The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  “Death from some powerful vegetable alkaloid,”119 I answered, “some strychnine-like substance120 which would produce tetanus.”

  “That was the idea which occurred to me the instant I saw the drawn muscles of the face. On getting into the room I at once looked for the means by which the poison had entered the system. As you saw, I discovered a thorn which had been driven or shot with no great force into the scalp. You observe that the part struck was that which would be turned towards the hole in the ceiling if the man were erect in his chair. Now examine this thorn.”

  I took it up gingerly and held it in the light of the lantern. It was long, sharp, and black, with a glazed look near the point as though some gummy substance had dried upon it. The blunt end had been trimmed and rounded off with a knife.

  “Is that an English thorn?” he asked.

  “No, it certainly is not.”

  “With all these data you should be able to draw some just inference. But here are the regulars, so the auxiliary forces may beat a retreat.”

  As he spoke, the steps which had been coming nearer sounded loudly on the passage, and a very stout, portly man in a grey suit strode heavily into the room. He was red-faced, burly, and plethoric, with a pair of very small, twinkling eyes, which looked keenly out from between swollen and puffy pouches. He was closely followed by an inspector in uniform and by the still palpitating Thaddeus Sholto.

  “Here’s a business!” he cried, in a muffled, husky voice. “Here’s a pretty business! But who are all these? Why, the house seems to be as full as a rabbit-warren!”

  “I think you must recollect me, Mr. Athelney Jones,” said Holmes quietly.

  “Why, of course I do!” he wheezed. “It’s Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the theorist. Remember you! I’ll never forget how you lectured us all on causes and inferences and effects in the Bishopgate121 jewel case. It’s true you set us on the right track; but you’ll own now that it was more by good luck than good guidance.”

  “It was a piece of very simple reasoning.”

  “Oh, come, now, come! Never be ashamed to own up. But what is all this? Bad business! Bad business! Stern facts here—no room for theories. How lucky that I happened to be out at Norwood over another case! I was at the station when the message arrived. What d’you think the man died of?”

  “Oh, this is hardly a case for me to theorize over,” said Holmes dryly.

  “No, no. Still, we can’t deny that you hit the nail on the head sometimes. Dear me! Door locked, I understand. Jewels worth half a million missing. How was the window?”

  “Fastened; but there are steps on the sill.”

  “Well, well, if it was fastened the steps could have nothing to do with the matter. That’s common sense. Man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing. Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at times. Just step outside, Sergeant,122 and you, Mr. Sholto. Your friend can remain. What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off with the treasure? How’s that?”

  “On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside.”

  “Hum! There’s a flaw there. Let us apply common sense to the matter. This Thaddeus Sholto was with his brother; there was a quarrel: so much we know. The brother is dead and the jewels are gone. So much also we know. No one saw the brother from the time Thaddeus left him. His bed had not been slept in. Thaddeus is evidently in a most disturbed state of mind. His appearance is—well, not attractive. You see that I am weaving my web round Thaddeus. The net begins to close upon him.”

  “You are not quite in possession of the facts yet,” said Holmes. “This splinter of wood, which I have every reason to believe to be poisoned, was in the man’s scalp where you still see the mark; this card, inscribed as you see it, was on the table, and beside it lay this rather curious stone-headed instrument. How does all that fit into your theory?”

  “Confirms it in every respect,” said the fat detective pompously. “House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if this splinter be poisonous, Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use of it as any other man. The card is some hocus-pocus—a blind, as like as not. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is a hole in the roof.”

  With great activity, considering his bulk, he sprang up the steps and squeezed through into the garret, and immediately afterwards we heard his exulting voice proclaiming that he had found the trap-door.

  “He can find something,” remarked Holmes, shrugging his shoulders; “he has occasional glimmerings of reason. Il n’y a pas des sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l’esprit!”123

  “You see!” said Athelney Jones, reappearing down the steps again; “facts are better than theories, after all. My view of the case is confirmed. There is a trap-door communicating with the roof, and it is partly open.”

  “It was I who opened it.”

  “Oh, indeed! You did notice it, then?” He seemed a little crestfallen at the discovery. “Well, whoever noticed it, it shows how our gentleman got away. Inspector!”

  “Yes, sir,” from the passage.

  “Ask Mr. Sholto to step this way.—Mr. Sholto, it is my duty to inform you that anything which you may say will be used against you. I arrest you in the Queen’s name as being concerned in the death of your brother.”

  “ ‘Mr. Sholto, it is my duty to inform you that anything which you may say will be used against you.’ ”

  Richard Gutschmidt, Das Zeichen der Vier (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)

  “There, now! Didn’t I tell you!” cried the poor little man, throwing out his hands and looking from one to the other of us.

  “Don’t trouble yourself about it, Mr. Sholto,” said Holmes; “I think that I can engage to clear you of the charge.”

  “Don’t promise too much, Mr. Theorist, don’t promise too much!” snapped the detective. “You may find it a harder matter than you think.”

  “Not only will I clear him, Mr. Jones, but I will make you a free present of the name and description of one of the two people who were in this room last night. His name, I have every reason to believe, is Jonathan Small. He is a poorly educated man, small, active, with his right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away upon the inner side. His left boot has a coarse, square-toed sole, with an iron band round the heel. He is a middle-aged man, much sunburned, and has been a convict. These few indications may be of some assistance to you, coupled with the fact that there is a good deal of skin missing from the palm of his hand. The other man—”

  “Ah! the other man?” asked Athelney Jones in a sneering voice, but impressed none the less, as I could easily see, by the precision of the other’s manner.

  “Is a rather curious person,” said Sherlock Holmes, turning upon his heel. “I hope before very long to be able to introduce you to the pair of them. A word with you, Watson.”

  He led me out to the head of the stair.

  “This unexpected occurrence,” he said, “has caused us rather to lose sight of the original purpose of our journey.”

  “I have just been thinking so,” I answered; “it is not right that Miss Morstan should remain in this stricken house.”

  “No. You must escort her home. She lives with Mrs. Cecil Forrester, in Lower Camberwell,124 so it is not very far. I will wait for you here if you will drive out again. Or perhaps you are too tired?”

  “By no means. I don’t think I could rest until I know more of this fantastic business. I have seen something of the rough side of life, but I give you my word that this quick succession of strange surprises to-night has shaken my nerve completely. I should like, however, to see the matter through with you, now that I have got so far.”

  “Your presence will be of great service to me,” he answered. “We shall work the case out independently and leave this fellow Jones to exult over any mare’s-nest which he may choose to construct
. When you have dropped Miss Morstan, I wish you to go on to No. 3 Pinchin Lane, down near the water’s edge at Lambeth.125 The third house on the right-hand side is a bird-stuffer’s; Sherman is the name. You will see a weasel holding a young rabbit in the window. Knock old Sherman up and tell him, with my compliments, that I want Toby126 at once. You will bring Toby back in the cab with you.”

  “A dog, I suppose.”

  “Yes, a queer mongrel, with a most amazing power of scent. I would rather have Toby’s help than that of the whole detective force of London.”

  “I shall bring him then,” said I. “It is one now. I ought to be back before three if I can get a fresh horse.”

  “And I,” said Holmes, “shall see what I can learn from Mrs. Bernstone and from the Indian servant, who, Mr. Thaddeus tells me, sleeps in the next garret.127 Then I shall study the great Jones’s methods and listen to his not too delicate sarcasms. ‘Wir sind gewohnt das die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen.’128 Goethe is always pithy.”

  111 A “snib” is a lock.

  112 Then a region of more than 10 million, located in west Africa between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, it was comprised of French Senegambia (the colony called Senegal), English Senegambia (the colony of Gambia and the islands of Los), Portuguese Senegambia, and various independent states. Today it encompasses Senegal and The Gambia, the latter an English-speaking Muslim country with a Catholic minority.

  113 Donald A. Redmond, in “Stop Changing Your Mind, Watson!,” points out the inconsistency of this description with the observation two paragraphs later that “[t]he floor was covered thickly with the prints of a naked foot.”

  114 Newt and Lillian Williams wonder: “What bird has ‘deep-set’ eyes?”

  115 A distillation from wood tar then used to treat wood; also used in medicine, both in Victorian times and today, as an expectorant for chronic bronchitis. Railroad ties are treated with creosote, a source of the distinctive and not unpleasing smell at train tracks.

  116 The “Rule of Three” is a name for the rule of fractions that if a/b=c/d, then a times d equals b times c, and if three of the values of a, b, c, and d are known, the fourth may be determined. For example, if 2/3=x/27, then x=2 times 27 (54) divided by 3, or 18, so that 2/3=18/27.

  117 When the body’s energy reserves are depleted, certain proteins in the muscles lose their extendability, and the muscles become stiff. This condition is commonly referred to as rigor mortis. The time a corpse requires to enter rigor mortis depends on how quickly the body chills (the process is slower at lower room temperatures) and the amount of stress the person experiences before death.

  118 A facial expression caused by a spasm of the facial muscles, characterised by raised eyebrows and grinning distortion of the face (see note 120, below). It occurs frequently in cases of tetanus.

  119 See A Study in Scarlet, note 33.

  120 George B. Koelle suggests several possibilities, including strophanthin (a cardiac drug similar to digitalis) and two central nervous system stimulants, picrotoxin and strychnine. According to Koelle, strychnine itself is the most logical choice. He notes that it “would probably be rapidly absorbed from a wound. Following a series of violent convulsions, it produces death by tonic respiratory paralysis. One of its most striking features is the risus sardonicus, or sardonic grin, which may remain on the face of the victim.” It is curious that Watson himself absent-mindedly prescribed strychnine to Thaddeus Sholto (see note 104, above).

  121 Bishopsgate Street, called “Bishopgate” Street in many older publications, is in Bethnal Green, and Bishopsgate Station is a station of the London Underground. In Holmes’s time, it was actually bifurcated in common reference into “Bishopsgate Street Within” (the City) and “Bishopsgate Street Without” and was the main northern thoroughfare out of the City.

  122 Donald A. Redmond points out that Watson’s characterisation of the police officer as a “sergeant” is either in error or unexplained, for nine paragraphs earlier, Watson recounts how Jones arrived “followed by an inspector in uniform.” Eight paragraphs later, Watson records Jones as referring to the “inspector,” but in Chapter VII, the man is described by Watson as a “weary-looking police sergeant.” There is no indication of the presence of two separate men.

  123 Drawn from Les Maximes by François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), this is translated as: “There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit.” The saying appears in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1741 and 1745.

  124 See A Study in Scarlet, note 175.

  125 Situated at the foot of Westminster Bridge, Lambeth is described by Augustus J. C. Hare, writing in 1884, as “densely populated, and covered with a labyrinth of featureless streets and poverty-stricken courts.”

  126 For Victorian readers, observes Donald Girard Jewell, in A Canonical Dog’s Life, the name Toby would instantly call to mind the live dog who appeared, with elaborate neck ruffle, in the Punch and Judy shows, and was trained “to bark or grab Punch’s ample proboscis on cue.” Traditionally a bull terrier, Toby sometimes took the form of a puppet or stuffed dog. According to an interview with an unnamed nineteenth-century London Punchman, conducted by Henry Mayhew, at one time three live singing dogs were featured simultaneously: “ … a great hit it war. It made a surprising alteration in the exhibition, for till lately the performance was called Punch and Toby as well… . but we can’t get three dogs to do it now. The mother of them dogs, ye see, was a singer, and had two pups what was singers too” (“The Domination of Fancy or Punch’s Opera,” in London Labour and the London Poor, 1851). The Punchman noted that the dogs also were trained to smoke pipes.

  127 But, as Donald A. Redmond observes, Holmes apparently failed to do so—in Chapter VII he refers to the butler as “Lal Rao, whom we have not seen.”

  128 From Goethe’s Faust, Part I (1808), this is translated by Bayard Taylor (in 1870–1871) as “We are used to see that Man despises what he never comprehends.” Madeleine B. Stern proposes that Holmes owned a set of the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), critic, journalist, painter, theatre manager, statesman, educationalist, natural philosopher, and perhaps the last European to emulate the great personalities of the Renaissance.

  CHAPTER

  VII

  THE EPISODE OF THE BARREL

  THE POLICE HAD brought a cab with them, and in this I escorted Miss Morstan back to her home. After the angelic fashion of women, she had borne trouble with a calm face as long as there was someone weaker than herself to support, and I had found her bright and placid by the side of the frightened housekeeper. In the cab, however, she first turned faint and then burst into a passion of weeping—so sorely had she been tried by the adventures of the night. She has told me since that she thought me cold and distant upon that journey. She little guessed the struggle within my breast, or the effort of self-restraint which held me back. My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as my hand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalities of life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as had this one day of strange experiences. Yet there were two thoughts which sealed the words of affection upon my lips. She was weak and helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at a disadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time. Worse still, she was rich. If Holmes’s researches were successful, she would be an heiress. Was it fair, was it honourable, that a half-pay surgeon should take such advantage of an intimacy which chance had brought about? Might she not look upon me as a mere vulgar fortune-seeker? I could not bear to risk that such a thought should cross her mind. This Agra treasure intervened like an impassable barrier between us.

  It was nearly two o’clock when we reached Mrs. Cecil Forrester’s. The servants had retired hours ago, but Mrs. Forrester had been so interested by the strange message which Miss Morstan had received that she had sat up in the hope of her return. She opened the door herself, a middle-aged, graceful woman, and it gave me joy to
see how tenderly her arm stole round the other’s waist and how motherly was the voice in which she greeted her.129 She was clearly no mere paid dependant but an honoured friend. I was introduced, and Mrs. Forrester earnestly begged me to step in and tell her our adventures. I explained, however, the importance of my errand and promised faithfully to call and report any progress which we might make with the case. As we drove away I stole a glance back, and I still seem to see that little group on the step—the two graceful, clinging figures, the half-opened door, the hall-light shining through stained glass,130 the barometer, and the bright stair-rods.131 It was soothing to catch even that passing glimpse of a tranquil English home in the midst of the wild, dark business which had absorbed us.

  Barometers.

  Victorian Shopping (Harrod’s 1895 Catalogue)

  And the more I thought of what had happened, the wilder and darker it grew. I reviewed the whole extraordinary sequence of events as I rattled on through the silent, gas-lit streets. There was the original problem: that at least was pretty clear now. The death of Captain Morstan, the sending of the pearls, the advertisement, the letter—we had had light upon all those events. They had only led us, however, to a deeper and far more tragic mystery. The Indian treasure, the curious plan found among Morstan’s baggage, the strange scene at Major Sholto’s death, the rediscovery of the treasure immediately followed by the murder of the discoverer, the very singular accompaniments to the crime, the footsteps, the remarkable weapons, the words upon the card, corresponding with those upon Captain Morstan’s chart—here was indeed a labyrinth in which a man less singularly endowed than my fellow-lodger might well despair of ever finding the clue.

  Pinchin Lane was a row of shabby, two-storied brick houses in the lower quarter of Lambeth.132 I had to knock for some time at No. 3 before I could make any impression. At last, however, there was the glint of a candle behind the blind, and a face looked out at the upper window.