a set of six to correspond. What puzzles me is that I should not have
heard of such magnificent specimens. I only know of one in England to
match this, and it is certainly not likely to be in the market. Would
it be indiscreet if I were to ask you, Dr. Hill Barton, how you
obtained this?"
"Does it really matter?" I asked with as careless an air as I could
muster. "You can see that the piece is genuine, and, as to the value,
I am content to take an expert's valuation."
"Very mysterious," said he with a quick, suspicious flash of his dark
eyes. "In dealing with objects of such value, one naturally wishes to
know all about the transaction. That the piece is genuine is certain.
I have no doubts at all about that. But suppose--I am bound to take
every possibility into account--that it should prove afterwards that
you had no right to sell?"
"I would guarantee you against any claim of the sort."
"That, of course, would open up the question as to what your
guarantee was worth."
"My bankers would answer that."
"Quite so. And yet the whole transaction strikes me as rather
unusual."
"You can do business or not," said I with indifference. "I have given
you the first offer as I understood that you were a connoisseur, but
I shall have no difficulty in other quarters."
"Who told you I was a connoisseur?"
"I was aware that you had written a book upon the subject."
"Have you read the book?"
"No."
"Dear me, this becomes more and more difficult for me to understand!
You are a connoisseur and collector with a very valuable piece in
your collection, and yet you have never troubled to consult the one
book which would have told you of the real meaning and value of what
you held. How do you explain that?"
"I am a very busy man. I am a doctor in practice."
"That is no answer. If a man has a hobby he follows it up, whatever
his other pursuits may be. You said in your note that you were a
connoisseur."
"So I am."
"Might I ask you a few questions to test you? I am obliged to tell
you, Doctor--if you are indeed a doctor--that the incident becomes
more and more suspicious. I would ask you what do you know of the
Emperor Shomu and how do you associate him with the Shoso-in near
Nara? Dear me, does that puzzle you? Tell me a little about the
Northern Wei dynasty and its place in the history of ceramics."
I sprang from my chair in simulated anger.
"This is intolerable, sir," said I. "I came here to do you a favour,
and not to be examined as if I were a schoolboy. My knowledge on
these subjects may be second only to your own, but I certainly shall
not answer questions which have been put in so offensive a way."
He looked at me steadily. The languor had gone from his eyes. They
suddenly glared. There was a gleam of teeth from between those cruel
lips.
"What is the game? You are here as a spy. You are an emissary of
Holmes. This is a trick that you are playing upon me. The fellow is
dying I hear, so he sends his tools to keep watch upon me. You've
made your way in here without leave, and, by God! you may find it
harder to get out than to get in."
He had sprung to his feet, and I stepped back, bracing myself for an
attack, for the man was beside himself with rage. He may have
suspected me from the first; certainly this cross-examination had
shown him the truth; but it was clear that I could not hope to
deceive him. He dived his hand into a side-drawer and rummaged
furiously. Then something struck upon his ear, for he stood listening
intently.
"Ah!" he cried. "Ah!" and dashed into the room behind him.
Two steps took me to the open door, and my mind will ever carry a
clear picture of the scene within. The window leading out to the
garden was wide open. Beside it, looking like some terrible ghost,
his head girt with bloody bandages, his face drawn and white, stood
Sherlock Holmes. The next instant he was through the gap, and I heard
the crash of his body among the laurel bushes outside. With a howl of
rage the master of the house rushed after him to the open window.
And then! It was done in an instant, and yet I clearly saw it. An
arm--a woman's arm--shot out from among the leaves. At the same
instant the Baron uttered a horrible cry--a yell which will always
ring in my memory. He clapped his two hands to his face and rushed
round the room, beating his head horribly against the walls. Then he
fell upon the carpet, rolling and writhing, while scream after scream
resounded through the house.
"Water! For God's sake, water!" was his cry.
I seized a carafe from a side-table and rushed to his aid. At the
same moment the butler and several footmen ran in from the hall. I
remember that one of them fainted as I knelt by the injured man and
turned that awful face to the light of the lamp. The vitriol was
eating into it everywhere and dripping from the ears and the chin.
One eye was already white and glazed. The other was red and inflamed.
The features which I had admired a few minutes before were now like
some beautiful painting over which the artist has passed a wet and
foul sponge. They were blurred, discoloured, inhuman, terrible.
In a few words I explained exactly what had occurred, so far as the
vitriol attack was concerned. Some had climbed through the window and
others had rushed out on to the lawn, but it was dark and it had
begun to rain. Between his screams the victim raged and raved against
the avenger. "It was that hell-cat, Kitty Winter!" he cried. "Oh, the
she-devil! She shall pay for it! She shall pay! Oh, God in heaven,
this pain is more than I can bear!"
I bathed his face in oil, put cotton wadding on the raw surfaces, and
administered a hypodermic of morphia. All suspicion of me had passed
from his mind in the presence of this shock, and he clung to my hands
as if I might have the power even yet to clear those dead-fish eyes
which gazed up at me. I could have wept over the ruin had I not
remembered very clearly the vile life which had led up to so hideous
a change. It was loathsome to feel the pawing of his burning hands,
and I was relieved when his family surgeon, closely followed by a
specialist, came to relieve me of my charge. An inspector of police
had also arrived, and to him I handed my real card. It would have
been useless as well as foolish to do otherwise, for I was nearly as
well known by sight at the Yard as Holmes himself. Then I left that
house of gloom and terror. Within an hour I was at Baker Street.
Holmes was seated in his familiar chair, looking very pale and
exhausted. Apart from his injuries, even his iron nerves had been
shocked by the events of the evening, and he listened with horror to
my account of the Baron's transformation.
"The wages of sin, Watson--the wages of sin!" said he. "Sooner or
later it will always come. God knows, there was sin enough," he
added, taking up a brown volume from the table. "Here is the book the
woman talked of. If this will not break off the marriage, nothing
ever could. But it will, Watson. It must. No self-respecting woman
could stand it."
"It is his love diary?"
"Or his lust diary. Call it what you will. The moment the woman told
us of it I realized what a tremendous weapon was there if we could
but lay our hands on it. I said nothing at the time to indicate my
thoughts, for this woman might have given it away. But I brooded over
it. Then this assault upon me gave me the chance of letting the Baron
think that no precautions need be taken against me. That was all to
the good. I would have waited a little longer, but his visit to
America forced my hand. He would never have left so compromising a
document behind him. Therefore we had to act at once. Burglary at
night is impossible. He takes precautions. But there was a chance in
the evening if I could only be sure that his attention was engaged.
That was where you and your blue saucer came in. But I had to be sure
of the position of the book, and I knew I had only a few minutes in
which to act, for my time was limited by your knowledge of Chinese
pottery. Therefore I gathered the girl up at the last moment. How
could I guess what the little packet was that she carried so
carefully under her cloak? I thought she had come altogether on my
business, but it seems she had some of her own."
"He guessed I came from you."
"I feared he would. But you held him in play just long enough for me
to get the book, though not long enough for an unobserved escape. Ah,
Sir James, I am very glad you have come!"
Our courtly friend had appeared in answer to a previous summons. He
listened with the deepest attention to Holmes's account of what had
occurred.
"You have done wonders--wonders!" he cried when he had heard the
narrative. "But if these injuries are as terrible as Dr. Watson
describes, then surely our purpose of thwarting the marriage is
sufficiently gained without the use of this horrible book."
Holmes shook his head.
"Women of the De Merville type do not act like that. She would love
him the more as a disfigured martyr. No, no. It is his moral side,
not his physical, which we have to destroy. That book will bring her
back to earth--and I know nothing else that could. It is in his own
writing. She cannot get past it."
Sir James carried away both it and the precious saucer. As I was
myself overdue, I went down with him into the street. A brougham was
waiting for him. He sprang in, gave a hurried order to the cockaded
coachman, and drove swiftly away. He flung his overcoat half out of
the window to cover the armorial bearings upon the panel, but I had
seen them in the glare of our fanlight none the less. I gasped with
surprise. Then I turned back and ascended the stair to Holmes's room.
"I have found out who our client is," I cried, bursting with my great
news. "Why, Holmes, it is--"
"It is a loyal friend and a chivalrous gentleman," said Holmes,
holding up a restraining hand. "Let that now and forever be enough
for us."
I do not know how the incriminating book was used. Sir James may have
managed it. Or it is more probable that so delicate a task was
entrusted to the young lady's father. The effect, at any rate, was
all that could be desired. Three days later appeared a paragraph in
the Morning Post to say that the marriage between Baron Adelbert
Gruner and Miss Violet de Merville would not take place. The same
paper had the first police-court hearing of the proceedings against
Miss Kitty Winter on the grave charge of vitriol-throwing. Such
extenuating circumstances came out in the trial that the sentence, as
will be remembered, was the lowest that was possible for such an
offence. Sherlock Holmes was threatened with a prosecution for
burglary, but when an object is good and a client is sufficiently
illustrious, even the rigid British law becomes human and elastic. My
friend has not yet stood in the dock.
THE BLANCHED SOLDIER
The ideas of my friend Watson, though limited, are exceedingly
pertinacious. For a long time he has worried me to write an
experience of my own. Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution,
since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial
are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste
instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures. "Try it
yourself, Holmes!" he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that,
having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter
must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader. The
following case can hardly fail to do so, as it is among the strangest
happenings in my collection, though it chanced that Watson had no
note of it in his collection. Speaking of my old friend and
biographer, I would take this opportunity to remark that if I burden
myself with a companion in my various little inquiries it is not done
out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some
remarkable characteristics of his own to which in his modesty he has
given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own
performances. A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course
of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes
as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed
book, is indeed an ideal helpmate.
I find from my notebook that it was in January, 1903, just after the
conclusion of the Boer War, that I had my visit from Mr. James M.
Dodd, a big, fresh, sunburned, upstanding Briton. The good Watson had
at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I
can recall in our association. I was alone.
It is my habit to sit with my back to the window and to place my
visitors in the opposite chair, where the light falls full upon them.
