84 D. Martin Dakin wonders at the biblical names bestowed on the disreputable Major Sholto’s sons. “Perhaps it was the deceased Mrs. Sholto who was responsible.”
85 Noel Coward, in his operetta Bitter Sweet (1929), set in nineteenth-century Austria and revolving around the elopement of a young woman with her music teacher, called it “Tokay, the golden sunshine of a summer day.” The Hungarian wine is made from three varieties of white grape—Furmint, Hárslevelü, and Muskotály—with the first being predominant. “Tokaji alone on a label is almost certainly a fraud,” according to wine expert André L. Simon. “[I]t should be followed by Aszu, Szamorodni or Essencia.” The first and last are sweet; the middle, dry. Tokay is mentioned again in “His Last Bow,” when Holmes and Watson share a bottle.
86 Cyrus Durgin points out, in “The Speckled Band,” that Chianti, a dry table wine that stores poorly, and Tokay, a commonly fortified wine similar to brandy, are an unusual combination to be found in an Englishman’s at-hand bar. “I suppose the only conclusion is that a person who would keep only Tokay and Chianti—two wines very different in every respect—would necessarily be an eccentric person. I think we are entitled to assume, from the evidence of the narrative, that Mr. Thaddeus Sholto was indeed peculiar.”
87 Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796–1875), French landscape and figure painter. Forgeries of his work abound. Corot was a painter who never descended to ideological controversy, and in his personal habits he was unassuming and generous, providing for his contemporary Honoré Daumier (1808–1875), for instance, when the great political cartoonist and painter was near-destitute and had lost his sight. Oscar Wilde expressed his delight in the painter’s works in a private letter.
88 A renowned painter of the Neapolitan School (1615–1673), Rosa was also a poet and satirist. In a private letter, Wilde expressed the hope that his play The Duchess of Padua would have a “Salvator Rosa” effect.
89 Adolphe William Bouguereau (1825– 1905), a French painter whose works were most frequently of religious and mythological subjects. Christopher Morley remarks, “Mr. Sholto, as a man of refined tastes, would have been grieved to know that Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Faun was for many years the most famous barroom painting in New York, at the old Hoffman House on Fifth Avenue.”
90 Ben Wolf (“Zero Wolf Meets Sherlock Holmes”) raises an eyebrow at Sholto’s statement that he favours the modern school, “since Sholto’s statement was made in the year 1888, 14 years after the Impressionists had shown in Paris. Thaddeus would seem to have permitted his subscription to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts to lapse some years earlier.”
91 David L. Hammer identifies the house as “Beaulieu Lodge” (pronounced Bewley), off Church Street, on the summit of South Norwood Hill. Percy Metcalfe suggests either Beaulieu or, more likely, in his view, Hazelwood, about a mile and a half from Knights Hill, while Bernard Davies builds a detailed case for Kilravock House, now Ross Road SE26, but formerly in Upper Norwood.
92 It is curious that Jonathan Small knew nothing of the fate of Captain Morstan and apparently cared nothing about it. He expresses his solidarity with the remaining three of the “Four” but seems to have little sympathy for the Captain, who was cheated by Sholto as badly as the others were and who seems to have acted fairly toward Small and the others.
93 The only other wooden-legged men who are named in the Canon are Josiah Amberley, the eponymous client in “The Retired Colourman,” and Francis Prosper, suitor of the maid Lucy Parr in “The Beryl Coronet.” Prosper is described as a “greengrocer,” assuredly a tradesman, and Upper Norwood does lie adjacent to Streatham, the scene of “The Beryl Coronet.” The suggestion of the identity of the “tradesman” was first made by Gavin Brend to T. S. Blakeney. (An unnamed wooden-legged news-vendor appears in “The Illustrious Client” and is depicted on the cover of the Sherlock Holmes Journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.)
94 What was in this letter? We may deduce that the “great shock” that the letter contained must have been the news that Jonathan Small had escaped from his confinement in the Andamans. However, the letter surely cannot have been the news that Small had just escaped, for in 1882, “three or four years ago,” according to Small (although this does not square with the other indications that the case took place in 1888), after “drift[ing] about the world” for some apparent time, Small travelled to London. Therefore, Small must have escaped shortly after Captain Morstan’s death, in 1879 or 1880.
Who would have sent Sholto a letter containing such news, even if late? Presumably neither Sholto nor Morstan would have told any of their colleagues of their financial arrangement with Small. It is possible that the letter came from a colleague of Sholto’s who had been posted to India and who merely wrote Sholto of various gossip concerning his old posting in the Andamans. Ian McQueen suggests that Small himself wrote this letter from India, just before his travel to London (see note 145, below.)
95 On the basis of the skimpy evidence, medical authorities suggest varying diagnoses, including orthopnea (difficulty breathing except when upright), heart failure due to hypertension, and pneumonia.
96 Agra, capital (or “headquarters”) of the Agra district of India and until 1648 the capital of India, is famous for the Agra fort, which features in Jonathan Small’s narrative, and the Táj-Mahal, a splendid mausoleum built during the Mughal dynasty (mid-sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) by the Emperor Sháh Jahán (1592–1666) for the remains of his favourite wife, Mumtázá Mahal, who died delivering their fourteenth child. Shah Jahan himself, “King of the World,” is also buried there, having lived out his last years as a prisoner in the Agra fort during the course of his four sons’ internecine fight for the throne.
Agra Fort.
97 T. S. Blakeney notes that Sholto’s conduct is reflective of the generally low standard of conduct of officers of the British and Indian Armies as reported in the Canon—see, for example, Colonel Sebastian Moran (of “The Empty House”) or Colonel Valentine Walter (“The Bruce-Partington Plans”). Not only did Sholto gamble to the point of ruin, he assisted in the escape of four murderers, ultimately double-crossing them. “Even his regrets about Miss Morstan were lip-service only—he urged his sons to do nothing for her in his life-time. He must have had a hardened conscience indeed!”
98 “Bad taste leads to crime.” William S. Baring-Gould observes that the expression was coined by Le Baron de Mareste but was immortalised by the writer Stendhal (Henri Beyle, 1783–1842).
99 Buttoned with “frogs,” loops (often braided) that pass over a bar-shaped button, knot, or decorative fastening.
100 Ear-flaps.
101 Having a pinched or emaciated look; more commonly “peaked” today.
102 A person with a weak constitution, or one who is sickly, and whose overriding concern is chronic invalidism.
103 About $2.5 million in American dollars, over £32 million, or over $60 million, in 2005 purchasing power.
104 Strychnine, derived from the dried seeds of the East Indian tree Strychnos nux vomica, is an alkaloid obtained in crystal form. Even a small dose of the drug (0.2 mg/kg) causes convulsions, muscle spasms, and death. “Watson could almost have been forgiven if he actually had given the injection to Thaddeus Sholto,” remarks Dr. Maurice Campbell, “who must have been very trying in the cab on that journey.”
CHAPTER
V
THE TRAGEDY OF PONDICHERRY LODGE
IT WAS NEARLY eleven o’clock when we reached this final stage of our night’s adventures. We had left the damp fog of the great city behind us, and the night was fairly fine. A warm wind blew from the westward, and heavy clouds moved slowly across the sky, with half a moon peeping occasionally through the rifts. It was clear enough to see for some distance, but Thaddeus Sholto took down one of the side-lamps from the carriage to give us a better light upon our way.
Pondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds and was girt round with a very high stone wall topped with broken glass. A single na
rrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance. On this our guide knocked with a peculiar postman-like rat-tat.105
“Who is there?” cried a gruff voice from within.
“It is I, McMurdo. You surely know my knock by this time.”
There was a grumbling sound and a clanking and jarring of keys. The door swung heavily back, and a short, deep-chested man stood in the opening, with the yellow light of the lantern shining upon his protruded face and twinkling, distrustful eyes.
Dustjacket, The Sign of Four.
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1932)
“That you, Mr. Thaddeus? But who are the others? I had no orders about them from the master.”
“No, McMurdo? You surprise me! I told my brother last night that I should bring some friends.”
“He hain’t been out o’ his room to-day, Mr. Thaddeus, and I have no orders. You know very well that I must stick to regulations. I can let you in, but your friends they must just stop where they are.”
This was an unexpected obstacle. Thaddeus Sholto looked about him in a perplexed and helpless manner.
“This is too bad of you, McMurdo!” he said. “If I guarantee them, that is enough for you. There is the young lady, too. She cannot wait on the public road at this hour.”
“Our guide knocked with a peculiar postmanlike rat, tat.”
Artist unknown, The Sign of the Four (New York and Boston: H. M. Caldwell Co., n.d.)
“Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus,” said the porter inexorably. “Folk may be friends o’ yours, and yet no friends o’ the master’s. He pays me well to do my duty, and my duty I’ll do. I don’t know none o’ your friends.”
“Oh, yes, you do, McMurdo,” cried Sherlock Holmes genially. “I don’t think you can have forgotten me. Don’t you remember that amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison’s rooms on the night of your benefit106 four years back?”107
“Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” roared the prize-fighter. “God’s truth! how could I have mistook you? If instead o’ standin’ there so quiet you had just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the jaw,108 I’d ha’ known you without a question. Ah, you’re one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy.”
“A short, deep-chested man stood in the opening.”
Richard Gutschmidt, Das Zeichen der Vier (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)
“You see, Watson, if all else fails me, I have still one of the scientific professions open to me,” said Holmes, laughing. “Our friend won’t keep us out in the cold now, I am sure.”
“In you come, sir, in you come—you and your friends,” he answered. “Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus, but orders are very strict. Had to be certain of your friends before I let them in.”
Inside, a gravel path wound through desolate grounds to a huge clump of a house, square and prosaic, all plunged in shadow save where a moonbeam struck one corner and glimmered in a garret window. The vast size of the building, with its gloom and its deathly silence, struck a chill to the heart. Even Thaddeus Sholto seemed ill at ease, and the lantern quivered and rattled in his hand.
“I cannot understand it,” he said. “There must be some mistake. I distinctly told Bartholomew that we should be here, and yet there is no light in his window. I do not know what to make of it.”
The National Sporting Club, London.
Sketches from “Punch,” by Phil May (1897)
“Does he always guard the premises in this way?” asked Holmes.
“Yes; he has followed my father’s custom. He was the favourite son, you know, and I sometimes think that my father may have told him more than he ever told me. That is Bartholomew’s window up there where the moonshine strikes. It is quite bright, but there is no light from within, I think.”
“None,” said Holmes. “But I see the glint of a light in that little window beside the door.”
“Ah, that is the housekeeper’s room. That is where old Mrs. Bernstone sits. She can tell us all about it. But perhaps you would not mind waiting here for a minute or two, for if we all go in together, and she has had no word of our coming, she may be alarmed. But, hush! what is that?”
He held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my wrist, and we all stood, with thumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great black house there sounded through the silent night the saddest and most pitiful of sounds—the shrill, broken whimpering of a frightened woman.
“It is Mrs. Bernstone,” said Sholto. “She is the only woman in the house. Wait here. I shall be back in a moment.”
He hurried for the door and knocked in his peculiar way. We could see a tall old woman admit him and sway with pleasure at the very sight of him.
“Oh, Mr. Thaddeus, sir, I am so glad you have come! I am so glad you have come, Mr. Thaddeus, sir!”
We heard her reiterated rejoicings until the door was closed and her voice died away into a muffled monotone.
Our guide had left us the lantern. Holmes swung it slowly round and peered keenly at the house and at the great rubbish-heaps which cumbered the grounds. Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marvelled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand-in-hand like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.
“What a strange place!” she said, looking round.
“It looks as though all the moles in England had been let loose in it. I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Ballarat,109 where the prospectors had been at work.”
“And from the same cause,” said Holmes. “These are the traces of the treasure-seekers. You must remember that they were six years looking for it. No wonder that the grounds look like a gravel-pit.”
At that moment the door of the house burst open, and Thaddeus Sholto came running out, with his hands thrown forward and terror in his eyes.
“There is something amiss with Bartholomew!” he cried. “I am frightened! My nerves cannot stand it.”
He was, indeed, half blubbering with fear, and his twitching, feeble face peeping out from the great astrakhan collar had the helpless, appealing expression of a terrified child.
“Come into the house,” said Holmes in his crisp, firm way.
“Yes, do!” pleaded Thaddeus Sholto. “I really do not feel equal to giving directions.”
We all followed him into the housekeeper’s room, which stood upon the left-hand side of the passage. The old woman was pacing up and down with a scared look and restless, picking fingers, but the sight of Miss Morstan appeared to have a soothing effect upon her.
“God bless your sweet, calm face!” she cried, with an hysterical sob. “It does me good to see you. Oh, but I have been sorely tried this day!”
Our companion patted her thin, work-worn hand and murmured some few words of kindly, womanly comfort which brought the colour back into the other’s bloodless cheeks.
“Master has locked himself in and will not answer me,” she explained. “All day I have waited to hear from him, for he often likes to be alone; but an hour ago I feared that something was amiss, so I went up and peeped through the keyhole. You must go up, Mr. Thaddeus—you must go up and look for yourself. I have seen Mr. Bartholomew Sholto in joy and in sorrow for ten long years, but I never saw him with such a face on him as that.”
Sherlock Holmes took the lamp and led the way, for Thaddeus Sholto’s teeth were chattering in his head. So shaken was he that I had to pass my hand under his arm as we went up the stairs, for his knees were trembling un
der him. Twice as we ascended, Holmes whipped his lens out of his pocket and carefully examined marks which appeared to me to be mere shapeless smudges of dust upon the coconut matting which served as a stair-carpet. He walked slowly from step to step, holding the lamp low, and shooting keen glances to right and left. Miss Morstan had remained behind with the frightened housekeeper.
The third flight of stairs ended in a straight passage of some length, with a great picture in Indian tapestry upon the right of it and three doors upon the left. Holmes advanced along it in the same slow and methodical way, while we kept close at his heels, with our long, black shadows streaming backward down the corridor. The third door was that which we were seeking. Holmes knocked without receiving any answer, and then tried to turn the handle and force it open. It was locked on the inside, however, and by a broad and powerful bolt, as we could see when we set our lamp up against it. The key being turned, however, the hole was not entirely closed. Sherlock Holmes bent down to it and instantly rose again with a sharp intaking of the breath.
“There is something devilish in this, Watson,” said he, more moved than I had ever before seen him. “What do you make of it?”
I stooped to the hole and recoiled in horror. Moonlight was streaming into the room, and it was bright with a vague and shifty radiance. Looking straight at me and suspended, as it were, in the air, for all beneath was in shadow, there hung a face—the very face of our companion Thaddeus. There was the same high, shining head, the same circular bristle of red hair,110 the same bloodless countenance. The features were set, however, in a horrible smile, a fixed and unnatural grin, which in that still and moonlit room was more jarring to the nerves than any scowl or contortion. So like was the face to that of our little friend that I looked round at him to make sure that he was indeed with us. Then I recalled to mind that he had mentioned to us that his brother and he were twins.
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