escort to you but also as witnesses to what I am about to do and
say. The three of us can show a bold front to Brother Bartholomew. But
let us have no outsiders- no police or officials. We can settle
everything satisfactorily among ourselves without any interference.
Nothing would annoy Brother Bartholomew more than any publicity."
He sat down upon a low settee and blinked at us inquiringly with his
weak, watery blue eyes.
"For my part," said Holmes, "whatever you may choose to say will
go no further."
I nodded to show my agreement.
"That is well! That is well!" said he. "May I offer you a glass of
Chianti, Miss Morstan? Or of Tokay? I keep no other wines. Shall I
open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to
tobacco-smoke, to the balsamic odour of the Eastern tobacco. I am a
little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative."
He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled
merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with
our heads advanced and our chins upon our hands, while the strange,
jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in
the centre.
"When I first determined to make this communication to you," said
he, "I might have given you my address; but I feared that you might
disregard my request and bring unpleasant people with you. I took
the liberty, therefore, of making an appointment in such a way that my
man Williams might be able to see you first. I have complete
confidence in his discretion, and he had orders, if he were
dissatisfied, to proceed no further in the matter. You will excuse
these precautions, but I am a man of somewhat retiring, and I might
even say refined, tastes, and there is nothing more unaesthetic than a
policeman. I have a natural shrinking from all forms of rough
materialism. I seldom come in contact with the rough crowd. I live, as
you see, with some little atmosphere of elegance around me. I may call
myself a patron of the arts. It is my weakness. The landscape is a
genuine Corot, and though a connoisseur might perhaps throw a doubt
upon that Salvator Rosa, there cannot be the least question about
the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school."
"You will excuse me, Mr. Sholto," said Miss Morstan, "but I am
here at your request to learn something which you desire to tell me.
It is very late, and I should desire the interview to be as short as
possible."
"At the best it must take some time," he answered; "for we shall
certainly have to go to Norwood and see Brother Bartholomew. We
shall all go and try if we can get the better of Brother
Bartholomew. He is very angry with me for taking the course which
has seemed right to me. I had quite high words with him last night.
You cannot imagine what a terrible fellow he is when he is angry."
"If we are to go to Norwood, it would perhaps be as well to start at
once," I ventured to remark.
He laughed until his ears were quite red.
"That would hardly do," he cried. "I don't know what he would say if
I brought you in that sudden way. No, I must prepare you by showing
you how we all stand to each other. In the first place, I must tell
you that there are several points in the story of which I am myself
ignorant. I can only lay the facts before you as far as I know them
myself.
"My father was, as you may have guessed, Major John Sholto, once
of the Indian Army. He retired some eleven years ago and came to
live at Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood. He had prospered in
India and brought back with him a considerable sum of money, a large
collection of valuable curiosities, and a staff of native servants.
With these advantages he bought himself a house, and rived in great
luxury. My twin-brother Bartholomew and I were the only children.
"I very well remember the sensation which was caused by the
disappearance of Captain Morstan. We read the details in the papers,
and knowing that he had been a friend of our father's we discussed the
case freely in his presence. He used to join in our speculations as to
what could have happened. Never for an instant did we suspect that
he had the whole secret hidden in his own breast, that of all men he
alone knew the fate of Arthur Morstan.
"We did know, however, that some mystery, some positive danger,
overhung our father. He was very fearful of going out alone, and he
always employed two prize-fighters to act as porters at Pondicherry
Lodge. Williams, who drove you tonight, was one of them. He was once
lightweight champion of England. Our father would never tell us what
it was he feared, but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden
legs. On one occasion he actually fired his revolver at a wooden
legged man, who proved to be a harmless tradesman canvassing for
orders. We had to pay a large sum to hush the matter up. My brother
and I used to think this a mere whim of my father's, but events have
since led us to change our opinion.
"Early in 1882 my father received a letter from India which was a
great shock to him. He nearly fainted at the breakfast-table when he
opened it, and from that day he sickened to his death. What was in the
letter we could never discover, but I could see as he held it that
it was short and written in a scrawling hand. He had suffered for
years from an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and
towards the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope,
and that he wished to make a last communication to us.
"When we entered his room he was propped up with pillows and
breathing heavily. He besought us to lock the door and to come upon
either side of the bed. Then grasping our hands he made a remarkable
statement to us in a voice which was broken as much by emotion as by
pain. I shall try and give it to you in his own very words.
"`I have only one thing,' he said, `which weighs upon my mind at
this supreme moment. It is my treatment of poor Morstan's orphan.
The cursed greed which has been my besetting sin through life has
withheld from her the treasure, half at least of which should have
been hers. And yet I have made no use of it myself, so blind and
foolish a thing is avarice. The mere feeling of possession has been so
dear to me that I could not bear to share it with another. See that
chaplet tipped with pearls beside the quinine-bottle. Even that I
could not bear to part with, although I had got it out with the design
of sending it to her. You, my sons, will give her a fair share of
the Agra treasure. But send her nothing- not even the chaplet- until I
am gone. After all, men have been as bad as this and have recovered.
"`I will tell you how Morstan died,' he continued. `He had
suffered for years from a weak heart, but he concealed it from every
one. I alone knew it. When in India, he and I, through a remarkable
chain of circumstances, came into possession of a considerable
treasure. I brought it over to England, and on the night of
Morstan's arrival he came straight over here to claim his share. He
walked over from the station and was admitted by my faithful old Lal
Chowdar, who is now dead. Morstan and I had a difference of opinion as
to the division of the treasure, and we came to heated words.
Morstan had sprung out of his chair in a paroxysm of anger, when he
suddenly pressed his hand to his side, his face turned a dusky hue,
and he fell backward, cutting his head against the corner of the
treasure chest. When I stooped over him I found, to my horror, that he
was dead.
"`For a long time I sat half distracted, wondering what I should do.
My first impulse was, of course, to call for assistance; but I could
not but recognize that there was every chance that I would be
accused of his murder. His death at the moment of a quarrel, and the
gash in his head, would be black against me. Again, an official
inquiry could not be made without bringing out some facts about the
treasure, which I was particularly anxious to keep secret. He had told
me that no soul upon earth knew where he had gone. There seemed to
be no necessity why any soul ever should know.
"`I was still pondering over the matter, when, looking up, I saw
my servant, Lal Chowdar, in the doorway. He stole in and bolted the
door behind him. "Do not fear, sahib," he said; "no one need know that
you have killed him. Let us hide him away, and who is the wiser?" "I
did not kill him," said I. Lal Chowdar shook his head and smiled. "I
heard it all, sahib," said he; "I heard you quarrel, and I heard the
blow. But my lips are sealed. All are asleep in the house. Let us
put him away together." That was enough to decide me. If my own
servant could not believe my innocence, how could I hope to make it
good before twelve foolish tradesmen in a jury-box? Lal Chowdar and
I disposed of the body that night, and within a few days the London
papers were full of the mysterious disappearance of Captain Morstan.
You will see from what I say that I can hardly be blamed in the
matter. My fault lies in the fact that we concealed not only the
body but also the treasure and that I have clung to Morstan's share as
well as to my own. I wish you, therefore, to make restitution. Put
your ears down to my mouth. The treasure is hidden in-'
"At this instant a horrible change came over his expression; his
eyes stared wildly, his jaw dropped, and he yelled in a voice which
I can never forget, `Keep him out! For Christ's sake keep him out!' We
both stared round at the window behind us upon which his gaze was
fixed. A face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see
the whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It
was a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of
concentrated malevolence. My brother and I rushed towards the
window, but the man was gone. When we returned to my father his head
had dropped and his pulse had ceased to beat.
"We searched the garden that night but found no sign of the intruder
save that just under the window a single footmark was visible in the
flower-bed. But for that one trace, we might have thought that our
imaginations had conjured up that wild, fierce face. We soon, however,
had another and a more striking proof that there were secret
agencies at work all round us. The window of my father's room was
found open in the morning, his cupboards and boxes had been rifled,
and upon his chest was fixed a torn piece of paper with the words `The
sign of the four' scrawled across it. What the phrase meant or who our
secret visitor may have been, we never knew. As far as we can none
of my father's property had been actually stolen, though everything
had been turned out. My brother and I naturally associated this
peculiar incident with the fear which haunted my father during his
life, but it is still a complete mystery to us."
The little man stopped to relight his hookah and puffed thoughtfully
for a few moments. We had all sat absorbed, listening to his
extraordinary narrative. At the short account of her father's death
Miss Morstan had turned deadly white, and for a moment I feared that
she was about to faint. She rallied, however, on drinking a glass of
water which I quietly poured out for her from a Venetian carafe upon
the side-table. Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair with an
abstracted expression and the lids drawn low over his glittering eyes.
As I glanced at him I could not but think how on that very day he
had complained bitterly of the commonplaceness of life. Here at
least was a problem which would tax his sagacity to the utmost. Mr.
Thaddeus Sholto looked from one to the other of us with an obvious
pride at the effect which his story had produced and then continued
between the puffs of his overgrown pipe.
"My brother and I," said he, "were, as you may imagine, much excited
as to the treasure which my father had spoken of. For weeks and for
months we dug and delved in every part of the garden without
discovering its whereabouts. It was maddening to think that the
hiding-place was on his very lips at the moment that he died. We could
judge the splendour of the missing riches by the chaplet which he
had taken out. Over this chaplet my brother Bartholomew and I had some
little discussion. The pearls were evidently of great value, and he
was averse to part with them, for, between friends, my brother was
himself a little inclined to my father's fault. He thought, too,
that if we parted with the chaplet it might give rise to gossip and
finally bring us into trouble. It was all that I could do to
persuade him to let me find out Miss Morstan's address and send her
a detached pearl at fixed intervals so that at least she might never
feel destitute."
"It was a kindly thought," said our companion earnestly, "it was
extremely good of you."
The little man waved his hand deprecatingly.
"We were your trustees," he said; "that was the view which I took of
it, though Brother Bartholomew could not altogether see it in that
light. We had plenty of money ourselves. I desired no more. Besides,
it would have been such bad taste to have treated a young lady in so
scurvy a fashion. `Le mauvais gout mene au crime.' The French have a
very neat way of putting these things. Our difference of opinion on
this subject went so far that I thought it best to set up rooms for
myself; so I left Pondicherry Lodge, taking the old khitmutgar and
Williams with me. Yesterday, however, I learned that an event of
extreme importance has occurred. The treasure has been discovered. I
instantly communicated with Miss Morstan, and it only remains for us
to drive out to Norwood and demand our share. I explained my views
last night to Brother Bartholomew, so we shall be expected, if not
