The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (5 page)

about us were chimneys, tall ghostly stacks and clusters of squat smoke-blackened pots,

surrounding a great leaden cupola shining like silver under the moon. At the far end, where

the roof-tree of an old gable rose against the sky, a dark shape seemed to crouch above a

single moon-washed chimney.

A sulphur-match flared blue, then burned with a cedar yellow glow and, an instant later,

came the hissing of an ignited fuse followed by a clattering sound in the chimney. Holmes

ran forward, twisting and turning through the maze of stacks and parapets, toward the

hunched figure now hastily clawing away.

"Fire, Watson! Fire!"

Our pistols rang out together. I saw Trepoff's pale face jerk round toward us, and then in the

same instant the whole chimney-stack rose straight up into the air in a solid pillar of white

fire. The roof heaved beneath my feet, and I was dimly conscious of rolling over and over

along the leads, while shards and splinters of broken brickwork whizzed overhead or clanged

against the metal dome of the cupola.

Holmes rose unsteadily to his feet. "Are you hurt, Watson?" he gasped.

"Only a trifle winded," I replied. "But it was fortunate we were thrown on our faces.

Otherwise—" I gestured toward the slashed and scarred stacks that rose about us.

We had advanced only a few yards through a mist of gritty dust when we came upon the man

whom we were seeking.

"He must now answer to a greater tribunal," said Holmes, looking down at the dreadful

object sprawled on the leads. "Our shots made him hesitate for that fatal second, and he took

the full blast of the bomb up the chimney." My friend turned away. "Come," he added, and

his voice was bitter with self-reproach. "We have been both too slow to save our client,

and too late to avenge him through the machinery of human justice."

Suddenly his expression altered, and he clutched my arm.

"By Jove, Watson! A single chimney-stack saved our lives!" he cried. "What was the word

the woman used! Hooded! That was it, hooded! Quickly; there's not a moment to lose!"

We raced through the trap-door, and down the stairway to the main landing. At the far

end, through a haze of acrid smoke, we could discern the ruins of a splintered door. An instant

later we had rushed into the bedroom of the Grand Duke. Holmes groaned aloud at the scene

which met our eyes.

What was once a stately fireplace now yawned in a great jagged hole beneath the remnants

of a heavy stone hood. The fire from the grate had been blasted into the room, and the air was

foul with the stench of the carpet smouldering under its powder of red-hot ashes. Holmes darted

forward through the smoke, and a moment later I saw him stoop behind the wreckage of

a piano.

"Quick, Watson!" he cried. "There is life in him yet! This is where I can do nothing, and

you can do everything."

But it was touch and go. For the remainder of the night the young Duke hovered between

life and death in the old wainscotted bedroom to which we had carried him. Yet, as the sun

rose above the trees in the park, I noted with satisfaction that the coma induced by shock was

already passing into a natural sleep.

"His wounds are superficial," I said. "But the shock alone could have proved fatal. Now

that he is asleep, he will live, and I have no doubt that the presence of Miss Celia Forsythe will

speed his recovery."

"Should you record the facts of this little case," remarked Holmes a few minutes later, as we

strolled across the dew-laden grass of the deer-park, all glittering and sparkling in the fresh

beauty of the dawn, "then you must have the honesty to lay the credit where it is due."

"But does not the credit lie with you?"

"No, Watson. That the outcome was successful is owing entirely to the fact that our

ancestors understood the art of building. The strength of a fireplace-hood two hundred years

old saved that young man's head from being blown off his shoulders. It is fortunate for the

Grand Duke Alexei of Russia, and for the reputation of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker

Street, that in the days of the good King James the householder never failed to allow for the

violent predilections of his neighbour."

From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in

the case of the Trepoff murder.

FROM "A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA."

2

The Adventure of the Gold Hunter

"Mr. Holmes, it was death by the visitation of God!"

We have heard many singular statements in our rooms at Baker Street, but few more

startling than this pronouncement of the Rev. Mr. James Appley.

I need no reference to my note-book to recall that it was a fine summer day in the year

1887. A telegram had arrived at the breakfast-table. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, with an exclamation

of impatience, threw it across to me. The telegram stated merely that the Rev. James Appley

requested the favour of waiting upon him that morning, to consult him in a matter of church

affairs.

"Really, Watson," Holmes had commented with some asperity, as he lighted his after-

breakfast pipe, "matters have indeed come to a pretty pass when clergymen seek my advice as

to the length of their sermons or the conduct of the Harvest Festival. I am flattered but out

of my depth. What does Crockford say of this strange client?"

Endeavouring to anticipate my friend's methods, I had already taken down the clerical

directory. I could find only that the gentleman in question was the vicar of a small parish in

Somerset, and had written a monograph on Byzantine medicine.

"An unusual pursuit for a country clergyman," Holmes remarked. "But here, unless I am

much mistaken, is the man himself."

As he spoke, there had arisen from below an excited pealing of the door-bell, and, before

Mrs. Hudson could announce him, our visitor had burst into the room. He was a tall, thin,

high-shouldered man in rustic clerical dress with a benevolent, scholarly face framed in

antiquated side-whiskers of the sort once known as Dundreary weepers.

"My dear sirs," he cried, peering at us myopically from behind oval spectacles, "pray

accept my assurance that it is only the pressure of events that prompts my invasion of your

privacy."

"Come, come," said Sherlock Holmes good-humouredly, waving him to the basket-chair

before the empty fireplace. "I am a consulting detective, and therefore my privacy is of no

more consequence than that of a doctor."

The clergyman had hardly seated himself when he blurted out the extraordinary words

with which I have begun this narrative.

"Death by the visitation of God," repeated Sherlock Holmes. Though his voice was

subdued, yet it seemed to me that there was a roll and thrill in the words. "Then surely, my

dear sir, the matter lies rather within your province than within mine?"

"I ask your pardon," said the vicar, hastily. "My words were perhaps over-emphatic and even

irreverent. But you will understand that this horrible event, this—" his voice sank almost to a

whisper as he leaned forward in his chair. "Mr. Holmes, it is villainy: cold-blooded,

deliberate villainy!"

"Believe me, sir, I am all attention."

"Mr. John Trelawney—Squire Trelawney, we called him—was the richest landowner for

miles about. Four nights ago, when only three months short of his seventieth birthday, he died in

his bed."

"Hum! That is not so uncommon."

"No, sir. But hear me!" cried the vicar, raising a long forefinger curiously smudged on the

very tip. "John Trelawney was a hale and hearty man, suffering from no organic disease, and

good for at least a dozen more years in this mundane sphere. Dr. Paul Griffin, our local

medical practitioner and incidentally my nephew, flatly refused to issue a death-certificate.

There was a most dreadful business called a post-mortem."

Holmes, who had not yet doffed his mouse-coloured dressing-gown, had been leaning back

languidly in his arm-chair. Now he half opened his eyes.

"A post-mortem!" said he. "Performed by your nephew?"

Mr. Appley hesitated. "No, Mr. Holmes. It was performed by Sir Leopold Harper, our

foremost living authority on medical jurisprudence. I may tell you, here and now, that poor

Trelawney did not die a natural death. Not only the police but Scotland Yard have been

called in."

"Ah!"

"On the other hand," continued Mr. Appley agitatedly, "Trelawney was not murdered, and

he could not possibly have been murdered. The greatest medical skill has been used to

pronounce that he could not have died from any cause whatsoever."

For a moment there was a silence in our sitting-room, where the blinds had been half drawn

against the summer sun.

"My dear Watson," said Holmes cordially, "will you be good enough to fetch me a clay

pipe from the rack over the sofa? Thank you. I find, Mr. Appley, that a clay is most

conducive to meditation. Come, where is the coalscuttle? May I venture to offer you a cigar?"

"
Cras
ingens iterabimus aequor,"
said the vicar, running his curiously mottled fingers over

his side-whiskers. "At the moment, thank you, no. I cannot smoke. I dare not smoke! It

would choke me. I am aware that I must tell you the facts in precise detail. But it is difficult.

You may have remarked that I am considered somewhat absent-minded?"

"Indeed."

"Yes, sir. In youth, before my call to the Church, I once desired to study medicine. But my

late father forbade it, due to this absent-mindedness. Were I to become a doctor, said my

father, I should instantly chloroform the patient and remove his gall-stones when he had

merely come to enquire about a slight cough."

"Well, well," said Holmes, with a touch of impatience. "But you were disturbed in your mind

this morning," he continued, regarding our client with his keen glance. "That, no doubt, was

why you consulted several books in your study before catching the train to London this

morning?"

"Yes, sir. They were medical works."

"Do you not find it inconvenient to have the bookshelves in your study built so high?"

"Dear me, no. Can any room be too high or too large for one's books?"

Abruptly the vicar paused. His long face, framed in the Dundreary weepers, grew even

longer as his mouth fell open.

"Now I am positive, I am quite positive," said he, "that I mentioned neither my books

nor the height of the shelves in my study! How could you have known these things?"

"Tut, a trifle! How do I know, for instance, that you are either a bachelor or a widower,

and that you have a most slovenly housekeeper?"

"Really, Holmes," cried I, "there is another besides Mr. Appley who would like to know

how you deduced it!"

"The dust, Watson! The dust!"

"What dust?"

"Kindly observe the index finger of Mr. Appley's right hand. You will note, on its tip,

smudges of that dark-grey dust which accumulates on the top of books. The smudges,

somewhat faded, were made no later than this morning. Since Mr. Appley is a tall man with

long arms, surely it is obvious that he plucked down books from a high shelf. When to this

accumulation of dust we add an unbrushed top hat, it requires small shrewdness to determine

that he has no wife, but an appalling housekeeper."

"Remarkable!" said I.

"Meretricious," said he. "And I apologize to our guest for interrupting his narrative."

"This death was incomprehensible beyond all measure! But you have not yet heard the

worst," continued our visitor. "I must tell you that Trelawney has one surviving relative: a

niece, aged twenty-one. Her name is Miss Dolores Dale, the daughter of the late Mrs.

Copley Dale, of Glastonbury. For several years the young lady has kept house for Trelawney

in his great whitewashed home, called Goodman's Rest. It has always been understood that

Dolores, who is engaged to be married to a fine young man named Jeffrey Ainsworth, would

inherit her uncle's fortune. When I tell you that a sweeter, or kinder spirit never existed, that her

hair is darker than Homer's wine-dark sea and that upon occasion she can be all flash and fire

suggestive of Southern blood—"

"Yes, yes," said Holmes, closing his eyes. "But you stated that I had not heard the worst?"

"True. Here are the facts. Shortly before his death, Trelawney changed his will. Disinheriting

his niece, whom the stern-minded old man considered to be too frivolous, he left his entire

fortune to my nephew, Dr. Paul Griffin. Sir, it was the scandal of the country-side! Two

weeks later, Trelawney was dead in his bed and my unhappy nephew is now under suspicion

of murder."

"Pray be particular in your details," said Holmes.

"In the first place," continued the vicar, "I should describe the late Squire Trelawney as a

man of stern and implacable habit. I seem always to see him, tall and big-boned, with his great

head and his grizzled silver beard, against the brown of a ploughed field or a line of heavy

green trees.

"Each evening, in his bedroom, he would read a chapter of the Bible. Afterwards he would