“This is terrible!” I said to Holmes. “What is to be done?”
“The door must come down,” he answered, and springing against it, he put all his weight upon the lock.
It creaked and groaned but did not yield. Together we flung ourselves upon it once more, and this time it gave way with a sudden snap, and we found ourselves within Bartholomew Sholto’s chamber.
It appeared to have been fitted up as a chemical laboratory. A double line of glass-stoppered bottles was drawn up upon the wall opposite the door, and the table was littered over with Bunsen burners, test-tubes, and retorts. In the corners stood carboys of acid in wicker baskets. One of these appeared to leak or to have been broken, for a stream of dark-coloured liquid had trickled out from it, and the air was heavy with a peculiarly pungent, tar-like odour. A set of steps stood at one side of the room in the midst of a litter of lath and plaster, and above them there was an opening in the ceiling large enough for a man to pass through. At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope was thrown carelessly together.
By the table, in a wooden armchair the master of the house was seated all in a heap, with his head sunk upon his left shoulder and that ghastly, inscrutable smile upon his face. He was stiff and cold and had clearly been dead many hours. It seemed to me that not only his features but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion. By his hand upon the table there lay a peculiar instrument—a brown, close-grained stick, with a stone head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Beside it was a torn sheet of note-paper with some words scrawled upon it. Holmes glanced at it and then handed it to me.
“In a wooden armchair the master of the house was seated all in a heap, with his head sunk upon his left shoulder and that ghastly, inscrutable smile upon his face.”
Richard Gutschmidt, Das Zeichen der Vier (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)
“Not only his features, but all his limbs were twisted and turned in a most fantastic fashion.”
H. B. Eddy, Sunday American, April 21, 1912
Death of Bartholomew Sholto.
F. H. Townsend, The Sign of Four (London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1903)
“You see,” he said, with a significant raising of the eyebrows.
In the light of the lantern I read with a thrill of horror, “The sign of the four.”
“In God’s name, what does it all mean?” I asked.
“It means murder,” said he, stooping over the dead man. “Ah! I expected it. Look here!”
He pointed to what looked like a long, dark thorn stuck in the skin just above the ear.
“It looks like a thorn,” said I.
“It is a thorn. You may pick it out. But be careful, for it is poisoned.”
I took it up between my finger and thumb. It came away from the skin so readily that hardly any mark was left behind. One tiny speck of blood showed where the puncture had been.
“This is all an insoluble mystery to me,” said I. “It grows darker instead of clearer.”
“On the contrary,” he answered, “it clears every instant. I only require a few missing links to have an entirely connected case.”
“ ‘I read, with a thrill of horror, “The Sign of Four.” ’ ”
Charles Kerr, The Sign of Four (London: Spencer Blackett, 1890)
We had almost forgotten our companion’s presence since we entered the chamber. He was still standing in the doorway, the very picture of terror, wringing his hands and moaning to himself. Suddenly, however, he broke out into a sharp, querulous cry.
“The treasure is gone!” he said. “They have robbed him of the treasure! There is the hole through which we lowered it. I helped him to do it! I was the last person who saw him! I left him here last night, and I heard him lock the door as I came downstairs.”
“What time was that?”
“It was ten o’clock. And now he is dead, and the police will be called in, and I shall be suspected of having had a hand in it. Oh, yes, I am sure I shall. But you don’t think so, gentlemen? Surely, you don’t think that it was I? Is it likely that I would have brought you here if it were I? Oh, dear! oh, dear! I know that I shall go mad!”
He jerked his arms and stamped his feet in a kind of convulsive frenzy.
“You have no reason for fear, Mr. Sholto,” said Holmes kindly, putting his hand upon his shoulder; “take my advice and drive down to the station to report the matter to the police. Offer to assist them in every way. We shall wait here until your return.”
The little man obeyed in a half-stupefied fashion, and we heard him stumbling down the stairs in the dark.
105 The postman’s double knock is heard in The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837) and elsewhere in the works of Charles Dickens. Christopher Morley observes that this traditional knock was replaced later by the double ring of the bell—the basis of James M. Cain’s hard-boiled first novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). The novel was made, in 1946, into the brilliant film noir of the same name, starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, and, in 1981, remade into a vehicle for Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
106 By the time of The Sign of Four, boxing was no longer illegal per se within the borders of London (although wagering on boxing was still banned), and the authorities turned a blind eye on matches conducted under the Queensberry Rules. In 1865, John Graham Chambers, a member of the Amateur Athletic Club, wrote rules for the conduct of matches that were adopted in 1867, under the patronage of John Sholto Douglas, the Marquess of Queensberry. Chambers intended the rules for amateur boxing matches, such as those conducted by the AAC, and they were first used for a tournament of such matches in 1872. The rules stressed short rounds, with rest periods, eliminated hugging or wrestling, required gloves to be worn, and provided for the match to end if a boxer was down and unable to arise on his own within ten seconds—in short, much like modern rules. Benefits for down-and-out boxers were a longstanding tradition of the sport. The milieu of boxing in the pre-Queensberry period is brought to life in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Rodney Stone (1896) and George MacDonald Fraser’s Black Ajax (1997).
107 “Four years back” would be 1883 or 1884, depending on the date assigned to the events of The Sign of Four (see Chronological Table). But T. S. Blakeney points out that McMurdo must have joined the Sholto household before Major Sholto’s death in 1882, for brother Bartholomew had no need for a protector. “[McMurdo’s] benefit night (presumably when he retired from the ring) would have been just prior to his being engaged by Major Sholto on the latter’s retirement from the Army—about 1877.”
108 “The right cross,” H. T. Webster observes, “is indeed the characteristic Sunday punch of the tall rangy type of boxer, as the left hook is the main reliance of the short and stocky one. This punch, to the head or body, is delivered straight from the shoulder but with a slight pivoting motion of the body which gives it something of the character of a hook. It is called a cross, because it must cross either over or under the opponent’s left arm to land.” Holmes used a left jab against Roaring Jack Woodley, the “slogging ruffian” of “The Solitary Cyclist,” who, it will be remembered, had to be carried home in a cart after taking on Holmes. Webster concludes that Holmes fought in the classic style, standing up straight and using his extraordinary speed of foot to avoid infighting. He would have punished his opponents with straight lefts and then finished them off with his powerful right cross. While J. N. Williamson characterises Holmes as a welterweight or middleweight, Patrick J. Leonard, Sr., recounts his discovery of how Holmes fought heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan (1858–1918) to a draw on March 10, 1888.
109 Robert Hughes, in recounting the history of the Australian gold rush in 1851, terms Ballarat “the richest field of all.” After the discovery of gold there by John Dunlop, an aged digger, Hughes writes, “The word ran back to Melbourne that gold was everywhere… . [B]y November 1851 … a cataract of gold was pouring from Ballarat.” Within a few months, Hughes estimates, perhaps 50,000 people were on the diggings.
Did Watson actually visit Australia? John Hall suggests that Watson added the reference to Ballarat as a result of Holmes’s mention of it as recorded in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” during the events of which Watson may have been writing up his notes of the events of The Sign of Four. Hall and others conclude that Watson did not see the mines themselves but rather a sketch or photograph in a book. However, Christopher Redmond, in “Art in the Blood: Two Canonical Relatives. II. ‘The History of My Unhappy Brother,’ ” suggests that Watson went to Australia between the time of the events of A Study in Scarlet and the events of The Sign of Four to look after his older brother. Both of these views are thoughtfully rejected by William Hyder (“Watson’s Education and Medical Career”), who proposes that Watson spent at least part of his boyhood in Australia.
110 Jay Finley Christ finds this to be an “amazing” identification. “The reader is invited to try to distinguish red hair from brown or even from black, by the light of a half-moon, while the observer is peering through a partially stopped key-hole. Let him try it in the open, too, if he likes.”
CHAPTER
VI
SHERLOCK HOLMES GIVES A DEMONSTRATION
“NOW, WATSON,” said Holmes, rubbing his hands, “we have half an hour to ourselves. Let us make good use of it. My case is, as I have told you, almost complete; but we must not err on the side of over-confidence. Simple as the case seems now, there may be something deeper underlying it.”
“Simple!” I ejaculated.
“Surely,” said he with something of the air of a clinical professor expounding to his class. “Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters. Now to work! In the first place, how did these folk come and how did they go? The door has not been opened since last night. How of the window?” He carried the lamp across to it, muttering his observations aloud the while but addressing them to himself rather than to me. “Window is snibbed111 on the inner side. Frame-work is solid. No hinges at the side. Let us open it. No water-pipe near. Roof quite out of reach. Yet a man has mounted by the window. It rained a little last night. Here is the print of a foot in mould upon the sill. And here is a circular muddy mark, and here again upon the floor, and here again by the table. See here, Watson! This is really a very pretty demonstration.”
The Sign of the Four.
(Chicago: M. A. Donohue & Co., n.d.)
I looked at the round, well-defined muddy discs.
“That is not a footmark,” said I.
“It is something much more valuable to us. It is the impression of a wooden stump. You see here on the sill is the boot-mark, a heavy boot with a broad metal heel, and beside it is the mark of the timber-toe.”
“It is the wooden-legged man.”
“Quite so. But there has been someone else—a very able and efficient ally. Could you scale that wall, Doctor?”
I looked out of the open window. The moon still shone brightly on that angle of the house. We were a good sixty feet from the ground, and, look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice in the brickwork.
“It is absolutely impossible,” I answered.
“Without aid it is so. But suppose you had a friend up here who lowered you this good stout rope which I see in the corner, securing one end of it to this great hook in the wall. Then, I think, if you were an active man, you might swarm up, wooden leg and all. You would depart, of course, in the same fashion, and your ally would draw up the rope, untie it from the hook, shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get away in the way that he originally came. As a minor point, it may be noted,” he continued, fingering the rope, “that our wooden-legged friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor. His hands were far from horny. My lens discloses more than one blood-mark, especially towards the end of the rope, from which I gather that he slipped down with such velocity that he took the skin off his hands.”
“This is all very well,” said I; “but the thing becomes more unintelligible than ever. How about this mysterious ally? How came he into the room?”
“Yes, the ally!” repeated Holmes pensively. “There are features of interest about this ally. He lifts the case from the regions of the commonplace. I fancy that this ally breaks fresh ground in the annals of crime in this country—though parallel cases suggest themselves from India and, if my memory serves me, from Senegambia.”112
“How came he, then?” I reiterated. “The door is locked; the window is inaccessible. Was it through the chimney?”
“The grate is much too small,” he answered. “I had already considered that possibility.”
“How, then?” I persisted.
“You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. Whence, then, did he come?”
“He came through the hole in the roof!” I cried.
“Of course he did. He must have done so. If you will have the kindness to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our researches to the room above—the secret room in which the treasure was found.”
He mounted the steps, and, seizing a rafter with either hand, he swung himself up into the garret. Then, lying on his face, he reached down for the lamp and held it while I followed him.
The chamber in which we found ourselves was about ten feet one way and six the other. The floor was formed by the rafters, with thin lath and plaster between, so that in walking one had to step from beam to beam.113 The roof ran up to an apex and was evidently the inner shell of the true roof of the house. There was no furniture of any sort, and the accumulated dust of years lay thick upon the floor.
“Here you are, you see,” said Sherlock Holmes, putting his hand against the sloping wall. “This is a trapdoor which leads out on to the roof. I can press it back, and here is the roof itself, sloping at a gentle angle. This, then, is the way by which Number One entered. Let us see if we can find some other traces of his individuality?”
He held down the lamp to the floor, and as he did so I saw for the second time that night a startled, surprised look come over his face. For myself, as I followed his gaze, my skin was cold under my clothes. The floor was covered thickly with the prints of a naked foot—clear, well-defined, perfectly formed, but scarce half the size of those of an ordinary man.
“ ‘Here you are, you see,’ said Sherlock Holmes.”
Artist unknown, Sherlock Holmes Series, Vol. I (New York & London: Harper & Bros., 1904)
“He held down the lamp to the floor.”
Richard Gutschmidt, Das Zeichen der Vier (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)
“Holmes,” I said in a whisper, “a child has done this horrid thing.”
He had recovered his self-possession in an instant.
“I was staggered for the moment,” he said, “but the thing is quite natural. My memory failed me, or I should have been able to foretell it. There is nothing more to be learned here. Let us go down.”
“What is your theory, then, as to those footmarks?” I asked, eagerly, when we had regained the lower room once more.
“My dear Watson, try a little analysis yourself,” said he, with a touch of impatience. “You know my methods. Apply them, and it will be instructive to compare results.”
“I cannot conceive anything which will cover the facts,” I answered.
“It will be clear enough to you soon,” he said, in an offhand way. “I think that there is nothing else of importance here, but I will look.”
He whipped out his lens and a tape measure and hurried about the room on his knees, measuring, comparing, examining, with his long, thin nose only a few inches from the planks and his beady eyes gleaming and deep-set like those of a bird.114 So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those
of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defence. As he hunted about, he kept muttering to himself, and finally he broke out into a loud crow of delight.
“We are certainly in luck,” said he. “We ought to have very little trouble now. Number One has had the misfortune to tread in the creosote.115 You can see the outline of the edge of his small foot here at the side of this evil-smelling mess. The carboy has been cracked, you see, and the stuff has leaked out.”
“ ‘Holmes,’ I said, ‘a child has done this horrid thing.’ ”
F. H. Townsend, The Sign of Four (London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1903)
“What then?” I asked.
“Why, we have got him, that’s all,” said he.
“I know a dog that would follow that scent to the world’s end. If a pack can track a trailed herring across a shire, how far can a specially-trained hound follow so pungent a smell as this? It sounds like a sum in the rule of three.116 The answer should give us the—But hallo! here are the accredited representatives of the law.”
Heavy steps and the clamour of loud voices were audible from below, and the hall door shut with a loud crash.
“Before they come,” said Holmes, “just put your hand here on this poor fellow’s arm, and here on his leg. What do you feel?”
“The muscles are as hard as a board,” I answered.
“Quite so. They are in a state of extreme contraction, far exceeding the usual rigor mortis.117 Coupled with this distortion of the face, this Hippocratic smile, or ‘risus sardonicus,’118 as the old writers called it, what conclusion would it suggest to your mind?”
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Page 34