The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
by Neill next day, but the rebels took me away with them in their
retreat, and it was many a long year before ever I saw a white
face again. I was tortured and tried to get away, and was
captured and tortured again. You can see for yourselves the state
in which I was left. Some of them that fled into Nepaul took me
with them, and then afterwards I was up past Darjeeling. The
hill-folk up there murdered the rebels who had me, and I became
their slave for a time until I escaped; but instead of going
south I had to go north, until I found myself among the Afghans.
There I wandered about for many a year, and at last came back to
the Punjab, where I lived mostly among the natives and picked up
a living by the conjuring tricks that I had learned. What use was
it for me, a wretched cripple, to go back to England or to make
myself known to my old comrades? Even my wish for revenge would
not make me do that. I had rather that Nancy and my old pals
should think of Harry Wood as having died with a straight back,
than see him living and crawling with a stick like a chimpanzee.
They never doubted that I was dead, and I meant that they never
should. I heard that Barclay had married Nancy, and that he was
rising rapidly in the regiment, but even that did not make me
speak.
“But when one gets old one has a longing for home. For years I’ve
been dreaming of the bright green fields and the hedges of
England. At last I determined to see them before I died. I saved
enough to bring me across, and then I came here where the
soldiers are, for I know their ways and how to amuse them and so
earn enough to keep me.”
“Your narrative is most interesting,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I
have already heard of your meeting with Mrs. Barclay, and your
mutual recognition. You then, as I understand, followed her home
and saw through the window an altercation between her husband and
her, in which she doubtless cast his conduct to you in his teeth.
Your own feelings overcame you, and you ran across the lawn and
broke in upon them.”
“I did, sir, and at the sight of me he looked as I have never
seen a man look before, and over he went with his head on the
fender. But he was dead before he fell. I read death on his face
as plain as I can read that text over the fire. The bare sight of
me was like a bullet through his guilty heart.”
“And then?”
“Then Nancy fainted, and I caught up the key of the door from her
hand, intending to unlock it and get help. But as I was doing it
it seemed to me better to leave it alone and get away, for the
thing might look black against me, and any way my secret would be
out if I were taken. In my haste I thrust the key into my pocket,
and dropped my stick while I was chasing Teddy, who had run up
the curtain. When I got him into his box, from which he had
slipped, I was off as fast as I could run.”
“Who’s Teddy?” asked Holmes.
The man leaned over and pulled up the front of a kind of hutch in
the corner. In an instant out there slipped a beautiful
reddish-brown creature, thin and lithe, with the legs of a stoat,
a long, thin nose, and a pair of the finest red eyes that ever I
saw in an animal’s head.
“It’s a mongoose,” I cried.
“Well, some call them that, and some call them ichneumon,” said
the man. “Snake-catcher is what I call them, and Teddy is amazing
quick on cobras. I have one here without the fangs, and Teddy
catches it every night to please the folk in the canteen.
“Any other point, sir?”
“Well, we may have to apply to you again if Mrs. Barclay should
prove to be in serious trouble.”
“In that case, of course, I’d come forward.”
“But if not, there is no object in raking up this scandal against
a dead man, foully as he has acted. You have at least the
satisfaction of knowing that for thirty years of his life his
conscience bitterly reproached him for this wicked deed. Ah,
there goes Major Murphy on the other side of the street. Good-by,
Wood. I want to learn if anything has happened since yesterday.”
We were in time to overtake the major before he reached the
corner.
“Ah, Holmes,” he said: “I suppose you have heard that all this
fuss has come to nothing?”
“What then?”
“The inquest is just over. The medical evidence showed
conclusively that death was due to apoplexy. You see it was quite
a simple case after all.”
“Oh, remarkably superficial,” said Holmes, smiling. “Come,
Watson, I don’t think we shall be wanted in Aldershot any more.”
“There’s one thing,” said I, as we walked down to the station.
“If the husband’s name was James, and the other was Henry, what
was this talk about David?”
“That one word, my dear Watson, should have told me the whole
story had I been the ideal reasoner which you are so fond of
depicting. It was evidently a term of reproach.”
“Of reproach?”
“Yes; David strayed a little occasionally, you know, and on one
occasion in the same direction as Sergeant James Barclay. You
remember the small affair of Uriah and Bathsheba? My biblical
knowledge is a trifle rusty, I fear, but you will find the story
in the first or second of Samuel.”
IX. The Resident Patient
In glancing over the somewhat incoherent series of memoirs with
which I have endeavoured to illustrate a few of the mental
peculiarities of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have been
struck by the difficulty which I have experienced in picking out
examples which shall in every way answer my purpose. For in those
cases in which Holmes has performed some _tour-de-force_ of
analytical reasoning, and has demonstrated the value of his
peculiar methods of investigation, the facts themselves have
often been so slight or so commonplace that I could not feel
justified in laying them before the public. On the other hand, it
has frequently happened that he has been concerned in some
research where the facts have been of the most remarkable and
dramatic character, but where the share which he has himself
taken in determining their causes has been less pronounced than
I, as his biographer, could wish. The small matter which I have
chronicled under the heading of “A Study in Scarlet,” and that
other later one connected with the loss of the _Gloria Scott_,
may serve as examples of this Scylla and Charybdis which are
forever threatening the historian. It may be that in the business
of which I am now about to write the part which my friend played
is not sufficiently accentuated; and yet the whole train of
circumstances is so remarkable that I cannot bring myself to omit
it entirely from this series.
I cannot be sure of the exact date, for some of my memoranda upon
the matter have been mislaid, but it must have been towards the
end of the first year during which Holmes and I shared chambers
in Baker Street. It was boisterous October weather, and we had
both remained indoors all day, I because I feared with my shaken
health to face the keen autumn wind, while he was deep in some of
those abstruse chemical investigations which absorbed him utterly
as long as he was engaged upon them. Towards evening, however,
the breaking of a test-tube brought his research to a premature
ending, and he sprang up from his chair with an exclamation of
impatience and a clouded brow.
“A day’s work ruined, Watson,” said he, striding across to the
window. “Ha! the stars are out and the wind has fallen. What do
you say to a ramble through London?”
I was weary of our little sitting-room and gladly acquiesced. For
three hours we strolled about together, watching the
ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through
Fleet Street and the Strand. Holmes had shaken off his temporary
ill-humour, and his characteristic talk, with its keen observance
of detail and subtle power of inference held me amused and
enthralled. It was ten o’clock before we reached Baker Street
again. A brougham was waiting at our door.
“Hum! A doctor’s—general practitioner, I perceive,” said Holmes.
“Not been long in practice, but has had a good deal to do. Come
to consult us, I fancy! Lucky we came back!”
I was sufficiently conversant with Holmes’s methods to be able to
follow his reasoning, and to see that the nature and state of the
various medical instruments in the wicker basket which hung in
the lamplight inside the brougham had given him the data for his
swift deduction. The light in our window above showed that this
late visit was indeed intended for us. With some curiosity as to
what could have sent a brother medico to us at such an hour, I
followed Holmes into our sanctum.
A pale, taper-faced man with sandy whiskers rose up from a chair
by the fire as we entered. His age may not have been more than
three or four and thirty, but his haggard expression and
unhealthy hue told of a life which has sapped his strength and
robbed him of his youth. His manner was nervous and shy, like
that of a sensitive gentleman, and the thin white hand which he
laid on the mantelpiece as he rose was that of an artist rather
than of a surgeon. His dress was quiet and sombre—a black
frock-coat, dark trousers, and a touch of colour about his
necktie.
“Good-evening, doctor,” said Holmes, cheerily. “I am glad to see
that you have only been waiting a very few minutes.”
“You spoke to my coachman, then?”
“No, it was the candle on the side-table that told me. Pray
resume your seat and let me know how I can serve you.”
“My name is Doctor Percy Trevelyan,” said our visitor, “and I
live at 403, Brook Street.”
“Are you not the author of a monograph upon obscure nervous
lesions?” I asked.
His pale cheeks flushed with pleasure at hearing that his work
was known to me.
“I so seldom hear of the work that I thought it was quite dead,”
said he. “My publishers gave me a most discouraging account of
its sale. You are yourself, I presume, a medical man?”
“A retired Army surgeon.”
“My own hobby has always been nervous disease. I should wish to
make it an absolute specialty, but, of course, a man must take
what he can get at first. This, however, is beside the question,
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I quite appreciate how valuable your
time is. The fact is that a very singular train of events has
occurred recently at my house in Brook Street, and to-night they
came to such a head that I felt it was quite impossible for me to
wait another hour before asking for your advice and assistance.”
Sherlock Holmes sat down and lit his pipe. “You are very welcome
to both,” said he. “Pray let me have a detailed account of what
the circumstances are which have disturbed you.”
“One or two of them are so trivial,” said Dr. Trevelyan, “that
really I am almost ashamed to mention them. But the matter is so
inexplicable, and the recent turn which it has taken is so