Sherlock Holmes Page 5

  “But Holmes didn’t finish his statement. A lot happened all at once. The leader of the group took a swing at Holmes, but he dodged it and the man ended up striking me in the side. Another one kicked out my crutch, and I toppled to the ground. I felt a foot kick me in the ribs when I heard the bleat of a police whistle and someone yelled, ‘Coppers! Beat it!’

  “I heard the clopping footsteps of people dashing away when I was suddenly hoisted up by Holmes and a constable. ‘What is this world coming to when ruffians beat a cripple in the street?’ the officer complained. ‘You all right, sir?’

  “‘Yes. I really don’t know what happened,’ I confessed.

  “‘I’ll tell you what happened, Officer,’ Holmes complained. ‘This man was just minding his own business when he turned down this alleyway and saw illegal gambling. They didn’t like the way he looked at them, like he might call the police, so those scoundrels attacked him,’ Holmes spat on the ground and shook his head full of remorse, then he bellowed with his fists in the air. ‘This neighborhood! What is becoming of my home?’

  “‘Don’t you worry none, sir, we’ll get Emerson and his gang,’ the officer said, consoling Holmes.

  “I heard a voice call out, ‘Officer, hurry! This way!’

  “‘You rest now, and stay put. We’ll be needing a statement,’ the constable said, his eyes darting down the alley. He ran off blowing his whistle. Holmes waited until he had turned the corner. Then, he slapped me on my back.

  “‘Well done, sir. Let us away at once,’ Holmes said, and he gave me a slight shove forward.

  “Holmes had me limp along as fast as I could ‘til we had weaved around a few corner blocks and were mixed in enough crowds that we did not have to worry ourselves about the copper returning. We stopped in front of a fairly empty street, where I was startled to see a hansom waiting.

  “‘Why, Holmes, is that carriage for us?’

  “‘No, sir, it is for you. I had the driver wait here, ready to take you away. I’ve already given him half of his fee for the trip.’

  “‘Trip? Mr. Holmes, I still don’t know what exactly happened back there.’

  “‘I happened. Now, into the hansom you go.’ Holmes urged me forward, but I slammed my crutch down and stood my ground.

  “‘Wait, Mr. Holmes. You are a blessing, I can’t rightly deny that. Still, I feel you owe me some explanation of how I ended up so fortunate. Before I hop into that cab, tell me – How did you manage to pull all this off?’

  “Holmes’s expression soured at my insistence. He checked his pocket watch, sighed, and then said, ‘Very well. After I left you, I followed your directions to the gambling street den and was able to see the layout of Emerson’s scheme. He has his dealer play fairly, but if he determines that he is losing too much money, he wipes his nose, which gestures to the dealer to slip poor cards to the players. This causes the winners to be allowed to win but not to win big. At one point during my game, Emerson gave out a cough and his ruffians stood and blocked the alley exit. I noted that Emerson shook his head “No”, and his henchmen went back to their positions. I believe he really had a cough at that moment. So, I knew that was his signal to deal with a cheat or a thief. Having learned the inner workings of Emerson’s street games within a half of an hour, I accepted my losses, proposed a game of Vingt-un to commence in an hour, and then I went about gathering food and clothing for you, procuring this cab, and putting young Williams to work.’

  “‘Williams?’ I asked. ‘Who is Williams?’

  “‘Ah, Williams was the young street urchin I hired to call the police at precisely noon today.’

  “‘You mean you knew we would be attacked?’ I bellowed.

  “‘Of course. Think about it. It was a rather elementary deduction. When we entered the gambling den, I knew we had a limited time to earn your required moneys. I also knew that by having both of us participate in the game of Vingt-un, we would have double the odds of earning your money. Now, the deck that the dealer used was well worn and easy to count the cards. Before each hand was finished being dealt, I had ascertained who would win. That is why I made a point to have you throw away some of your winning hands. We had to gain the trust of the house. So we kept our winnings small until ten minutes to noon. I made a point of stating that I had an early afternoon engagement, so there was no concern with me checking my watch during the game. When I knew the time was right, I significantly increased my bets. We won five large pools of money, and then we went back to losing to throw off Emerson. If he called in the goons too soon, we would end up in a street brawl. So, that is why we kept playing. When it was noon, we ended the game. I believed that Emerson would call in his thugs, but I was not certain. Of course, he did follow through with that course of action.

  “‘I had told Williams to alert the constable at precisely noon that a crippled man was being assaulted in Emerson’s Alley. Even a bribed constable cannot turn his back on a gentleman being attacked on the streets. He came round just as the ruffians were attacking you. His timing could not have been better. When we assisted you, I told the constable the tale of you being an innocent bystander, attacked by a disreputable gang. Then, Williams came around and called the constable to pursue Emerson’s associates. We then absconded, and here we are. Now, I believe I owe you your winnings, sans my expenses for the episode.’

  “Holmes handed me my winnings and then told me the cab would take me to a rooming house on the Thames.

  “Tomorrow, Father, I will board a ship and will make my voyage back to Cork, back to my wife, back to my home where a new job awaits me. Time for me to start my life again.

  “I said my goodbye to Mr. Holmes, and when I arrived at the boarding house, I was happy to see your small parish next door. I believe it was the Lord intervening on my behalf, Father. I know I earned my passage back home through ill means. I know Holmes lied and maybe cheated a bit to get me home. I’m ready to do penance for the opportunity which the Lord has granted me.

  “Yes, Father, I will. Thank you. What’s that? No, Father, when I said goodbye to Holmes, we only shook hands. I learned nothing else about the lad. I’m sorry to say that this is probably the last adventure we’ll ever hear about that involves Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

  The Adventure of the Gloria Scott

  by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  “I have some papers here,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, “which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance over. These are the documents in the extraordinary case of the Gloria Scott, and this is the message which struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it.”

  He had picked from a drawer a little tarnished cylinder, and, undoing the tape, he handed me a short note scrawled upon a half-sheet of slate-gray paper.

  “The supply of game for London is going steadily up,” it ran. “Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant’s life.”

  As I glanced up from reading this enigmatical message, I saw Holmes chuckling at the expression upon my face.

  “You look a little bewildered,” said he.

  “I cannot see how such a message as this could inspire horror. It seems to me to be rather grotesque than otherwise.”

  “Very likely. Yet the fact remains that the reader, who was a fine, robust old man, was knocked clean down by it as if it had been the butt end of a pistol.”

  “You arouse my curiosity,” said I. “But why did you say just now that there were very particular reasons why I should study this case?”

  “Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged.”

  I had often endeavored to elicit from my companion what had first turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never caught him before in a communicative humor. Now he sat forward in this arm-chair and spread out the documents upon his knees. Then he lit his pipe and sat for some time s
moking and turning them over.

  “You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?” he asked. “He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.

  “Trevor used to come in to inquire after me.”

  “It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days, but Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At first it was only a minute’s chat, but soon his visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and energy, the very opposite to me in most respects, but we had some subjects in common, and it was a bond of union when I found that he was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his father’s place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation.

  “Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a J.P., and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was an old-fashioned, wide-spread, oak-beamed brick building, with a fine lime-lined avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that he would be a fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month there.

  “Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend his only son. There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while on a visit to Birmingham. The father interested me extremely. He was a man of little culture, but with a considerable amount of rude strength, both physically and mentally. He knew hardly any books, but he had traveled far, had seen much of the world. And had remembered all that he had learned. In person he was a thick-set, burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet he had a reputation for kindness and charity on the country-side, and was noted for the leniency of his sentences from the bench.

  “One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were sitting over a glass of port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about those habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a system, although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in my life. The old man evidently thought that his son was exaggerating in his description of one or two trivial feats which I had performed.

  “‘Come, now, Mr. Holmes,’ said he, laughing good-humoredly. ‘I’m an excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me.’

  “‘I fear there is not very much,’ I answered. ‘I might suggest that you have gone about in fear of some personal attack with the last twelve months.’

  “The laugh faded from his lips, and he stared at me in great surprise.

  “‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said he. ‘You know, Victor,’ turning to his son, ‘when we broke up that poaching gang they swore to knife us, and Sir Edward Holly has actually been attacked. I’ve always been on my guard since then, though I have no idea how you know it.’

  “‘You have a very handsome stick,’ I answered. ‘By the inscription I observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you have taken some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole so as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not take such precautions unless you had some danger to fear.’

  “‘Anything else?’ he asked, smiling.

  “‘You have boxed a good deal in your youth.’

  “‘Right again. How did you know it? Is my nose knocked a little out of the straight?’

  “‘No,’ said I. ‘It is your ears. They have the peculiar flattening and thickening which marks the boxing man.’

  “‘Anything else?’

  “‘You have done a good deal of digging by your callosities.’

  “‘Made all my money at the gold fields.’

  “‘You have been in New Zealand.’

  “‘Right again.’

  “‘You have visited Japan.’

  “‘Quite true.’

  “‘And you have been most intimately associated with someone whose initials were J. A., and whom you afterwards were eager to entirely forget.’

  “Mr. Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes upon me with a strange wild stare, and then pitched forward, with his face among the nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.

  “You can imagine, Watson, how shocked both his son and I were. His attack did not last long, however, for when we undid his collar, and sprinkled the water from one of the finger-glasses over his face, he gave a gasp or two and sat up.

  “‘Ah, boys,’ said he, forcing a smile, ‘I hope I haven’t frightened you. Strong as I look, there is a weak place in my heart, and it does not take much to knock me over. I don’t know how you manage this, Mr. Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of fancy would be children in your hands. That’s your line of life, sir, and you may take the word of a man who has seen something of the world.’

  “And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby. At the moment, however, I was too much concerned at the sudden illness of my host to think of anything else.

  “‘I hope that I have said nothing to pain you?’ said I.

  “‘Well, you certainly touched upon rather a tender point. Might I ask how you know, and how much you know?’ He spoke now in a half-jesting fashion, but a look of terror still lurked at the back of his eyes.

  “‘It is simplicity itself,’ said I. ‘When you bared your arm to draw that fish into the boat I saw that J. A. had been tattooed in the bend of the elbow. The letters were still legible, but it was perfectly clear from their blurred appearance, and from the staining of the skin round them, that efforts had been made to obliterate them. It was obvious, then, that those initials had once been very familiar to you, and that you had afterwards wished to forget them.’

  “‘What an eye you have!’ he cried, with a sigh of relief. ‘It is just as you say. But we won’t talk of it. Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old lovers are the worst. Come into the billiard-room and have a quiet cigar.’

  “From that day, amid all his cordiality, there was always a touch of suspicion in Mr. Trevor’s manner towards me. Even his son remarked it. ‘You’ve given the governor such a turn,’ said he, ‘that he’ll never be sure again of what you know and what you don’t know.’ He did not mean to show it, I am sure, but it was so strongly in his mind that it peeped out at every action. At last I became so convinced that I was causing him uneasiness that I drew my visit to a close. On the very day, however, before I left, and incident occurred which proved in the sequel to be of importance.

  “We were sitting out upon the lawn on garden chairs, the three of us, basking in the sun and admiring the view across the Broads, when a maid came out to say that there was a man at the door who wanted to see Mr. Trevor.

  “‘What is his name?’ asked my host.

  “‘He would not give any.’

  “‘What does he want, then?’

  “‘He says that you know him, and that he only wants a moment’s conversation.’

  “‘Show him round here.’ An instant afterwards there appeared a little wizened fellow with a cringing manner and a shambling style of walking. He wore an open jacket, with a splotch of tar on the sleeve, a red-and-black check shirt, dungare
e trousers, and heavy boots badly worn. His face was thin and brown and crafty, with a perpetual smile upon it, which showed an irregular line of yellow teeth, and his crinkled hands were half closed in a way that is distinctive of sailors. As he came slouching across the lawn I heard Mr. Trevor make a sort of hiccoughing noise in his throat, and jumping out of his chair, he ran into the house. He was back in a moment, and I smelt a strong reek of brandy as he passed me.

  “‘Well, my man,’ said he. ‘What can I do for you?’

  “The sailor stood looking at him with puckered eyes, and with the same loose-lipped smile upon his face.

  “‘You don’t know me?’ he asked.

  “‘Why, dear me, it is surely Hudson,’ said Mr. Trevor in a tone of surprise.

  “‘Hudson it is, sir,’ said the seaman. ‘Why, it’s thirty year and more since I saw you last. Here you are in your house, and me still picking my salt meat out of the harness cask.’

  “‘Tut, you will find that I have not forgotten old times,’ cried Mr. Trevor, and, walking towards the sailor, he said something in a low voice. ‘Go into the kitchen,’ he continued out loud, ‘and you will get food and drink. I have no doubt that I shall find you a situation.’

  “‘Hudson it is, sir,’ said the seaman.”

  “‘Thank you, sir,’ said the seaman, touching his fore-lock. ‘I’m just off a two-yearer in an eight-knot tramp, short-handed at that, and I wants a rest. I thought I’d get it either with Mr. Beddoes or with you.’

  “‘Ah!’ cried Trevor. ‘You know where Mr. Beddoes is?’

  “‘Bless you, sir, I know where all my old friends are,’ said the fellow with a sinister smile, and he slouched off after the maid to the kitchen. Mr. Trevor mumbled something to us about having been shipmate with the man when he was going back to the diggings, and then, leaving us on the lawn, he went indoors. An hour later, when we entered the house, we found him stretched dead drunk upon the dining-room sofa. The whole incident left a most ugly impression upon my mind, and I was not sorry next day to leave Donnithorpe behind me, for I felt that my presence must be a source of embarrassment to my friend.