him into your family circle. He is one of the most dangerous men in
England--a ruined gambler, an absolutely desperate villain, a man
without heart or conscience. Your niece knew nothing of such men.
When he breathed his vows to her, as he had done to a hundred before
her, she flattered herself that she alone had touched his heart. The
devil knows best what he said, but at least she became his tool and
was in the habit of seeing him nearly every evening."
"I cannot, and I will not, believe it!" cried the banker with an
ashen face.
"I will tell you, then, what occurred in your house last night. Your
niece, when you had, as she thought, gone to your room, slipped down
and talked to her lover through the window which leads into the
stable lane. His footmarks had pressed right through the snow, so
long had he stood there. She told him of the coronet. His wicked lust
for gold kindled at the news, and he bent her to his will. I have no
doubt that she loved you, but there are women in whom the love of a
lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have
been one. She had hardly listened to his instructions when she saw
you coming downstairs, on which she closed the window rapidly and
told you about one of the servants' escapade with her wooden-legged
lover, which was all perfectly true.
"Your boy, Arthur, went to bed after his interview with you but he
slept badly on account of his uneasiness about his club debts. In the
middle of the night he heard a soft tread pass his door, so he rose
and, looking out, was surprised to see his cousin walking very
stealthily along the passage until she disappeared into your
dressing-room. Petrified with astonishment, the lad slipped on some
clothes and waited there in the dark to see what would come of this
strange affair. Presently she emerged from the room again, and in the
light of the passage-lamp your son saw that she carried the precious
coronet in her hands. She passed down the stairs, and he, thrilling
with horror, ran along and slipped behind the curtain near your door,
whence he could see what passed in the hall beneath. He saw her
stealthily open the window, hand out the coronet to someone in the
gloom, and then closing it once more hurry back to her room, passing
quite close to where he stood hid behind the curtain.
"As long as she was on the scene he could not take any action without
a horrible exposure of the woman whom he loved. But the instant that
she was gone he realised how crushing a misfortune this would be for
you, and how all-important it was to set it right. He rushed down,
just as he was, in his bare feet, opened the window, sprang out into
the snow, and ran down the lane, where he could see a dark figure in
the moonlight. Sir George Burnwell tried to get away, but Arthur
caught him, and there was a struggle between them, your lad tugging
at one side of the coronet, and his opponent at the other. In the
scuffle, your son struck Sir George and cut him over the eye. Then
something suddenly snapped, and your son, finding that he had the
coronet in his hands, rushed back, closed the window, ascended to
your room, and had just observed that the coronet had been twisted in
the struggle and was endeavouring to straighten it when you appeared
upon the scene."
"Is it possible?" gasped the banker.
"You then roused his anger by calling him names at a moment when he
felt that he had deserved your warmest thanks. He could not explain
the true state of affairs without betraying one who certainly
deserved little enough consideration at his hands. He took the more
chivalrous view, however, and preserved her secret."
"And that was why she shrieked and fainted when she saw the coronet,"
cried Mr. Holder. "Oh, my God! what a blind fool I have been! And his
asking to be allowed to go out for five minutes! The dear fellow
wanted to see if the missing piece were at the scene of the struggle.
How cruelly I have misjudged him!"
"When I arrived at the house," continued Holmes, "I at once went very
carefully round it to observe if there were any traces in the snow
which might help me. I knew that none had fallen since the evening
before, and also that there had been a strong frost to preserve
impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, but found it all
trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it, however, at the
far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stood and talked with a
man, whose round impressions on one side showed that he had a wooden
leg. I could even tell that they had been disturbed, for the woman
had run back swiftly to the door, as was shown by the deep toe and
light heel marks, while Wooden-leg had waited a little, and then had
gone away. I thought at the time that this might be the maid and her
sweetheart, of whom you had already spoken to me, and inquiry showed
it was so. I passed round the garden without seeing anything more
than random tracks, which I took to be the police; but when I got
into the stable lane a very long and complex story was written in the
snow in front of me.
"There was a double line of tracks of a booted man, and a second
double line which I saw with delight belonged to a man with naked
feet. I was at once convinced from what you had told me that the
latter was your son. The first had walked both ways, but the other
had run swiftly, and as his tread was marked in places over the
depression of the boot, it was obvious that he had passed after the
other. I followed them up and found they led to the hall window,
where Boots had worn all the snow away while waiting. Then I walked
to the other end, which was a hundred yards or more down the lane. I
saw where Boots had faced round, where the snow was cut up as though
there had been a struggle, and, finally, where a few drops of blood
had fallen, to show me that I was not mistaken. Boots had then run
down the lane, and another little smudge of blood showed that it was
he who had been hurt. When he came to the highroad at the other end,
I found that the pavement had been cleared, so there was an end to
that clue.
"On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, the
sill and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I could at
once see that someone had passed out. I could distinguish the outline
of an instep where the wet foot had been placed in coming in. I was
then beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what had occurred.
A man had waited outside the window; someone had brought the gems;
the deed had been overseen by your son; he had pursued the thief; had
struggled with him; they had each tugged at the coronet, their united
strength causing injuries which neither alone could have effected. He
had returned with the prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of
his opponent. So far I was clear. The question now was, who was the
man and who was it brought him the coronet?
"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Now, I knew that it was not you who had brought it down, so there
only remained your niece and the maids. But if it were the maids, why
should your son allow himself to be accused in their place? There
could be no possible reason. As he loved his cousin, however, there
was an excellent explanation why he should retain her secret--the
more so as the secret was a disgraceful one. When I remembered that
you had seen her at that window, and how she had fainted on seeing
the coronet again, my conjecture became a certainty.
"And who could it be who was her confederate? A lover evidently, for
who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which she must feel to
you? I knew that you went out little, and that your circle of friends
was a very limited one. But among them was Sir George Burnwell. I had
heard of him before as being a man of evil reputation among women. It
must have been he who wore those boots and retained the missing gems.
Even though he knew that Arthur had discovered him, he might still
flatter himself that he was safe, for the lad could not say a word
without compromising his own family.
"Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I took next. I
went in the shape of a loafer to Sir George's house, managed to pick
up an acquaintance with his valet, learned that his master had cut
his head the night before, and, finally, at the expense of six
shillings, made all sure by buying a pair of his cast-off shoes. With
these I journeyed down to Streatham and saw that they exactly fitted
the tracks."
"I saw an ill-dressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening," said
Mr. Holder.
"Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my man, so I came home and
changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had to play then,
for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avert scandal, and I
knew that so astute a villain would see that our hands were tied in
the matter. I went and saw him. At first, of course, he denied
everything. But when I gave him every particular that had occurred,
he tried to bluster and took down a life-preserver from the wall. I
knew my man, however, and I clapped a pistol to his head before he
could strike. Then he became a little more reasonable. I told him
that we would give him a price for the stones he held--?000 apiece.
That brought out the first signs of grief that he had shown. 'Why,
dash it all!' said he, 'I've let them go at six hundred for the
three!' I soon managed to get the address of the receiver who had
them, on promising him that there would be no prosecution. Off I set
to him, and after much chaffering I got our stones at 1000 pounds
apiece. Then I looked in upon your son, told him that all was right,
and eventually got to my bed about two o'clock, after what I may call
a really hard day's work."
"A day which has saved England from a great public scandal," said the
banker, rising. "Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, but you shall
not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Your skill has indeed
exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now I must fly to my dear
boy to apologise to him for the wrong which I have done him. As to
what you tell me of poor Mary, it goes to my very heart. Not even
your skill can inform me where she is now."
"I think that we may safely say," returned Holmes, "that she is
wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that
whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient
punishment."
THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES
"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock
Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph,
"it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations
that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to
observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in
these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to
draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have
given prominence not so much to the many causes c閘鑒res and
sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those
incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have
given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis
which I have made my special province."
"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved from
the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my
records."
"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, taking up a glowing cinder
with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which
was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather
than a meditative mood--"you have erred perhaps in attempting to put
colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining
yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning
from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about
the thing."
"It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter," I
remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which
I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend's
singular character.
"No, it is not selfishness or conceit," said he, answering, as was
his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. "If I claim full justice
for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing--a thing beyond
myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the
logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have
degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of
tales."
It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast
on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at Baker Street. A
thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-coloured houses, and
the opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the
