my hut. I learned a little of his lingo from him, and this made him
all the fonder of me.
"Tonga--for that was his name--was a fine boatman, and owned a big,
roomy canoe of his own. When I found that he was devoted to me and
would do anything to serve me, I saw my chance of escape. I talked it
over with him. He was to bring his boat round on a certain night to
an old wharf which was never guarded, and there he was to pick me up.
I gave him directions to have several gourds of water and a lot of
yams, cocoa-nuts, and sweet potatoes.
"He was stanch and true, was little Tonga. No man ever had a more
faithful mate. At the night named he had his boat at the wharf. As it
chanced, however, there was one of the convict-guard down there,--a
vile Pathan who had never missed a chance of insulting and injuring
me. I had always vowed vengeance, and now I had my chance. It was as
if fate had placed him in my way that I might pay my debt before I
left the island. He stood on the bank with his back to me, and his
carbine on his shoulder. I looked about for a stone to beat out his
brains with, but none could I see. Then a queer thought came into my
head and showed me where I could lay my hand on a weapon. I sat down
in the darkness and unstrapped my wooden leg. With three long hops I
was on him. He put his carbine to his shoulder, but I struck him
full, and knocked the whole front of his skull in. You can see the
split in the wood now where I hit him. We both went down together,
for I could not keep my balance, but when I got up I found him still
lying quiet enough. I made for the boat, and in an hour we were well
out at sea. Tonga had brought all his earthly possessions with him,
his arms and his gods. Among other things, he had a long bamboo
spear, and some Andaman cocoa-nut matting, with which I make a sort
of sail. For ten days we were beating about, trusting to luck, and on
the eleventh we were picked up by a trader which was going from
Singapore to Jiddah with a cargo of Malay pilgrims. They were a rum
crowd, and Tonga and I soon managed to settle down among them. They
had one very good quality: they let you alone and asked no questions.
"Well, if I were to tell you all the adventures that my little chum
and I went through, you would not thank me, for I would have you here
until the sun was shining. Here and there we drifted about the world,
something always turning up to keep us from London. All the time,
however, I never lost sight of my purpose. I would dream of Sholto at
night. A hundred times I have killed him in my sleep. At last,
however, some three or four years ago, we found ourselves in England.
I had no great difficulty in finding where Sholto lived, and I set to
work to discover whether he had realized the treasure, or if he still
had it. I made friends with someone who could help me,--I name no
names, for I don't want to get any one else in a hole,--and I soon
found that he still had the jewels. Then I tried to get at him in
many ways; but he was pretty sly, and had always two prize-fighters,
besides his sons and his khitmutgar, on guard over him.
"One day, however, I got word that he was dying. I hurried at once to
the garden, mad that he should slip out of my clutches like that,
and, looking through the window, I saw him lying in his bed, with his
sons on each side of him. I'd have come through and taken my chance
with the three of them, only even as I looked at him his jaw dropped,
and I knew that he was gone. I got into his room that same night,
though, and I searched his papers to see if there was any record of
where he had hidden our jewels. There was not a line, however: so I
came away, bitter and savage as a man could be. Before I left I
bethought me that if I ever met my Sikh friends again it would be a
satisfaction to know that I had left some mark of our hatred: so I
scrawled down the sign of the four of us, as it had been on the
chart, and I pinned it on his bosom. It was too much that he should
be taken to the grave without some token from the men whom he had
robbed and befooled.
"We earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poor Tonga at fairs
and other such places as the black cannibal. He would eat raw meat
and dance his war-dance: so we always had a hatful of pennies after a
day's work. I still heard all the news from Pondicherry Lodge, and
for some years there was no news to hear, except that they were
hunting for the treasure. At last, however, came what we had waited
for so long. The treasure had been found. It was up at the top of the
house, in Mr. Bartholomew Sholto's chemical laboratory. I came at
once and had a look at the place, but I could not see how with my
wooden leg I was to make my way up to it. I learned, however, about a
trap-door in the roof, and also about Mr. Sholto's supper-hour. It
seemed to me that I could manage the thing easily through Tonga. I
brought him out with me with a long rope wound round his waist. He
could climb like a cat, and he soon made his way through the roof,
but, as ill luck would have it, Bartholomew Sholto was still in the
room, to his cost. Tonga thought he had done something very clever in
killing him, for when I came up by the rope I found him strutting
about as proud as a peacock. Very much surprised was he when I made
at him with the rope's end and cursed him for a little blood-thirsty
imp. I took the treasure-box and let it down, and then slid down
myself, having first left the sign of the four upon the table, to
show that the jewels had come back at last to those who had most
right to them. Tonga then pulled up the rope, closed the window, and
made off the way that he had come.
"I don't know that I have anything else to tell you. I had heard a
waterman speak of the speed of Smith's launch, the Aurora, so I
thought she would be a handy craft for our escape. I engaged with old
Smith, and was to give him a big sum if he got us safe to our ship.
He knew, no doubt, that there was some screw loose, but he was not in
our secrets. All this is the truth, and if I tell it to you,
gentlemen, it is not to amuse you,--for you have not done me a very
good turn,--but it is because I believe the best defence I can make
is just to hold back nothing, but let all the wold know how badly I
have myself been served by Major Sholto, and how innocent I am of the
death of his son."
"A very remarkable account," said Sherlock Holmes. "A fitting wind-up
to an extremely interesting case. There is nothing at all new to me
in the latter part of your narrative, except that you brought your
own rope. That I did not know. By the way, I had hoped that Tonga had
lost all his darts; yet he managed to shoot one at us in the boat."
"He had lost them all, sir, except the one which was in his blow-pipe
at the time."
"Ah, of course," said Holmes. "I had not thought of that."
"Is there any other point which you would like to ask about?" asked
the convict, affably.
"I think not, thank you," my companion answered.
"Well, Holmes," said Athelney Jones, "You are a man to be humored,
and we all know that you are a connoisseur of crime, but duty is
duty, and I have gone rather far in doing what you and your friend
asked me. I shall feel more at ease when we have our story-teller
here safe under lock and key. The cab still waits, and there are two
inspectors down-stairs. I am much obliged to you both for your
assistance. Of course you will be wanted at the trial. Good-night to
you."
"Good-night, gentlemen both," said Jonathan Small.
"You first, Small," remarked the wary Jones as they left the room.
"I'll take particular care that you don't club me with your wooden
leg, whatever you may have done to the gentleman at the Andaman
Isles."
"Well, and there is the end of our little drama," I remarked, after
we had set some time smoking in silence. "I fear that it may be the
last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your
methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honor to accept me as a husband
in prospective."
He gave a most dismal groan. "I feared as much," said he. "I really
cannot congratulate you."
I was a little hurt. "Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my
choice?" I asked.
"Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I
ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have
been doing. She had a decided genius that way: witness the way in
which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her
father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is
opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I
should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment."
"I trust," said I, laughing, "that my judgment may survive the
ordeal. But you look weary."
"Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag
for a week."
"Strange," said I, "how terms of what in another man I should call
laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigor."
"Yes," he answered, "there are in me the makings of a very fine
loafer and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of
those lines of old Goethe,--
Schade, da?die Natur nur einen Mensch aus Dir schuf,
Denn zum w黵digen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.
"By the way, a propos of this Norwood business, you see that they
had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none
other than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the undivided
honor of having caught one fish in his great haul."
"The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have done all
the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the
credit, pray what remains for you?"
"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the
cocaine-bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up for it.
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA
Table of contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
CHAPTER I
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him
mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any
emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one
particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably
balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and
observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would
have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer
passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things
for the observer--excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives
and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions
into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to
introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his
mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of
his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong
emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to
him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and
questionable memory.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away
from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred
interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master
of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention,
while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole
Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among
his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and
ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his
own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study
of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers
of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those
mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official
police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings:
of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his
clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at
Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so
delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.
Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared
with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former
friend and companion.
One night--it was on the twentieth of March, 1888--I was returning
from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil
practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the
well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with
