21 Correctly, the New York Police Department or the New York Police Detective Bureau.
22 The Police Code (12th Ed., 1904) makes it clear that the arresting officer must not induce a confession: “A confession must be entirely voluntary. This will not be the case if it appears to the Judge to have been caused by any inducement, threat, or promise, proceeding from a person in authority . . .”
23 Two decades before Al Capone arrived in Chicago and became king of the city’s organised crime scene, Chicago was already a rough, industrial town overcrowded with newly arrived working-class European immigrants and their children. In many ways proud of its reputation for rowdiness and even corruption, Chicago was ripe for the kind of gang warfare that employed Abe Slaney and Elsie’s father and that paved the way for the rise of Capone. Rudyard Kipling was appalled by the city’s grime, writing in his American Notes (1891), “Having seen it [Chicago], I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages. . . . I looked down interminable vistas flanked with nine, ten, and fifteen-storied houses, and crowded with men and women, and the show impressed me with a great horror. Except in London—and I have forgotten what London was like—I had never seen so many white people together, and never such a collection of miserables.”
24 Several theories exist as to what Elsie’s father used as the basis for his unique alphabet (presuming that the system was not entirely his own original creation). William Smith concludes that the cipher was likely derived from one used by the Army Signal Corps, published by Major Albert J. Myer in his A Manual of Signals (1864), which involved men using flags. Renowned cryptographer David Shulman puts forward a remarkably similar cipher published in the United Service Magazine, a British publication, in 1832, also using flags. Irving Kamil points out the similarities of the cipher to the Easter Island and Indus Valley scripts discussed by Charles Berlitz in his Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds (1972). And an article in The Bookman by Lyndon Orr (April 1910) suggests that the cipher was based on that detailed in “The Language of the Restless Imps” using stick-figures, which appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine in June 1874.
25 Recall that in Elsie’s purse were found “twenty fifty-pound notes of the Bank of England, held together by an india-rubber band.” Where did Elsie get this enormous sum of money? Was it part of the “bit of honest money” with which, Slaney tells us, she left Chicago? Or savings from household expenses? Or did she steal it from her husband? John B. Koelle finds the entire notion improbable, surmising instead that Elsie and Slaney together killed Cubitt, stole his money, and then quarrelled over a division of the spoils. Alternatively, Slaney may have been blackmailing the Cubitts, and they brought the money to a meeting with him, where they intended to kill him.
John Hall, in Sidelights on Holmes, also finds Slaney’s account dubious. Surely Slaney would have realised that his efforts to woo Elsie were doomed, in light of the strength of character she had already shown in refusing to marry a criminal. “[T]hen why should he imagine for one moment,” marvels Hall, “that, having settled down to a happy enough life in the English countryside, she would agree to commit adultery? It makes no sense at all.” Naturally, Slaney must have been half-mad with jealousy and rejection, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that he came to Ridling Thorpe Manor with revenge, not reconciliation, on his mind. “The only explanation that does make any sort of sense,” continues Hall, “is surely that Slaney had intended all along to kill Mr. Cubitt, and very probably Elsie as well, as revenge for what he saw as her desertion of him.”
26 Armed. The term is also used in The Valley of Fear.
27 That Elsie would take the time to close the window before shooting herself seems like an unnecessary bit of business. Clifton R. Andrew suggests that Elsie, still in love with Abe Slaney, closed the window in order to protect him, so that a third party’s involvement in the shooting would not be discovered.
28 According to E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, “A plunger; one who spends his money recklessly; a simpleton. This is simply the letter J, the initial letter of Juggins, who, in 1887, made a fool of himself by losses on the turf.”
29 The six messages (in translation) are:
1 AM HERE ABE SLANEY
2 AT ELRIGES
3 COME ELSIE
4 NEVER
5 ELSIE PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD
6 COME HERE AT ONCE
William S. Baring-Gould notes that the symbol used for “V” in message #4 is the same as that used for “P” in message #5 in virtually every published text. In addition, in some texts, the symbol used for “C” in message #6 is the same as that used for “M” throughout, and different from that used for “C” in message #3. Whether these mistakes resulted from Watson’s careless copying or the printer’s errors cannot be determined at this time.
30 The nature of those “mitigating circumstances” that led to the commutation of Slaney’s sentence is unclear. Harry Ober argues righteously that “Threatening a woman with death, coming to her house armed, probably flourishing a gun, and mortally wounding her husband who was defending his wife properly, all constitute to me a chain of criminal acts, which add up to murder in the first degree.” However, a British court may have concluded that there was little evidence that Slaney intended to kill anyone (only the ambiguous advice “PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD”) and that he was merely acting in self-defence when he fired the shot that killed Cubitt.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST1
In “The Solitary Cyclist,” we glimpse one of the British “frontiers,” the mines of South Africa, which are the source of unexpected danger to yet another Violet (there are four damsels in distress with that name in the Canon). Bicycles, the great fad of the late Victorian era, play a central rôle in the case, which is set in 1895. Although Watson records in A Study in Scarlet that Holmes is an expert boxer, we have only two instances of his pugilistic skills, “The Naval Treaty” and here. While the case has very little mystery about it, scholars raise interesting questions about the marriage laws of England and the irrational behaviour of the villains.
FROM THE YEARS 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man.2 It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he was not consulted during those eight years, and there were hundreds of private cases, some of them of the most intricate and extraordinary character, in which he played a prominent part. Many startling successes and a few unavoidable failures were the outcome of this long period of continuous work. As I have preserved very full notes of all these cases, and was myself personally engaged in many of them, it may be imagined that it is no easy task to know which I should select to lay before the public. I shall, however, preserve my former rule, and give the preference to those cases which derive their interest not so much from the brutality of the crime as from the ingenuity and dramatic quality of the solution. For this reason I will now lay before the reader the facts connected with Miss Violet Smith, the solitary cyclist3 of Charlington, and the curious sequel of our investigation, which culminated in unexpected tragedy. It is true that the circumstance did not permit4 any striking illustration of those powers for which my friend was famous, but there were some points about the case which made it stand out in those long records of crime from which I gather the material for these little narratives.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
On referring to my notebook for the year 1895,5 I find that it was upon Saturday, April 23,6 that we first heard of Miss Violet Smith. Her visit was, I remember, extremely unwelcome to Holmes, for he was immersed at the moment in a very abstruse and complicated problem concerning the peculiar persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well-known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected. My friend, who loved above all things precision and concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand. And yet without a harshness which was foreign to his nature it was impossible to refuse to listen to the story of the y
oung and beautiful woman, tall, graceful, and queenly, who presented herself at Baker Street late in the evening and implored his assistance and advice. It was vain to urge that his time was already fully occupied, for the young lady had come with the determination to tell her story, and it was evident that nothing short of force could get her out of the room until she had done so. With a resigned air and a somewhat weary smile, Holmes begged the beautiful intruder to take a seat and to inform us what it was that was troubling her.
“At least it cannot be your health,” said he, as his keen eyes darted over her; “so ardent a bicyclist must be full of energy.”7
She glanced down in surprise at her own feet, and I observed the slight roughening of the side of the sole caused by the friction of the edge of the pedal.
Miss Violet Smith, teacher of music.
Frederick Dorr Steele, Collier’s, 1903
“Yes, I bicycle a good deal, Mr. Holmes, and that has something to do with my visit to you to-day.”
My friend took the lady’s ungloved hand and examined it with as close an attention and as little sentiment as a scientist would show to a specimen.
“You will excuse me, I am sure. It is my business,” said he, as he dropped it. “I nearly fell into the error of supposing that you were typewriting. Of course, it is obvious that it is music. You observe the spatulate finger-end, Watson, which is common to both professions? There is a spirituality about the face, however”—he8 gently turned it towards the light—“which the typewriter does not generate. This lady is a musician.”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, I teach music.”
“In the country, I presume, from your complexion.”
“Yes, sir; near Farnham, on the borders of Surrey.”
“My friend took the lady’s ungloved hand and examined it.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1903
“A beautiful neighbourhood, and full of the most interesting associations. You remember, Watson, that it was near there that we took Archie Stamford, the forger.9 Now, Miss Violet, what has happened to you near Farnham, on the borders of Surrey?”
The young lady, with great clearness and composure, made the following curious statement:
“My father is dead, Mr. Holmes. He was James Smith, who conducted the orchestra at the old Imperial Theatre.10 My mother and I were left without a relation in the world except one uncle, Ralph Smith, who went to Africa twenty-five years ago, and we have never had a word from him since. When father died we were left very poor, but one day we were told that there was an advertisement in the Times inquiring for our whereabouts. You can imagine how excited we were, for we thought that someone had left us a fortune. We went at once to the lawyer whose name was given in the paper. There we met two gentlemen, Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Woodley, who were home on a visit from South Africa. They said that my uncle was a friend of theirs, that he had died some months before in poverty11 in Johannesburg,12 and that he had asked them with his last breath to hunt up his relations and see that they were in no want. It seemed strange to us that Uncle Ralph, who took no notice of us when he was alive, should be so careful to look after us when he was dead; but Mr. Carruthers explained that the reason was that my uncle had just heard of the death of his brother, and so felt responsible for our fate.”
“Excuse me,” said Holmes; “when was this interview?”
“Last December—four months ago.”
“Pray proceed.”
“Mr. Woodley seemed to me to be a most odious person. He was for ever making eyes at me—a coarse, puffy-faced, red-moustached young man, with his hair plastered down on each side of his forehead. I thought that he was perfectly hateful—and I was sure that Cyril would not wish me to know such a person.”
“Oh! Cyril is his name!” said Holmes, smiling.
The young lady blushed and laughed.
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, Cyril Morton, an electrical engineer, and we hope to be married at the end of the summer. Dear me, how did I get talking about him? What I wished to say was that Mr. Woodley was perfectly odious, but that Mr. Carruthers, who was a much older man, was more agreeable. He was a dark, sallow, clean-shaven, silent person; but he had polite manners and a pleasant smile. He inquired how we were left, and on finding that we were very poor he suggested that I should come and teach music to his only daughter, aged ten. I said that I did not like to leave my mother, on which he suggested that I should go home to her every week-end, and he offered me a hundred a year, which was certainly splendid pay. So it ended by my accepting, and I went down to Chiltern Grange,13 about six miles from Farnham. Mr. Carruthers was a widower, but he had engaged a lady-housekeeper, a very respectable, elderly person, called Mrs. Dixon, to look after his establishment. The child was a dear, and everything promised well. Mr. Carruthers was very kind and very musical, and we had most pleasant evenings together. Every week-end I went home to my mother in town.
“The first flaw in my happiness was the arrival of the red-moustached Mr. Woodley. He came for a visit of a week, and oh, it seemed three months to me. He was a dreadful person, a bully to everyone else, but to me something infinitely worse. He made odious love to me, boasted of his wealth, said that if I married him I could have the finest diamonds in London, and finally, when I would have nothing to do with him, he seized me in his arms one day after dinner—he was hideously strong—and he swore that he would not let me go until I had kissed him. Mr. Carruthers came in, and tore him from me, on which he turned upon his own host, knocking him down and cutting his face open. That was the end of his visit, as you can imagine. Mr. Carruthers apologized to me next day, and assured me that I should never be exposed to such an insult again. I have not seen Mr. Woodley since.
“And now, Mr. Holmes, I come at last to the special thing which has caused me to ask your advice to-day. You must know that every Saturday forenoon I ride on my bicycle to Farnham Station in order to get the 12:22 to town. The road from Chiltern Grange is a lonely one, and at one spot it is particularly so, for it lies for over a mile between Charlington Heath upon one side and the woods which lie round Charlington Hall upon the other. You could not find a more lonely tract of road anywhere, and it is quite rare to meet so much as a cart, or a peasant, until you reach the high-road near Crooksbury Hill.14 Two weeks ago I was passing this place, when I chanced to look back over my shoulder, and about two hundred yards behind me I saw a man, also on a bicycle. He seemed to be a middle-aged man, with a short, dark beard. I looked back before I reached Farnham, but the man was gone, so I thought no more about it. But you can imagine how surprised I was, Mr. Holmes, when on my return on the Monday I saw the same man on the same stretch of road. My astonishment was increased when the incident occurred again, exactly as before, on the following Saturday and Monday. He always kept his distance, and did not molest me in any way, but still it certainly was very odd. I mentioned it to Mr. Carruthers, who seemed interested in what I said, and told me that he had ordered a horse and trap, so that in future I should not pass over these lonely roads without some companion.
“The horse and trap were to have come this week, but for some reason they were not delivered, and again I had to cycle to the station. That was this morning. You can think that I looked out when I came to Charlington Heath, and there, sure enough, was the man, exactly as he had been the two weeks before. He always kept so far from me that I could not clearly see his face, but it was certainly someone whom I did not know. He was dressed in a dark suit with a cloth cap. The only thing about his face that I could clearly see was his dark beard. To-day I was not alarmed, but I was filled with curiosity, and I determined to find out who he was and what he wanted. I slowed down my machine, but he slowed down his. Then I stopped altogether, but he stopped also. Then I laid a trap for him. There is a sharp turning of the road, and I pedalled very quickly round this, and then I stopped and waited. I expected him to shoot round and pass me before he could stop. But he never appeared. Then I went back and looked round the corner. I could see a mile of road, bu
t he was not on it. To make it the more extraordinary there was no side road at this point down which he could have gone.”
“He always kept so far from me that I could not clearly see his face.”
Anonymous, Portland Oregonian, July 23, 1911
Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands.
“This case certainly presents some features of its own,” said he. “How much time elapsed between your turning the corner and your discovery that the road was clear?”
“Two or three minutes.”
“Then he could not have retreated down the road, and you say that there are no side roads?”
“None.”
“Then he certainly took a footpath on one side or the other.”
“It could not have been on the side of the heath or I should have seen him.”
“So, by the process of exclusion we arrive at the fact that he made his way toward Charlington Hall, which, as I understand, is situated in its own grounds on one side of the road.15 Anything else?”
“Nothing, Mr. Holmes, save that I was so perplexed that I felt I should not be happy until I had seen you and had your advice.”
Holmes sat in silence for some little time.
“Where is the gentleman to whom you are engaged?” he asked at last.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books) Page 15