"Dirty?"
"Yes, it is all we can do to make him wash his hands, and his face is
as black as a tinker's. Well, when once his case has been settled, he
will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you saw him, you
would agree with me that he needed it."
"I should like to see him very much."
"Would you? That is easily done. Come this way. You can leave your
bag."
"No, I think that I'll take it."
"Very good. Come this way, if you please." He led us down a passage,
opened a barred door, passed down a winding stair, and brought us to
a whitewashed corridor with a line of doors on each side.
"The third on the right is his," said the inspector. "Here it is!" He
quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the door and glanced
through.
"He is asleep," said he. "You can see him very well."
We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his face
towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He
was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a
coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He
was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which
covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad
wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by
its contraction had turned up one side of the upper lip, so that
three teeth were exposed in a perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright
red hair grew low over his eyes and forehead.
"He's a beauty, isn't he?" said the inspector.
"He certainly needs a wash," remarked Holmes. "I had an idea that he
might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me." He
opened the Gladstone bag as he spoke, and took out, to my
astonishment, a very large bath-sponge.
"He! he! You are a funny one," chuckled the inspector.
"Now, if you will have the great goodness to open that door very
quietly, we will soon make him cut a much more respectable figure."
"Well, I don't know why not," said the inspector. "He doesn't look a
credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?" He slipped his key into the
lock, and we all very quietly entered the cell. The sleeper half
turned, and then settled down once more into a deep slumber. Holmes
stooped to the water-jug, moistened his sponge, and then rubbed it
twice vigorously across and down the prisoner's face.
"Let me introduce you," he shouted, "to Mr. Neville St. Clair, of
Lee, in the county of Kent."
Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The man's face peeled off
under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the coarse brown
tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and
the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face! A
twitch brought away the tangled red hair, and there, sitting up in
his bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and
smooth-skinned, rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy
bewilderment. Then suddenly realising the exposure, he broke into a
scream and threw himself down with his face to the pillow.
"Great heavens!" cried the inspector, "it is, indeed, the missing
man. I know him from the photograph."
The prisoner turned with the reckless air of a man who abandons
himself to his destiny. "Be it so," said he. "And pray what am I
charged with?"
"With making away with Mr. Neville St.--Oh, come, you can't be
charged with that unless they make a case of attempted suicide of
it," said the inspector with a grin. "Well, I have been twenty-seven
years in the force, but this really takes the cake."
"If I am Mr. Neville St. Clair, then it is obvious that no crime has
been committed, and that, therefore, I am illegally detained."
"No crime, but a very great error has been committed," said Holmes.
"You would have done better to have trusted your wife."
"It was not the wife; it was the children," groaned the prisoner.
"God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God!
What an exposure! What can I do?"
Sherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him
kindly on the shoulder.
"If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up," said he,
"of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand, if you
convince the police authorities that there is no possible case
against you, I do not know that there is any reason that the details
should find their way into the papers. Inspector Bradstreet would, I
am sure, make notes upon anything which you might tell us and submit
it to the proper authorities. The case would then never go into court
at all."
"God bless you!" cried the prisoner passionately. "I would have
endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my
miserable secret as a family blot to my children.
"You are the first who have ever heard my story. My father was a
schoolmaster in Chesterfield, where I received an excellent
education. I travelled in my youth, took to the stage, and finally
became a reporter on an evening paper in London. One day my editor
wished to have a series of articles upon begging in the metropolis,
and I volunteered to supply them. There was the point from which all
my adventures started. It was only by trying begging as an amateur
that I could get the facts upon which to base my articles. When an
actor I had, of course, learned all the secrets of making up, and had
been famous in the green-room for my skill. I took advantage now of
my attainments. I painted my face, and to make myself as pitiable as
possible I made a good scar and fixed one side of my lip in a twist
by the aid of a small slip of flesh-coloured plaster. Then with a red
head of hair, and an appropriate dress, I took my station in the
business part of the city, ostensibly as a match-seller but really as
a beggar. For seven hours I plied my trade, and when I returned home
in the evening I found to my surprise that I had received no less
than 26s. 4d.
"I wrote my articles and thought little more of the matter until,
some time later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ served
upon me for ?5. I was at my wit's end where to get the money, but a
sudden idea came to me. I begged a fortnight's grace from the
creditor, asked for a holiday from my employers, and spent the time
in begging in the City under my disguise. In ten days I had the money
and had paid the debt.
"Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous work
at ? a week when I knew that I could earn as much in a day by
smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on the ground,
and sitting still. It was a long fight between my pride and the
money, but the dollars won at last, and I threw up reporting and sat
day after day in the corner which I had first chosen, inspiring pity
by my ghastly face and filling my pockets with coppers. Only one man
knew my secret. He was the keeper of a low den in which I used to
lodge in Swandam Lane, where I could every morning emerge as a
squalid beggar and in the evenings transform myself into a
well-dressed man about town. This fellow, a Lascar, was well paid by
me for his rooms, so that I knew that my secret was safe in his
possession.
"Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of
money. I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could
earn ?00 a year--which is less than my average takings--but I had
exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a
facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a
recognised character in the City. All day a stream of pennies, varied
by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I
failed to take ?.
"As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country,
and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my
real occupation. My dear wife knew that I had business in the City.
She little knew what.
"Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my room
above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw, to my
horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the street,
with her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of surprise, threw up
my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my confidant, the Lascar,
entreated him to prevent anyone from coming up to me. I heard her
voice downstairs, but I knew that she could not ascend. Swiftly I
threw off my clothes, pulled on those of a beggar, and put on my
pigments and wig. Even a wife's eyes could not pierce so complete a
disguise. But then it occurred to me that there might be a search in
the room, and that the clothes might betray me. I threw open the
window, reopening by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted
upon myself in the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which
was weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from
the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of the
window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes would
have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of constables up
the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather, I confess, to my
relief, that instead of being identified as Mr. Neville St. Clair, I
was arrested as his murderer.
"I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I was
determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and hence my
preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would be terribly
anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the Lascar at a
moment when no constable was watching me, together with a hurried
scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to fear."
"That note only reached her yesterday," said Holmes.
"Good God! What a week she must have spent!"
"The police have watched this Lascar," said Inspector Bradstreet,
"and I can quite understand that he might find it difficult to post a
letter unobserved. Probably he handed it to some sailor customer of
his, who forgot all about it for some days."
"That was it," said Holmes, nodding approvingly; "I have no doubt of
it. But have you never been prosecuted for begging?"
"Many times; but what was a fine to me?"
"It must stop here, however," said Bradstreet. "If the police are to
hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone."
"I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take."
"In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps may
be taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out. I am
sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for having
cleared the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your results."
"I reached this one," said my friend, "by sitting upon five pillows
and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to
Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast."
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE
I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning
after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of
the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown,
a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled
morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the
couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very
seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and
cracked in several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat
of the chair suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner
for the purpose of examination.
"You are engaged," said I; "perhaps I interrupt you."
"Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my
results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one"--he jerked his thumb
in the direction of the old hat--"but there are points in connection
with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of
instruction."
I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his
crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were
thick with the ice crystals. "I suppose," I remarked, "that, homely
as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it--that
it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery
and the punishment of some crime."
"No, no. No crime," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "Only one of
those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four
million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a
few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of
humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to
take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be
striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had
