Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, tearing sound, one of the broad,white stones turned over upon its side and left a square, gaping hole,through which streamed the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish face,which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand on either side of the aperture,drew itself shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge.In another instant he stood at the side of the hole and was hauling after him a companion,lithe and small like himself, with a pale face and a shock of very red hair.
“It’s all clear,” he whispered. “Have you the chisel and the bags?Great Scott!Jump, Archie, jump, and I’ll swing for it!”
Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar. The other dived down the hole,and I heard the sound of rending cloth as Jones clutched at his skirts.The light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver,but Holmes’ hunting crop came down on the man’s wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone floor.
“It’s no use, John Clay,” said Holmes blandly. “You have no chance at all.”
“So I see,” the other answered with the utmost coolness. “I fancy that my pal is all right,though I see you have got his coat-tails.”
“There are three men waiting for him at the door,” said Holmes.
“Oh, indeed!You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must compliment you.”
“And I you,” Holmes answered. “Your red-headed idea was very new and effective.”
“You’ll see your pal again presently,” said Jones. “He’s quicker at climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the derbies.”
“I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands,” remarked our prisoner as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists.“You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also,when you address me always to say ‘sir’ and ‘please.’”
“All right,” said Jones with a stare and a snigger. “Well, would you please, sir, march upstairs,where we can get a cab to carry your Highness to the police-station?”
“That is better,” said John Clay serenely.He made a sweeping bow to the three of us and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.
“Really, Mr. Holmes,” said Mr. Merryweather as we followed them from the cellar,“I do not know how the bank can thank you or repay you.There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience.”
“I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John Clay,” said Holmes.“I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund,but beyond that I am amply repaid by having had an experience which is in many ways unique,and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of the Red-headed League.”
“You see, Watson,” he explained in the early hours of the morning as we sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street,“it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of the League,and the copying of the _Encyclopædia_, must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of hours every day.It was a curious way of managing it, but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better.The method was no doubt suggested to Clay’s ingenious mind by the colour of his accomplice’s hair.The £ 4 a week was a lure which must draw him, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands?They put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary office,the other rogue incites the man to apply for it,and together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the week.From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages,it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive for securing the situation.”
“But how could you guess what the motive was?”
“Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however,was out of the question. The man’s business was a small one,and there was nothing in his house which could account for such elaborate preparations,and such an expenditure as they were at. It must, then, be something out of the house. What could it be?I thought of the assistant’s fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar!There was the end of this tangled clue. Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in London. He was doing something in the cellar—something which took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once more?I could think of nothing save that he was running a tunnel to some other building.
“So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action.I surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick.I was ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind. It was not in front.Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes,but we had never set eyes upon each other before. I hardly looked at his face.His knees were what I wished to see. You must yourself have remarked how worn, wrinkled,and stained they were. They spoke of those hours of burrowing.The only remaining point was what they were burrowing for. I walked round the corner,saw the City and Suburban Bank abutted on our friend’s premises,and felt that I had solved my problem. When you drove home after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard and upon the chairman of the bank directors, with the result that you have seen.”
“And how could you tell that they would make their attempt to-night?” I asked.
“Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that they cared no longer about Mr.Jabez Wilson’s presence—in other words, that they had completed their tunnel.But it was essential that they should use it soon, as it might be discovered,or the bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them better than any other day,as it would give them two days for their escape.For all these reasons I expected them to come to-night.”
“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.”
“It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas!I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.These little problems help me to do so.”
“And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,” he remarked.“‘_L’homme c’est rien—l’œuvre c’est tout_,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.”
III. A CASE OF IDENTITY
“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street,“life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city,gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on,the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events,working through generations, and leading to the most _outré_ results,it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. ”
“And yet I am not convinced of it,” I answered. “The cases which come to light in the papers are,as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough.We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is,it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic.”
“A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect,” remarked Holmes.“This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps,upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details,which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it,there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.”
I smiled and shook my head. “I can quite understand your thinking so,” I said. “Of course,in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled,throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre.But here”—I picked up the morning paper from the ground—“let us put it to a practical test.Here is the first heading upon which I come. ‘A husband’s cruelty to his wife.’ There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me.There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise,the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude.”
“Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,” said Holmes,taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. “This is the Dundas separation case, and,as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it.The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman,and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife,which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller.Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.”
He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid.Its splendour was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.
“Ah,” said he, “I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks.It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers. ”
“And the ring?” I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which sparkled upon his finger.
“It was from the reigning family of Holland,though the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you,who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems.”
“And have you any on hand just now?” I asked with interest.
“Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of interest. They are important,you understand, without being interesting. Indeed,I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation,and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation.The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule,is the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter which has been referred to me from Marseilles,there is nothing which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however,that I may have something better before very many minutes are over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken.”
He had risen from his chair and was standing between the parted blinds gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street.Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck,and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her ear.From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows,while her body oscillated backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove buttons.Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves the bank, she hurried across the road,and we heard the sharp clang of the bell.
“I have seen those symptoms before,” said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire.“Oscillation upon the pavement always means an _affaire de cœur_. She would like advice,but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication.And yet even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates,and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love matter,but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed, or grieved.But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts.”
As he spoke there was a tap at the door,and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland,while the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchant-man behind a tiny pilot boat.Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and,having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair,he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him.
“Do you not find,” he said, “that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting?”
“I did at first,” she answered, “but now I know where the letters are without looking.” Then,suddenly realising the full purport of his words, she gave a violent start and looked up,with fear and astonishment upon her broad, good-humoured face. “You’ve heard about me, Mr. Holmes,” she cried, “else how could you know all that?”
“Never mind,” said Holmes, laughing; “it is my business to know things.Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?”
“I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege,whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up for dead. Oh, Mr.Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I’m not rich,but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine,and I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
“Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?” asked Sherlock Holmes, with his finger-tips together and his eyes to the ceiling.
Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss Mary Sutherland. “Yes,I did bang out of the house,” she said, “for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr.Windibank—that is, my father—took it all. He would not go to the police,and he would not go to you, and so at last,as he would do nothing and kept on saying that there was no harm done, it made me mad,and I just on with my things and came right away to you.”
“Your father,” said Holmes, “your stepfather, surely, since the name is different.”
“Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too,for he is only five years and two months older than myself.”
“And your mother is alive?”
“Oh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasn’t best pleased, Mr. Holmes,when she married again so soon after father’s death,and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself.Father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business behind him,which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the foreman; but when Mr.Windibank came he made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines.They got £ 4700 for the goodwill and interest,which wasn’t near as much as father could have got if he had been alive.”
I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative,but, on the contrary, he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.
“Your own little income,” he asked, “does it come out of the business?”
“Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate and was left me by my uncle Ned in Auckland.It is in New Zealand stock, paying 4½ per cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interest.”
“You interest me extremely,” said Holmes. “And since you draw so large a sum as a hundred a year,with what you earn into the bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in every way.I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about £ 60.”
“I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes,but you understand that as long as I live at home I don’t wish to be a burden to them,and so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course,that is only just for the time. Mr. Windibank draws my interest every quarter and pays it over to mother,and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at typewriting.It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day.”
“You have made your position very clear to me,” said Holmes. “This is my friend, Dr. Watson,before whom you can speak as freely as before myself.Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
A flush stole over Miss Sutherland’s face, and she picked nervously at the fringe of her jacket.“I met him first at the gasfitters’ ball,” she said.“They used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us,and sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank did not wish us to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere.He would get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday-school treat.But this time I was set on going, and I would go; for what right had he to prevent?He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all father’s friends were to be there.And he said that I had nothing fit to wear,when I had my purple plush that I had never so much as taken out of the drawer. At last,when nothing else would do, he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went,mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
“I suppose,” said Holmes, “that when Mr.Windibank came back from France he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball.”
“Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and shrugged his shoulders,and said there was no use denying anything to a woman, for she would have her way.”
“I see. Then at the gasfitters’ ball you met, as I understand, a gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
“Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if we had got home all safe,and after that we met him—that is to say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks,but after that father came back again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house any more.”
“No?”
“Well, you know father didn’t like anything of the sort.He wouldn’t have any visitors if he could help it,and he used to say that a woman should be happy in her own family circle. But then,as I used to say to mother, a woman wants her own circle to begin with, and I had not got mine yet. ”
“But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel?Did he make no attempt to see you?”
“Well, father was going off to France again in a week,and Hosmer wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until he had gone.We could write in the meantime, and he used to write every day.I took the letters in in the morning, so there was no need for father to know.”
“Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that we took. Hosmer—Mr.Angel—was a cashier in an office in Leadenhall Street—and—”
“What office?”
“That’s the worst of it, Mr. Holmes, I don’t know.”
“Where did he live, then?”
“He slept on the premises.”
“And you don’t know his address?”
“No—except that it was Leadenhall Street.”
“Where did you address your letters, then?”
“To the Leadenhall Street Post Office, to be left till called for.He said that if they were sent to the office he would be chaffed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady,so I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn’t have that,for he said that when I wrote them they seemed to come from me,but when they were typewritten he always felt that the machine had come between us.That will just show you how fond he was of me, Mr. Holmes,and the little things that he would think of.”
“It was most suggestive,” said Holmes. “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?”
“He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the evening than in the daylight,for he said that he hated to be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was.Even his voice was gentle. He’d had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me,and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech.He was always well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as mine are,and he wore tinted glasses against the glare.”
“Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather, returned to France?”
“Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we should marry before father came back.He was in dreadful earnest and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament,that whatever happened I would always be true to him.Mother said he was quite right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion.Mother was all in his favour from the first and was even fonder of him than I was. Then,when they talked of marrying within the week, I began to ask about father;but they both said never to mind about father, but just to tell him afterwards,and mother said she would make it all right with him. I didn’t quite like that, Mr. Holmes.It seemed funny that I should ask his leave, as he was only a few years older than me;but I didn’t want to do anything on the sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux,where the company has its French offices,but the letter came back to me on the very morning of the wedding.”
“It missed him, then?”
“Yes, sir; for he had started to England just before it arrived.”
“Ha!that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged, then, for the Friday. Was it to be in church?”
“Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Saviour’s, near King’s Cross,and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. Pancras Hotel. Hosmer came for us in a hansom,but as there were two of us he put us both into it and stepped himself into a four-wheeler,which happened to be the only other cab in the street. We got to the church first,and when the four-wheeler drove up we waited for him to step out, but he never did,and when the cabman got down from the box and looked there was no one there!The cabman said that he could not imagine what had become of him,for he had seen him get in with his own eyes. That was last Friday, Mr. Holmes,and I have never seen or heard anything since then to throw any light upon what became of him.”
“It seems to me that you have been very shamefully treated,” said Holmes.
“Oh, no, sir!He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why, all the morning he was saying to me that,whatever happened, I was to be true; and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to separate us,I was always to remember that I was pledged to him,and that he would claim his pledge sooner or later. It seemed strange talk for a wedding-morning,but what has happened since gives a meaning to it.”
“Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then,that some unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him?”
“Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he would not have talked so.And then I think that what he foresaw happened.”
“But you have no notion as to what it could have been?”
“None.”
“One more question. How did your mother take the matter?”
“She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the matter again.”
“And your father?Did you tell him?”
“Yes; and he seemed to think, with me, that something had happened,and that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said,what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the doors of the church, and then leaving me?Now, if he had borrowed my money, or if he had married me and got my money settled on him,there might be some reason, but Hosmer was very independent about money and never would look at a shilling of mine. And yet, what could have happened?And why could he not write?Oh, it drives me half-mad to think of it, and I can’t sleep a wink at night.” She pulled a little handkerchief out of her muff and began to sob heavily into it.
“I shall glance into the case for you,” said Holmes, rising,“and I have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result.Let the weight of the matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind dwell upon it further.Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer Angel vanish from your memory, as he has done from your life.”
“Then you don’t think I’ll see him again?”
“I fear not.”
“Then what has happened to him?”
“You will leave that question in my hands.I should like an accurate description of him and any letters of his which you can spare.”
“I advertised for him in last Saturday’s _Chronicle_,” said she.“Here is the slip and here are four letters from him.”
“Thank you. And your address?”
“No. 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell.”
“Mr. Angel’s address you never had, I understand. Where is your father’s place of business?”
“He travels for Westhouse & Marbank, the great claret importers of Fenchurch Street.”
“Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will leave the papers here,and remember the advice which I have given you. Let the whole incident be a sealed book,and do not allow it to affect your life.”
“You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be true to Hosmer.He shall find me ready when he comes back.”
For all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face,there was something noble in the simple faith of our visitor which compelled our respect.She laid her little bundle of papers upon the table and went her way,with a promise to come again whenever she might be summoned.
Sherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his fingertips still pressed together,his legs stretched out in front of him, and his gaze directed upward to the ceiling.Then he took down from the rack the old and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a counsellor, and,having lit it, he leaned back in his chair, with the thick blue cloud-wreaths spinning up from him,and a look of infinite languor in his face.
“Quite an interesting study, that maiden,” he observed.“I found her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, is rather a trite one.You will find parallel cases, if you consult my index, in Andover in ’77,and there was something of the sort at The Hague last year. Old as is the idea, however,there were one or two details which were new to me. But the maiden herself was most instructive.”
“You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite invisible to me,” I remarked.
“Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look,and so you missed all that was important.I can never bring you to realise the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails,or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace. Now,what did you gather from that woman’s appearance?Describe it.”
“Well, she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat, with a feather of a brickish red.Her jacket was black, with black beads sewn upon it, and a fringe of little black jet ornaments.Her dress was brown, rather darker than coffee colour,with a little purple plush at the neck and sleeves.Her gloves were greyish and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots I didn’t observe.She had small round, hanging gold earrings,and a general air of being fairly well-to-do in a vulgar, comfortable, easy-going way.”
Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled.
“’Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed.It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method,and you have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general impressions, my boy,but concentrate yourself upon details. My first glance is always at a woman’s sleeve.In a man it is perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you observe,this woman had plush upon her sleeves, which is a most useful material for showing traces.The double line a little above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against the table,was beautifully defined. The sewing-machine, of the hand type, leaves a similar mark,but only on the left arm, and on the side of it farthest from the thumb,instead of being right across the broadest part, as this was. I then glanced at her face, and,observing the dint of a pince-nez at either side of her nose,I ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed to surprise her.”
“It surprised me.”
“But, surely, it was obvious. I was then much surprised and interested on glancing down to observe that,though the boots which she was wearing were not unlike each other, they were really odd ones;the one having a slightly decorated toe-cap, and the other a plain one.One was buttoned only in the two lower buttons out of five, and the other at the first, third,and fifth. Now, when you see that a young lady, otherwise neatly dressed,has come away from home with odd boots, half-buttoned,it is no great deduction to say that she came away in a hurry.”
“And what else?” I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by my friend’s incisive reasoning.
“I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving home but after being fully dressed.You observed that her right glove was torn at the forefinger,but you did not apparently see that both glove and finger were stained with violet ink.She had written in a hurry and dipped her pen too deep. It must have been this morning,or the mark would not remain clear upon the finger. All this is amusing, though rather elementary,but I must go back to business, Watson. Would you mind reading me the advertised description of Mr. Hosmer Angel?”