The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
son. The first had walked both ways, but the other had run swiftly, and
as his tread was marked in places over the depression of the boot, it
was obvious that he had passed after the other. I followed them up and
found they led to the hall window, where Boots had worn all the snow
away while waiting. Then I walked to the other end, which was a hundred
yards or more down the lane. I saw where Boots had faced round, where
the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle, and, finally,
where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show me that I was not
mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, and another little smudge
of blood showed that it was he who had been hurt. When he came to the
high road at the other end, I found that the pavement had been cleared,
so there was an end to that clue.
“On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, the sill
and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I could at once see
that someone had passed out. I could distinguish the outline of an
instep where the wet foot had been placed in coming in. I was then
beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what had occurred. A man
had waited outside the window; someone had brought the gems; the deed
had been overseen by your son; he had pursued the thief; had struggled
with him; they had each tugged at the coronet, their united strength
causing injuries which neither alone could have effected. He had
returned with the prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of his
opponent. So far I was clear. The question now was, who was the man, and
who was it brought him the coronet?
“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Now, I knew
that it was not you who had brought it down, so there only remained
your niece and the maids. But if it were the maids, why should your son
allow himself to be accused in their place? There could be no possible
reason. As he loved his cousin, however, there was an excellent
explanation why he should retain her secret—the more so as the secret
was a disgraceful one. When I remembered that you had seen her at that
window, and how she had fainted on seeing the coronet again, my
conjecture became a certainty.
“And who could it be who was her confederate? A lover evidently, for
who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which she must feel to
you? I knew that you went out little, and that your circle of friends
was a very limited one. But among them was Sir George Burnwell. I had
heard of him before as being a man of evil reputation among women. It
must have been he who wore those boots and retained the missing gems.
Even though he knew that Arthur had discovered him, he might still
flatter himself that he was safe, for the lad could not say a word
without compromising his own family.
“Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I took next. I
went in the shape of a loafer to Sir George’s house, managed to pick up
an acquaintance with his valet, learned that his master had cut his
head the night before, and, finally, at the expense of six shillings,
made all sure by buying a pair of his cast-off shoes. With these I
journeyed down to Streatham and saw that they exactly fitted the
tracks.”
“I saw an ill-dressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening,” said Mr.
Holder.
“Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my man, so I came home and
changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had to play then,
for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avert scandal, and I
knew that so astute a villain would see that our hands were tied in the
matter. I went and saw him. At first, of course, he denied everything.
But when I gave him every particular that had occurred, he tried to
bluster and took down a life-preserver from the wall. I knew my man,
however, and I clapped a pistol to his head before he could strike.
Then he became a little more reasonable. I told him that we would give
him a price for the stones he held—£ 1000 apiece. That brought out the
first signs of grief that he had shown. ‘Why, dash it all!’ said he,
‘I’ve let them go at six hundred for the three!’ I soon managed to get
the address of the receiver who had them, on promising him that there
would be no prosecution. Off I set to him, and after much chaffering I
got our stones at £ 1000 apiece. Then I looked in upon your son, told
him that all was right, and eventually got to my bed about two o’clock,
after what I may call a really hard day’s work.”
“A day which has saved England from a great public scandal,” said the
banker, rising. “Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, but you shall
not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Your skill has indeed
exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now I must fly to my dear boy
to apologise to him for the wrong which I have done him. As to what you
tell me of poor Mary, it goes to my very heart. Not even your skill can
inform me where she is now.”
“I think that we may safely say,” returned Holmes, “that she is
wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that
whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient
punishment.”
XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES
“To the man who loves art for its own sake,” remarked Sherlock Holmes,
tossing aside the advertisement sheet of _The Daily Telegraph_, “it is
frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the
keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe,
Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little
records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I
am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence
not so much to the many _causes célèbres_ and sensational trials in
which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been
trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of
deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special
province.”
“And yet,” said I, smiling, “I cannot quite hold myself absolved from
the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.”
“You have erred, perhaps,” he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with
the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont
to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a
meditative mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and
life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the
task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect
which is really the only notable feature about the thing.”
“It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” I
remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I
had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend’s
singular character.
“No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said he, answering, as was his
wont, my thoughts rather than my words. “If I claim full justice for my
art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself.
Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather
than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what
should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.”
It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast
on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at Baker Street. A
thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the
opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy
yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit and shone on the white cloth and
glimmer of china and metal, for the table had not been cleared yet.
Sherlock Holmes had been silent all the morning, dipping continuously
into the advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last,
having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very sweet
temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.
“At the same time,” he remarked after a pause, during which he had sat
puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire, “you can hardly
be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you
have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not
treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I
endeavoured to help the King of Bohemia, the singular experience of
Miss Mary Sutherland, the problem connected with the man with the
twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters
which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational,
I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.”
“The end may have been so,” I answered, “but the methods I hold to have
been novel and of interest.”
“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant
public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by
his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!
But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of
the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all
enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to
be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and
giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I
have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning
marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!” He tossed a crumpled letter
across to me.
It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and ran
thus:
“DEAR MR. HOLMES,—I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I
should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to
me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten to-morrow if I do
not inconvenience you. Yours faithfully,
“VIOLET HUNTER.”
“Do you know the young lady?” I asked.
“Not I.”
“It is half-past ten now.”
“Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring.”
“It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember
that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim
at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this
case, also.”
“Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, for
here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question.”
As he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was
plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a
plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own
way to make in the world.
“You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure,” said she, as my
companion rose to greet her, “but I have had a very strange experience,
and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask
advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what
I should do.”
“Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything that I
can to serve you.”
I could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner and
speech of his new client. He looked her over in his searching fashion,
and then composed himself, with his lids drooping and his finger-tips
together, to listen to her story.
“I have been a governess for five years,” said she, “in the family of
Colonel Spence Munro, but two months ago the colonel received an
appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and took his children over to
America with him, so that I found myself without a situation. I
advertised, and I answered advertisements, but without success. At last
the little money which I had saved began to run short, and I was at my
wit’s end as to what I should do.
“There is a well-known agency for governesses in the West End called
Westaway’s, and there I used to call about once a week in order to see