experience of such."
"So much so," I remarked, "that of the last six cases which I have
added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime."
"Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler
papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the
adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt that
this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You know
Peterson, the commissionaire?"
"Yes."
"It is to him that this trophy belongs."
"It is his hat."
"No, no, he found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will look
upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual problem.
And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas
morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt,
roasting at this moment in front of Peterson's fire. The facts are
these: about four o'clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you
know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small
jollification and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court
Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking
with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his
shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out
between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter
knocked off the man's hat, on which he raised his stick to defend
himself and, swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window
behind him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from
his assailants; but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and
seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards him,
dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the labyrinth
of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The
roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was
left in possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of
victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable
Christmas goose."
"Which surely he restored to their owner?"
"My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that 'For Mrs.
Henry Baker' was printed upon a small card which was tied to the
bird's left leg, and it is also true that the initials 'H. B.' are
legible upon the lining of this hat, but as there are some thousands
of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it
is not easy to restore lost property to any one of them."
"What, then, did Peterson do?"
"He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning,
knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. The
goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in
spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten
without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore,
to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain
the hat of the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner."
"Did he not advertise?"
"No."
"Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?"
"Only as much as we can deduce."
"From his hat?"
"Precisely."
"But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered
felt?"
"Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself
as to the individuality of the man who has worn this article?"
I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather
ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape,
hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk,
but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker's name; but, as
Holmes had remarked, the initials "H. B." were scrawled upon one
side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic
was missing. For the rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and
spotted in several places, although there seemed to have been some
attempt to hide the discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.
"I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend.
"On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however,
to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your
inferences."
"Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?"
He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion
which was characteristic of him. "It is perhaps less suggestive than
it might have been," he remarked, "and yet there are a few inferences
which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a
strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual
is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly
well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen
upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly,
pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline
of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably
drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact
that his wife has ceased to love him."
"My dear Holmes!"
"He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect," he
continued, disregarding my remonstrance. "He is a man who leads a
sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is
middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last
few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more
patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way,
that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on in his
house."
"You are certainly joking, Holmes."
"Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you
these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?"
"I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am
unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man
was intellectual?"
For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over
the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. "It is a
question of cubic capacity," said he; "a man with so large a brain
must have something in it."
"The decline of his fortunes, then?"
"This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge
came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band
of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to
buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since,
then he has assuredly gone down in the world."
"Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight
and the moral retrogression?"
Sherlock Holmes laughed. "Here is the foresight," said he putting his
finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. "They are
never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a
certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take
this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken
the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he
has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a
weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal
some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is
a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect."
"Your reasoning is certainly plausible."
"The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is
grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream,
are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of
the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut
by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and
there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe,
is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust
of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the
time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive
that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be
in the best of training."
"But his wife--you said that she had ceased to love him."
"This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear
Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when
your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you
also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection."
"But he might be a bachelor."
"Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife.
Remember the card upon the bird's leg."
"You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce
that the gas is not laid on in his house?"
"One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see
no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the
individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning
tallow--walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and
a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains
from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?"
"Well, it is very ingenious," said I, laughing; "but since, as you
said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done
save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of
energy."
Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew
open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment
with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with
astonishment.
"The goose, Mr. Holmes! The goose, sir!" he gasped.
"Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off
through the kitchen window?" Holmes twisted himself round upon the
sofa to get a fairer view of the man's excited face.
"See here, sir! See what my wife found in its crop!" He held out his
hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly
scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but of
such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric point in
the dark hollow of his hand.
Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. "By Jove, Peterson!" said he,
"this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you have
got?"
"A diamond, sir? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though it
were putty."
"It's more than a precious stone. It is the precious stone."
"Not the Countess of Morcar's blue carbuncle!" I ejaculated.
"Precisely so. I ought to know its size and shape, seeing that I have
read the advertisement about it in The Times every day lately. It is
absolutely unique, and its value can only be conjectured, but the
reward offered of ?000 is certainly not within a twentieth part of
the market price."
"A thousand pounds! Great Lord of mercy!" The commissionaire plumped
down into a chair and stared from one to the other of us.
"That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are
sentimental considerations in the background which would induce the
Countess to part with half her fortune if she could but recover the
gem."
"It was lost, if I remember aright, at the Hotel Cosmopolitan," I
remarked.
"Precisely so, on December 22nd, just five days ago. John Horner, a
plumber, was accused of having abstracted it from the lady's
jewel-case. The evidence against him was so strong that the case has
been referred to the Assizes. I have some account of the matter here,
I believe." He rummaged amid his newspapers, glancing over the dates,
until at last he smoothed one out, doubled it over, and read the
following paragraph:
"Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. John Horner, 26, plumber, was
brought up upon the charge of having upon the 22nd inst., abstracted
from the jewel-case of the Countess of Morcar the valuable gem known
as the blue carbuncle. James Ryder, upper-attendant at the hotel,
gave his evidence to the effect that he had shown Horner up to the
dressing-room of the Countess of Morcar upon the day of the robbery
in order that he might solder the second bar of the grate, which was
loose. He had remained with Horner some little time, but had finally
been called away. On returning, he found that Horner had disappeared,
that the bureau had been forced open, and that the small morocco
casket in which, as it afterwards transpired, the Countess was
accustomed to keep her jewel, was lying empty upon the
dressing-table. Ryder instantly gave the alarm, and Horner was
arrested the same evening; but the stone could not be found either
upon his person or in his rooms. Catherine Cusack, maid to the
Countess, deposed to having heard Ryder's cry of dismay on
discovering the robbery, and to having rushed into the room, where
