“ ‘Fritz! Fritz!’31 she cried in English, ‘remember your promise after the last time. You said it should not be again. He will be silent! Oh, he will be silent!’
“ ‘You are mad, Elise!’ he shouted, struggling to break away from her. ‘You will be the ruin of us. He has seen too much. Let me pass, I say!’ He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the window, cut at me with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and was hanging with my fingers in the window slot and my hands across the sill,32 when his blow fell. I was conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the garden below.
“I was shaken, but not hurt by the fall; so I picked myself up, and rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I understood that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly, however, as I ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me. I glanced down at my hand, which was throbbing painfully, and then, for the first time, saw that my thumb had been cut off, and that the blood was pouring from my wound. I endeavoured to tie my handkerchief round it, but there came a sudden buzzing in my ears, and next moment I fell in a dead faint among the rose-bushes.
“He cut at me.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1892
“How long I remained unconscious I cannot tell. It must have been a very long time, for the moon had sunk, and a bright morning was breaking when I came to myself. My clothes were all sodden with dew, and my coat-sleeve was drenched with blood from my wounded thumb.33 The smarting of it recalled in an instant all the particulars of my night’s adventure, and I sprang to my feet with the feeling that I might hardly yet be safe from my pursuers. But, to my astonishment, when I came to look round me, neither house nor garden were to be seen. I had been lying in an angle of the hedge close by the highroad, and just a little lower down was a long building, which proved, upon my approaching it, to be the very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night. Were it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed during those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream.
“Half dazed, I went into the station, and asked about the morning train. There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The same porter was on duty, I found, as had been there when I arrived. I inquired of him whether he had ever heard of Colonel Lysander Stark. The name was strange to him. Had he observed a carriage the night before waiting for me? No, he had not. Was there a police-station anywhere near? There was one about three miles off.
“It was too far for me to go, weak and ill as I was. I determined to wait until I got back to town before telling my story to the police. It was a little past six when I arrived, so I went first to have my wound dressed, and then the doctor was kind enough to bring me along here. I put the case into your hands, and shall do exactly what you advise.”
We both sat in silence for some little time after listening to this extraordinary narrative. Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down from the shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he placed his cuttings.
“Here is an advertisement which will interest you,” said he. “It appeared in all the papers about a year ago. Listen to this:—
Lost, on the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged 26, a hydraulic engineer. Left his lodgings at ten o’clock at night, and has not been heard of since. Was dressed in, &c., &c.
“Ha! That represents the last time that the Colonel needed to have his machine overhauled, I fancy.”
“Good heavens!” cried my patient. “then that explains what the girl said.”
“Undoubtedly. It is quite clear that the Colonel was a cool and desperate man, who was absolutely determined that nothing should stand in the way of his little game, like those out-and-out pirates who will leave no survivor from a captured ship. Well, every moment now is precious, so, if you feel equal to it, we shall go down to Scotland Yard at once as a preliminary to starting for Eyford.”
Some three hours or so afterwards we were all in the train together, bound from Reading to the little Berkshire village. There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard, a plain-clothes man, and myself. Bradstreet had spread an ordnance map34 of the county out upon the seat, and was busy with his compasses drawing a circle with Eyford for its centre.
“There you are,” said he. “That circle is drawn at a radius of ten miles from the village. The place we want must be somewhere near that line. You said ten miles, I think, sir.”
“It was an hour’s good drive.”
“And you think that they brought you back all that way when you were unconscious?”
“They must have done so. I have a confused memory, too, of having been lifted and conveyed somewhere.”
“What I cannot understand,” said I, “is why they should have spared you when they found you lying fainting in the garden. Perhaps the villain was softened by the woman’s entreaties.”
“I hardly think that likely. I never saw a more inexorable face in my life.”
“Oh, we shall soon clear up all that,” said Bradstreet. “Well, I have drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon it the folk that we are in search of are to be found.”
“I think I could lay my finger on it,” said Holmes, quietly.
“Really, now!” cried the Inspector, “you have formed your opinion! Come now, we shall see who agrees with you. I say it is south, for the country is more deserted there.”
“And I say east,” said my patient.
“I am for west,” remarked the plain-clothes man. “There are several quiet little villages up there.”
“And I am for north,” said I; “because there are no hills there, and our friend says that he did not notice the carriage go up any.”
“Come,” cried the Inspector, laughing; “it’s a very pretty diversity of opinion. We have boxed the compass35 among us. Who do you give your casting vote to?”
“You are all wrong.”
“But we can’t all be.”
“Oh yes, you can. This is my point.” He placed his finger in the centre of the circle. “This is where we shall find them.”
“But the twelve-mile drive?” gasped Hatherley.
“Six out and six back. Nothing simpler. You say yourself that the horse was fresh and glossy when you got in. How could it be that, if it had gone twelve miles over heavy roads?”
“Indeed, it is a likely ruse enough,” observed Bradstreet, thoughtfully. “Of course there can be no doubt as to the nature of this gang.”
“None at all,” said Holmes. “They are coiners36 on a large scale, and have used the machine to form the amalgam37 which has taken the place of silver.”
“We have known for some time that a clever gang was at work,” said the inspector.
“They have been turning out half-crowns by the thousand. We even traced them as far as Reading, but could get no farther; for they had covered their traces in a way that showed that they were very old hands. But now, thanks to this lucky chance, I think that we have got them right enough.”
But the Inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not destined to fall into the hands of justice. As we rolled into Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood, and hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape.
“A house on fire?” asked Bradstreet, as the train steamed off again on its way.
“Yes, sir!” said the station-master.
“When did it break out?”
“I hear that it was during the night, sir, but it has got worse, and the whole place is in a blaze.”
“Whose house is it?”
“Dr. Becher’s.”
“Tell me,” broke in the engineer, “is Dr. Becher a German, very thin, with a long sharp nose?”
The station-master laughed heartily. “No, sir, Dr. Becher is an Englishman, and there isn’t a man in the parish who has a better-lined waistcoat. But he has a gentleman staying with him, a patient, as I understand, who is a foreigner, and
he looks as if a little good Berkshire beef would do him no harm.”
The station-master had not finished his speech before we were all hastening in the direction of the fire. The road topped a low hill, and there was a great widespread white-washed building in front of us, spouting fire at every chink and window, while in the garden in front three fire-engines were vainly striving to keep the flames under.
“A house on fire?”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1892
“That’s it!” cried Hatherley, in intense excitement. “There is the gravel drive, and there are the rose-bushes where I lay. That second window is the one that I jumped from.”
“Well, at least,” said Holmes, “You have had your revenge upon them. There can be no question that it was your oil lamp which, when it was crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls, though no doubt they were too excited in the chase after you to observe it at the time. Now keep your eyes open in this crowd for your friends of last night, though I very much fear that they are a good hundred miles off by now.”
And Holmes’s fear came to be realised, for from that day to this no word has ever been heard either of the beautiful woman, the sinister German, or the morose Englishman. Early that morning a peasant had met a cart, containing several people and some very bulky boxes driving rapidly in the direction of Reading, but there all traces of the fugitives disappeared, and even Holmes’s ingenuity failed ever to discover the least clue to their whereabouts.
The firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements which they had found within, and still more so by discovering a newly severed human thumb upon a window-sill of the second floor. About sunset, however, their efforts were at last successful, and they subdued the flames,38 but not before the roof had fallen in, and the whole place been reduced to such absolute ruin that, save some twisted cylinders and iron piping, not a trace remained of the machinery which had cost our unfortunate acquaintance so dearly. Large masses of nickel and of tin were discovered stored in an out house, but no coins were to be found, which may have explained the presence of those bulky boxes which have been already referred to.
How our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to the spot where he recovered his senses39 might have remained for ever a mystery were it not for the soft mould, which told us a very plain tale. He had evidently been carried down by two persons, one of whom had remarkably small feet and the other unusually large ones. On the whole, it was most probable that the silent Englishman, being less bold or less murderous than his companion, had assisted the woman to bear the unconscious man out of the way of danger.
Fire brigade, ca. 1890.
Past Positive
“Well,” said our engineer, ruefully, as we took our seats to return once more to London, “it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb, and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?”
“Experience,” said Holmes, laughing.40 “Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.”
1“The Engineer’s Thumb” was published in the Strand Magazine in March 1892.
2Arthur Conan Doyle received his M.D. in 1885 at the University of Edinburgh together with one Colonel William Pleace Warburton. Although there is no record of William Pleace Warburton suffering any mental disturbance, it is possible that he is the subject of the matter brought to Holmes’s attention and was introduced through Conan Doyle’s relationship with Watson.
3“The Blanched Soldier,” note 5, for the implications of this statement.
4This statement implies that Watson engaged in the private practice of medicine (a “civil practice,” as contrasted with his service as an army surgeon, his “military practice”) before 1889. It may have been a practice based at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (Bart’s), where Watson was a resident; in A Study in Scarlet, Watson records no interval between his residency and his course of study at Netley. Arthur Conan Doyle’s unproduced play Angels of Darkness, probably written in 1885, shares many character names and elements with Watson’s A Study in Scarlet (1887), leading to suspicions of collaboration. While the play identifies Dr. John Watson as a San Francisco practitioner, the absence of Sherlock Holmes from the cast of characters makes it suspect as an historical document.
5Watson refers here to the station-master, porters, ticket-takers, and other station workers.
6Hydraulic engineering was then a subset of mechanical engineering, which encompassed the design and building of machinery, mills, steam engines (including, of course, trains), iron ships, and agricultural implements. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was founded by George Stephenson, builder (with his son Robert) of the famed Rocket locomotive (see “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” note 9), at Birmingham, England, in 1847 and registered under the Companies Act in 1878. Together with the Society of Engineers, founded in 1854, Stephenson’s Institution brought a standard of professionalism to a loosely organised field of study. Hydraulic engineers concerned themselves with machines utilising hydraulic engines as well as the general manipulation of the flow of water and other fluids. Seven hydraulic engineering firms were listed in the 1885 directory of the London-based United Telephone System; at least one of those firms also billed itself as a specialist in gas and hot water, and five were also listed under “mechanical engineers.”
7Hatherley’s statement contradicts this conclusion several times.
8The editors of the Doubleday (American) edition of the Canon substitute the phrase “pale-looking” in place of “blushing hotly.” This seems to fit better with the description of Hatherley’s “bloodless cheeks.”
9Left or right? Bliss Austin argues for the left thumb, on the basis that if Hatherley were right handed (which is statistically probable) and had injured his right thumb, “he could hardly have been so dextrous in tying tourniquets or eating hearty breakfasts.”
10Philip Weller notes that this wound is not consistent with an attack by a heavy, sharp instrument that Watson later surmises and Hatherley describes. Instead, such an instrument would produce a clean cut, not a “spongy” surface.
11Bandages impregnated with carbolic acid or phenol. The compound’s use as an anti-septic was popularised by Joseph Lister (1827–1912), a physician who revolutionised medicine by applying Pasteur’s theories (that infection was caused by bacteria) to the practise of surgery. Prior to Lister’s innovation, surgeons in England generally used ether as an anaesthetic, which made surgery tolerable for the patient but did nothing to prevent the potentially fatal onset of gangrene. In 1865, Lister set a patient’s leg fracture and successfully treated the wound with carbolic acid. By 1880, according to Oxford University Press’s A Dictionary of Scientists, the Listerian method had become standard surgical procedure, drastically reducing postoperative fatalities and other complications. Lister—who taught at Edinburgh from 1869 to 1876, a decade before Arthur Conan Doyle studied there—became the first physician to be raised to the peerage when he was made a baron in 1897.
12There is much criticism of Watson’s medical treatment, with some suggesting that Watson should have stitched up the wound and then should have prescribed a narcotic to deaden the pain and a hypnotic to help his patient sleep.
13“The Engineer’s Thumb” likely occurred in 1889 (see Chronological Table). The only published account of Holmes’s activities at that time was A Study in Scarlet. In light of the limited circulation of A Study in Scarlet, Hatherley probably heard about Holmes from some other source.
14The breakfast habits of Holmes (and Watson) are mysterious. In A Study in Scarlet, Watson refers to his own “late habits” and confesses that “I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours”; Holmes generally had breakfast and left his apartment before Watson rose. This was presumably before Watson went into “harness” in Paddington. In “The Speckled Band,” however, Watson describes himself as “regular in my habits” and Holmes as a “late
riser as a rule.” Here, Watson expects to discover Holmes taking his breakfast shortly after seven o’clock.
15The department of personal advertisements in newspapers, first made famous in The Times of London. Christopher Morley comments: “All such columns exhibit a weird or comic mixture of human perplexities, hence the appropriate nickname.”
16Pieces of tobacco pressed into a hard section (plugs) and unburnt or semi-burnt pieces (dottles) retrieved from a half-smoked pipe.
17A thin slice of bacon or ham, broiled or fried.
18There is no Eyford in Berkshire or anywhere else in England, for that matter. Joseph H. Gillies identifies the town as “Twyford,” near the borders of Oxfordshire.
19An improvised bed (as one made up on the floor).
20A sandy clay then used for industrial and medical purposes. The earthy, hydrous aluminium silicate, of which it is composed, was used for the absorption of grease by “fullers,” persons who worked with cloth.
21The Encyclopædia Britannica (9th Ed.) lists Surrey and Yorkshire in England and Morayshire in Scotland.
22The hydraulic press, invented in 1796 by Yorkshireman Joseph Bramah—a machinist and prolific inventor—exerts pressure on a small piston, which compresses fluid against a larger piston. By transmitting the force to a larger surface area, the force is “multiplied” by the ratio of the surface areas. For example, exerting 100 pounds of force on a piston of 2-inch diameter, which compresses liquid against a 6-inch-diameter piston, results in multiplying the force to 900 pounds. In other words, the compression of a column of water can be used to exert tremendous pressure on a target (for example, to shape or stamp metals, as in coining).
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books) Page 42
