty, like a person standing at the edge of some great height. Then, with a little sob, she drew a folded paper from the front of her dress and laid it in his hand.
　　Holmes did not open it. He only looked at the seal and the superscription and then nodded as if all doubt were gone. At that exact moment the door opened, and Trelawney Hope came back into the room. His face showed the misery of a man who has waited outside a closed door while his whole life may have been changing within. Lady Hilda turned white as death and half rose from her chair. Holmes stepped between them with a quick firmness and said that the matter was settled. The missing paper had been recovered, and no further question need be asked.
　　Hope stared at him in amazement. He asked where the letter had been found and by what road it had come back. Holmes answered that for the present, at least, it would be wiser not to ask. Enough had already happened. The one thing necessary was that the document should be returned at once to the place from which it vanished. The Secretary, still looking from Holmes to his wife and back again, took the paper with shaking hands. He recognized it at once, and in another moment all the strength seemed to leave him. He dropped into a chair and covered his face.
　　Holmes then said, in a tone both gentle and very firm, that he wished to speak plainly. The public danger had now ended. Nothing further would be gained by opening private wounds which time, silence, and love might still heal. If Trelawney Hope could trust his wife without hearing all that fear had forced her to do, then he would show himself the wiser and happier man. If he could not, then no explanation, however full, would truly help him. Lady Hilda gave a low cry and fell on her knees beside her husband, but Holmes turned away and would not let us watch more.
　　We left the room together and went back to Baker Street. On the way Holmes said little. At last I asked whether he thought Hope understood the truth in all important points. Holmes answered that he understood enough. A clever man needs only the edges of some things. The centre he can often supply for himself. He added that in this case the less spoken, the better, because the true criminal had not been malice, but fear.
　　When we reached Baker Street, we found Lord Bellinger already there, waiting with all the impatience which even great statesmen cannot always keep hidden in private crisis. Holmes placed the recovered letter in his hand without a word. The older man broke the seal, looked inside only long enough to make certain, and then gave one long breath of relief. For the first time since he entered our rooms, the weight seemed to lift from his face. He said that Holmes had done more for England that day than many men do in a lifetime of office.
　　Holmes answered lightly that he had only put back a paper where it ought never to have been removed from. Lord Bellinger, however, was not a man to leave gratitude in light words. He said that if Holmes wished for public honour, it could be found. Holmes shook his head at once. Public honour, he said, is often less useful than private freedom. The Prime Minister understood that answer very well. He then asked one question only: had the danger truly passed? Holmes said yes. Since the paper had not left London and had not been copied, the storm which might have broken over Europe would not now break at all.
　　After Lord Bellinger had gone, I asked Holmes what part of the whole matter had first made him suspect Lady Hilda. He said that it had not been one thing, but several. Her fear had been too personal for mere patriotism. The theft of the letter from a locked box without force pointed strongly toward someone in the room. The murder of Lucas on that same night showed where such a paper might next be found. Then the shifted carpet in Godolphin Street and the hidden compartment made the rest plain. “A statesman loses a letter,” said Holmes, “and the world trembles. A woman fears a private shame, and the letter begins to move. That was the whole case.”
　　I asked whether he truly believed Hope and his wife could live happily after such a blow. Holmes answered that no marriage is saved by truth alone or ruined by one act alone. Some are broken by pride, some by silence, and some are held together by mercy after truth has already done its worst. In this case, he said, Lady Hilda had done great wrong, but not from greed or evil. She had acted under blackmail and fear. If Trelawney Hope loved her wisely, he would bury the past with the paper and let both remain unread forever.
　　So ended the adventure of the second stain. It began in the highest circles of government and with the threat of war between nations. Yet, like many other cases, it came at last to rest on the secret pain of one human heart. Holmes once said afterward that public dangers are often easier to manage than private ones, because ministers can be reasoned with, but fear inside a marriage has a logic of its own. I have always thought that saying very true. In this case, as in some others, Europe was saved in a cabinet room, but the real battle had been fought in a bedroom and in a woman’s conscience.