by L. E. Smart
"None. Nevaeh wrote those words."
"And they were posted today at Gravesend. Well, Mr. St. Clair, the clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the danger is over."
"But she must be alive, Ms. Holmes."
"Unless this is a clever forgery to put us on the wrong scent. The ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from her."
"No, no; it is, it is her very own writing!"
"Very well. It may, however, have been written on Monday and only posted today."
"That is possible."
"If so, much may have happened between."
"Oh, you must not discourage me, Ms. Holmes. I know that all is well with her. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I should know if evil came upon her. On the very day that I saw her last she cut herself in the bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room rushed upstairs instantly with the utmost certainty that something had happened. Do you think that I would respond to such a trifle and yet be ignorant of her death?"
"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a man may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. And in this letter you certainly have a very strong piece of evidence to corroborate your view. But if your wife is alive and able to write letters, why should she remain away from you?"
"I cannot imagine. It is unthinkable."
"And on Monday she made no remarks before leaving you?"
"No."
"And you were surprised to see her in Swandam Lane?"
"Very much so."
"Was the window open?"
"Yes."
"Then she might have called to you?"
"She might."
"She only, as I understand, gave an inarticulate cry?"
"Yes."
"A call for help, you thought?"
"Yes. She waved her hands."
"But it might have been a cry of surprise. Astonishment at the unexpected sight of you might cause her to throw up her hands?"
"It is possible."
"And you thought she was pulled back?"
"She disappeared so suddenly."
"She might have leaped back. You did not see anyone else in the room?"
"No, but this horrible woman confessed to having been there, and the Lascar was at the foot of the stairs."
"Quite so. Your wife, as far as you could see, had her ordinary clothes on?"
"But without her collar or tie. I distinctly saw her bare throat."
"Had she ever spoken of Swandam Lane?"
"Never."
"Had she ever showed any signs of having taken opium?"
"Never."
"Thank you, Mr. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about which I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little supper and then retire, for we may have a very busy day tomorrow."
A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a woman, however, who, when she had an unsolved problem upon her mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging her facts, looking at it from every point of view until she had either fathomed it or convinced herself that her data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that she was now preparing for an all-night sitting. She took off her coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from her bed and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these she constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which she perched herself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of her. In the dim light of the lamp I saw her sitting there, an old briar pipe between her lips, her eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from her, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon her strong-set aquiline features. So she sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so she sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between her lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night.
"Awake, Watson?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Game for a morning drive?"
"Certainly."
"Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-girl sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out." She chuckled to herself as she spoke, her eyes twinkled, and she seemed a different woman to the sombre thinker of the previous night.
As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly finished when Holmes returned with the news that the girl was putting in the horse.
"I want to test a little theory of mine," said she, pulling on her boots. "I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the key of the affair now."
"And where is it?" I asked, smiling.
"In the bathroom," she answered. "Oh, yes, I am not joking," she continued, seeing my look of incredulity. "I have just been there, and I have taken it out, and I have got it in this Gladstone bag. Come on, my girl, and we shall see whether it will not fit the lock."
We made our way downstairs as quietly as possible, and out into the bright morning sunshine. In the road stood our horse and trap, with the half-clad stable-girl waiting at the head. We both sprang in, and away we dashed down the London Road. A few country carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as some city in a dream.
"It has been in some points a singular case," said Holmes, flicking the horse on into a gallop. "I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all."
In town the earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily from their windows as we drove through the streets of the Surrey side. Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the river, and dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the right and found ourselves in Bow Street. Sherlock Holmes was well known to the force, and the two constables at the door saluted her. One of them held the horse's head while the other led us in.
"Who is on duty?" asked Holmes.
"Inspector Bradstreet, madam."
"Ah, Bradstreet, how are you?" A tall, stout official had come down the stone-flagged passage, in a peaked cap and frogged jacket. "I wish to have a quiet word with you, Bradstreet." "Certainly, Ms. Holmes. Step into my room here." It was a small, office-like room, with a huge ledger upon the table, and a telephone projecting from the wall. The inspector sat down at her desk.
"What can I do for you, Ms. Holmes?"
"I called about that beggarman, Boone -- the one who was charged with being concerned in the disappearance of Ms. Nevaeh St. Clair, of Lee."
"Yes. She was brought up and remanded for further inquiries."
"So I heard. You have her here?"
"In the cells."
"Is she quiet?"
"Oh, she gives no trouble. But she is a dirty scoundrel."
"Dirty?"
"Yes, it is all we can do to make her wash her hands, and her face is as black as a tinker's. Well, when once her case has been settled, she will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you saw her, you would agree with me that she needed it."
"I should like to see her 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." She 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 her," said the inspector. "Here it is!" She quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the doo
r and glanced through.
"She is asleep," said she. "You can see her very well."
We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with her face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. She was a middle-sized woman, coarsely clad as became her calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in her tattered coat. She was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which covered her 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 her eyes and forehead.
"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said the inspector.
"She certainly needs a wash," remarked Holmes. "I had an idea that she might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me." She opened the Gladstone bag as she spoke, and took out, to my astonishment, a very large bath-sponge.
"She! she! 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 her cut a much more respectable figure."
"Well, I don't know why not," said the inspector. "She doesn't look a credit to the Bow Street cells, does she?" She slipped her 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 her sponge, and then rubbed it twice vigorously across and down the prisoner's face.
"Let me introduce you," she shouted, "to Ms. Nevaeh St. Clair, of Lee, in the county of Kent."
Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The woman'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 her bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking woman, black-haired and smooth-skinned, rubbing her eyes and staring about her with sleepy bewilderment. Then suddenly realising the exposure, she broke into a scream and threw herself down with her face to the pillow.
"Great heavens!" cried the inspector, "it is, indeed, the missing woman. I know her from the photograph."
The prisoner turned with the reckless air of a woman who abandons herself to her destiny. "Be it so," said she. "And pray what am I charged with?"
"With making away with Ms. Nevaeh 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 Ms. Nevaeh 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 husband."
"It was not the husband; it was the children," groaned the prisoner. "God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their mother. My God! What an exposure! What can I do?"
Sherlock Holmes sat down beside her on the couch and patted her kindly on the shoulder.
"If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up," said she, "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 mother 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 actress 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 appropriate pants, 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, sometime later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ served upon me for 25 pounds. 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 2 pounds 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 woman knew my secret. She 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 woman about town. This lady, a Lascar, was well paid by me for her rooms, so that I knew that my secret was safe in her 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 700 pounds 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 2 pounds.
"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 husband knew that I had business in the City. He 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 husband was standing in the street, with his 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 her to prevent anyone from coming up to me. I heard his voice downstairs, but I knew that he could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off my clothes, pulled on those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and wig. Even a husband'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 Ms. Nevaeh St. Clair, I was arrested as her murderess.
"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 husband 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 him that he had no cause to fear."
"That note only reached him yesterday," said Holmes.
"Good God! What a week he must have spent!"
"The police have watched this Lascar," said Inspector Bradstreet, "and I can quite understand that she might find it difficult to post a letter unobserved. Probably she handed it to some sailor customer of her, 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 woman 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, Ms. 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."
VII - 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 her the compliments of the season. She was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within her 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.
