The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  A heavy step was heard ascending the stair, with a great wheezing and rattling as from a man who was sorely put to it for breath. Once or twice he stopped, as though the climb were too much for him, but at last he made his way to our door and entered. His appearance corresponded to the sounds which we had heard. He was an aged man, clad in seafaring garb, with an old pea-jacket buttoned up to his throat. His back was bowed, his knees were shaky, and his breathing was painfully asthmatic. As he leaned upon a thick oaken cudgel his shoulders heaved in the effort to draw the air into his lungs. He had a coloured scarf round his chin, and I could see little of his face save a pair of keen dark eyes, overhung by bushy white brows and long grey side-whiskers. Altogether he gave me the impression of a respectable master mariner who had fallen into years and poverty.

  The South-West India Dock (ca. 1875).

  Victorian and Edwardian London

  “What is it, my man?” I asked.

  He looked about him in the slow methodical fashion of old age.

  “Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?” said he.

  “No; but I am acting for him. You can tell me any message you may have for him.”

  “It was to him himself I was to tell it,” said he.

  “But I tell you that I am acting for him. Was it about Mordecai Smith’s boat?”

  “Yes. I knows well where it is. An’ I knows where the men he is after are. An’ I knows where the treasure is. I knows all about it.”

  “Then tell me, and I shall let him know.”

  “It was to him I was to tell it,” he repeated, with the petulant obstinacy of a very old man.

  “Well, you must wait for him.”

  “No, no; I ain’t goin’ to lose a whole day to please no one. If Mr. Holmes ain’t here, then Mr. Holmes must find it all out for himself. I don’t care about the look of either of you, and I won’t tell a word.”

  He shuffled towards the door, but Athelney Jones got in front of him.

  “Wait a bit, my friend,” said he. “You have important information, and you must not walk off. We shall keep you, whether you like or not, until our friend returns.”

  The old man made a little run towards the door, but, as Athelney Jones put his broad back up against it, he recognized the uselessness of resistance.

  “ ‘Pretty sort o’ treatment this!’ he cried, stamping his stick.”

  F. H. Townsend, The Sign of Four (London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1903)

  “Pretty sort o’ treatment this!” he cried, stamping his stick. “I come here to see a gentleman, and you two, who I never saw in my life, seize me and treat me in this fashion!”

  “You will be none the worse,” I said. “We shall recompense you for the loss of your time. Sit over here on the sofa, and you will not have long to wait.”

  He came across sullenly enough and seated himself with his face resting on his hands. Jones and I resumed our cigars and our talk. Suddenly, however, Holmes’s voice broke in upon us.

  “I think that you might offer me a cigar too,” he said.

  We both started in our chairs. There was Holmes sitting close to us with an air of quiet amusement.

  “Holmes!” I exclaimed. “You here! But where is the old man?”

  “Here is the old man,” said he, holding out a heap of white hair. “Here he is—wig, whiskers, eyebrows, and all. I thought my disguise was pretty good, but I hardly expected that it would stand that test.”184

  “ ‘Here is the old man,’ said he, holding out a heap of white hair.”

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

  “Ah, you rogue!” cried Jones, highly delighted. “You would have made an actor and a rare one.185 You had the proper workhouse cough, and those weak legs of yours are worth ten pound a week. I thought I knew the glint of your eye, though. You didn’t get away from us so easily, you see.”

  “I have been working in that get-up all day,” said he, lighting his cigar. “You see, a good many of the criminal classes begin to know me—especially since our friend here took to publishing some of my cases186: so I can only go on the war-path under some simple disguise like this. You got my wire?”

  “Yes; that was what brought me here.”

  “How has your case prospered?”

  “It has all come to nothing. I have had to release two of my prisoners, and there is no evidence against the other two.”

  “Never mind. We shall give you two others in the place of them. But you must put yourself under my orders. You are welcome to all the official credit, but you must act on the lines that I point out. Is that agreed?”

  “Entirely, if you will help me to the men.”

  “Well, then, in the first place I shall want a fast police-boat—a steam launch—to be at the Westminster Stairs187 at seven o’clock.”

  “That is easily managed. There is always one about there,188 but I can step across the road and telephone189 to make sure.”

  “Then I shall want two staunch men in case of resistance.”

  “There will be two or three in the boat. What else?”

  “When we secure the men we shall get the treasure. I think that it would be a pleasure to my friend here to take the box round to the young lady to whom half of it rightfully belongs. Let her be the first to open it. Eh, Watson?”

  “It would be a great pleasure to me.”

  “Rather an irregular proceeding,” said Jones, shaking his head. “However, the whole thing is irregular, and I suppose we must wink at it. The treasure must afterwards be handed over to the authorities until after the official investigation.”

  “Certainly. That is easily managed. One other point. I should much like to have a few details about this matter from the lips of Jonathan Small himself. You know I like to work the details of my cases out. There is no objection to my having an unofficial interview with him, either here in my rooms or elsewhere, as long as he is efficiently guarded?”

  Song sheet for “Ring Up Britain” or John Bull’s Telephone (ca. 1880).

  1888 telephone, made by Western Electric and provided in London by the National Telephone Company.

  “Well, you are master of the situation. I have had no proof yet of the existence of this Jonathan Small. However, if you can catch him, I don’t see how I can refuse you an interview with him.”

  “That is understood, then?”

  “Perfectly. Is there anything else?”

  “Only that I insist upon your dining with us. It will be ready in half an hour. I have oysters190 and a brace of grouse,191 with something a little choice in white wines.192 Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper.”

  178 “I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are aware, Watson … ,” remarks Holmes in The Valley of Fear.

  179 A preparation believed to be capable of lowering the temperature of the blood. Victorians embraced patent medicines, of which there were over 1,500 by 1860. Many were innocuous, but an infants’ teething medication made up of treacle mixed with opium caused numerous deaths. Indeed, a number of patent medicines contained alcohol or opiates—otherwise, how would they have “worked”? Hostetter’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters, apart from prolonging life, cured depression; and, to purify your blood, you could try Vogeler’s Curative Compound—and then administer it to your livestock, too. The advertising claims of many patent medicines defy modern belief.

  John Hall, in “The Lady of the House,” contends that this remark by Mrs. Hudson supports the view that she was of an older generation—at least, older than Holmes, although there is no direct evidence on the point. “Positively motherly in fact,” is Hall’s description of the landlady.

  Victorian patent medicine (1895). Was this a seven-per-cent solution? Victorian Advertisments

  180 Is this a reference to Holmes’s rivals? Or to the Irregulars?

  181 Richmond was a favourite summer-resort of Londoners, and the stretch of the Thames between Richmond and Hampton Court was especial
ly popular for short boating excursions. Extra trains to both destinations ran at reduced fares (and with special extended-return privileges) throughout the season.

  182 Could Holmes actually have intended to solicit information with this advertisement? Charles B. Stephens argues that, having said nothing to Watson to prepare him for visitors and failing to provide Watson with the large reward offered, Holmes must have anticipated no answers to the advertisement. Rather, Stephens believes, Holmes was sure that the appearance of the advertisement, which included his address, would alert Small to his involvement in the case and flush the fugitives, whom he could then catch as they emerged from their hiding place.

  If Stephens interprets this action correctly, then Holmes’s reliance on the address to achieve the desired result indicates that Holmes believed that professional criminals were involved in the affair—perhaps Moriarty and his gang—and that they would know Holmes’s address. Certainly neither Small nor Smith would have any knowledge of Sherlock Holmes and his address. It should be kept in mind that at the time of the events recorded here, Watson had only published A Study in Scarlet (1887), and so the reading public knew nothing of the later-famous 221B Baker Street lodgings.

  Earlier, Watson himself suggested running an advertisement to locate the Aurora (see note 161, above, and text accompanying). Holmes rejected the idea, stating that an advertisement would lead “[o]ur men [to] know that the chase was hot at their heels” and flee. On reflection, he evidently realised the merit of Watson’s idea and decided that flight was exactly the result he needed. Stephens applauds Holmes’s bold gamble and criticises Watson for his lack of similar praise but fails to credit the feelings Watson must have harboured about Holmes’s earlier, somewhat churlish dismissal of Watson’s suggestion.

  183 Near the East and West India Docks, Poplar was a borough between Limehouse and West Ham.

  184 “It is astonishing,” remarks D. Martin Dakin, “that Watson, as on other occasions, failed to recognise at close range a man whom he knew so well, especially as he had actually seen him start out in the same seafaring garb a short while before.” Dakin suggests that Watson did in fact see through Holmes’s disguises, but pretended to be taken in, in order to spare his feelings.

  185 Compare Watson’s remark from “A Scandal in Bohemia”: “The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.” The suggestion that Holmes was an actor in his youth is taken up in detail by William S. Baring-Gould, who proposes that Holmes toured America with the Sasanoff Shakespeare Company from 1879 to 1880. See Chronological Table and Theatrical Mr. Holmes, by Michael Harrison.

  186 Of course, only one case had actually been published before The Sign of Four—namely, A Study in Scarlet (1887). William S. Baring-Gould comments, “It is possible that Holmes here confused the one published case with the number of cases Watson had undoubtedly chronicled by this time.” However, H. B. Williams suggests that Holmes must have been referring to some of the cases that may have appeared in small pamphlet form and been lost since. “Whatever the medium,” Williams concludes, “its circulation was such that the criminal and lower classes of London were familiar with Holmes and his methods.” See also note 182.

  187 Probably a reference to Westminster Pier, a public pier located on the Victoria Embankment just below Westminster Bridge. Watson may have misspoken, conflating the Pier with the Whitehall Stairs, which are situated some two hundred yards down the Thames.

  188 The Thames Police or, more formally, the Thames Division of the Metropolitan Police, founded in 1839, patrolled the river in a fleet of rowing boats that, by 1898, numbered twenty-eight; the boats were still in use in the 1920s. (The police did not acquire motorboats until 1910.) Under the command of Superintendent George Steed, the force consisted in 1887 of 44 inspectors, 4 sergeants, and 124 constables, according to Charles Dickens, Jr. (Dictionary of the Thames, 1887). These numbers had increased 10 percent by the following year. Descriptions of the uniforms of “Wet Bobs” vary, with all sources agreeing that the men wore a blue reefer coat, or double-breasted jacket—removed for rowing—and loose-fitting trousers. There was a variety of headgear: a hard glazed hat, a peaked yachtsman’s cap, or a straw hat. The officers decorated their collars with a nickel anchor. Dickens, Jr., writes: “Both night and day several boats patrol the river in different parts; a fresh boat starting from the station hard every two hours to relieve the one whose watch is up. Each boat contains an inspector and two men, the latter of whom do the rowing, and a careful system of supervision is maintained by which the passing of each boat is checked at varying points. Two steam launches are also employed”; by 1898, eight more steam launches had been added. The work was dangerous, and between 1857 and 1901 at least two officers drowned in the line of duty.

  189 Col. E. Ennalls Berl points out the absence of a telephone at 221B Baker Street at this time. Not until the events of “The Retired Colourman” (generally dated 1899—see Chronological Table) is there a record of a telephone at the Baker Street lodgings. Although one historian of Scotland Yard records that as late as 1898, neither the Yard nor any of the two hundred Metropolitan Police stations had telephones, one senior Scotland Yard official confirms that the Yard had telephone service from 1887 on.

  190 Julia Carlson Rosenblatt and Frederic H. Sonnenschmidt, the latter then Culinary Dean of the Culinary Institute of America, write, in Dining with Sherlock Holmes, “[T]he cuisine of Victorian England was fairly overrun by this delicious mollusk—but only in season. By law the availability of oysters was restricted to the period of September through April, or, by convenient mnemonic, the months with an ‘r’ in them.”

  191 Fletcher Pratt, in “The Gastronomic Holmes,” points out that one brace of grouse would be insufficient for three men, one of whom was Watson, “who did nothing to preserve his figure.” He concludes that there were three brace, and “they could only have been served in the classic manner prescribed by both Brillat-Savarin and Escoffier—roasted with the breasts only served, accompanied by a bread sauce, potato chips and a gravy made from the unused portions of the birds.” A “brace” refers to a pair of grouse, usually 8 to 10 ounces in size.

  Rosenblatt and Sonnenschmidt point out that Holmes referred to himself as “housekeeper” and Mrs. Hudson must have had the night off. “But having been occupied with his investigation all day, Holmes could not have done much in advance of his return… . Holmes merely stopped at a shop on his way home and purchased the grouse already cooked.” Thus, they suggest “Cold Roast Grouse with Cold Cuts.”

  192 Fletcher Pratt suspects “a Montrachet with a domaine bottling,” while Jørgen Cold, in “What Did Sherlock Holmes Drink?,” remarks, “There is hardly any doubt that a good white wine in London at that time must have been Rhein wine and supposedly a Steinberger Kabinett.” Rosenblatt and Sonnenschmidt comment, “With this dish, English gourmets usually prefer a mixture of light and dark beer. A Frenchman would usually accompany it with champagne or chablis. Holmes’s choice of white wine on this occasion may reflect his French ancestry.”

  CHAPTER

  X

  THE END OF THE ISLANDER

  OUR MEAL WAS a merry one. Holmes could talk exceedingly well when he chose, and that night he did choose. He appeared to be in a state of nervous exaltation. I have never known him so brilliant. He spoke on a quick succession of subjects—on miracle plays,193 on mediaeval pottery,194 on Stradivarius violins,195 on the Buddhism of Ceylon,196 and on the warships of the future—handling each as though he had made a special study of it. His bright humour marked the reaction from his black depression of the preceding days. Athelney Jones proved to be a sociable soul in his hours of relaxation and faced his dinner with the air of a bon vivant. For myself, I felt elated at the thought that we were nearing the end of our task, and I caught something of Holmes’s gaiety. None of us alluded during dinner to the cause which had brought us together.

  When the cloth was cleared, H
olmes glanced at his watch and filled up three glasses with port.197

  “One bumper,”198 said he, “to the success of our little expedition. And now it is high time we were off. Have you a pistol, Watson?”

  “I have my old service-revolver in my desk.”

  “You had best take it, then. It is well to be prepared. I see that the cab is at the door. I ordered it for half-past six.”

  It was a little past seven before we reached the Westminster wharf and found our launch awaiting us. Holmes eyed it critically.

  “Is there anything to mark it as a police-boat?”

  “Yes; that green lamp at the side.”

  “Then take it off.”

  The small change was made, we stepped on board, and the ropes were cast off. Jones, Holmes, and I sat in the stern. There was one man at the rudder, one to tend the engines, and two burly police-inspectors forward.

  “Where to?” asked Jones.

  “To the Tower. Tell them to stop opposite to Jacobson’s Yard.”

  Our craft was evidently a very fast one. We shot past the long lines of loaded barges as though they were stationary. Holmes smiled with satisfaction as we overhauled a river steamer and left her behind us.

  “We ought to be able to catch anything on the river,” he said.

  “Well, hardly that. But there are not many launches to beat us.”

  “We shall have to catch the Aurora, and she has a name for being a clipper. I will tell you how the land lies, Watson. You recollect how annoyed I was at being baulked by so small a thing?”

  “Yes.

  “Well, I gave my mind a thorough rest by plunging into a chemical analysis. One of our greatest statesmen has said that a change of work is the best rest.199 So it is. When I had succeeded in dissolving the hydrocarbon200 which I was at work at, I came back to our problem of the Sholtos, and thought the whole matter out again. My boys had been up the river and down the river without result. The launch was not at any landing-stage or wharf, nor had it returned. Yet it could hardly have been scuttled to hide their traces, though that always remained as a possible hypothesis if all else failed. I knew that this man Small had a certain degree of low cunning, but I did not think him capable of anything in the nature of delicate finesse. That is usually a product of higher education. I then reflected that since he had certainly been in London some time—as we had evidence that he maintained a continual watch over Pondicherry Lodge—he could hardly leave at a moment’s notice, but would need some little time, if it were only a day, to arrange his affairs. That was the balance of probability, at any rate.”