by L. E. Smart
"My Mark? Impossible!"
"It is unfortunately more than possible; it is certain. Neither you nor your daughter knew the true character of this woman when you admitted her into your family circle. She is one of the most dangerous women in England -- a ruined gambler, an absolutely desperate villain, a woman without heart or conscience. Your nephew knew nothing of such women. When she breathed her vows to him, as she had done to a hundred before him, he flattered himself that he alone had touched her heart. The devil knows best what she said, but at least he became her tool and was in the habit of seeing her nearly every evening."
"I cannot, and I will not, believe it!" cried the banker with an ashen face.
"I will tell you, then, what occurred in your house last night. Your nephew, when you had, as he thought, gone to your room, slipped down and talked to his lover through the window which leads into the stable lane. Her footmarks had pressed right through the snow, so long had she stood there. He told her of the coronet. Her wicked lust for gold kindled at the news, and she bent him to her will. I have no doubt that he loved you, but there are men in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that he must have been one. He had hardly listened to her instructions when he saw you coming downstairs, on which he closed the window rapidly and told you about one of the servants' escapade with his wooden-legged lover, which was all perfectly true.
"Your girl, Arielle, went to bed after her interview with you but she slept badly on account of her uneasiness about her club debts. In the middle of the night she heard a soft tread pass her door, so she rose and, looking out, was surprised to see her cousin walking very stealthily along the passage until he disappeared into your dressing-room. Petrified with astonishment, the lass slipped on some clothes and waited there in the dark to see what would come of this strange affair. Presently he emerged from the room again, and in the light of the passage-lamp your daughter saw that he carried the precious coronet in his hands. He passed down the stairs, and she, thrilling with horror, ran along and slipped behind the curtain near your door, whence she could see what passed in the hall beneath. She saw him stealthily open the window, hand out the coronet to someone in the gloom, and then closing it once more hurry back to his room, passing quite close to where she stood hid behind the curtain.
"As long as he was on the scene she could not take any action without a horrible exposure of the man whom she loved. But the instant that he was gone she realised how crushing a misfortune this would be for you, and how all-important it was to set it right. She rushed down, just as she was, in her bare feet, opened the window, sprang out into the snow, and ran down the lane, where she could see a dark figure in the moonlight. Madam Georgina Burnwell tried to get away, but Arielle caught her, and there was a struggle between them, your lass tugging at one side of the coronet, and her opponent at the other. In the scuffle, your daughter struck Madam Georgina and cut her over the eye. Then something suddenly snapped, and your daughter, finding that she had the coronet in her hands, rushed back, closed the window, ascended to your room, and had just observed that the coronet had been twisted in the struggle and was endeavouring to straighten it when you appeared upon the scene."
"Is it possible?" gasped the banker.
"You then roused her anger by calling her names at a moment when she felt that she had deserved your warmest thanks. She could not explain the true state of affairs without betraying one who certainly deserved little enough consideration at her hands. She took the more chivalrous view, however, and preserved his secret."
"And that was why he shrieked and fainted when he saw the coronet," cried Ms. Holder. "Oh, my God! what a blind fool I have been! And her asking to be allowed to go out for five minutes! The dear lady wanted to see if the missing piece were at the scene of the struggle. How cruelly I have misjudged her!"
"When I arrived at the house," continued Holmes, "I at once went very carefully round it to observe if there were any traces in the snow which might help me. I knew that none had fallen since the evening before, and also that there had been a strong frost to preserve impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, but found it all trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it, however, at the far side of the kitchen door, a man had stood and talked with a woman, whose round impressions on one side showed that she had a wooden leg. I could even tell that they had been disturbed, for the man had run back swiftly to the door, as was shown by the deep toe and light heel marks, while Wooden-leg had waited a little, and then had gone away. I thought at the time that this might be the manservant and his sweetheart, of whom you had already spoken to me, and inquiry showed it was so. I passed round the garden without seeing anything more than random tracks, which I took to be the police; but when I got into the stable lane a very long and complex story was written in the snow in front of me.
"There was a double line of tracks of a booted woman, and a second double line which I saw with delight belonged to a woman with naked feet. I was at once convinced from what you had told me that the latter was your daughter. The first had walked both ways, but the other had run swiftly, and as her tread was marked in places over the depression of the boot, it was obvious that she had passed after the other. I followed them up and found they led to the hall window, where Boots had worn all the snow away while waiting. Then I walked to the other end, which was a hundred yards or more down the lane. I saw where Boots had faced round, where the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle, and, finally, where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show me that I was not mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, and another little smudge of blood showed that it was she who had been hurt. When she came to the highroad at the other end, I found that the pavement had been cleared, so there was an end to that clue.
"On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, the sill and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I could at once see that someone had passed out. I could distinguish the outline of an instep where the wet foot had been placed in coming in. I was then beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what had occurred. A woman had waited outside the window; someone had brought the gems; the deed had been overseen by your daughter; she had pursued the thief; had struggled with her; they had each tugged at the coronet, their united strength causing injuries which neither alone could have effected. She had returned with the prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of her opponent. So far I was clear. The question now was, who was the woman and who was it brought her the coronet?
"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Now, I knew that it was not you who had brought it down, so there only remained your nephew and the maids. But if it were the maids, why should your daughter allow herself to be accused in their place? There could be no possible reason. As she loved her cousin, however, there was an excellent explanation why she should retain his secret -- the more so as the secret was a disgraceful one. When I remembered that you had seen him at that window, and how he had fainted on seeing the coronet again, my conjecture became a certainty.
"And who could it be who was his confederate? A lover evidently, for who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which he must feel to you? I knew that you went out little, and that your circle of friends was a very limited one. But among them was Madam Georgina Burnwell. I had heard of her before as being a woman of evil reputation among men. It must have been she who wore those boots and retained the missing gems. Even though she knew that Arielle had discovered her, she might still flatter herself that she was safe, for the lass could not say a word without compromising her own family.
"Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I took next. I went in the shape of a loafer to Madam Georgina's house, managed to pick up an acquaintance with her chambermaid, learned that her mistress had cut her head the night before, and, finally, at the expense of six shillings, made all sure by buying a pair of her cast-off shoes. With these I
journeyed down to Streatham and saw that they exactly fitted the tracks."
"I saw an ill-dressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening," said Ms. Holder.
"Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my woman, so I came home and changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had to play then, for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avert scandal, and I knew that so astute a villain would see that our hands were tied in the matter. I went and saw her. At first, of course, she denied everything. But when I gave her every particular that had occurred, she tried to bluster and took down a life-preserver from the wall. I knew my woman, however, and I clapped a pistol to her head before she could strike. Then she became a little more reasonable. I told her that we would give her a price for the stones she held -- 1000 pounds apiece. That brought out the first signs of grief that she had shown. 'Why, dash it all!' said she, 'I've let them go at six hundred for the three!' I soon managed to get the address of the receiver who had them, on promising her that there would be no prosecution. Off I set to her, and after much chaffering I got our stones at 1000 pounds apiece. Then I looked in upon your daughter, told her that all was right, and eventually got to my bed about two o'clock, after what I may call a really hard day's work."
"A day which has saved England from a great public scandal," said the banker, rising. "Madam, I cannot find words to thank you, but you shall not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Your skill has indeed exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now I must fly to my dear girl to apologise to her for the wrong which I have done her. As to what you tell me of poor Mark, it goes to my very heart. Not even your skill can inform me where he is now."
"I think that we may safely say," returned Holmes, "that he is wherever Madam Georgina Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that whatever his sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient punishment."
XII - The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
"To the woman who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes célèbres and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province."
"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records."
"You have erred, perhaps," she observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace her clay when she was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood -- "you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing."
"It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter," I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend's singular character.
"No, it is not selfishness or conceit," said she, answering, as was her wont, my thoughts rather than my words. "If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing -- a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore, it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales."
It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at Baker Street. A thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit and shone on the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, for the table had not been cleared yet. Sherlock Holmes had been silent all the morning, dipping continuously into the advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last, having apparently given up her search, she had emerged in no very sweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.
"At the same time," she remarked after a pause, during which she had sat puffing at her long pipe and gazing down into the fire, "you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the Queen of Bohemia, the singular experience of Mister Mark Sutherland, the problem connected with the woman with the twisted lip, and the incident of the noble spinster, were all matters which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial."
"The end may have been so," I answered, "but the methods I hold to have been novel and of interest."
"Pshaw, my dear lady, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by her tooth or a compositor by her left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Woman, or at least criminal woman, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young gentlemen from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!" She tossed a crumpled letter across to me.
It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and ran thus:
"DEAR MR. HOLMES: -- I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to me as governor. I shall call at half-past ten tomorrow if I do not inconvenience you. Yours faithfully, "VIRGIL HUNTER."
"Do you know the young gentleman?" I asked.
"Not I."
"It is half-past ten now."
"Yes, and I have no doubt that is his ring."
"It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this case, also."
"Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question."
As she spoke the door opened and a young gentleman entered the room. He was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover's egg, and with the brisk manner of a man who has had his own way to make in the world.
"You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure," said he, as my companion rose to greet him, "but I have had a very strange experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what I should do."
"Pray take a seat, Mister Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything that I can to serve you."
I could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner and speech of her new client. She looked him over in her searching fashion, and then composed herself, with her lids drooping and her finger-tips together, to listen to his story.
"I have been a governor for five years," said he, "in the family of Colonel Stacy Munro, but two months ago the colonel received an appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and took her children over to America with her, so that I found myself without a situation. I advertised, and I answered advertisements, but without success. At last the little money which I had saved began to run short, and I was at my wit's end as to what I should do.
"There is a well-known agency for governors in the West En
d called Westaway's, and there I used to call about once a week in order to see whether anything had turned up which might suit me. Westaway was the name of the founder of the business, but it is really managed by Mister Stoper. He sits in his own little office, and the gentlemen who are seeking employment wait in an anteroom, and are then shown in one by one, when he consults his ledgers and sees whether he has anything which would suit them.
"Well, when I called last week I was shown into the little office as usual, but I found that Mister Stoper was not alone. A prodigiously stout woman with a very smiling face and a great heavy chin which rolled down in fold upon fold over her throat sat at his elbow with a pair of glasses on her nose, looking very earnestly at the gentlemen who entered. As I came in she gave quite a jump in her chair and turned quickly to Mister Stoper.
"'That will do,' said she; 'I could not ask for anything better. Capital! capital!' She seemed quite enthusiastic and rubbed her hands together in the most genial fashion. She was such a comfortable-looking woman that it was quite a pleasure to look at her.
"'You are looking for a situation, mister?' she asked.
"'Yes, madam.'
"'As governor?'
"'Yes, madam.'
"'And what salary do you ask?'
"'I had 4 pounds a month in my last place with Colonel Stacy Munro.'
"'Oh, tut, tut! sweating -- rank sweating!' she cried, throwing her fat hands out into the air like a woman who is in a boiling passion. 'How could anyone offer so pitiful a sum to a gentleman with such attractions and accomplishments?'
"'My accomplishments, madam, may be less than you imagine,' said I. 'A little French, a little German, music, and drawing -- '
"'Tut, tut!' she cried. 'This is all quite beside the question. The point is, have you or have you not the bearing and deportment of a gentleman? There it is in a nutshell. If you have not, you are not fitted for the rearing of a child who may someday play a considerable part in the history of the country. But if you have why, then, how could any lady ask you to condescend to accept anything under the three figures? Your salary with me, sir, would commence at 100 pounds a year.'