money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very nicely, and
lived generally in good style. By degrees he made friends in the
neighbourhood, and in 1887 he married the daughter of a local brewer,
by whom he now has two children. He had no occupation, but was
interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the
morning, returning by the 5.14 from Cannon Street every night. Mr.
St. Clair is now thirty-seven years of age, is a man of temperate
habits, a good husband, a very affectionate father, and a man who is
popular with all who know him. I may add that his whole debts at the
present moment, as far as we have been able to ascertain, amount to
?8 10s., while he has ?20 standing to his credit in the Capital and
Counties Bank. There is no reason, therefore, to think that money
troubles have been weighing upon his mind.
"Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town rather earlier than
usual, remarking before he started that he had two important
commissions to perform, and that he would bring his little boy home a
box of bricks. Now, by the merest chance, his wife received a
telegram upon this same Monday, very shortly after his departure, to
the effect that a small parcel of considerable value which she had
been expecting was waiting for her at the offices of the Aberdeen
Shipping Company. Now, if you are well up in your London, you will
know that the office of the company is in Fresno Street, which
branches out of Upper Swandam Lane, where you found me to-night. Mrs.
St. Clair had her lunch, started for the City, did some shopping,
proceeded to the company's office, got her packet, and found herself
at exactly 4.35 walking through Swandam Lane on her way back to the
station. Have you followed me so far?"
"It is very clear."
"If you remember, Monday was an exceedingly hot day, and Mrs. St.
Clair walked slowly, glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab, as
she did not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself. While
she was walking in this way down Swandam Lane, she suddenly heard an
ejaculation or cry, and was struck cold to see her husband looking
down at her and, as it seemed to her, beckoning to her from a
second-floor window. The window was open, and she distinctly saw his
face, which she describes as being terribly agitated. He waved his
hands frantically to her, and then vanished from the window so
suddenly that it seemed to her that he had been plucked back by some
irresistible force from behind. One singular point which struck her
quick feminine eye was that although he wore some dark coat, such as
he had started to town in, he had on neither collar nor necktie.
"Convinced that something was amiss with him, she rushed down the
steps--for the house was none other than the opium den in which you
found me to-night--and running through the front room she attempted
to ascend the stairs which led to the first floor. At the foot of the
stairs, however, she met this Lascar scoundrel of whom I have spoken,
who thrust her back and, aided by a Dane, who acts as assistant
there, pushed her out into the street. Filled with the most maddening
doubts and fears, she rushed down the lane and, by rare good-fortune,
met in Fresno Street a number of constables with an inspector, all on
their way to their beat. The inspector and two men accompanied her
back, and in spite of the continued resistance of the proprietor,
they made their way to the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been
seen. There was no sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that
floor there was no one to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous
aspect, who, it seems, made his home there. Both he and the Lascar
stoutly swore that no one else had been in the front room during the
afternoon. So determined was their denial that the inspector was
staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs. St. Clair had
been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box which
lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell a cascade
of children's bricks. It was the toy which he had promised to bring
home.
"This discovery, and the evident confusion which the cripple showed,
made the inspector realise that the matter was serious. The rooms
were carefully examined, and results all pointed to an abominable
crime. The front room was plainly furnished as a sitting-room and led
into a small bedroom, which looked out upon the back of one of the
wharves. Between the wharf and the bedroom window is a narrow strip,
which is dry at low tide but is covered at high tide with at least
four and a half feet of water. The bedroom window was a broad one and
opened from below. On examination traces of blood were to be seen
upon the windowsill, and several scattered drops were visible upon
the wooden floor of the bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the
front room were all the clothes of Mr. Neville St. Clair, with the
exception of his coat. His boots, his socks, his hat, and his
watch--all were there. There were no signs of violence upon any of
these garments, and there were no other traces of Mr. Neville St.
Clair. Out of the window he must apparently have gone for no other
exit could be discovered, and the ominous bloodstains upon the sill
gave little promise that he could save himself by swimming, for the
tide was at its very highest at the moment of the tragedy.
"And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately implicated
in the matter. The Lascar was known to be a man of the vilest
antecedents, but as, by Mrs. St. Clair's story, he was known to have
been at the foot of the stair within a very few seconds of her
husband's appearance at the window, he could hardly have been more
than an accessory to the crime. His defence was one of absolute
ignorance, and he protested that he had no knowledge as to the doings
of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and that he could not account in any way
for the presence of the missing gentleman's clothes.
"So much for the Lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who
lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was certainly
the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. Clair. His
name is Hugh Boone, and his hideous face is one which is familiar to
every man who goes much to the City. He is a professional beggar,
though in order to avoid the police regulations he pretends to a
small trade in wax vestas. Some little distance down Threadneedle
Street, upon the left-hand side, there is, as you may have remarked,
a small angle in the wall. Here it is that this creature takes his
daily seat, cross-legged with his tiny stock of matches on his lap,
and as he is a piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends
into the greasy leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him.
I have watched the fellow more than once before ever I thought of
making his professional acquaintance, and I have been surprised at
the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His appearance, you
see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him without observing him.
A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar,
which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper
lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which
present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him
out from amid the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his
wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which
may be thrown at him by the passers-by. This is the man whom we now
learn to have been the lodger at the opium den, and to have been the
last man to see the gentleman of whom we are in quest."
"But a cripple!" said I. "What could he have done single-handed
against a man in the prime of life?"
"He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp; but in other
respects he appears to be a powerful and well-nurtured man. Surely
your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that weakness in one
limb is often compensated for by exceptional strength in the others."
"Pray continue your narrative."
"Mrs. St. Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the
window, and she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her
presence could be of no help to them in their investigations.
Inspector Barton, who had charge of the case, made a very careful
examination of the premises, but without finding anything which threw
any light upon the matter. One mistake had been made in not arresting
Boone instantly, as he was allowed some few minutes during which he
might have communicated with his friend the Lascar, but this fault
was soon remedied, and he was seized and searched, without anything
being found which could incriminate him. There were, it is true, some
blood-stains upon his right shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his
ring-finger, which had been cut near the nail, and explained that the
bleeding came from there, adding that he had been to the window not
long before, and that the stains which had been observed there came
doubtless from the same source. He denied strenuously having ever
seen Mr. Neville St. Clair and swore that the presence of the clothes
in his room was as much a mystery to him as to the police. As to Mrs.
St. Clair's assertion that she had actually seen her husband at the
window, he declared that she must have been either mad or dreaming.
He was removed, loudly protesting, to the police-station, while the
inspector remained upon the premises in the hope that the ebbing tide
might afford some fresh clue.
"And it did, though they hardly found upon the mud-bank what they had
feared to find. It was Neville St. Clair's coat, and not Neville St.
Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded. And what do you think
they found in the pockets?"
"I cannot imagine."
"No, I don't think you would guess. Every pocket stuffed with pennies
and half-pennies--421 pennies and 270 half-pennies. It was no wonder
that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a human body is a
different matter. There is a fierce eddy between the wharf and the
house. It seemed likely enough that the weighted coat had remained
when the stripped body had been sucked away into the river."
"But I understand that all the other clothes were found in the room.
Would the body be dressed in a coat alone?"
"No, sir, but the facts might be met speciously enough. Suppose that
this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the window, there
is no human eye which could have seen the deed. What would he do
then? It would of course instantly strike him that he must get rid of
the tell-tale garments. He would seize the coat, then, and be in the
act of throwing it out, when it would occur to him that it would swim
and not sink. He has little time, for he has heard the scuffle
downstairs when the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he
has already heard from his Lascar confederate that the police are
hurrying up the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes
to some secret hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his
beggary, and he stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands
into the pockets to make sure of the coat's sinking. He throws it
out, and would have done the same with the other garments had not he
heard the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the
window when the police appeared."
"It certainly sounds feasible."
"Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a better.
Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the station, but
it could not be shown that there had ever before been anything
against him. He had for years been known as a professional beggar,
but his life appeared to have been a very quiet and innocent one.
There the matter stands at present, and the questions which have to
be solved--what Neville St. Clair was doing in the opium den, what
happened to him when there, where is he now, and what Hugh Boone had
to do with his disappearance--are all as far from a solution as ever.
I confess that I cannot recall any case within my experience which
looked at the first glance so simple and yet which presented such
difficulties."
While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of
events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great town
until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and we rattled
along with a country hedge upon either side of us. Just as he
finished, however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a
few lights still glimmered in the windows.
"We are on the outskirts of Lee," said my companion. "We have touched
on three English counties in our short drive, starting in Middlesex,
passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. See that light
among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside that lamp sits a
woman whose anxious ears have already, I have little doubt, caught
the clink of our horse's feet."
"But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?" I asked.
"Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here. Mrs.
