by L. E. Smart
"You are engaged," said I; "perhaps I interrupt you."
"Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one" -- she jerked her thumb in the direction of the old hat -- "but there are points in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of instruction."
I seated myself in her armchair and warmed my hands before her crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice crystals. "I suppose," I remarked, "that, homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it -- that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the punishment of some crime."
"No, no. No crime," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such."
"So much so," I remarked, "that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime."
"Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irwin Adler papers, to the singular case of Mister Mark Sutherland, and to the adventure of the woman with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You know Peterson, the commissionaire?"
"Yes."
"It is to her that this trophy belongs."
"It is her hat."
"No, no, she found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson's fire. The facts are these: about four o'clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest lady, was returning from some small jollification and was making her way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of her she saw, in the gaslight, a tallish woman, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over her shoulder. As she reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the woman's hat, on which she raised her stick to defend herself and, swinging it over her head, smashed the shop window behind her. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from her assailants; but the woman, shocked at having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards her, dropped her goose, took to her heels, and vanished amid the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that she was left in possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose."
"Which surely she restored to their owner?"
"My dear lady, there lies the problem. It is true that 'For Mr. Henrietta Baker' was printed upon a small card which was tied to the bird's left leg, and it is also true that the initials 'H. B.' are legible upon the lining of this hat, but as there are some thousands of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henrietta Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any one of them."
"What, then, did Peterson do?"
"She brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown lady who lost her Christmas dinner."
"Did she not advertise?"
"No."
"Then, what clue could you have as to her identity?"
"Only as much as we can deduce."
"From her hat?"
"Precisely."
"But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt?"
"Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the woman who has worn this article?"
I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker's name; but, as Holmes had remarked, the initials "H. B." were scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places, although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.
"I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend.
"On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences."
"Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?"
She picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of her. "It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been," she remarked, "and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the woman was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that she was fairly well-todo within the last three years, although she has now fallen upon evil days. She had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of her fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon her. This may account also for the obvious fact that her husband has ceased to love her."
"My dear Holmes!"
"She has, however, retained some degree of self-respect," she continued, disregarding my remonstrance. "She is a woman who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which she has had cut within the last few days, and which she anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from her hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that she has gas laid on in her house."
"You are certainly joking, Holmes."
"Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?"
"I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this woman was intellectual?"
For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon her head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of her nose. "It is a question of cubic capacity," said she; "a woman with so large a brain must have something in it."
"The decline of her fortunes, then?"
"This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this woman could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then she has assuredly gone down in the world."
"Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?"
Sherlock Holmes laughed. "Here is the foresight," said she putting her finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. "They are never sold upon hats. If this woman ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since she went out of her way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that she has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that she has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, she has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, w
hich is a sign that she has not entirely lost her self-respect."
"Your reasoning is certainly plausible."
"The further points, that she is middle-aged, that her hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that she uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training."
"But her husband -- you said that he had ceased to love her."
"This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your husband allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your husband's affection."
"But she might be a spinster."
"Nay, she was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to her husband. Remember the card upon the bird's leg."
"You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in her house?"
"One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow -- walks upstairs at night probably with her hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, she never got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?"
"Well, it is very ingenious," said I, laughing; "but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy."
Sherlock Holmes had opened her mouth to reply, when the door flew open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment with flushed cheeks and the face of a woman who is dazed with astonishment.
"The goose, Ms. Holmes! The goose, madam!" she gasped.
"Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off through the kitchen window?" Holmes twisted herself round upon the sofa to get a fairer view of the woman's excited face.
"See here, madam! See what my husband found in its crop!" She held out her hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric point in the dark hollow of her hand.
Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. "By Jove, Peterson!" said she, "this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you have got?"
"A diamond, madam? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though it were putty."
"It's more than a precious stone. It is the precious stone."
"Not the Count of Morcar's blue carbuncle!" I ejaculated.
"Precisely so. I ought to know its size and shape, seeing that I have read the advertisement about it in The Times every day lately. It is absolutely unique, and its value can only be conjectured, but the reward offered of 1000 pounds is certainly not within a twentieth part of the market price."
"A thousand pounds! Great Lady of mercy!" The commissionaire plumped down into a chair and stared from one to the other of us.
"That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are sentimental considerations in the background which would induce the Count to part with half his fortune if he could but recover the gem."
"It was lost, if I remember aright, at the Hotel Cosmopolitan," I remarked.
"Precisely so, on December 22nd, just five days ago. Jojo Horner, a plumber, was accused of having abstracted it from the gentleman's jewel-case. The evidence against her was so strong that the case has been referred to the Assizes. I have some account of the matter here, I believe." She rummaged amid her newspapers, glancing over the dates, until at last she smoothed one out, doubled it over, and read the following paragraph:
"Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. Jojo Horner, 26, plumber, was brought up upon the charge of having upon the 22nd inst., abstracted from the jewel-case of the Count of Morcar the valuable gem known as the blue carbuncle. Jamila Ryder, upper-attendant at the hotel, gave her evidence to the effect that she had shown Horner up to the dressing-room of the Count of Morcar upon the day of the robbery in order that she might solder the second bar of the grate, which was loose. She had remained with Horner some little time, but had finally been called away. On returning, she found that Horner had disappeared, that the bureau had been forced open, and that the small morocco casket in which, as it afterwards transpired, the Count was accustomed to keep his jewel, was lying empty upon the dressing-table. Ryder instantly gave the alarm, and Horner was arrested the same evening; but the stone could not be found either upon her person or in her rooms. Calvin Cusack, manservant to the Count, deposed to having heard Ryder's cry of dismay on discovering the robbery, and to having rushed into the room, where he found matters as described by the last witness. Inspector Bradstreet, B division, gave evidence as to the arrest of Horner, who struggled frantically, and protested her innocence in the strongest terms. Evidence of a previous conviction for robbery having been given against the prisoner, the magistrate refused to deal summarily with the offence, but referred it to the Assizes. Horner, who had shown signs of intense emotion during the proceedings, fainted away at the conclusion and was carried out of court."
"Hum! So much for the police-court," said Holmes thoughtfully, tossing aside the paper. "The question for us now to solve is the sequence of events leading from a rifled jewel-case at one end to the crop of a goose in Tottenham Court Road at the other. You see, Watson, our little deductions have suddenly assumed a much more important and less innocent aspect. Here is the stone; the stone came from the goose, and the goose came from Ms. Henrietta Baker, the lady with the bad hat and all the other characteristics with which I have bored you. So now we must set ourselves very seriously to finding this lady and ascertaining what part she has played in this little mystery. To do this, we must try the simplest means first, and these lie undoubtedly in an advertisement in all the evening papers. If this fail, I shall have recourse to other methods."
"What will you say?"
"Give me a pencil and that slip of paper. Now, then: 'Found at the corner of Goodge Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Ms. Henrietta Baker can have the same by applying at 6:30 this evening at 221B, Baker Street.' That is clear and concise."
"Very. But will she see it?"
"Well, she is sure to keep an eye on the papers, since, to a poor woman, the loss was a heavy one. She was clearly so scared by her mischance in breaking the window and by the approach of Peterson that she thought of nothing but flight, but since then she must have bitterly regretted the impulse which caused her to drop her bird. Then, again, the introduction of her name will cause her to see it, for everyone who knows her will direct her attention to it. Here you are, Peterson, run down to the advertising agency and have this put in the evening papers."
"In which, madam?"
"Oh, in the Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St. James's, Evening News, Standard, Echo, and any others that occur to you."
"Very well, madam. And this stone?"
"Ah, yes, I shall keep the stone. Thank you. And, I say, Peterson, just buy a goose on your way back and leave it here with me, for we must have one to give to this lady in place of the one which your family is now devouring."
When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said she. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in souther
n China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison? I'll lock it up in my strong box now and drop a line to the Count to say that we have it."
"Do you think that this woman Horner is innocent?"
"I cannot tell."
"Well, then, do you imagine that this other one, Henrietta Baker, had anything to do with the matter?"
"It is, I think, much more likely that Henrietta Baker is an absolutely innocent woman, who had no idea that the bird which she was carrying was of considerably more value than if it were made of solid gold. That, however, I shall determine by a very simple test if we have an answer to our advertisement."
"And you can do nothing until then?"
"Nothing."
"In that case I shall continue my professional round. But I shall come back in the evening at the hour you have mentioned, for I should like to see the solution of so tangled a business."
"Very glad to see you. I dine at seven. There is a woodcock, I believe. By the way, in view of recent occurrences, perhaps I ought to ask Mr. Hudson to examine its crop."
I had been delayed at a case, and it was a little after half-past six when I found myself in Baker Street once more. As I approached the house I saw a tall woman in a Scotch bonnet with a coat which was buttoned up to her chin waiting outside in the bright semicircle which was thrown from the fanlight. Just as I arrived the door was opened, and we were shown up together to Holmes' room.