The case-book of Sherlock Holmes
lenient view of the transaction, and beyond a mild censure for the
delay in registering the lady's decease, the lucky owner got away
scatheless from this strange incident in a career which has now
outlived its shadows and promises to end in an honoured old age.
XII
THE ADVENTURE OF THE RETIRED COLOURMAN
Sherlock Holmes was in a melancholy and philosophic mood that morning.
His alert practical nature was subject to such reactions.
"Did you see him?" he asked.
"You mean the old fellow who has just gone out?"
"Precisely."
"Yes, I met him at the door."
"What did you think of him?"
"A pathetic, futile, broken creature."
"Exactly, Watson. Pathetic and futile. But is not all life pathetic
and futile? Is not his story a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We
grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse
than a shadow--misery."
"Is he one of your clients?"
"Well, I suppose I may call him so. He has been sent on by the Yard.
Just as medical men occasionally send their incurables to a quack.
They argue that they can do nothing more, and that whatever happens the
patient can be no worse than he is."
"What is the matter?"
Holmes took a rather soiled card from the table. "Josiah Amberley. He
says he was junior partner of Brickfall and Amberley, who are
manufacturers of artistic materials. You will see their names upon
paint-boxes. He made his little pile, retired from business at the age
of sixty-one, bought a house at Lewisham, and settled down to rest
after a life of ceaseless grind. One would think his future was
tolerably assured."
"Yes, indeed."
Holmes glanced over some notes which he had scribbled upon the back of
an envelope.
"Retired in 1896, Watson. Early in 1897 he married a woman twenty
years younger than himself--a good-looking woman, too, if the
photograph does not flatter. A competence, a wife, leisure--it seemed
a straight road which lay before him. And yet within two years he is,
as you have seen, as broken and miserable a creature as crawls beneath
the sun."
"But what has happened?"
"The old story, Watson. A treacherous friend and a fickle wife. It
would appear that Amberley has one hobby in life, and it is chess. Not
far from him at Lewisham there lives a young doctor who is also a
chess-player. I have noted his name as Dr. Ray Ernest. Ernest was
frequently in the house, and an intimacy between him and Mrs. Amberley
was a natural sequence, for you must admit that our unfortunate client
has few outward graces, whatever his inner virtues may be. The couple
went off together last week--destination untraced. What is more, the
faithless spouse carried off the old man's deed-box as her personal
luggage with a good part of his life's savings within. Can we find the
lady? Can we save the money? A commonplace problem so far as it has
developed, and yet a vital one for Josiah Amberley."
"What will you do about it?"
"Well, the immediate question, my dear Watson, happens to be, What will
_you_ do?--if you will be good enough to understudy me. You know that
I am preoccupied with this case of the two Coptic Patriarchs, which
should come to a head to-day. I really have not time to go out to
Lewisham, and yet evidence taken on the spot has a special value. The
old fellow was quite insistent that I should go, but I explained my
difficulty. He is prepared to meet a representative."
"By all means," I answered. "I confess I don't see that I can be of
much service, but I am willing to do my best." And so it was that on a
summer afternoon I set forth to Lewisham, little dreaming that within a
week the affair in which I was engaging would be the eager debate of
all England.
It was late that evening before I returned to Baker Street and gave an
account of my mission. Holmes lay with his gaunt figure stretched in
his deep chair, his pipe curling forth slow wreaths of acrid tobacco,
while his eyelids drooped over his eyes so lazily that he might almost
have been asleep were it not that at any halt or questionable passage
of my narrative they half lifted, and two grey eyes, as bright and keen
as rapiers, transfixed me with their searching glance.
"The Haven is the name of Mr. Josiah Amberley's house," I explained.
"I think it would interest you, Holmes. It is like some penurious
patrician who has sunk into the company of his inferiors. You know
that particular quarter, the monotonous brick streets, the weary
suburban highways. Right in the middle of them, a little island of
ancient culture and comfort, lies this old home, surrounded by a high
sun-baked wall mottled with lichens and topped with moss, the sort of
wall----"
"Cut out the poetry, Watson," said Holmes severely. "I note that it
was a high brick wall."
"Exactly. I should not have known which was The Haven had I not asked
a lounger who was smoking in the street. I have a reason for
mentioning him. He was a tall, dark, heavily-moustached, rather
military-looking man. He nodded in answer to my inquiry and gave me a
curiously questioning glance, which came back to my memory a little
later.
"I had hardly entered the gateway before I saw Mr. Amberley coming down
the drive. I only had a glimpse of him this morning, and he certainly
gave me the impression of a strange creature, but when I saw him in
full light his appearance was even more abnormal."
"I have, of course, studied it, and yet I should be interested to have
your impression," said Holmes.
"He seemed to me like a man who was literally bowed down by care. His
back was curved as though he carried a heavy burden. Yet he was not
the weakling that I had at first imagined, for his shoulders and chest
have the framework of a giant, though his figure tapers away into a
pair of spindled legs."
"Left shoe wrinkled, right one smooth."
"I did not observe that."
"No, you wouldn't. I spotted his artificial limb. But proceed."
"I was struck by the snaky locks of grizzled hair which curled from
under his old straw hat, and his face with its fierce, eager expression
and the deeply-lined features."
"Very good, Watson. What did he say?"
"He began pouring out the story of his grievances. We walked down the
drive together, and of course I took a good look round. I have never
seen a worse-kept place. The garden was all running to seed, giving me
an impression of wild neglect in which the plants had been allowed to
find the way of nature rather than of art. How any decent woman could
have tolerated such a state of things, I don't know. The house, too,
was slatternly to the last degree, but the poor man seemed himself to
be aware of it and to be trying to remedy it, for a great pot of green
paint stood in the centre of the hall and he was carrying a thick brush
in his left hand. He had been working on the woodwork.
"He took me into his dingy sanctum, and we had a long chat. Of course,
he was disappointed that you had not come yourself. 'I hardly
expected,' he said, 'that so humble an individual as myself, especially
after my heavy financial loss, could obtain the complete attention of
so famous a man as Mr. Sherlock Holmes.'
"I assured him that the financial question did not arise. 'No, of
course, it is art for art's sake with him,' said he; 'but even on the
artistic side of crime he might have found something here to study.
And human nature, Dr. Watson--the black ingratitude of it all! When
did I ever refuse one of her requests? Was ever a woman so pampered?
And that young man--he might have been my own son. He had the run of
my house. And yet see how they have treated me! Oh, Dr. Watson, it is
a dreadful, dreadful world!'
"That was the burden of his song for an hour or more. He had, it
seems, no suspicion of an intrigue. They lived alone save for a woman
who comes in by the day and leaves every evening at six. On that
particular evening old Amberley, wishing to give his wife a treat, had
taken two upper circle seats at the Haymarket Theatre. At the last
moment she had complained of a headache and had refused to go. He had
gone alone. There seemed to be no doubt about the fact, for he
produced the unused ticket which he had taken for his wife."
"That is remarkable--most remarkable," said Holmes, whose interest in
the case seemed to be rising. "Pray continue, Watson. I find your
narrative most arresting. Did you personally examine this ticket? You
did not, perchance, take the number?"
"It so happens that I did," I answered with some pride. "It chanced to
be my old school number, thirty-one, and so it stuck in my head."
"Excellent, Watson! His seat, then, was either thirty or thirty-two."
"Quite so," I answered, with some mystification. "And on B row."
"That is most satisfactory. What else did he tell you?"
"He showed me his strong-room, as he called it. It really is a
strong-room--like a bank--with iron door and shutter--burglar-proof, as
he claimed. However, the woman seems to have had a duplicate key, and
between them they had carried off some seven thousand pounds' worth of
cash and securities."
"Securities! How could they dispose of those?"
"He said that he had given the police a list and that he hoped they
would be unsalable. He had got back from the theatre about midnight,
and found the place plundered, the door and window open and the
fugitives gone. There was no letter or message, nor has he heard a
word since. He at once gave the alarm to the police."
Holmes brooded for some minutes.
"You say he was painting. What was he painting?"
"Well, he was painting the passage. But he had already painted the
door and woodwork of this room I spoke of."
"Does it not strike you as a strange occupation in the circumstances?"
"'One must do something to ease an aching heart.' That was his own
explanation. It was eccentric, no doubt, but he is clearly an
eccentric man. He tore up one of his wife's photographs in my
presence--tore it up furiously in a tempest of passion. 'I never wish
to see her damned face again,' he shrieked."
"Anything more, Watson?"
"Yes, one thing which struck me more than anything else. I had driven
to the Blackheath Station and had caught my train there, when just as
it was starting I saw a man dart into the carriage next to my own. You
know that I have a quick eye for faces, Holmes. It was undoubtedly the
tall, dark man whom I had addressed in the street. I saw him once more
at London Bridge, and then I lost him in the crowd. But I am convinced
that he was following me."
"No doubt! No doubt!" said Holmes. "A tall, dark, heavily-moustached
man, you say, with grey-tinted sun-glasses?"
"Holmes, you are a wizard. I did not say so, but he had grey-tinted
sun-glasses."
"And a Masonic tie-pin?"
"Holmes!"
"Quite simple, my dear Watson. But let us get down to what is
practical. I must admit to you that the case, which seemed to me to be
so absurdly simple as to be hardly worth my notice, is rapidly assuming
a very different aspect. It is true that though in your mission you
have missed everything of importance, yet even those things which have
obtruded themselves upon your notice give rise to serious thought."
"What have I missed?"
"Don't be hurt, my dear fellow. You know that I am quite impersonal.
No one else would have done better. Some possibly not so well. But
clearly you have missed some vital points. What is the opinion of the
neighbours about this man Amberley and his wife? That surely is of
importance. What of Dr. Ernest? Was he the gay Lothario one would
expect? With your natural advantages, Watson, every lady is your
helper and accomplice. What about the girl at the post office, or the