The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  The same day I went down to the Manor at Esher, and had an interview with Mrs. Odell. I felt, in the interest of her son, that it was my duty to tell her all I had learnt the previous night. She was terribly distressed, but stated that she had suspected for some time that her son was given to opium smoking, though she had no idea he carried the habit to such a remarkable extreme. She requested me to retain possession of the goblet and the spoon until her husband’s return, and, in the meantime, she promised to take her weak and misguided son to task, and to have the secret passage in the wall effectually stopped up.

  I should mention that I had managed to save a small quantity of the liquor that was in the goblet when I removed it from the club table; and I sent this to a celebrated analytical chemist for analysis, who pronounced it to be a very powerful and peculiar narcotic, made from a combination of Indian herbs with which he was not familiar.

  The dénouement has yet to be recorded. A few days later Ronald Odell, after drugging himself as usual, was found dead on one of the couches at the club. This necessitated an inquest, and the verdict was that he had died from a narcotic, but whether taken with the intention of destroying life or merely to produce sleep there was no evidence to show. Although I had no evidence to offer, I was firmly convinced in my own mind that the poor weak fellow had committed suicide, from a sense of shame at the discovery I had made.

  Of course, after this tragic affair, and the exposure it entailed, the Indian Dreamers’ Club was broken up, and all its luxurious appointments were sold by auction, and its members dispersed. It appeared that one of the rules was that the members of the club should never exceed twelve in number. What became of the remaining eleven I never knew; but it was hardly likely they would abandon the pernicious habits they had acquired.

  In the course of six months Colonel Odell returned from Egypt, and though he was much cut up by the death of his son, he was exceedingly gratified at the recovery of the peculiar goblet, which the misguided youth had no doubt purloined under the impression that it was useless in his father’s treasure room, but that it would more fittingly adorn the table of the Dreamers’ Club, of which he was the president. I could not help thinking that part of the motto of the club was singularly appropriate in his case: “Dream on, for to awaken is to die.” He had awakened from his dream, and passed into that state where dreams perplex not.

  The Greek Interpreter

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  The greatest and most famous detective who ever lived was, of course, Sherlock Holmes. While some good detective stories were written before he came on the scene, no character ever caught the imagination and, dare I say it, the love, that Holmes did.

  One of the most astonishing elements of the Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) is that, although written in the Victorian era, they lack the overwrought verbosity so prevalent in the prose of that time and remain as readable and fresh as anything produced in recent times. Equally remarkable is that he believed his most important fiction were such historical novels and short story collections as Micah Clarke (1889), The White Company (1891), The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896), and Sir Nigel (1906).

  He also was convinced that his most significant nonfiction work was in the spiritualism field, to which he devoted the last twenty years of his life, a considerable portion of his fortune, and prodigious energy, producing many major and not so major works on the subject.

  He was deluded, of course, as Holmes was his supreme achievement. The great detective’s first appearance was in the novel A Study in Scarlet (1887), followed by The Sign of Four (1890), neither of which changed the course of the detective story. This occurred instead when the first Holmes short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” was published in The Strand Magazine in July 1891, bringing the world’s first private detective to a huge readership.

  “The Greek Interpreter” is reprinted less often than many other cases featuring Holmes, probably because it is not his finest hour. Of course he solves the case but he nearly loses his client and does not prevent another murder. It is notable, however, for introducing Mycroft Holmes, his older and smarter brother, who “occasionally is the British Government.”

  “The Greek Interpreter” was first published in the September 1893 issue of The Strand Magazine; it was first collected in book form in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (London, George Newnes, 1894).

  THE GREEK INTERPRETER

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life. This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was preëminent in intelligence. His aversion to women and his disinclination to form new friendships were both typical of his unemotional character, but not more so than his complete suppression of every reference to his own people. I had come to believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living; but one day, to my very great surprise, he began to talk to me about his brother.

  It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, came round at last to the question of atavism and hereditary aptitudes. The point under discussion was how far any singular gift in an individual was due to his ancestry and how far to his own early training.

  “In your own case,” said I, “from all that you have told me, it seems obvious that your faculty of observation and your peculiar facility for deduction are due to your own systematic training.”

  “To some extent,” he answered thoughtfully. “My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”

  “But how do you know that it is hereditary?”

  “Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do.”

  This was news to me indeed. If there were another man with such singular powers in England, how was it that neither police nor public had heard of him? I put the question, with a hint that it was my companion’s modesty which made him acknowledge his brother as his superior. Holmes laughed at my suggestion.

  “My dear Watson,” said he, “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.”

  “Is he your junior?”

  “Seven years my senior.”

  “How comes it that he is unknown?”

  “Oh, he is very well known in his own circle.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Well, in the Diogenes Club, for example.”

  I had never heard of the institution, and my face must have proclaimed as much, for Sherlock Holmes pulled out his watch.

  “The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft one of the queerest men. He’s always there from quarter to five to twenty to eight. It’s six now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two curiosities.”

  Five minutes later we were in the street, walking towards Regent’s Circus.

  “You wonder,” said my companion, “why it is that Mycroft does not use his powers for detective work. He is incapable of it.”

  “But I thought you said——”

  “I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the dete
ctive began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury.”

  “It is not his profession, then?”

  “By no means. What is to me a means of livelihood is to him the merest hobby of a dilettante. He has an extraordinary faculty for figures, and audits the books in some of the government departments. Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner into Whitehall every morning and back every evening. From year’s end to year’s end he takes no other exercise, and is seen nowhere else, except only in the Diogenes Club, which is just opposite his rooms.”

  “I cannot recall the name.”

  “Very likely not. There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.”

  We had reached Pall Mall as we talked, and were walking down it from the St. James’s end. Sherlock Holmes stopped at a door some little distance from the Carlton, and, cautioning me not to speak, he led the way into the hall. Through the glass panelling I caught a glimpse of a large and luxurious room, in which a considerable number of men were sitting about and reading papers, each in his own little nook. Holmes showed me into a small chamber which looked out into Pall Mall, and then, leaving me for a minute, he came back with a companion whom I knew could only be his brother.

  Mycroft Holmes was a much larger and stouter man than Sherlock. His body was absolutely corpulent, but his face, though massive, had preserved something of the sharpness of expression which was so remarkable in that of his brother. His eyes, which were of a peculiarly light, watery gray, seemed to always retain that far-away, introspective look which I had only observed in Sherlock’s when he was exerting his full powers.

  “I am glad to meet you, sir,” said he, putting out a broad, fat hand like the flipper of a seal. “I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler. By the way, Sherlock, I expected to see you round last week to consult me over that Manor House case. I thought you might be a little out of your depth.”

  “No, I solved it,” said my friend, smiling.

  “It was Adams, of course.”

  “Yes, it was Adams.”

  “I was sure of it from the first.” The two sat down together in the bow-window of the club. “To anyone who wishes to study mankind this is the spot,” said Mycroft. “Look at the magnificent types! Look at these two men who are coming towards us, for example.”

  “The billiard-marker and the other?”

  “Precisely. What do you make of the other?”

  The two men had stopped opposite the window. Some chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only signs of billiards which I could see in one of them. The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat pushed back and several packages under his arm.

  “An old soldier, I perceive,” said Sherlock.

  “And very recently discharged,” remarked the brother.

  “Served in India, I see.”

  “And a non-commissioned officer.”

  “Royal Artillery, I fancy,” said Sherlock.

  “And a widower.”

  “But with a child.”

  “Children, my dear boy, children.”

  “Come,” said I, laughing, “this is a little too much.”

  “Surely,” answered Holmes, “it is not hard to say that a man with that bearing, expression of authority, and sun-baked skin, is a soldier, is more than a private, and is not long from India.”

  “That he has not left the service long is shown by his still wearing his ammunition boots, as they are called,” observed Mycroft.

  “He had not the cavalry stride, yet he wore his hat on one side, as is shown by the lighter skin on that side of his brow. His weight is against his being a sapper. He is in the artillery.”

  “Then, of course, his complete mourning shows that he has lost someone very dear. The fact that he is doing his own shopping looks as though it were his wife. He has been buying things for children, you perceive. There is a rattle, which shows that one of them is very young. The wife probably died in childbed. The fact that he has a picture-book under his arm shows that there is another child to be thought of.”

  I began to understand what my friend meant when he said that his brother possessed even keener faculties than he did himself. He glanced across at me and smiled. Mycroft took snuff from a tortoise-shell box and brushed away the wandering grains from his coat front with a large, red silk handkerchief.

  “By the way, Sherlock,” said he, “I have had something quite after your own heart—a most singular problem—submitted to my judgment. I really had not the energy to follow it up save in a very incomplete fashion, but it gave me a basis for some pleasing speculations. If you would care to hear the facts——”

  “My dear Mycroft, I should be delighted.”

  The brother scribbled a note upon a leaf of his pocket-book, and, ringing the bell, he handed it to the waiter.

  “I have asked Mr. Melas to step across,” said he. “He lodges on the floor above me, and I have some slight acquaintance with him, which led him to come to me in his perplexity. Mr. Melas is a Greek by extraction, as I understand, and he is a remarkable linguist. He earns his living partly as interpreter in the law courts and partly by acting as guide to any wealthy Orientals who may visit the Northumberland Avenue hotels. I think I will leave him to tell his very remarkable experience in his own fashion.”

  A few minutes later we were joined by a short, stout man whose olive face and coal black hair proclaimed his Southern origin, though his speech was that of an educated Englishman. He shook hands eagerly with Sherlock Holmes, and his dark eyes sparkled with pleasure when he understood that the specialist was anxious to hear his story.

  “I do not believe that the police credit me—on my word, I do not,” said he in a wailing voice. “Just because they have never heard of it before, they think that such a thing cannot be. But I know that I shall never be easy in my mind until I know what has become of my poor man with the sticking-plaster upon his face.”

  “I am all attention,” said Sherlock Holmes.

  “This is Wednesday evening,” said Mr. Melas. “Well, then, it was Monday night—only two days ago, you understand—that all this happened. I am an interpreter, as perhaps my neighbour there has told you. I interpret all languages—or nearly all—but as I am a Greek by birth and with a Grecian name, it is with that particular tongue that I am principally associated. For many years I have been the chief Greek interpreter in London, and my name is very well known in the hotels.

  “It happens not unfrequently that I am sent for at strange hours by foreigners who get into difficulties, or by travellers who arrive late and wish my services. I was not surprised, therefore, on Monday night when a Mr. Latimer, a very fashionably dressed young man, came up to my rooms and asked me to accompany him in a cab which was waiting at the door. A Greek friend had come to see him upon business, he said, and as he could speak nothing but his own tongu
e, the services of an interpreter were indispensable. He gave me to understand that his house was some little distance off, in Kensington, and he seemed to be in a great hurry, bustling me rapidly into the cab when we had descended to the street.

  “I say into the cab, but I soon became doubtful as to whether it was not a carriage in which I found myself. It was certainly more roomy than the ordinary four-wheeled disgrace to London, and the fittings, though frayed, were of rich quality. Mr. Latimer seated himself opposite to me and we started off through Charing Cross and up the Shaftesbury Avenue. We had come out upon Oxford Street and I had ventured some remark as to this being a roundabout way to Kensington, when my words were arrested by the extraordinary conduct of my companion.

  “He began by drawing a most formidable-looking bludgeon loaded with lead from his pocket, and switching it backward and forward several times, as if to test its weight and strength. Then he placed it without a word upon the seat beside him. Having done this, he drew up the windows on each side, and I found to my astonishment that they were covered with paper so as to prevent my seeing through them.

  “ ‘I am sorry to cut off your view, Mr. Melas,’ said he. ‘The fact is that I have no intention that you should see what the place is to which we are driving. It might possibly be inconvenient to me if you could find your way there again.’

  “As you can imagine, I was utterly taken aback by such an address. My companion was a powerful, broad-shouldered young fellow, and, apart from the weapon, I should not have had the slightest chance in a struggle with him.

  “ ‘This is very extraordinary conduct, Mr. Latimer,’ I stammered. ‘You must be aware that what you are doing is quite illegal.’

  “ ‘It is somewhat of a liberty, no doubt,’ said he, ‘but we’ll make it up to you. I must warn you, however, Mr. Melas, that if at any time to-night you attempt to raise an alarm or do anything which is against my interest, you will find it a very serious thing. I beg you to remember that no one knows where you are, and that, whether you are in this carriage or in my house, you are equally in my power.’