The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (6 page)

“I should have thought you would have been suspicious of evil when your servants did not return,” pursued the detective.

“I have not seen them,” whispered Sir Nathaniel. “I do not mingle with my servants. I did not know they had failed to return. Tell me——tell me all!”

“Mr. Edwards,” said Sherlock Holmes, turning to our client, “will you repeat your story, please?”

Mr. Harrington Edwards, thus adjured, told the unhappy tale again, ending with a heartbroken cry of “Oh, Nathaniel, can you ever forgive me?”

“I do not know that it was entirely your fault,” observed Holmes cheerfully. “Sir Nathaniel's own servants are the guilty ones, and surely he sent them with you.”

“But you said you had solved the case, Mr. Holmes,” cried our client, in a frenzy of despair.

“Yes,” agreed Holmes, “it is solved. You have had the clue in your own hands ever since the occurrence, but you did not know how to use it. It all turns upon the curious actions of the taller servant, prior to the assault.”

“The actions of——?” stammered Mr. Harrington Edwards. “Why, he did nothing——said nothing!”

“That is the curious circumstance,” said Sherlock Holmes. Sir Nathaniel got to his feet with difficulty.

“Mr. Holmes,” he said, “this has upset me more than I can tell you. Spare no pains to recover the book and to bring to justice the scoundrels who stole it. But I must go away and think——think——.”

“Stay,” said my friend. “I have already caught one of them.”

“What! Where?” cried the two collectors together.

“Here,” said Sherlock Holmes, and stepping forward he laid a hand on the baronet's shoulder. “You, Sir Nathaniel, were the taller servant, you were one of the thieves who throttled Mr. Harrington Edwards and took from him your own book. And now, sir, will you tell us why you did it?”

Sir Nathaniel Brooke-Bannerman staggered and would have fallen had not I rushed forward and supported him. I placed him in a chair. As we looked at him we saw confession in his eyes; guilt was written in his haggard face.

“Come, come,” said Holmes impatiently. “Or will it make it easier for you if I tell the story as it occurred? Let it be so, then. You parted with Mr. Harrington Edwards on your doorsill, Sir Nathaniel, bidding your best friend good-night with a smile on your lips and evil in your heart. And as soon as you had crossed the door, you slipped into an enveloping raincoat, turned up
your collar, and hastened by a shorter road to the porter's lodge, where you joined Mr. Edwards and Miles as one of your own servants. You spoke no word at any time, because you feared to speak. You were afraid Mr. Edwards would recognize your voice, while your beard, hastily assumed, protected your face and in the darkness your figure passed unnoticed.

“Having strangled and robbed your best friend, then, of your own book, you and your scoundrelly assistant fled across Mr. Edwards's fields to his own back door, thinking that, if investigation followed, I would be called in, and would trace those footprints and fix the crime upon Mr. Harrington Edwards—as part of a criminal plan, prearranged with your rascally servants, who would be supposed to be in the pay of Mr. Edwards and the ringleaders in a counterfeit assault upon his person. Your mistake, sir, was in ending your trail abruptly at Mr. Edwards's back door. Had you left another trail, then, leading back to your own domicile, I should unhesitatingly have arrested Mr. Harrington Edwards for the theft.

“Surely you must know that in criminal cases handled by me, it is never the obvious solution that is the correct one. The mere fact that the finger of suspicion is made to point at a certain individual is sufficient to absolve that individual from guilt. Had you read the little works of my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, you would not have made such a mistake. Yet you claim to be a bookman!”

A low moan from the unhappy baronet was his only answer.

“To continue, however; there at Mr. Edwards's own back door you ended your trail, entering his house—his own house—and spending the night under his roof, while his cries and ravings over his loss filled the night and brought joy to your unspeakable soul. And in the morning, when he had gone forth to consult me, you quietly left—you and Miles—and returned to your own place by the beaten highway.”

“Mercy!” cried the defeated wretch, cowering in his chair. “If it is made public, I am ruined. I was driven to it. I could not let Mr. Edwards examine the book, for that way exposure would follow; yet I could not refuse him—my best friend—when he asked its loan.”

“Your words tell me all that I did not know,” said Sherlock Holmes sternly. “The motive now is only too plain. The work, sir, was a forgery, and knowing that your erudite friend would discover it, you chose to blacken his name to save your own. Was the book insured?”

“Insured for £100,000, he told me,” interrupted Mr. Harrington Edwards excitedly.

“So that he planned at once to dispose of this dangerous and dubious item, and to reap a golden reward,” commented Holmes. “Come, sir, tell us about it. How much of it was forgery? Merely the inscription?”

“I will tell you,” said the baronet suddenly, “and throw myself upon the mercy of my friend, Mr. Edwards. The whole book, in effect, was a forgery. It was originally made up of two imperfect copies of the 1604 quarto. Out of the pair I made one perfect volume, and a skillful workman, now dead, changed the date for me so cleverly that only an expert of the first water could have detected it. Such an expert, however, is Mr. Harrington Edwards—the one man in the world who could have unmasked me.”

“Thank you, Nathaniel,” said Mr. Harrington Edwards gratefully.

“The inscription, of course, also was forged,” continued the baronet. “You may as well know everything.”

“And the book?” asked Holmes. “Where did you destroy it?”

A grim smile settled on Sir Nathaniel's features. “It is even now burning in Mr. Edwards's own furnace,” he said.

“Then it cannot yet be consumed,” cried Holmes, and dashed into the cellar, to emerge some moments later, in high spirits, carrying a charred leaf of paper in his hand.

“It is a pity,” he cried, “a pity! In spite of its questionable authenticity, it was a noble specimen. It is only half consumed; but let it burn away. I have preserved one leaf as a souvenir of
the occasion.” He folded it carefully and placed it in his wallet. “Mr. Harrington Edwards, I fancy the decision in this matter is for you to announce. Sir Nathaniel, of course, must make no effort to collect the insurance.”

“Let us forget it, then,” said Mr. Harrington Edwards, with a sigh. “Let it be a sealed chapter in the history of bibliomania.” He looked at Sir Nathaniel Brooke-Bannerman for a long moment, then held out his hand. “I forgive you, Nathaniel,” he said simply.

Their hands met; tears stood in the baronet's eyes. Powerfully moved, Holmes and I turned from the affecting scene and crept to the door unnoticed. In a moment the free air was blowing on our temples, and we were coughing the dust of the library from our lungs.

“They are a strange people, these book collectors,” mused Sherlock Holmes as we rattled back to town.

“My only regret is that I shall be unable to publish my notes on this interesting case,” I responded.

“Wait a bit, my dear Doctor,” counseled Holmes, “and it will be possible. In time both of them will come to look upon it as a hugely diverting episode, and will tell it upon themselves. Then your notes shall be brought forth and the history of another of Mr. Sherlock Holmes's little problems shall be given to the world.”

“It will always be a reflection upon Sir Nathaniel,” I demurred.

“He will glory in it,” prophesied Sherlock Holmes. “He will go down in bookish circles with Chatterton, and Ireland, and Payne Collier. Mark my words, he is not blind even now to the chance this gives him for a sinister immortality. He will be the first to tell it.”

“But why did you preserve the leaf from
Hamlet
?” I inquired. “Why not a jewel from the binding?”

Sherlock Holmes laughed heartily. Then he slowly unfolded the leaf in question, and directed a humorous finger to a spot upon the page.

“A fancy,” he responded, “to preserve so accurate a characterization of either of our friends. The line is a real jewel. See, the good Polonius says: ‘That he is mad, 'tis true; 'tis true 'tis pittie; and pittie 'tis 'tis true.' There is as much sense in Master Will as in Hafiz or Confucius, and a greater felicity of expression….Here is London, and now, my dear Watson, if we hasten we shall be just in time for Zabriski's matinee!”

SEVERAL EXPERT READERS
, including Ellery Queen, have described this oft-reprinted story as the best Sherlock Holmes parody (though I confess to a weakness for several of those by Robert L. Fish). There are, however, greater connections between the two hugely popular authors of the Victorian era than that they have both written about Holmes.

Bret Harte (1836–1902) established a reputation as one of the first and greatest chroniclers of life in the American West, specifically the gold rush years of California, in such stories as “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869), which has been the basis for several films as well as multiple operas, and “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), which brought him nationwide fame and wealth. His success did not last long, however, and though he continued to be published on a regular basis, his stories found little favor in America, often dismissed as derivative and sentimental. He moved to England in 1885, where his work enjoyed a large and enthusiastic following. Harte lived there for the rest of his life—an oddity, as he was then known as “the quintessential American writer.”

In his autobiography, Arthur Conan Doyle admitted that several of his early short stories, such as “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley” (1879) and “The American's Tale” (1880), were “feeble echoes of Bret Harte.” Furthermore, the plot of Conan Doyle's “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (1892) appears to bear a striking resemblance to Harte's narrative poem, “Her Letter.”

“The Stolen Cigar-Case” was first published in the December 1900 issue of
Pearson's Magazine
; it was first published in book form in
Condensed Novels: New Burlesques
(Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1902).

I FOUND HEMLOCK
Jones in the old Brook Street lodgings, musing before the fire. With the freedom of an old friend I at once threw myself in my old familiar attitude at his feet, and gently caressed his boot. I was induced to do this for two reasons; one that it enabled me to get a good look at his bent, concentrated face, and the other that it seemed to indicate my reverence for his superhuman insight. So absorbed was he, even then, in tracking some mysterious clue, that he did not seem to notice me. But therein I was wrong—as I always was in my attempt to understand that powerful intellect.

“It is raining,” he said, without lifting his head.

“You have been out then?” I said quickly.

“No. But I see that your umbrella is wet, and that your overcoat, which you threw off on entering, has drops of water on it.”

I sat aghast at his penetration. After a pause he said carelessly, as if dismissing the subject: “Besides, I hear the rain on the window. Listen.”

I listened. I could scarcely credit my ears, but there was the soft pattering of drops on the pane. It was evident, there was no deceiving this man!

“Have you been busy lately?” I asked, changing the subject. “What new problem—given up by Scotland Yard as inscrutable—has occupied that gigantic intellect?”

He drew back his foot slightly, and seemed to hesitate ere he returned it to its original position. Then he answered wearily: “Mere trifles—nothing to speak of. The Prince Kapoli has been here to get my advice regarding the disappearance of certain rubies from the Kremlin; the Rajah of Pootibad, after vainly beheading his entire bodyguard, has been obliged to seek my assistance to recover a jewelled sword. The Grand Duchess of Pretzel-Brauntswig is desirous of discovering where her husband was on the night of the 14th of February, and last night”—he lowered his voice slightly—“a lodger in this very house, meeting me on the stairs, wanted to know ‘Why they don't answer his bell.' ”

I could not help smiling—until I saw a frown gathering on his inscrutable forehead.

“Pray to remember,” he said coldly, “that it was through such an apparently trivial question that I found out, ‘Why Paul Ferroll killed his Wife,' and ‘What happened to Jones!' ”

I became dumb at once. He paused for a moment, and then suddenly changing back to his usual pitiless, analytical style, he said: “When I say these are trifles—they are so in comparison to an affair that is now before me. A crime has been committed, and, singularly enough, against myself. You start,” he said; “you wonder who would have dared attempt it! So did I; nevertheless, it has been done.
I
have been
robbed
!”

“
You
robbed—you, Hemlock Jones, the Terror of Peculators!” I gasped in amazement, rising and gripping the table as I faced him.

“Yes; listen. I would confess it to no other. But
you
who have followed my career, who know my methods; yea, for whom I have partly lifted the veil that conceals my plans from ordinary humanity; you, who have for years rapturously accepted my confidences, passionately admired
my inductions and inferences, placed yourself at my beck and call, become my slave, grovelled at my feet, given up your practice except those few unremunerative and rapidly decreasing patients to whom, in moments of abstraction over
my
problems, you have administered strychnine for quinine and arsenic for Epsom salts; you, who have sacrificed everything and everybody to me—
you
I make my confidant!”

I rose and embraced him warmly, yet he was already so engrossed in thought that at the same moment he mechanically placed his hand upon his watch chain as if to consult the time. “Sit down,” he said; “have a cigar?”

“I have given up cigar smoking,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

I hesitated, and perhaps coloured. I had really given it up because, with my diminished practice, it was too expensive. I could only afford a pipe. “I prefer a pipe,” I said laughingly. “But tell me of this robbery. What have you lost?”

He rose, and planting himself before the fire with his hands under his coat tails, looked down upon me reflectively for a moment. “Do you remember the cigar-case presented to me by the Turkish Ambassador for discovering the missing favourite of the Grand Vizier in the fifth chorus girl at the Hilarity Theatre? It was that one. It was incrusted with diamonds. I mean the cigar-case.”

“And the largest one had been supplanted by paste,” I said.

“Ah,” he said with a reflective smile, “you know that?”

“You told me yourself. I remember considering it a proof of your extraordinary perception. But, by Jove, you don't mean to say you have lost it?”

He was silent for a moment. “No; it has been stolen, it is true, but I shall still find it. And by myself alone! In your profession, my dear fellow, when a member is severely ill he does not prescribe for himself, but call in a brother doctor. Therein we differ. I shall take this matter in my own hands.”

“And where could you find better?” I said enthusiastically. “I should say the cigar-case is as good as recovered already.”

“I shall remind you of that again,” he said lightly. “And now, to show you my confidence in your judgment, in spite of my determination to pursue this alone, I am willing to listen to any suggestions from you.”

He drew a memorandum book from his pocket, and, with a grave smile, took up his pencil.

I could scarcely believe my reason. He, the great Hemlock Jones! accepting suggestions from a humble individual like myself! I kissed his hand reverently, and began in a joyous tone:

“First I should advertise, offering a reward. I should give the same information in handbills, distributed at the ‘pubs' and the pastry-cooks. I should next visit the different pawnbrokers; I should give notice at the police station. I should examine the servants. I should thoroughly search the house and my own pockets. I speak relatively,” I added with a laugh, “of course I mean
your
own.”

He gravely made an entry of these details. “Perhaps,” I added, “you have already done this?”

“Perhaps,” he returned enigmatically. “Now, my dear friend,” he continued, putting the notebook in his pocket, and rising—“would you excuse me for a few moments? Make yourself perfectly at home until I return; there may be some things,” he added with a sweep of his hand towards his heterogeneously filled shelves, “that may interest you, and while away the time. There are pipes and tobacco in that corner and whiskey on the table.” And nodding to me with the same inscrutable face, he left the room. I was too well accustomed to his methods to think much of his unceremonious withdrawal, and made no doubt he was off to investigate some clue which had suddenly occurred to his active intelligence.

Left to myself, I cast a cursory glance over his shelves. There were a number of small glass jars, containing earthy substances labeled “Pavement and road sweepings,” from the principal thoroughfares and suburbs of London, with the sub-directions “For identifying foot tracks.” There
were several other jars labeled “Fluff from omnibus and road-car seats,” “Cocoanut fibre and rope strands from mattings in public places,” “Cigarette stumps and match ends from floor of Palace Theatre, Row A, 1 to 50.” Everywhere were evidences of this wonderful man's system and perspicacity.

I was thus engaged when I heard the slight creaking of a door, and I looked up as a stranger entered. He was a rough-looking man, with a shabby overcoat, a still more disreputable muffler round his throat, and a cap on his head. Considerably annoyed at his intrusion I turned upon him rather sharply, when, with a mumbled, growling apology for mistaking the room, he shuffled out again and closed the door. I followed him quickly to the landing and saw that he disappeared down the stairs.

With my mind full of the robbery, the incident made a singular impression on me. I knew my friend's habits of hasty absences from his room in his moments of deep inspiration; it was only too probable that with his powerful intellect and magnificent perceptive genius concentrated on one subject, he should be careless of his own belongings, and, no doubt, even forget to take the ordinary precaution of locking up his drawers. I tried one or two and found I was right—although for some reason I was unable to open one to its fullest extent. The handles were sticky, as if someone had opened them with dirty fingers. Knowing Hemlock's fastidious cleanliness, I resolved to inform him of this circumstance, but I forgot it, alas! until—but I am anticipating my story.

His absence was strangely prolonged. I at last seated myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets—no doubt induced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully to my senses, I found Hemlock Jones sitting on the other side of the hearth, his deeply concentrated gaze fixed on the fire.

“I found you so comfortably asleep that I could not bear to waken you,” he said with a smile.

I rubbed my eyes. “And what news?” I asked. “How have you succeeded?”

“Better than I expected,” he said, “and I think,” he added, tapping his note-book—“I owe much to
you
.”

Deeply gratified, I awaited more. But in vain. I ought to have remembered that in his moods Hemlock Jones was reticence itself. I told him simply of the strange intrusion, but he only laughed.

Later, when I rose to go, he looked at me playfully. “If you were a married man,” he said, “I would advise you not to go home until you had brushed your sleeve. There are a few short, brown sealskin hairs on the inner side of the fore-arm—just where they would have adhered if your arm had encircled a sealskin sacque with some pressure!”

“For once you are at fault,” I said triumphantly, “the hair is my own as you will perceive; I had just had it cut at the hair-dressers, and no doubt this arm projected beyond the apron.”

He frowned slightly, yet nevertheless, on my turning to go he embraced me warmly—a rare exhibition in that man of ice. He even helped me on with my overcoat and pulled out and smoothed down the flaps of my pockets. He was particular, too, in fitting my arm in my overcoat sleeve, shaking the sleeve down from the armhole to the cuff with his deft fingers. “Come again soon!” he said, clapping me on the back.

“At any and all times,” I said enthusiastically. “I only ask ten minutes twice a day to eat a crust at my office and four hours sleep at night, and the rest of my time is devoted to you always—as you know.”

“It is, indeed,” he said, with his impenetrable smile.

Nevertheless I did not find him at home when I next called. One afternoon, when nearing my own home I met him in one of his favourite disguises—a long, blue, swallow-tailed coat, striped cotton trousers, large turn-over collar, blacked face, and white hat, carrying a
tambourine. Of course to others the disguise was perfect, although it was known to myself, and I passed him—according to an old understanding between us—without the slightest recognition, trusting to a later explanation. At another time, as I was making a professional visit to the wife of a publican at the East End, I saw him in the disguise of a broken down artisan looking into the window of an adjacent pawnshop. I was delighted to see that he was evidently following my suggestions, and in my joy I ventured to tip him a wink; it was abstractedly returned.

Two days later I received a note appointing a meeting at his lodgings that night. That meeting, alas! was the one memorable occurrence of my life, and the last meeting I ever had with Hemlock Jones! I will try to set it down calmly, though my pulses still throb with the recollection of it.

I found him standing before the fire with that look upon his face which I had seen only once or twice in our acquaintance—a look which I may call an absolute concatenation of inductive and deductive ratiocination—from which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic, was absolutely discharged. He was simply an icy algebraic symbol! Indeed his whole being was concentrated to that extent that his clothes fitted loosely, and his head was absolutely so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally hung on his massive ears.

After I had entered, he locked the doors, fastened the windows, and even placed a chair before the chimney. As I watched those significant precautions with absorbing interest, he suddenly drew a revolver and presenting it to my temple, said in low, icy tones:

“Hand over that cigar-case!”

Even in my bewilderment, my reply was truthful, spontaneous, and involuntary. “I haven't got it,” I said.

He smiled bitterly, and threw down his revolver. “I expected that reply! Then let me now confront you with something more awful, more deadly, more relentless and convincing than that mere lethal weapon—the damning inductive and deductive proofs of your guilt!” He drew from his pocket a roll of paper and a note-book.

“But surely,” I gasped, “you are joking! You could not for a moment believe—”

“Silence!” he roared. “Sit down!”

I obeyed.

“You have condemned yourself,” he went on pitilessly. “Condemned yourself on my processes—processes familiar to you, applauded by you, accepted by you for years! We will go back to the time when you first saw the cigar-case. Your expressions,” he said in cold, deliberate tones, consulting his paper, “were: ‘How beautiful! I wish it were mine.' This was your first step in crime—and my first indication. From ‘I
wish
it were mine' to ‘I
will
have it mine,' and the mere detail, ‘How
can
I make it mine,' the advance was obvious. Silence! But as in my methods, it was necessary that there should be an overwhelming inducement to the crime, that unholy admiration of yours for the mere trinket itself was not enough. You are a smoker of cigars.”