When I glance over my notes and records of the SherlockHolmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90, I am faced by somany which present strange and interesting features that it is noeasy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some,however, have already gained publicity through the papers, andothers have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities whichmy friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the objectof these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his analyticalskill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without an ending,while others have been but partially cleared up, and have theirexplanations founded rather upon conjecture and surmise thanon that absolute logical proof which was so dear to him. Thereis, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in itsdetails and so startling in its results that I am tempted to givesome account of it in spite of the fact that there are points inconnection with it which never have been, and probably never willbe, entirely cleared up.
The year ’87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greateror less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headingsunder this one twelve months I find an account of the adventureof the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, whoheld a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse,of the facts connected with the loss of the British barque SophyAnderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in theisland of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case. Inthe latter, as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, bywinding up the dead man’s watch, to prove that it had been woundup two hours before, and that therefore the deceased had goneto bed within that time—a deduction which was of the greatestimportance in clearing up the case. All these I may sketch out atsome future date, but none of them present such singular featuresas the strange train of circumstances which I have now taken upmy pen to describe.
It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctialgales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind hadscreamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so thateven here in the heart of great, hand-made London we wereforced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of lifeand to recognise the presence of those great elemental forceswhich shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, likeuntamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the storm grewhigher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a childin the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of thefireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the otherwas deep in one of Clark Russell’s fine sea-stories until the howlof the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and thesplash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the seawaves. My wife was on a visit to her mother’s, and for a few days Iwas a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.
“Why,” said I, glancing up at my companion, “that was surely thebell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?”
“Except yourself I have none,” he answered. “I do not encouragevisitors.”
“A client, then?”
“If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out onsuch a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is more likelyto be some crony of the landlady’s.”
Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, forthere came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door. Hestretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself andtowards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit.
“Come in!” said he.
The man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty atthe outside, well-groomed and trimly clad, with something ofrefinement and delicacy in his bearing. The streaming umbrellawhich he held in his hand, and his long shining waterproof toldof the fierce weather through which he had come. He lookedabout him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I could see thathis face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a man who isweighed down with some great anxiety.
“I owe you an apology,” he said, raising his golden pince-nez to hiseyes. “I trust that I am not intruding. I fear that I have broughtsome traces of the storm and rain into your snug chamber.”
“Give me your coat and umbrella,” said Holmes. “They mayrest here on the hook and will be dry presently. You have come upfrom the south-west, I see.”
“Yes, from Horsham.”
“That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps isquite distinctive.”
“I have come for advice.”
“That is easily got.”
“And help.”
“That is not always so easy.”
“I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I heard from MajorPrendergast how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal.”
“Ah, of course. He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards.”
“He said that you could solve anything.”
“He said too much.”
“That you are never beaten.”
“I have been beaten four times—three times by men, and onceby a woman.”
“But what is that compared with the number of your successes?”
“It is true that I have been generally successful.”
“Then you may be so with me.”
“I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour mewith some details as to your case.”
“It is no ordinary one.”
“None of those which come to me are. I am the last court ofappeal.”
“And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, youhave ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain ofevents than those which have happened in my own family.”
“You fill me with interest,” said Holmes. “Pray give us the essentialfacts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question youas to those details which seem to me to be most important.”
The young man pulled his chair up and pushed his wet feet outtowards the blaze.
“My name,” said he, “is John Openshaw, but my own affairs have,as far as I can understand, little to do with this awful business. Itis a hereditary matter; so in order to give you an idea of the facts,I must go back to the commencement of the affair.