198 “[A]ccording to [Samuel] Johnson from ‘bump,’ but probably from French Bon-Pere, the fixed toast in monastic life of old, now used for ‘full measure’ ” (Slang Dictionary, 1865).
199 T. S. Blakeney queries, “Presumably Gladstone is meant; can anyone say when and where he made this remark, and quote the authority for it?”
200 “It is inconceivable that dissolving a hydrocarbon should be a problem, even momentarily, to a chemist,” Remsen Ten Eyck Schenck writes, in “Baker Street Fables.” “Holmes might as well have said ‘when I had succeeded in tying my boot-lace,’ with the air of having triumphed over great obstacles after days of heroic effort.”
Dr. John D. Clark agrees, in “A Chemist’s View of Canonical Chemistry”: “There is rarely any difficulty in dissolving a hydrocarbon… . All you have to do is apply a lighter liquid hydrocarbon, and voilà!, you have your solution. If you have ever removed a glob of tar from a fender with a gasoline-soaked rag, you know what I mean.”
But Leon S. Holstein (“ ‘7. Knowledge of Chemistry—Profound’ ”) disagrees: “[I]t is my understanding, from those versed in the art, that one method of examining unknown organic compounds is to first determine physical properties, one of which is the solubility or insolubility in various reagents. The remark in question was made merely to convey that whatever compound or admixture he was working on, Holmes had determined that it was soluble in some standard reagent.”
Lee R. Walters, in “The Hydrocarbon Puzzle,” asserts that Holmes was working on dissolving carbazol (carbazole) in a new solvent—concentrated sulfuric acid, which was not reported as a solvent system until 1902.
201 An anchorage in the English Channel, between the Thames Estuary and the Straits of Dover. Protected to the west by the land mass of Kent and to the east by a line of sandbars and shoals called the Goodwin Sands, it was a holding-over spot for ships.
202 D. Martin Dakin wonders at Holmes’s dismissal of this sensible suggestion by Athelney Jones. “I can see no other reason than that he wanted the chase just for the fun of it.”
203 “Overlooking the Watson error—he says ‘Surrey’ here, when he means ‘Kent,’ ” writes Michael Harrison, in The London of Sherlock Holmes—“we realise that we are in another world than theirs: a world in which, though steamships with electric light were crossing the Atlantic in under five days, the sailing-ship was still the commoner; not until the next century was steam to overtake sail.”
204 Flat-bottomed boats, broad and not entirely unlike barges, commonly used to convey cargo from ship to shore.
205 Binoculars with large objective lenses, for viewing in the dark. In normal daylight, the human eye’s diameter is about 4 to 41/2 millimetres, whereas at night it can be as large as 7 to 71/2 millimetres. To accommodate the larger nighttime diameter, a pair of binoculars with a large field works best to admit more light.
Night glasses.
Victorian Shopping (Harrod’s 1895 Catalogue)
206 Deductive; relating to or derived from reasoning by self-evident propositions.
207 Holmes paraphrases Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man (1872):
All the events which occur upon the earth result from Law: even those actions which are entirely dependent on the caprices of the memory, or the impulse of the passions, are shown by statistics to be, when taken in the gross, entirely independent of the human will. As a single atom, man is an enigma; as a whole, he is a mathematical problem. As an individual, he is a free agent; as a species, the offspring of necessity.
208 D. Martin Dakin humorously points out, “One imagines that few Victorian street urchins were in the habit of carrying handkerchiefs, and if one had done so, it would not have stayed white for long.” He concludes that Holmes provided it to him for signalling purposes.
209 Jack Tracy explains, in Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana: “[M]eaning that the helm was turned fully to one side …”
210 Segment of the Thames, from below London Bridge to a little above Regent’s Canal. A centre of trade from the founding of London by the Romans around 33 A.D. through 1950, the Pool saw perhaps its heaviest traffic during the nineteenth century, with the construction of St. Katharine Docks (1824). Among the buildings along this stretch of the river were the Billingsgate Fish Market and the Old Customs House. River transport in the Pool slowed down considerably with the railroad boom of the 1870s.
211 From the end of Limehouse Reach to Greenwich Ferry.
212 The name “Isle of Dogs” dates from at least 1588 and is the title of a lost play by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson that was suppressed for sedition almost immediately following its first performance at the Swan Theatre in July 1597. Originally a peninsula jutting out into the river between Limehouse and Blackwall, the Isle of Dogs became an “island” when a canal was built across it in the early nineteenth century. It was subsequently abandoned and incorporated into the West and East India Docks. The Millwall dock followed in mid-century, as well as a town on the south-east tip of the Isle that included sawmills, potteries, brickfields, timber wharves, a cement factory, and a church. The odd name has never been satisfactorily explained.
213 G. W. Welch, in “ ‘No Mention of That Local Hunt, Watson,’ ” notes this and numerous other hunting references in the Canon and concludes that Watson, an avid hunter, must have been disabled from hunting by his wound.
214 Barking Reach was the site of the outlets of London’s “new and gigantic system of drainage …” (so described in Baedeker).
215 During the early nineteenth century, Royal Artillery officers used the Plumstead Marshes for live firing practice, but Harold Clunn, in The Face of London, presents a grim prognosis for anyone venturing near these foetid “swamps of stagnant water” at mid-century: “no provision whatever had been made for drainage, and many … ditches, which were dangerous to health, had not been cleaned out within the memory of living men.” Cases of marsh ague were reported. However, the whiff of gentrification was just around the corner. With the growth of the Royal Arsenal at nearby Woolwich creating job opportunities, the separate suburb of Plumstead joined the march of progress, its population spiking to 24,502 in 1861 (from 1,166 in 1801).
CHAPTER
XI
THE GREAT AGRA TREASURE
OUR CAPTIVE SAT in the cabin opposite to the iron box which he had done so much and waited so long to gain. He was a sunburned reckless-eyed fellow, with a network of lines and wrinkles all over his mahogany features, which told of a hard, open-air life. There was a singular prominence about his bearded chin which marked a man who was not to be easily turned from his purpose. His age may have been fifty or thereabouts, for his black, curly hair was thickly shot with grey. His face in repose was not an unpleasing one, though his heavy brows and aggressive chin gave him, as I had lately seen, a terrible expression when moved to anger. He sat now with his handcuffed hands upon his lap, and his head sunk upon his breast, while he looked with his keen, twinkling eyes at the box which had been the cause of his ill-doings. It seemed to me that there was more sorrow than anger in his rigid and contained countenance. Once he looked up at me with a gleam of something like humour in his eyes.
“Well, Jonathan Small,” said Holmes, lighting a cigar, “I am sorry that it has come to this.”
“And so am I, sir,” he answered frankly. “I don’t believe that I can swing over the job.216 I give you my word on the Book that I never raised hand against Mr. Sholto. It was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not undo it again.”
“He sat now with his hand-cuffed hands on his lap, and his head sunk on his breast, while he gazed at the box.”
Artist unknown, The Sign of Four (New York and Boston: H. M. Caldwell Co., n.d.)
“Have a cigar,” said Holmes; “and you had best take a pull out of my flask, for you are very
wet. How could you expect so small and weak a man as this black fellow to overpower Mr. Sholto and hold him while you were climbing the rope?”
“You seem to know as much about it as if you were there, sir. The truth is that I hoped to find the room clear. I knew the habits of the house pretty well, and it was the time when Mr. Sholto usually went down to his supper. I shall make no secret of the business. The best defence that I can make is just the simple truth. Now, if it had been the old major I would have swung for him with a light heart. I would have thought no more of knifing him than of smoking this cigar. But it’s cursed hard that I should be lagged217 over this young Sholto, with whom I had no quarrel whatever.”
“You are under the charge of Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard. He is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you do I hope that I may be of use to you. I think I can prove that the poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached the room.”
“That he was, sir. I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw him grinning at me with his head on his shoulder as I climbed through the window. It fairly shook me, sir. I’d have half killed Tonga for it if he had not scrambled off. That was how he came to leave his club, and some of his darts too, as he tells me, which I dare say helped to put you on our track; though how you kept on it is more than I can tell. I don’t feel no malice against you for it. But it does seem a queer thing,” he added, with a bitter smile, “that I, who have a fair claim to half a million of money, should spend the first half of my life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the other half digging drains at Dartmoor.218 It was an evil day for me when first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the man who owned it. To him, it brought murder, to Major Sholto it brought fear and guilt, to me it has meant slavery for life.”
“He sat now with his handcuffed hands upon his lap.”
Richard Gutschmidt, Das Zeichen der Vier (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)
Dartmoor Prison (ca. 1900).
At this moment Athelney Jones thrust his219 face and heavy shoulders into the tiny cabin.
“Quite a family party,” he remarked. “I think I shall have a pull at that flask, Holmes. Well, I think we may all congratulate each other. Pity we didn’t take the other alive; but there was no choice. I say, Holmes, you must confess that you cut it rather fine. It was all we could do to overhaul her.”
“All is well that ends well,” said Holmes. “But I certainly did not know that the Aurora was such a clipper.”
“Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that if he had had another man to help him with the engines we should never have caught her. He swears he knew nothing of this Norwood business.”
“Neither he did,” cried our prisoner—“not a word. I chose his launch because I heard that she was a flier. We told him nothing; but we paid him well, and he was to get something handsome if we reached our vessel, the Esmeralda, at Gravesend, outward bound for the Brazils.”220
“Well, if he has done no wrong we shall see that no wrong comes to him. If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are not so quick in condemning them.” It was amusing to notice how the consequential Jones was already beginning to give himself airs on the strength of the capture. From the slight smile which played over Sherlock Holmes’s face, I could see that the speech had not been lost upon him.
“We will be at Vauxhall Bridge presently,” said Jones, “and shall land you, Dr. Watson, with the treasure-box. I need hardly tell you that I am taking a very grave responsibility upon myself in doing this. It is most irregular; but of course an agreement is an agreement. I must, however, as a matter of duty, send an inspector with you, since you have so valuable a charge. You will drive, no doubt?”
“Yes, I shall drive.”
“It is a pity there is no key, that we may make an inventory first. You will have to break it open. Where is the key, my man?”
“At the bottom of the river,” said Small shortly.
“Hum! There was no use your giving this unnecessary trouble. We have had work enough already through you. However, Doctor, I need not warn you to be careful. Bring the box back with you to the Baker Street rooms. You will find us there, on our way to the station.”
They landed me at Vauxhall, with my heavy iron box, and with a bluff, genial inspector as my companion. A quarter of an hour’s drive brought us to Mrs. Cecil Forrester’s. The servant seemed surprised at so late a visitor. Mrs. Cecil Forrester was out for the evening, she explained, and likely to be very late. Miss Morstan, however, was in the drawing-room; so to the drawing-room I went, box in hand, leaving the obliging inspector221 in the cab.
She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and waist. The soft light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back in the basket chair, playing over her sweet, grave face, and tinting with a dull, metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy. At the sound of my footfall she sprang to her feet, however, and a bright flush of surprise and of pleasure coloured her pale cheeks.
“I heard a cab drive up,” she said. “I thought that Mrs. Forrester had come back very early, but I never dreamed that it might be you. What news have you brought me?”
“I have brought something better than news,” said I, putting down the box upon the table and speaking jovially and boisterously, though my heart was heavy within me. “I have brought you something which is worth all the news in the world. I have brought you a fortune.”
She glanced at the iron box.
“Is that the treasure then?” she asked, coolly enough.
“Yes, this is the great Agra treasure. Half of it is yours and half is Thaddeus Sholto’s. You will have a couple of hundred thousand each. Think of that! An annuity of ten thousand pounds. There will be few richer young ladies in England. Is it not glorious?”
I think I must have been rather over-acting my delight, and that she detected a hollow ring in my congratulations, for I saw her eyebrows rise a little, and she glanced at me curiously.
“If I have it,” said she, “I owe it to you.”
“No, no,” I answered, “not to me, but to my friend Sherlock Holmes. With all the will in the world, I could never have followed up a clue which has taxed even his analytical genius. As it was, we very nearly lost it at the last moment.”
“Pray sit down and tell me all about it, Dr. Watson,” said she.
I narrated briefly what had occurred since I had seen her last. Holmes’s new method of search, the discovery of the Aurora, the appearance of Athelney Jones, our expedition in the evening, and the wild chase down the Thames. She listened with parted lips and shining eyes to my recital of our adventures. When I spoke of the dart which had so narrowly missed us, she turned so white that I feared that she was about to faint.
“It is nothing,” she said as I hastened to pour her out some water. “I am all right again. It was a shock to me to hear that I had placed my friends in such horrible peril.”
“That is all over,” I answered. “It was nothing. I will tell you no more gloomy details. Let us turn to something brighter. There is the treasure. What could be brighter than that? I got leave to bring it with me, thinking that it would interest you to be the first to see it.”
“It would be of the greatest interest to me,” she said. There was no eagerness in her voice, however. It had struck her, doubtless, that it might seem ungracious upon her part to be indifferent to a prize which had cost so much to win.
“What a pretty box!” she said, stooping over it. “This is Indian work, I suppose?”
“Yes; it is Benares222 metal-work.”
“And so heavy!” she exclaim
ed, trying to raise it.223 “The box alone must be of some value. Where is the key?”
“Small threw it into the Thames,” I answered. “I must borrow Mrs. Forrester’s poker.”
There was in the front a thick and broad hasp, wrought in the image of a sitting Buddha. Under this I thrust the end of the poker and twisted it outward as a lever. The hasp sprang open with a loud snap. With trembling fingers I flung back the lid. We both stood gazing in astonishment. The box was empty!
No wonder that it was heavy. The iron-work was two-thirds of an inch thick all round. It was massive, well made, and solid, like a chest constructed to carry things of great price, but not one shred or crumb of metal or jewellery lay within it. It was absolutely and completely empty.
“ ‘Then I say “thank god,” too.’ ”
Richard Gutschmidt, Das Zeichen der Vier (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)
“The treasure is lost,” said Miss Morstan, calmly.
As I listened to the words and realized what they meant, a great shadow seemed to pass from my soul. I did not know how this Agra treasure had weighed me down, until now that it was finally removed. It was selfish, no doubt, disloyal, wrong, but I could realize nothing save that the golden barrier was gone from between us.
“Thank God!” I ejaculated from my very heart.
She looked at me with a quick, questioning smile.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Because you are within my reach again,” I said, taking her hand. She did not withdraw it. “Because I love you, Mary, as truly as ever a man loved a woman.224 Because this treasure, these riches, sealed my lips. Now that they are gone I can tell you how I love you. That is why I said, ‘Thank God.’ ”
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Page 42