The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

“And Mr. Holmes knows it?” “Mr. Holmes always knows whatever there is to know.”

“You can go, Billy. That boy is a problem, Watson. How far am I justified in allowing him to be in danger?” “Danger of what, Holmes?” “Of sudden death. I’m expecting something this evening.” “Expecting what?” “To be murdered, Watson.” “No, no, you are joking, Holmes!” “Even my limited sense of humour could evolve a better joke than that.

“Because the faculties become refined when you starve them. Why, surely, as a doctor, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore, it is the brain I must consider.”

“You won’t die in your bed, Holmes.” “I have often had the same idea. Does it matter very much? After all, Count, your own exit is more likely to be perpendicular than horizontal. But these anticipations of the future are morbid. Why not give ourselves up to the unrestrained enjoyment of the present?”

“No violence, gentlemen—no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!

“We give you best, Holmes. I believe you are the devil himself.” “Not far from him, at any rate,” Holmes answered with a polite smile.

his mood was particularly bright and joyous, with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments.

“Let me say right here, Mr. Holmes,” he began, “that money is nothing to me in this case. You can burn it if it’s any use in lighting you to the truth. This woman is innocent and this woman has to be cleared, and it’s up to you to do it. Name your figure!” “My professional charges are upon a fixed scale,” said Holmes coldly. “I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether.” “Well, if dollars make no difference to you, think of the reputation. If you pull this off every paper in England and America will be booming you. You’ll be the talk of two continents.” “Thank you, Mr. Gibson, I do not think that I am in need of booming. It may surprise you to know that I prefer to work anonymously, and that it is the problem itself which attracts me. But we are wasting time. Let us get down to the facts.”

“Plain enough, but what’s at the back of it? Raising the price on me, or afraid to tackle it, or what? I’ve a right to a plain answer.” “Well, perhaps you have,” said Holmes. “I’ll give you one. This case is quite sufficiently complicated to start with without the further difficulty of false information.” “Meaning that I lie.” “Well, I was trying to express it as delicately as I could, but if you insist upon the word I will not contradict you.”

“I’m not pretending to be any better than I am. I guess all my life I’ve been a man that reached out his hand for what he wanted, and I never wanted anything more than the love and possession of that woman. I told her so.” “Oh, you did, did you?” Holmes could look very formidable when he was moved. “I said to her that if I could marry her I would, but that it was out of my power. I said that money was no object and that all I could do to make her happy and comfortable would be done.” “Very generous, I am sure,” said Holmes with a sneer. “See here, Mr. Holmes. I came to you on a question of evidence, not on a question of morals. I’m not asking for your criticism.” “It is only for the young lady’s sake that I touch your case at all,” said Holmes sternly. “I don’t know that anything she is accused of is really worse than what you have yourself admitted, that you have tried to ruin a defenceless girl who was under your roof. Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences.”

It was not a long journey from Winchester to Thor Place, but it was long to me in my impatience, while for Holmes it was evident that it seemed endless; for, in his nervous restlessness he could not sit still, but paced the carriage or drummed with his long, sensitive fingers upon the cushions beside him. Suddenly, however, as we neared our destination he seated himself opposite to me—we had a first-class carriage to ourselves—and laying a hand upon each of my knees he looked into my eyes with the peculiarly mischievous gaze which was characteristic of his more imp-like moods. “Watson,” said he, “I have some recollection that you go armed upon these excursions of ours.” It was as well for him that I did so, for he took little care for his own safety when his mind was once absorbed by a problem so that more than once my revolver had been a good friend in need. I reminded him of the fact. “Yes, yes, I am a little absent-minded in such matters. But have you your revolver on you?”

I received one of Holmes’s laconic messages: Come at once if convenient—if inconvenient come all the same. S.H.

What Sherlock Holmes was about to suggest will never be known, for at this moment the door opened and a young lady was shown into the room. As she appeared Mr. Bennett sprang up with a cry and ran forward with his hands out to meet those which she had herself outstretched. “Edith, dear! Nothing the matter, I hope?” “I felt I must follow you. Oh, Jack, I have been so dreadfully frightened! It is awful to be there alone.” “Mr. Holmes, this is the young lady I spoke of. This is my fiancée.” “We were gradually coming to that conclusion, were we not, Watson?” Holmes answered with a smile.

“Hardly enough, Mr. Holmes!” the old man cried in a high screaming voice, with extraordinary malignancy upon his face. He got between us and the door as he spoke, and he shook his two hands at us with furious passion. “You can hardly get out of it so easily as that.” His face was convulsed, and he grinned and gibbered at us in his senseless rage. I am convinced that we should have had to fight our way out of the room if Mr. Bennett had not intervened.

“Thick and horny in a way which is quite new in my experience. Always look at the hands first, Watson. Then cuffs, trouser-knees, and boots. Very curious knuckles which can only be explained by the mode of progression observed by—” Holmes paused and suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, Watson, Watson, what a fool I have been! It seems incredible, and yet it must be true. All points in one direction. How could I miss seeing the connection of ideas? Those knuckles how could I have passed those knuckles? And the dog! And the ivy! It’s surely time that I disappeared into that little farm of my dreams.

“The real source,” said Holmes, “lies, of course, in that untimely love affair which gave our impetuous professor the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man. When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.”

There is danger there—a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?”

“Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their hearts? It’s pure lunacy.” “But surely,” said I, “the vampire was not necessarily a dead man? A living person might have the habit. I have read, for example, of the old sucking the blood of the young in order to retain their youth.” “You are right, Watson. It mentions the legend in one of these references. But are we to give serious attention to such things? This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.

“No, she struck him savagely. It is the more terrible as he is a poor little inoffensive cripple.”

he smiled, and his eyes came back to the baby. On its chubby neck there was this small puckered mark. Without speaking, Holmes examined it with care. Finally he shook one of the dimpled fists which waved in front of him. “Good-bye, little man. You have made a strange start in life.

“This is a more serious matter than I had expected, Watson,” said he. “It is fair to tell you so, though I know it will only be an additional reason to you for running your head into danger. I should know my Watson by now. But there is danger, and you should know it.”

In an instant he had whisked out a revolver from his breast and had fired two shots. I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh. There was a crash as Holmes’s pistol came down on the man’s head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair. “You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!” It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation. “It’s nothing, Holmes. It’s a mere scratch.” He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife. “You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?”

Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else.

“It may be some fussy, self-important fool; it may be a matter of life or death,” said he as he handed me the note.

“Of course, I was prepared to find Dr. Watson,” he remarked with a courteous bow. “His collaboration may be very necessary, for we are dealing on this occasion, Mr. Holmes, with a man to whom violence is familiar and who will, literally, stick at nothing. I should say that there is no more dangerous man in Europe.” “I have had several opponents to whom that flattering term has been applied,” said Holmes with a smile.

A crimson patch had soaked through the white linen compress. I sat beside him and bent my head. “All right, Watson. Don’t look so scared,” he muttered in a very weak voice. “It’s not as bad as it seems.” “Thank God for that!” “I’m a bit of a single-stick expert. as you know. I took most of them on my guard. It was the second man that was too much for me.” “What can I do, Holmes? Of course, it was that damned fellow who set them on. I’ll go and thrash the hide off him if you give the word.” “Good old Watson!

Now, Watson, I want you to do something for me.” “I am here to be used, Holmes.”

For a long time he has worried me to write an experience of my own. Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution, since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures. “Try it yourself, Holmes!” he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that, having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realise that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader.

The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone.

Mr. James M. Dodd seemed somewhat at a loss how to begin the interview. I did not attempt to help him, for his silence gave me more time for observation. I have found it wise to impress clients with a sense of power, and so I gave him some of my conclusions.

“You see everything.” “I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see.

“Exactly, Watson. Pathetic and futile. But is not all life pathetic and futile? Is not his story a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow —misery.”

“Is he one of your clients?” “Well, I suppose I may call him so. He has been sent on by the Yard. Just as medical men occasionally send their incurables to a quack. They argue that they can do nothing more, and that whatever happens the patient can be no worse than he is.”

“Cut out the poetry, Watson,” said Holmes severely. “I note that it was a high brick wall.”

“Most singular!” said the distant voice. “Most remarkable! I much fear, my dear Watson, that there is no return train to-night. I have unwittingly condemned you to the horrors of a country inn.

It was soon apparent to me that my companion’s reputation as a miser was not undeserved. He had grumbled at the expense of the journey, had insisted upon travelling third-class, and was now clamorous in his objections to the hotel bill. Next morning, when we did at last arrive in London, it was hard to say which of us was in the worse humour.

“What is the question, Mr. Holmes?” “Only this: What did you do with the bodies?” The man sprang to his feet with a hoarse scream. He clawed into the air with his bony hands. His mouth was open, and for the instant he looked like some horrible bird of prey. In a flash we got a glimpse of the real Josiah Amberley, a misshapen demon with a soul as distorted as his body. As he fell back into his chair he clapped his hand to his lips as if to stifle a cough. Holmes sprang at his throat like a tiger and twisted his face towards the ground. A white pellet fell from between his gasping lips. “No short cuts, Josiah Amberley. Things must be done decently and in order. What about it, Barker?”

first, I would give you an insight into this man’s mentality. It is a very unusual one—so much so that I think his destination is more likely to be Broadmoor than the scaffold.

“There being no fear of interruption I proceeded to burgle the house. Burglary has always been an alternative profession had I cared to adopt it, and I have little doubt that I should have come to the front.

“Of course, he was bound to call us in, but why he should have gone to you I can’t understand.” “Pure swank!” Holmes answered. “He felt so clever and so sure of himself that he imagined no one could touch him. He could say to any suspicious neighbour, ‘Look at the steps I have taken. I have consulted not only the police but even Sherlock Holmes.'” The inspector laughed.

If I had said that a mad bull had arrived it would give a clearer impression of what occurred.

He swung a huge knotted lump of a fist under my friend’s nose. Holmes examined it closely with an air of great interest. “Were you born so?” he asked. “Or did it come by degrees?” It may have been the icy coolness of my friend, or it may have been the slight clatter which I made as I picked up the poker. In any case, our visitor’s manner became less flamboyant.

Holmes raised his hand for silence. Then he strode across the room, flung open the door, and dragged in a great gaunt woman whom he had seized by the shoulder. She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.

“Now, Susan, wheezy people may not live long, you know. It’s a wicked thing to tell fibs. Whom did you tell?”

But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

“Dr. Watson agrees, so that settles it.”

I made a mistake, I fear, in not asking you to spend the night on guard. This fellow has clearly proved a broken reed.

Meantime, lady”—he wagged a cautionary forefinger—”have a care! Have a care! You can’t play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands.”

It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London.

That the dog should die was after the beautiful, faithful nature of dogs.