The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
easily controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I
did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the official
police, but it is not pleasant to have a family misfortune like this
noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless expense, for how could you
possibly find this Hosmer Angel?"
"On the contrary," said Holmes, quietly, "I have every reason to believe
that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel."
Mr. Windibank gave a violent start, and dropped his gloves. "I am
delighted to hear it," he said.
"It is a curious thing," remarked Holmes, "that a typewriter has really
quite as much individuality as a man's handwriting. Unless they are quite
new no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than
others, and some wear only on one side. Now, you remark in this note of
yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some little slurring
over the _e_, and a slight defect in the tail of the _r_. There are
fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more obvious."
"We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no
doubt it is a little worn," our visitor answered, glancing keenly at
Holmes with his bright little eyes.
"And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr.
Windibank," Holmes continued. "I think of writing another little monograph
some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a
subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four
letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all
typewritten. In each case, not only are the _e_'s slurred and the _r_'s
tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens,
that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there
as well."
Mr. Windibank sprung out of his chair, and picked up his hat. "I cannot
waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes," he said. "If you
can catch the man, catch him, and let me know when you have done it."
"Certainly," said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in the door.
"I let you know, then, that I have caught him!"
"What! where?" shouted Mr. Windibank, turning white to his lips, and
glancing about him like a rat in a trap.
"Oh, it won't do--really it won't," said Holmes, suavely. "There is no
possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is quite too transparent,
and it was a very bad compliment when you said that it was impossible for
me to solve so simple a question. That's right! Sit down, and let us talk
it over."
Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face, and a glitter of
moisture on his brow. "It--it's not actionable," he stammered.
"I am very much afraid that it is not; but between ourselves, Windibank,
it was as cruel, and selfish, and heartless a trick in a petty way as ever
came before me. Now, let me just run over the course of events, and you
will contradict me if I go wrong."
The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his breast,
like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his feet up on the corner of
the mantelpiece, and, leaning back with his hands in his pockets, began
talking, rather to himself, as it seemed, than to us.
"The man married a woman very much older than himself for her money," said
he, "and he enjoyed the use of the money of the daughter as long as she
lived with them. It was a considerable sum, for people in their position,
and the loss of it would have made a serious difference. It was worth an
effort to preserve it. The daughter was of a good, amiable disposition,
but affectionate and warm-hearted in her ways, so that it was evident that
with her fair personal advantages, and her little income, she would not be
allowed to remain single long. Now her marriage would mean, of course, the
loss of a hundred a year, so what does her stepfather do to prevent it? He
takes the obvious course of keeping her at home, and forbidding her to
seek the company of people of her own age. But soon he found that that
would not answer forever. She became restive, insisted upon her rights,
and finally announced her positive intention of going to a certain ball.
What does her clever stepfather do then? He conceives an idea more
creditable to his head than to his heart. With the connivance and
assistance of his wife, he disguised himself, covered those keen eyes with
tinted glasses masked the face with a mustache and a pair of bushy
whiskers, sunk that clear voice into an insinuating whisper, and doubly
secure on account of the girl's short sight, he appears as Mr. Hosmer
Angel, and keeps off other lovers by making love himself."
"It was only a joke at first," groaned our visitor. "We never thought that
she would have been so carried away."
"Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very decidedly
carried away, and having quite made up her mind that her stepfather was in
France, the suspicion of treachery never for an instant entered her mind.
She was flattered by the gentleman's attentions, and the effect was
increased by the loudly expressed admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel
began to call, for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as far
as if would go, if a real effect were to be produced. There were meetings,
and an engagement, which would finally secure the girl's affections from
turning toward anyone else. But the deception could not be kept up
forever. These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous. The
thing to do was clearly to bring the business to an end in such a dramatic
manner that it would leave a permanent impression upon the young lady's
mind, and prevent her from looking upon any other suitor for some time to
come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and hence
also the allusions to a possibility of something happening on the very
morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss Sutherland to be so
bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to his fate, that for ten years
to come, at any rate, she would not listen to another man. As far as the
church door he brought her, and then, as he could go no farther, he
conveniently vanished away by the old trick of stepping in at one door of
a four-wheeler and out at the other. I think that that was the chain of
events, Mr. Windibank!"
Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes had been
talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold sneer upon his pale
face.
"It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes," said he; "but if you are so
very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is you who are
breaking the law now, and not me. I have done nothing actionable from the
first, but as long as you keep that door locked you lay yourself open to
an action for assault and illegal constraint."
"The law cannot, as you say, touch you," said Holmes, unlocking and
throwing open the door, "yet there never was a man who deserved punishment
more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip
across your shoulders. By Jove!" he continued, flushing up at the sight of
the bitter sneer upon the man's face, "it is not part of my duties to my
client, but here's a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat
myself to--" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could
grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, the heavy hall
door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. James Windibank running
at the top of his speed down the road.
"There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!" said Holmes, laughing as he threw
himself down into his chair once more. "That fellow will rise from crime
to crime until he does something very bad and ends on a gallows. The case
has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest."
"I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning," I remarked.
"Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr. Hosmer Angel
must have some strong object for his curious conduct, and it was equally
clear that the only man who really profited by the incident, as far as we
could see, was the stepfather. Then the fact that the two men were never
together, but that the one always appeared when the other was away, was
suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious voice, which
both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My suspicions were
all confirmed by his peculiar action in typewriting his signature, which,
of course, inferred that his handwriting was so familiar to her that she
would recognize even the smallest sample of it. You see all these isolated
facts, together with many minor ones, all pointed in the same direction."
"And how did you verify them?"
"Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration. I knew the
firm for which this man worked. Having taken the printed description, I
eliminated everything from it which could be the result of a
disguise,--the whiskers, the glasses, the voice,--and I sent it to the
firm with a request that they would inform me whether it answered to the
description of any of their travelers. I had already noticed the
peculiarities of the typewriter, and I wrote to the man himself at his
business address, asking him if he would come here. As I expected, his
reply was typewritten, and revealed the same trivial but characteristic
defects. The same post brought me a letter from Westhouse & Marbank, of
Fenchurch Street, to say that the description tallied in every respect
with that of their employee, James Windibank. _Voilà tout!_"
"And Miss Sutherland?"
"If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian
saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also
for whoso snatcheth a delusion from a woman.' There is as much sense in
Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world."
_A Scandal in Bohemia_
I
To Sherlock Holmes she is always _the_ woman. I have seldom heard him
mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion
akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly,
were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was,
I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world
has seen; but as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false
position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a
sneer. They were admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing
the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to
admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted
temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a
doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a
crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing
that a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one
woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and
questionable memory.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from
each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centered interests
which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own
establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention; while Holmes,
who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained
in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and
alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness
of the drug and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as
ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense
faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those