The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  185 This is the Scottish spelling, used in the Beeton’s and English book edition; in American editions, it is generally changed to the American version, “dumbfounded.” The Slang Dictionary gives the meaning as “to perplex, to beat soundly till not able to speak.”

  186 Because it is the Master, we can perhaps forgive the repetition of this phrase from Chapter V, for it had not yet become a cliché.

  187 The hotel servant whose job included boot-cleaning.

  188 A set of stables grouped around an open yard or alley. “Sherlock Mews,” known less interestingly as York Mews South in Watson’s Day, is just off Baker Street.

  189 Stangerson certainly did not need to refer to this telegram from time to time. Why, then, was it still in his possession at the time of his death, over a month after receipt? One assumes, by the way, that this refers to Jefferson Hope, whom Holmes later identifies as the object of Drebber’s search, and not to “J. H.” Watson. The latter suggestion is especially intriguing in light of Arthur Conan Doyle’s play Angels of Darkness, which places Dr. Watson in San Francisco, where he meets Jefferson Hope, who, with his dying breath, urges Watson to marry Lucy Ferrier!

  190 This is a familiar theme for Holmes, who has expressed similar sentiments elsewhere: “One should always look for a possible alternative and provide against it. It is the first rule of criminal investigation” (“Black Peter”); “When you follow two separate trains of thought, you will find some point of intersection which should approximate to the truth” (“Lady Frances Carfax”); “One drawback of an active mind is that one can always conceive alternative explanations, which would make our scent a false one” (“Thor Bridge”). Holmes here discusses the essence of the scientific method: One attempts to formulate a general principle that explains disparate phenomena or data points but retains the flexibility to discard the principle when an unexpected phenomenon or data point occurs. At the point of abandoning the prior principle, the scientist attempts to formulate a new general principle that explains the previously explained phenomena as well as the unexplained. Historian Thomas S. Kuhn examined the approach in detail in his seminal The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), calling the abandonment of the unworkable explanation a “paradigm shift.”

  191 Again, Holmes reveals another bit of his own personal dogma, articulated throughout the years: “Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring home” (“Boscombe Valley Mystery”); “The more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be” (“Red-Headed League”). In the context of the scientific method, it is the unusual data point that tests the viability of a theory.

  192 The Encylopædia Britannica (9th Ed.) puts the population of the London Police District, “Greater London,” at 4,764,312 in 1881.

  193 In an 1894 article in the Strand Magazine, Inspector Maurice Moser, late of Scotland Yard, complained:

  English handcuffs … are heavy unwieldy, awkward machines, which at the best of times, and under the most favorable circumstances are extremely difficult of application. They weigh over a pound, and have to be unlocked with a key in a manner not greatly differing from the operation of winding up the average eight-day clock, and fastened on to the prisoner’s wrists, how, the fates and good luck only know. This lengthy, difficult, and particularly disagreeable operation, with a prisoner struggling and fighting, is to a degree almost incredible. The prisoner practically has to be overpowered or to submit before he can be finally and certainly secured… . As the English handcuffs have only been formed for criminals who submitted quietly to necessity, it was considered expedient to find an instrument applicable to all cases. The perfected article comes from America … and, being lighter, less clumsy, and more easily concealed, finds general favour among the officers of Scotland Yard.

  Handcuff design had taken a major step forward with W. V. Adams’s 1862 patent of adjustable ratchets, which ensured a snug, secure fit for both thick-and thin-wristed captives. But Elliott Kimball, in “Origin and Evolution of G. Lestrade—2. A Matter of Mancinism,” informs us that automatically locking handcuffs of the kind Holmes displays here were not available prior to 1896, and Kimball concludes that the darbies in question were Holmes’s own (and only) mechanical invention. But Kimball appears incorrect: There were, in fact, numerous varieties of automatically locking cuffs in use, and the principal problem facing the arresting officer was often keeping the cuffs from locking before the cuffs were placed on the prisoner. This was dealt with elegantly in 1882, when E. D. Bean patented his first handcuff featuring a unique release button to solve the problem of premature locking. In his patent application, dated September 1, 1882, Bean stated:

  American handcuffs, recommended by Inspector Maurice Moser of Scotland Yard.

  Strand Magazine (1894)

  It often occurs in the attempt of a policeman to arrest and manacle an offender that the handcuff becomes in the struggle accidentally closed and locked before the officer can succeed in placing it about his prisoner’s wrist, and when this occurs it is a matter of time and difficulty to unlock the instrument, and more chance is afforded the offender to escape from the control of the officer. The object of this invention is to prevent accidental or premature locking of a handcuff by providing it with a lock containing an adjustable stop controlled by a readily accessible thumb-knob, by means of which the latch or bolt of the lock is restrained from engaging the hasp until such time as the officer shall release them by pressure upon such said thumb-piece.

  Holmes’s cuffs may have been an improvement on one of the dozens of designs then available.

  194 Lestrade’s somewhat dismissive statement may have been indicative of officers’ ambivalence about using the restraints. Former Scotland Yard Inspector Maurice Moser, note 193, above, wrote in 1894, “My personal experience of handcuffs is small, because I dislike them, for in addition to their clumsiness, I know that when I have laid my hands upon my man, it will be difficult for him to escape… . Regarding handcuffs generally, in my opinion not one of the inventions I have mentioned now in use is sufficiently easy of application.”

  PART

  II

  The Country of the Saints195

  195 In Jack Tracy’s definitive Conan Doyle and the Latter-day Saints (henceforth referred to as Saints), Tracy compares the descriptions in the chapters that follow with the realities of Mormon culture in Utah from 1846 to 1860. There is endless speculation about who might have written “Part II: The Country of the Saints,” which is clearly not narrated (nor written) by Watson. Tracy, for his part, concludes that Arthur Conan Doyle was the author. See note 241, below.

  CHAPTER

  I

  ON THE GREAT ALKALI PLAIN196

  IN THE CENTRAL portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilization. From the Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in the north to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolation and silence. Nor is Nature always in one mood throughout this grim district. It comprises snow-capped and lofty mountains, and dark and gloomy valleys. There are swift-flowing rivers which dash through jagged cañons; and there are enormous plains, which in winter are white with snow, and in summer are grey with the saline alkali dust. They all preserve, however, the common characteristics of barrenness, inhospitality, and misery.

  There are no inhabitants of this land of despair. A band of Pawnees or of Blackfeet may occasionally traverse it in order to reach other hunting-grounds, but the hardiest of the braves are glad to lose sight of those awesome plains, and to find themselves once more upon their prairies. The coyote skulks among the scrub, the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the clumsy grizzly bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and picks up such sustenance as it can amongst the rocks. These are the sole dwellers in the wilderness.

  In the whole world there can be no more dreary view th
an that from the northern slope of the Sierra Blanco.197 As far as the eye can reach stretches the great flat plain-land, all dusted over with patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the dwarfish chaparral bushes. On the extreme verge of the horizon lie a long chain of mountain peaks, with their rugged summits flecked with snow. In this great stretch of country there is no sign of life, nor of anything appertaining to life. There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, grey earth—above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence—complete and heart-subduing silence.

  It has been said there is nothing appertaining to life upon the broad plain. That is hardly true. Looking down from the Sierra Blanco, one sees a pathway traced out across the desert, which winds away and is lost in the extreme distance. It is rutted with wheels and trodden down by the feet of many adventurers. Here and there there are scattered white objects which glisten in the sun, and stand out against the dull deposit of alkali. Approach, and examine them! They are bones: some large and coarse, others smaller and more delicate. The former have belonged to oxen, and the latter to men. For fifteen hundred miles one may trace this ghastly caravan route by these scattered remains of those who had fallen by the wayside.

  Looking down on this very scene, there stood upon the fourth of May, eighteen hundred and forty-seven, a solitary traveller. His appearance was such that he might have been the very genius or demon of the region. An observer would have found it difficult to say whether he was nearer to forty or to sixty. His face was lean and haggard, and the brown parchment-like skin was drawn tightly over the projecting bones; his long, brown hair and beard were all flecked and dashed with white; his eyes were sunken in his head, and burned with an unnatural lustre; while the hand which grasped his rifle was hardly more fleshy than that of a skeleton. As he stood, he leaned upon his weapon for support, and yet his tall figure and the massive framework of his bones suggested a wiry and vigorous constitution. His gaunt face, however, and his clothes, which hung so baggily over his shriveled limbs, proclaimed what it was that gave him that senile and decrepit appearance. The man was dying—dying from hunger and from thirst.

  He had toiled painfully down the ravine, and on to this little elevation, in the vain hope of seeing some signs of water. Now the great salt plain stretched before his eyes, and the distant belt of savage mountains, without a sign anywhere of plant or tree, which might indicate the presence of moisture. In all that broad landscape there was no gleam of hope. North, and east, and west he looked with wild, questioning eyes, and then he realized that his wanderings had come to an end, and that there, on that barren crag, he was about to die. “Why not here, as well as in a feather bed, twenty years hence?” he muttered, as he seated himself in the shelter of a boulder.

  Before sitting down, he had deposited upon the ground his useless rifle, and also a large bundle tied up in a grey shawl, which he had carried slung over his right shoulder. It appeared to be somewhat too heavy for his strength, for in lowering it, it came down on the ground with some little violence. Instantly there broke from the grey parcel a little moaning cry, and from it there protruded a small, scared face, with very bright brown eyes, and two little speckled dimpled fists.

  “Dying from hunger.”

  Geo. Hutchinson, A Study in Scarlet (London: Ward, Lock Bowden, and Co., 1891)

  Scene from A Study in Scarlet (Great Britain: Samuelson Film Mfg. Co. Ltd., 1914), starring Winnifred Pearson as the young Lucy Ferrier and James LeFre as John Ferrier.

  “You’ve hurt me!” said a childish voice, reproachfully.

  “Have I, though?” the man answered penitently. “I didn’t go for to do it.” As he spoke he unwrapped the grey shawl and extricated a pretty little girl of about five years of age, whose dainty shoes and smart pink frock with its little linen apron, all bespoke a mother’s care. The child was pale and wan, but her healthy arms and legs showed that she had suffered less than her companion.

  “How is it now?” he answered anxiously, for she was still rubbing the towsy golden curls which covered the back of her head.

  “Kiss it and make it well,” she said, with perfect gravity, shoving the injured part up to him. “That’s what mother used to do. Where’s mother?”

  “Mother’s gone. I guess you’ll see her before long.”

  “Gone, eh!” said the little girl. “Funny, she didn’t say good-bye; she ’most always did if she was just goin’ over to Auntie’s for tea, and now she’s been away three days. Say, it’s awful dry, ain’t it? Ain’t there no water, nor nothing to eat?”

  “No, there ain’t nothing, dearie. You’ll just need to be patient awhile, and then you’ll be all right. Put your head up ag’in me like that, and then you’ll feel bullier.198 It ain’t easy to talk when your lips is like leather, but I guess I’d best let you know how the cards lie. What’s that you’ve got?”

  “Pretty things! fine things!” cried the little girl enthusiastically, holding up two glittering fragments of mica. “When we goes back to home I’ll give them to brother Bob.”

  “You’ll see prettier things than them soon,” said the man confidently. “You just wait a bit. I was going to tell you though—you remember when we left the river?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, we reckoned we’d strike another river soon, d’ye see. But there was somethin’ wrong; compasses, or map, or somethin’, and it didn’t turn up. Water ran out. Just except a little drop for the likes of you and—and—”

  “And you couldn’t wash yourself,” interrupted his companion gravely, staring up at his grimy visage.

  “No, nor drink. And Mr. Bender, he was the fust to go, and then Indian Pete, and then Mrs. McGregor, and then Johnny Hones, and then, dearie, your mother.”

  “Then mother’s a deader too,” cried the little girl, dropping her face in her pinafore and sobbing bitterly.

  “Yes, they all went except you and me. Then I thought there was some chance of water in this direction, so I heaved you over my shoulder and we tramped it together. It don’t seem as though we’ve improved matters. There’s an almighty small chance for us now!”

  “Do you mean that we are going to die too?” asked the child, checking her sobs, and raising her tear-stained face.

  “I guess that’s about the size of it.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?” she said, laughing gleefully. “You gave me such a fright. Why, of course, now as long as we die we’ll be with mother again.”

  “Yes, you will, dearie.”

  “And you too. I’ll tell her how awful good you’ve been. I’ll bet she meets us at the door of Heaven with a big pitcher of water, and a lot of buckwheat cakes, hot, and toasted on both sides, like Bob and me was fond of. How long will it be first?”

  “I don’t know—not very long.” The man’s eyes were fixed upon the northern horizon. In the blue vault of the heaven there had appeared three little specks which increased in size every moment, so rapidly did they approach. They speedily resolved themselves into three large brown birds, which circled over the heads of the two wanderers, and then settled upon some rocks which overlooked them. They were buzzards, the vultures of the West, whose coming is the forerunner of death.

  “Cocks and hens,” cried the little girl gleefully, pointing at their ill-omened forms, and clapping her hands to make them rise. “Say, did God make this country?”

  “In course He did,” said her companion, rather startled by this unexpected question.

  “He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri,” the little girl continued. “I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It’s not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees.”

  “What would ye think of offering up prayer?” the man asked diffidently.

  “It ain’t night yet,” she answered.

  “It don’t matter. It ain’t quite regular, but He won’t mind that, you bet. Yo
u say over them ones that you used to say every night in the wagon when we was on the Plains.”

  “Why don’t you say some yourself?” the child asked, with wondering eyes.

  “I disremember them,” he answered. “I hain’t said none since I was half the height o’ that gun. I guess it’s never too late. You say them out, and I’ll stand by and come in on the choruses.”

  “Then you’ll need to kneel down, and me too,” she said, laying the shawl out for that purpose. “You’ve got to put your hands up like this. It makes you feel kind o’ good.”

  It was a strange sight had there been anything but the buzzards to see it. Side by side on the narrow shawl knelt the two wanderers, the little prattling child and the reckless, hardened adventurer. Her chubby face and his haggard, angular visage were both turned up to the cloudless heaven in heartfelt entreaty to that dread Being with whom they were face to face, while the two voices—the one thin and clear, the other deep and harsh—united in the entreaty for mercy and forgiveness. The prayer finished, they resumed their seat in the shadow of the boulder until the child fell asleep, nestling upon the broad breast of her protector. He watched over her slumber for some time, but Nature proved to be too strong for him. For three days and three nights he had allowed himself neither rest nor repose. Slowly the eyelids drooped over the tired eyes, and the head sunk lower and lower upon the breast, until the man’s grizzled beard was mixed with the gold tresses of his companion, and both slept the same deep and dreamless slumber.

  “ ‘You’ve got to put your hands up like this. It makes you feel kind o’ good.’ ”

  Richard Gutschmidt, Späte Rache (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)

  Had the wanderer remained awake for another half hour a strange sight would have met his eyes. Far away on the extreme verge of the alkali plain there rose up a little spray of dust, very slight at first, and hardly to be distinguished from the mists of the distance, but gradually growing higher and broader until it formed a solid well-defined cloud. This cloud continued to increase in size until it became evident that it could only be raised by a great multitude of moving creatures. In more fertile spots the observer would have come to the conclusion that one of those great herds of bisons which graze upon the prairie land was approaching him. This was obviously impossible in these arid wilds. As the whirl of dust drew nearer to the solitary bluff upon which the two castaways were reposing, the canvas-covered tilts of wagons and the figures of armed horsemen began to show up through the haze, and the apparition revealed itself as being a great caravan upon its journey for the West. But what a caravan! When the head of it had reached the base of the mountains, the rear was not yet visible on the horizon. Right across the enormous plain stretched the straggling array, wagons and carts, men on horseback, and men on foot. Innumerable women who staggered along under burdens, and children who toddled beside the wagons or peeped out from under the white coverings. This was evidently no ordinary party of immigrants, but rather some nomad people who had been compelled from stress of circumstances to seek themselves a new country. There rose through the clear air a confused clattering and rumbling from this great mass of humanity, with the creaking of wheels and the neighing of horses. Loud as it was, it was not sufficient to rouse the two tired wayfarers above them.