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 3
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
Thirty-fourth Bombay Infantry, died upon the twenty-eighth 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 pocketbook, for the one side is as
clean as the other."
"It was in his pocketbook 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
ghostlike in the endless procession of faces which flitted across
these narrow bars of light- sad faces and glad, haggard and merry.
Like all humankind, 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 notebook 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 demeanour was as resolute and collected as
ever. I endeavoured 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 our pace, the fog, and my own limited knowledge of
London, I lost my bearings and knew nothing save that we seemed to
be going a very long way. Sherlock Holmes was never at fault, however,
and he muttered the names as the cab rattled through squares and in
and out by tortuous by-streets.
"Rochester Row," said he. "Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on
the Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side
apparently. Yes, I thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch
glimpses of the river."
We did indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames, with
the lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed
on and was soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon the other
side.
"Wordsworth Road," said my companion. "Priory Road. Lark Hall
Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbour Lane. Our quest
does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions."
We had indeed reached a questionable and forbidding neighbourhood.
Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare
and tawdry brilliancy of public-houses at the corner. Then came rows
of two-storied villas, each with a fronting of miniature garden, and
then again interminable lines of new, staring brick buildings- the
monster tentacles which the giant city was throwing out into the
country. At last the cab drew up at the third house in a new
terrace. None of the other houses were inhabited, and that at which we
stopped was as dark as its neighbours, save for a single glimmer in
the kitchen-window. On our knocking, however, the door was instantly
thrown open by a Hindoo servant, clad in a yellow turban, white
loose-fitting clothes, and a yellow sash. There was something
strangely incongruous in this Oriental figure framed in the
commonplace doorway of a third-rate suburban dwelling-house.
"The sahib awaits you," said he, and even as he spoke, there came
a high, piping voice from some inner room.
"Show them in to me, khitmutgar," it said. "Show them straight in to
me."
Chapter 4
THE STORY OF THE BALD-HEADED MAN
We followed the Indian down a sordid and common passage, ill-lit and
worse furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he
threw open. A blaze of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the
centre of the glare there stood a small man with a very high head, a
bristle of red hair all round the fringe of it, and a bald, shining
scalp which shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from
fir-trees. He writhed his hands together as he stood, and his features
were in a perpetual jerk- now smiling, now scowling, but never for
an instant in repose. Nature had given him a pendulous lip, and a
too visible line of yellow and irregular teeth, which he strove feebly
to conceal by constantly passing his hand over the lower part of his
face. In spite of his obtrusive baldness he gave the impression of
youth. In point of fact, he had just turned his thirtieth year.
"Your servant, Miss Morstan," he kept repeating in a thin, high
voice. "Your servant, gentlemen. Pray step into my little sanctum. A
small place, miss, but furnished to my own liking. An oasis of art
in the howling desert of South London."
We were all astonished by the appearance of the apartment into which
he invited us. In that sorry house it looked as out of place as a
diamond of the first water in a setting of brass. The richest and
glossiest of curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back
here and there to expose some richly mounted painting or Oriental
vase. The carpet was of amber and black, so soft and so thick that the
foot sank pleasantly into it, as into a bed of moss. Two great
tiger-skins thrown athwart it increased the suggestion of Eastern
luxury, as did a huge hookah which stood upon a mat in the corner. A
lamp in the fashion of a silver dove was hung from an almost invisible
golden wire in the centre of the room. As it burned it filled the
air with a subtle and aromatic odour.
"Mr. Thaddeus Sholto," said the little man, still jerking and
smiling. "That is my name. You are Miss Morstan, of course. And
these gentlemen-"
"This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and this Dr. Watson."
"A doctor, eh?" cried he, much excited. "Have you your
stethoscope? Might I ask you- would you have the kindness? I have
grave doubts as to my mitral valve, if you would be so very good.
The aortic I may rely upon, but I should value your opinion upon the
mitral."
I listened to his heart, as requested, but was unable to find
anything amiss, save, indeed, that he was in an ecstasy of fear, for
he shivered from head to foot.
"It appears to be normal," I said. "You have no cause for
uneasiness."
"You will excuse my anxiety, Miss Morstan," he remarked airily. "I
am a great sufferer, and I have long had suspicions as to that
valve. I am delighted to hear that they are unwarranted. Had your
father, Miss Morstan, refrained from throwing a strain upon his heart,
he might have been alive now."
I could have struck the man across the face, so hot was I at this
callous and offhand reference to so delicate a matter. Miss Morstan
sat down, and her face grew white to the lips.
"I knew in my heart that he was dead," said she.
"I can give you every information," said he; "and, what is more, I
can do you justice; and I will, too, whatever Brother Bartholomew
may say. I am so glad to have your friends here not only as an
