"I could see that the end had not been in his mouth. Therefore he
used a holder. The tip had been cut off, not bitten off, but the cut
was not a clean one, so I deduced a blunt pen-knife."
"Holmes," I said, "you have drawn a net round this man from which he
cannot escape, and you have saved an innocent human life as truly as
if you had cut the cord which was hanging him. I see the direction in
which all this points. The culprit is--"
"Mr. John Turner," cried the hotel waiter, opening the door of our
sitting-room, and ushering in a visitor.
The man who entered was a strange and impressive figure. His slow,
limping step and bowed shoulders gave the appearance of decrepitude,
and yet his hard, deep-lined, craggy features, and his enormous limbs
showed that he was possessed of unusual strength of body and of
character. His tangled beard, grizzled hair, and outstanding,
drooping eyebrows combined to give an air of dignity and power to his
appearance, but his face was of an ashen white, while his lips and
the corners of his nostrils were tinged with a shade of blue. It was
clear to me at a glance that he was in the grip of some deadly and
chronic disease.
"Pray sit down on the sofa," said Holmes gently. "You had my note?"
"Yes, the lodge-keeper brought it up. You said that you wished to see
me here to avoid scandal."
"I thought people would talk if I went to the Hall."
"And why did you wish to see me?" He looked across at my companion
with despair in his weary eyes, as though his question was already
answered.
"Yes," said Holmes, answering the look rather than the words. "It is
so. I know all about McCarthy."
The old man sank his face in his hands. "God help me!" he cried. "But
I would not have let the young man come to harm. I give you my word
that I would have spoken out if it went against him at the Assizes."
"I am glad to hear you say so," said Holmes gravely.
"I would have spoken now had it not been for my dear girl. It would
break her heart--it will break her heart when she hears that I am
arrested."
"It may not come to that," said Holmes.
"What?"
"I am no official agent. I understand that it was your daughter who
required my presence here, and I am acting in her interests. Young
McCarthy must be got off, however."
"I am a dying man," said old Turner. "I have had diabetes for years.
My doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a month. Yet I
would rather die under my own roof than in a jail."
Holmes rose and sat down at the table with his pen in his hand and a
bundle of paper before him. "Just tell us the truth," he said. "I
shall jot down the facts. You will sign it, and Watson here can
witness it. Then I could produce your confession at the last
extremity to save young McCarthy. I promise you that I shall not use
it unless it is absolutely needed."
"It's as well," said the old man; "it's a question whether I shall
live to the Assizes, so it matters little to me, but I should wish to
spare Alice the shock. And now I will make the thing clear to you; it
has been a long time in the acting, but will not take me long to
tell.
"You didn't know this dead man, McCarthy. He was a devil incarnate. I
tell you that. God keep you out of the clutches of such a man as he.
His grip has been upon me these twenty years, and he has blasted my
life. I'll tell you first how I came to be in his power.
"It was in the early '60's at the diggings. I was a young chap then,
hot-blooded and reckless, ready to turn my hand at anything; I got
among bad companions, took to drink, had no luck with my claim, took
to the bush, and in a word became what you would call over here a
highway robber. There were six of us, and we had a wild, free life of
it, sticking up a station from time to time, or stopping the wagons
on the road to the diggings. Black Jack of Ballarat was the name I
went under, and our party is still remembered in the colony as the
Ballarat Gang.
"One day a gold convoy came down from Ballarat to Melbourne, and we
lay in wait for it and attacked it. There were six troopers and six
of us, so it was a close thing, but we emptied four of their saddles
at the first volley. Three of our boys were killed, however, before
we got the swag. I put my pistol to the head of the wagon-driver, who
was this very man McCarthy. I wish to the Lord that I had shot him
then, but I spared him, though I saw his wicked little eyes fixed on
my face, as though to remember every feature. We got away with the
gold, became wealthy men, and made our way over to England without
being suspected. There I parted from my old pals and determined to
settle down to a quiet and respectable life. I bought this estate,
which chanced to be in the market, and I set myself to do a little
good with my money, to make up for the way in which I had earned it.
I married, too, and though my wife died young she left me my dear
little Alice. Even when she was just a baby her wee hand seemed to
lead me down the right path as nothing else had ever done. In a word,
I turned over a new leaf and did my best to make up for the past. All
was going well when McCarthy laid his grip upon me.
"I had gone up to town about an investment, and I met him in Regent
Street with hardly a coat to his back or a boot to his foot.
"'Here we are, Jack,' says he, touching me on the arm; 'we'll be as
good as a family to you. There's two of us, me and my son, and you
can have the keeping of us. If you don't--it's a fine, law-abiding
country is England, and there's always a policeman within hail.'
"Well, down they came to the west country, there was no shaking them
off, and there they have lived rent free on my best land ever since.
There was no rest for me, no peace, no forgetfulness; turn where I
would, there was his cunning, grinning face at my elbow. It grew
worse as Alice grew up, for he soon saw I was more afraid of her
knowing my past than of the police. Whatever he wanted he must have,
and whatever it was I gave him without question, land, money, houses,
until at last he asked a thing which I could not give. He asked for
Alice.
"His son, you see, had grown up, and so had my girl, and as I was
known to be in weak health, it seemed a fine stroke to him that his
lad should step into the whole property. But there I was firm. I
would not have his cursed stock mixed with mine; not that I had any
dislike to the lad, but his blood was in him, and that was enough. I
stood firm. McCarthy threatened. I braved him to do his worst. We
were to meet at the pool midway between our houses to talk it over.
"When I went down there I found him talking with his son, so I smoked
a cigar and waited behind a tree until he should be alone. But as I
listened to his talk all that was black and bitter in me seemed to
come uppermost. He was urging his son to marry my daughter with as
little regard for what she might think as if she were a slut from off
the streets. It drove me mad to think that I and all that I held most
dear should be in the power of such a man as this. Could I not snap
the bond? I was already a dying and a desperate man. Though clear of
mind and fairly strong of limb, I knew that my own fate was sealed.
But my memory and my girl! Both could be saved if I could but silence
that foul tongue. I did it, Mr. Holmes. I would do it again. Deeply
as I have sinned, I have led a life of martyrdom to atone for it. But
that my girl should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was
more than I could suffer. I struck him down with no more compunction
than if he had been some foul and venomous beast. His cry brought
back his son; but I had gained the cover of the wood, though I was
forced to go back to fetch the cloak which I had dropped in my
flight. That is the true story, gentlemen, of all that occurred."
"Well, it is not for me to judge you," said Holmes as the old man
signed the statement which had been drawn out. "I pray that we may
never be exposed to such a temptation."
"I pray not, sir. And what do you intend to do?"
"In view of your health, nothing. You are yourself aware that you
will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the
Assizes. I will keep your confession, and if McCarthy is condemned I
shall be forced to use it. If not, it shall never be seen by mortal
eye; and your secret, whether you be alive or dead, shall be safe
with us."
"Farewell, then," said the old man solemnly. "Your own deathbeds,
when they come, will be the easier for the thought of the peace which
you have given to mine." Tottering and shaking in all his giant
frame, he stumbled slowly from the room.
"God help us!" said Holmes after a long silence. "Why does fate play
such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as
this that I do not think of Baxter's words, and say, 'There, but for
the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.'"
James McCarthy was acquitted at the Assizes on the strength of a
number of objections which had been drawn out by Holmes and submitted
to the defending counsel. Old Turner lived for seven months after our
interview, but he is now dead; and there is every prospect that the
son and daughter may come to live happily together in ignorance of
the black cloud which rests upon their past.
THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS
When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases
between the years '82 and '90, I am faced by so many which present
strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to know
which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already
gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a
field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so
high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to
illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his analytical skill, and would
be, as narratives, beginnings without an ending, while others have
been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded
rather upon conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical
proof which was so dear to him. There is, however, one of these last
which was so remarkable in its details and so startling in its
results that I am tempted to give some account of it in spite of the
fact that there are points in connection with it which never have
been, and probably never will be, entirely cleared up.
The year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or
less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under
this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the
Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a
luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the
facts connected with the loss of the British barque "Sophy Anderson",
of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of
Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as
may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead
man's watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and
that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time--a
deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the
case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of
them present such singular features as the strange train of
circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.
It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had
set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and
the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the
heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds
for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the
presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind
through the bars of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage.
As evening drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind
cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat
moodily at one side of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of
crime, while I at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine
sea-stories until the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend
with the text, and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the
long swash of the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother's,
and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at
Baker Street.
"Why," said I, glancing up at my companion, "that was surely the
bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?"
"Except yourself I have none," he answered. "I do not encourage
visitors."
"A client, then?"
"If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out on
