The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (32 page)

Some three hours or so afterwards we were all in the train together, bound from Reading to the little Berkshire village. There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard, a plain-clothes man, and myself. Bradstreet had spread an ordnance map of the county out upon the seat, and was busy with his compasses drawing a circle with Eyford for its centre.

‘There you are,' said he. ‘That circle is drawn at a radius of ten miles from the village. The place we want must be somewhere near that line. You said ten miles, I think, sir?'

‘It was an hour's good drive.'

‘And you think that they brought you back all that way when you were unconscious?'

‘They must have done so. I have a confused memory, too, of having been lifted and conveyed somewhere.'

What I cannot understand,' said I, ‘is why they should have spared you when they found you lying fainting in the garden. Perhaps the villain was softened by the woman's entreaties.'

‘I hardly think that likely. I never saw a more inexorable face in my life.'

‘Oh, we shall soon clear up all that,' said Bradstreet. ‘Well, I have
drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon it the folk that we are in search of are to be found.'

‘I think I could lay my finger on it,' said Holmes quietly.

‘Really, now!' cried the Inspector, ‘you have formed your opinion! Come now, we shall see who agrees with you. I say south, for the country is more deserted there.'

‘And I say east,' said my patient.

‘I am for west,' remarked the plain-clothes man. ‘There are several quiet little villages up there.'

‘And I am for north,' said I; ‘because there are no hills there, and our friend says that he did not notice the carriage go up any.'

‘Come,' said the Inspector, laughing; ‘it's a very pretty diversity of opinion. We have boxed the compass among us. Who do you give your casting vote to?'

‘You are all wrong.'

‘But we can't
all
be.'

‘Oh, yes, you can. This is my point,' he placed his finger on the centre of the circle. ‘This is where we shall find them.'

‘But the twelve-mile drive?' gasped Hatherley.

‘Six out and six back. Nothing simpler. You say yourself that the horse was fresh and glossy when you got in. How could it be that, if it had gone twelve miles over heavy roads?'

‘Indeed it is a likely ruse enough,' observed Bradstreet thoughtfully. ‘Of course there can be no doubt as to the nature of this gang.'

‘None at all,' said Holmes. ‘They are coiners on a large scale, and have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the place of silver.'

‘We have known for some time that a clever gang was at work,' said the inspector. ‘They have been turning out half-crowns by the thousand. We even traced them as far as Reading, but could get no further; for they had covered their traces in a way that showed that they were very old hands. But now, thanks to this lucky chance, I think that we have got them right enough.'

But the Inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not destined to fall into the hands of justice. As we rolled into Eyford station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind
a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood, and hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape.

‘A house on fire?' asked Bradstreet, as the train steamed off again on its way.

‘Yes, sir,' said the stationmaster.

‘When did it break out?'

‘I hear that it was during the night, sir, but it has got worse, and the whole place is in a blaze.'

‘Whose house is it?'

‘Dr Becher's.'

‘Tell me,' broke in the engineer, ‘is Dr Becher a German, very thin, with a long sharp nose?'

The stationmaster laughed heartily. ‘No, sir, Dr Becher is an Englishman, and there isn't a man in the parish who has a better lined waistcoat. But he has a gentleman staying with him, a patient as I understand, who is a foreigner, and he looks as if a little good Berkshire beef would do him no harm.'

The stationmaster had not finished his speech before we were all hastening in the direction of the fire. The road topped a low hill, and there was a great widespread whitewashed building in front of us, spouting fire at every chink and window, while in the garden in front three fire-engines were vainly striving to keep the flames under.

‘That's it!' cried Hatherley, in intense excitement. ‘There is the gravel drive, and there are the rose-bushes where I lay. That second window is the one that I jumped from.'

‘Well, at least,' said Holmes, ‘you have had your revenge upon them. There can be no question that it was your oil lamp which, when it was crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls, though no doubt they were too excited in the chase after you to observe it at the time. Now keep your eyes open in this crowd for your friends of last night, though I very much fear that they are a good hundred miles off by now.'

And Holmes's fears came to be realized, for from that day to this no word has ever been heard either of the beautiful woman, the sinister German, or the morose Englishman. Early that morning a peasant had met a cart, containing several people and some very bulky
boxes, driving rapidly in the direction of Reading, but there all traces of the fugitives disappeared, and even Holmes's ingenuity failed to discover the least clue to their whereabouts.

The firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements which they found within, and still more so by discovering a newly severed human thumb upon a window-sill of the second floor. About sunset, however, their efforts were at last successful, and they subdued the flames, but not before the roof had fallen in, and the whole place been reduced to such absolute ruin that, save some twisted cylinders and iron piping, not a trace remained of the machinery which had cost our unfortunate aquaintance so dearly. Large masses of nickel and of tin were discovered
¹¹
stored in an outhouse, but no coins were to be found, which may have explained the presence of those bulky boxes which have been already referred to.

How our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to the spot where he recovered his senses might have remained for ever a mystery were it not for the soft mould which told us a very plain tale. He had evidently been carried down by two persons, one of whom had remarkably small feet, and the other unusually large ones. On the whole, it was most probable that the silent Englishman, being less bold or less murderous than his companion, had assisted the woman to bear the unconscious man out of the way of danger.

‘Well,' said our engineer ruefully, as we took our seats to return to London, ‘it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb, and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained!'

‘Experience,' said Holmes, laughing. ‘Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.'

The Lord St Simon
¹
marriage, and its curious termination, have long since ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the gossips away from this four-year-old drama. As I have reason to believe, however, that the full facts have never been revealed to the general public, and as my friend Sherlock Holmes had a considerable share in clearing the matter up, I feel that no memoir of him would be complete without some little sketch of this remarkable episode.

It was a few weeks before my own marriage,
²
during the days when I was still sharing rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came home from an afternoon stroll to find a letter on the table waiting for him. I had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds, and the jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs
³
as a relic of my Afghan campaign, throbbed with dull persistency. With my body in one easy chair and my legs upon another, I had surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers, until at last, saturated with the news of the day, I tossed them all aside and lay listless, watching the huge crest and monogram upon the envelope upon the table, and wondering lazily who my friend's noble correspondent could be.

‘Here is a very fashionable epistle,' I remarked as he entered. ‘Your morning's letters, if I remember right, were from a fishmonger and a tide-waiter.'
⁴

‘Yes, my correspondence has certainly the charm of variety,' he answered, smiling, ‘and the humbler are usually the more interesting.
This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.'

He broke the seal, and glanced over the contents.

‘Oh, come, it may prove to be something of interest after all.'

‘Not social, then?'

‘No, distinctly professional.'

‘And from a noble client?'

‘One of the highest in England.'

‘My dear fellow, I congratulate you.'

‘I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case. It is just possible, however, that that also may not be wanting in this new investigation. You have been reading the papers diligently of late, have you not?'

‘It looks like it,' said I ruefully, pointing to a huge bundle in the corner. ‘I have had nothing else to do.'

‘It is fortunate, for you will perhaps be able to post me up. I read nothing except the criminal news and the agony column. The latter is always instructive. But if you have followed recent events so closely you must have read about Lord St Simon and his wedding?'

‘Oh, yes, with the deepest interest.'

‘That is well. The letter which I hold in my hand is from Lord St Simon. I will read it to you, and in return you must turn over these papers and let me have whatever bears upon the matter. This is what he says:

My dear Mr Sherlock Holmes,

Lord Backwater
⁵
tells me that I may place implicit reliance upon your judgement and discretion. I have determined, therefore, to call upon you, and to consult you in reference to the very painful event which has occurred in connection with my wedding. Mr Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, is acting already in the matter, but he assures me that he sees no objection to your co-operation, and that he even thinks that it might be of some assistance. I will call at four o'clock in the afternoon, and should you have any other engagement at that time, I hope you will postpone it, as this is a matter of paramount importance.

Yours faithfully,

ROBERT ST SIMON

‘It is dated from Grosvenor Mansions,
⁶
written with a quill pen, and the noble lord has had the misfortune to get a smear of ink upon the outer side of his right little finger,' remarked Holmes, as he folded up the epistle.

‘He says four o'clock. It is three now. He will be here in an hour.'

‘Then I have just time, with your assistance, to get clear upon the subject. Turn over those papers, and arrange the extracts in their order of time, while I take a glance as to who our client is.' He picked a red-covered volume
⁷
from a line of books of reference beside the mantelpiece. ‘Here he is,' said he, sitting down and flattening it out upon his knee. ‘ “Robert Walsingham de Vere St Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral” – Hum! “Arms: Azure, three caltrops in chief over a fess sable.
⁸
Born in 1846.” He's forty-one years of age, which is mature for marriage. Was Under-Secretary for the Colonies in a late Administration. The Duke, his father, was at one time Secretary for Foreign Affairs. They inherit Plantagenet blood by direct descent, and Tudor on the distaff side.
⁹
Ha! Well, there is nothing very instructive in all this. I think I must turn to you, Watson, for something more solid.'

‘I have very little difficulty in finding what I want,' said I, ‘for the facts are quite recent, and the matter struck me as remarkable. I feared to refer them to you, however, as I knew that you had an inquiry on hand, and that you disliked the intrusion of other matters.'

‘Oh, you mean the little problem of the Grosvenor Square
¹⁰
furniture van. That is quite cleared up now – though, indeed, it was obvious from the first. Pray give me the results of your newspaper selections.'

‘Here is the first notice which I can find. It is in the personal column of the
Morning Post
,
¹¹
and dates, as you see, some weeks back. “A marriage has been arranged,” it says, “and will, if rumour is correct, very shortly take place, between Lord Robert St Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral, and Miss Hatty Doran, the only daughter of Aloysius Doran, Esq., of San Francisco, Cal., U.S.A. ” That is all.'

‘Terse and to the point,' remarked Holmes, stretching his long thin legs towards the fire.

‘There was a paragraph amplifying this in one of the society papers of the same week. Ah, here it is. “There will soon be a call for
protection in the marriage market, for the present free-trade principle appears to tell heavily against our home product. One by one the management of the noble houses of Great Britain is passing into the hands of our fair cousins from across the Atlantic. An important addition has been made during the last week to the list of prizes which have been borne away by these charming invaders. Lord St Simon, who has shown himself for over twenty years proof against the little god's arrows, has now definitely announced his approaching marriage with Miss Hatty Doran, the fascinating daughter of a Californian millionaire. Miss Doran, whose graceful figure and striking face attracted much attention at the Westbury House
¹²
festivities, is an only child, and it is currently reported that her dowry will run to considerably over the six figures, with expectancies for the future. As it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years, and as Lord St Simon has no property of his own, save the small estate of Birchmoor, it is obvious that the Californian heiress is not the only gainer by an alliance which will enable her to make the easy and common transition from a Republican lady to a British title.”'