The Sign of the Four
service.”
“You are both very kind,” she answered. “I have led a retired life, and
have no friends whom I could appeal to. If I am here at six it will do,
I suppose?”
“You must not be later,” said Holmes. “There is one other point,
however. Is this handwriting the same as that upon the pearl-box
addresses?”
“I have them here,” she answered, producing half a dozen pieces of
paper.
“You are certainly a model client. You have the correct intuition. Let
us see, now.” He spread out the papers upon the table, and gave little
darting glances from one to the other. “They are disguised hands,
except the letter,” he said, presently, “but there can be no question
as to the authorship. See how the irrepressible Greek _e_ will break
out, and see the twirl of the final _s_. They are undoubtedly by the
same person. I should not like to suggest false hopes, Miss Morstan,
but is there any resemblance between this hand and that of your
father?”
“Nothing could be more unlike.”
“I expected to hear you say so. We shall look out for you, then, at
six. Pray allow me to keep the papers. I may look into the matter
before then. It is only half-past three. _Au revoir_, then.”
“_Au revoir_,” said our visitor, and, with a bright, kindly glance from
one to the other of us, she replaced her pearl-box in her bosom and
hurried away. Standing at the window, I watched her walking briskly
down the street, until the grey turban and white feather were but a
speck in the sombre crowd.
“What a very attractive woman!” I exclaimed, turning to my companion.
He had lit his pipe again, and was leaning back with drooping eyelids.
“Is she?” he said, languidly. “I did not observe.”
“You really are an automaton,—a calculating-machine!” I cried. “There
is something positively inhuman in you at times.”
He smiled gently. “It is of the first importance,” he said, “not to
allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to
me a mere unit,—a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are
antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning
woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for
their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is
a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the
London poor.”
“In this case, however—”
“I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule. Have you
ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make
of this fellow’s scribble?”
“It is legible and regular,” I answered. “A man of business habits and
some force of character.”
Holmes shook his head. “Look at his long letters,” he said. “They
hardly rise above the common herd. That _d_ might be an _a_, and that
_l_ an _e_. Men of character always differentiate their long letters,
however illegibly they may write. There is vacillation in his _k_’s and
self-esteem in his capitals. I am going out now. I have some few
references to make. Let me recommend this book,—one of the most
remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of Man.’ I
shall be back in an hour.”
I sat in the window with the volume in my hand, but my thoughts were
far from the daring speculations of the writer. My mind ran upon our
late visitor,—her smiles, the deep rich tones of her voice, the strange
mystery which overhung her life. If she were seventeen at the time of
her father’s disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now,—a sweet
age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little
sobered by experience. So I sat and mused, until such dangerous
thoughts came into my head that I hurried away to my desk and plunged
furiously into the latest treatise upon pathology. What was I, an army
surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking-account, that I should
dare to think of such things? She was a unit, a factor,—nothing more.
If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man
than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o’-the-wisps of the
imagination.
Chapter III
In Quest of a Solution
It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, and
in excellent spirits,—a mood which in his case alternated with fits of
the blackest depression.
“There is no great mystery in this matter,” he said, taking the cup of
tea which I had poured out for him. “The facts appear to admit of only
one explanation.”
“What! you have solved it already?”
“Well, that would be too much to say. I have discovered a suggestive
fact, that is all. It is, however, _very_ suggestive. The details are
still to be added. I have just found, on consulting the back files of
the _Times_, that Major Sholto, of Upper Norwood, late of the 34th
Bombay Infantry, died upon the 28th of April, 1882.”
“I may be very obtuse, Holmes, but I fail to see what this suggests.”
“No? You surprise me. Look at it in this way, then. Captain Morstan
disappears. The only person in London whom he could have visited is
Major Sholto. Major Sholto denies having heard that he was in London.
Four years later Sholto dies. _Within a week of his death_ Captain
Morstan’s daughter receives a valuable present, which is repeated from
year to year, and now culminates in a letter which describes her as a
wronged woman. What wrong can it refer to except this deprivation of
her father? And why should the presents begin immediately after
Sholto’s death, unless it is that Sholto’s heir knows something of the
mystery and desires to make compensation? Have you any alternative
theory which will meet the facts?”
“But what a strange compensation! And how strangely made! Why, too,
should he write a letter now, rather than six years ago? Again, the
letter speaks of giving her justice. What justice can she have? It is
too much to suppose that her father is still alive. There is no other
injustice in her case that you know of.”
“There are difficulties; there are certainly difficulties,” said
Sherlock Holmes, pensively. “But our expedition of to-night will solve
them all. Ah, here is a four-wheeler, and Miss Morstan is inside. Are
you all ready? Then we had better go down, for it is a little past the
hour.”
I picked up my hat and my heaviest stick, but I observed that Holmes
took his revolver from his drawer and slipped it into his pocket. It
was clear that he thought that our night’s work might be a serious one.
Miss Morstan was muffled in a dark cloak, and her sensitive face was
composed, but pale. She must have been more than woman if she did not
feel some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were
embarking, yet her self-control was perfect, and she readily answered
the few additional questions which Sherlock Holmes put to her.
“Major Sholto was a very particular friend of papa’s,” she said. “His
letters were full of allusions to the major. He and papa were in
command of the troops at the Andaman Islands, so they were thrown a
great deal together. By the way, a curious paper was found in papa’s
desk which no one could understand. I don’t suppose that it is of the
slightest importance, but I thought you might care to see it, so I
brought it with me. It is here.”
Holmes unfolded the paper carefully and smoothed it out upon his knee.
He then very methodically examined it all over with his double lens.
“It is paper of native Indian manufacture,” he remarked. “It has at
some time been pinned to a board. The diagram upon it appears to be a
plan of part of a large building with numerous halls, corridors, and
passages. At one point is a small cross done in red ink, and above it
is ‘3.37 from left,’ in faded pencil-writing. In the left-hand corner
is a curious hieroglyphic like four crosses in a line with their arms
touching. Beside it is written, in very rough and coarse characters,
‘The sign of the four,—Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan,
Dost Akbar.’ No, I confess that I do not see how this bears upon the
matter. Yet it is evidently a document of importance. It has been kept
carefully in a pocket-book; for the one side is as clean as the other.”
“It was in his pocket-book that we found it.”
“Preserve it carefully, then, Miss Morstan, for it may prove to be of
use to us. I begin to suspect that this matter may turn out to be much
deeper and more subtle than I at first supposed. I must reconsider my
ideas.” He leaned back in the cab, and I could see by his drawn brow
and his vacant eye that he was thinking intently. Miss Morstan and I
chatted in an undertone about our present expedition and its possible
outcome, but our companion maintained his impenetrable reserve until
the end of our journey.
It was a September evening, and not yet seven o’clock, but the day had
been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city.
Mud-coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the
Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw
a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare
from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and
threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There
was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless
procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of
light,—sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they
flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once
more. I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy evening,
with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined to make
me nervous and depressed. I could see from Miss Morstan’s manner that
she was suffering from the same feeling. Holmes alone could rise
superior to petty influences. He held his open note-book upon his knee,
and from time to time he jotted down figures and memoranda in the light
of his pocket-lantern.
At the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the
side-entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and
four-wheelers were rattling up, discharging their cargoes of
shirt-fronted men and beshawled, bediamonded women. We had hardly
reached the third pillar, which was our rendezvous, before a small,
dark, brisk man in the dress of a coachman accosted us.
“Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?” he asked.
“I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends,” said she.
He bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes upon us.
“You will excuse me, miss,” he said with a certain dogged manner, “but
I was to ask you to give me your word that neither of your companions
is a police-officer.”
“I give you my word on that,” she answered.
He gave a shrill whistle, on which a street Arab led across a
four-wheeler and opened the door. The man who had addressed us mounted
to the box, while we took our places inside. We had hardly done so
before the driver whipped up his horse, and we plunged away at a
furious pace through the foggy streets.
The situation was a curious one. We were driving to an unknown place,
on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete
hoax,—which was an inconceivable hypothesis,—or else we had good reason
to think that important issues might hang upon our journey. Miss
Morstan’s demeanor was as resolute and collected as ever. I endeavored
to cheer and amuse her by reminiscences of my adventures in
Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at our
situation and so curious as to our destination that my stories were
slightly involved. To this day she declares that I told her one moving
anecdote as to how a musket looked into my tent at the dead of night,
and how I fired a double-barrelled tiger cub at it. At first I had some
idea as to the direction in which we were driving; but soon, what with