We ran frantically down the path, which wound among the trees. We had reached the shrubbery which surrounded the house when Holmes pulled up.
“They didn’t go to the house. Here are their marks on the left—here, beside the laurel bushes! Ah, I said so.”
As he spoke a woman’s shrill scream—a scream which vibrated with a frenzy of horror—burst from the thick green clump of bushes in front of us. It ended suddenly on its highest note with a choke and a gurgle.
“This way! This way! They are in the bowling alley,”25 cried the stranger, darting through the bushes. “Ah, the cowardly dogs! Follow me, gentlemen! Too late! too late! by the living Jingo!”
We had broken suddenly into a lovely glade of greensward surrounded by ancient trees. On the farther side of it, under the shadow of a mighty oak, there stood a singular group of three people. One was a woman, our client, drooping and faint, a handkerchief round her mouth. Opposite her stood a brutal, heavy-faced, red-moustached young man, his gaitered legs parted wide, one arm akimbo, the other waving a riding crop, his whole attitude suggestive of triumphant bravado. Between them an elderly, grey-bearded man, wearing a short surplice over a light tweed suit, had evidently just completed the wedding service, for he pocketed his Prayer Book as we appeared and slapped the sinister bridegroom upon the back in jovial congratulation.
“They’re married?” I gasped.
“Come on!” cried our guide; “come on!” He rushed across the glade, Holmes and I at his heels. As we approached, the lady staggered against the trunk of the tree for support. Williamson, the ex-clergyman, bowed to us with mock politeness, and the bully Woodley advanced with a shout of brutal and exultant laughter.
“You can take your beard off, Bob,” said he. “I know you right enough. Well, you and your pals have just come in time for me to be able to introduce you to Mrs. Woodley.”
“As we approached, the lady staggered against the trunk of the tree.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
Our guide’s answer was a singular one. He snatched off the dark beard which had disguised him and threw it on the ground, disclosing a long, sallow, clean-shaven face below it. Then he raised his revolver and covered the young ruffian, who was advancing upon him with his dangerous riding crop swinging in his hand.
“Yes,” said our ally, “I am Bob Carruthers, and I’ll see this woman righted if I have to swing for it. I told you what I’d do if you molested her, and, by the Lord! I’ll be as good as my word.”
“You’re too late. She’s my wife!”
“No, she’s your widow.”
His revolver cracked, and I saw the blood spurt from the front of Woodley’s waistcoat. He spun round with a scream and fell upon his back, his hideous red face turning suddenly to a dreadful mottled pallor. The old man, still clad in his surplice, burst into such a string of foul oaths as I have never heard, and pulled out a revolver of his own, but, before he could raise it, he was looking down the barrel of Holmes’s weapon.
“No, she’s your widow.”
Anonymous, Portland Oregonian, July 23, 1911
“Enough of this,” said my friend, coldly. “Drop that pistol! Watson, pick it up! Hold it to his head! Thank you. You, Carruthers, give me that revolver. We’ll have no more violence. Come, hand it over!”
“Who are you, then?”
“My name is Sherlock Holmes.”
“Good Lord!”
“You have heard of me, I see. I will represent the official police until their arrival. Here, you!” he shouted to the frightened groom,26 who had appeared at the edge of the glade. “Come here. Take this note as hard as you can ride to Farnham.” He scribbled a few words upon a leaf from his notebook. “Give it to the superintendent at the police-station. Until he comes, I must detain you all under my personal custody.”
The strong, masterful personality of Holmes dominated the tragic scene, and all were equally puppets in his hands. Williamson and Carruthers found themselves carrying the wounded Woodley into the house, and I gave my arm to the frightened girl. The injured man was laid on his bed, and at Holmes’s request I examined him. I carried my report to where he sat in the old tapestry-hung dining-room with his two prisoners before him.
“He spun round with a scream and fell upon his back.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“He will live,” said I.
“What!” cried Carruthers, springing out of his chair. “I’ll go upstairs and finish him first. Do you tell me that that girl, that angel, is to be tied to Roaring Jack Woodley for life?”
“You need not concern yourself about that,” said Holmes. “There are two very good reasons why she should, under no circumstances, be his wife. In the first place, we are very safe in questioning Mr. Williamson’s right to solemnize a marriage.”
“I have been ordained,” cried the old rascal.
“And also unfrocked.”
“Once a clergyman, always a clergyman.”
“I think not. How about the licence?”
“We had a licence for the marriage. I have it here in my pocket.”
“Then you got it by a trick. But, in any case a forced marriage is no marriage, but it is a very serious felony,27 as you will discover before you have finished. You’ll have time to think the point out during the next ten years or so, unless I am mistaken. As to you, Carruthers, you would have done better to keep your pistol in your pocket.”
“I begin to think so, Mr. Holmes; but when I thought of all the precaution I had taken to shield this girl—for I loved her, Mr. Holmes, and it is the only time that ever I knew what love was—it fairly drove me mad to think that she was in the power of the greatest brute and bully in South Africa, a man whose name is a holy terror from Kimberley28 to Johannesburg. Why, Mr. Holmes, you’ll hardly believe it, but ever since that girl has been in my employment I never once let her go past this house, where I knew these rascals were lurking, without following her on my bicycle just to see that she came to no harm. I kept my distance from her, and I wore a beard, so that she should not recognise me, for she is a good and high-spirited girl, and she wouldn’t have stayed in my employment long if she had thought that I was following her about the country roads.”
“Why didn’t you tell her of her danger?”
“Because then, again, she would have left me, and I couldn’t bear to face that. Even if she couldn’t love me it was a great deal to me just to see her dainty form about the house, and to hear the sound of her voice.”
“Well,” said I, “you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness.”
“Maybe the two things go together. Anyhow, I couldn’t let her go. Besides, with this crowd about, it was well that she should have someone near to look after her. Then when the cable came I knew they were bound to make a move.”
“What cable?”
Carruthers took a telegram from his pocket.
“That’s it,” said he.
It was short and concise:
THE OLD MAN IS DEAD.
“Hum!” said Holmes. “I think I see how things worked, and I can understand how this message would, as you say, bring them to a head. But while you wait you might tell me what you can.”
The old reprobate with the surplice burst into a volley of bad language.
“By heaven!” said he, “if you squeal on us, Bob Carruthers, I’ll serve you as you served Jack Woodley. You can bleat about the girl to your heart’s content, for that’s your own affair, but if you round on your pals to this plain-clothes copper it will be the worst day’s work that ever you did.”
“Your reverence need not be excited,” said Holmes, lighting a cigarette. “The case is clear enough against you, and all I ask is a few details for my private curiosity. However, if there’s any difficulty in your telling me I’ll do the talking, and then you will see how far you have a chance of holding back your secrets. In the first place, three of you came from South Africa on this game—you, Williamso
n, you, Carruthers, and Woodley.”
“Lie number one,” said the old man; “I never saw either of them until two months ago, and I have never been in Africa in my life, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Busybody Holmes!”
“What he says is true,” said Carruthers.
“Well, well, two of you came over. His reverence is our own home-made article. You had known Ralph Smith in South Africa. You had reason to believe he would not live long. You found out that his niece would inherit his fortune. How’s that—eh?”
Carruthers nodded, and Williamson swore.
“She was next of kin, no doubt, and you were aware that the old fellow would make no will.”
“Couldn’t read or write,” said Carruthers.
“So you came over, the two of you, and hunted up the girl. The idea was that one of you was to marry her, and the other have a share of the plunder. For some reason Woodley was chosen as the husband. Why was that?”
“We played cards for her on the voyage. He won.”
“I see. You got the young lady into your service, and there Woodley was to do the courting. She recognised the drunken brute that he was, and would have nothing to do with him. Meanwhile your arrangement was rather upset by the fact that you had yourself fallen in love with the lady. You could no longer bear the idea of this ruffian owning her.”
“No, by George, I couldn’t!”
“There was a quarrel between you. He left you in a rage, and began to make his own plans independently of you.”
“It strikes me, Williamson, there isn’t very much that we can tell this gentleman,” cried Carruthers, with a bitter laugh. “Yes, we quarrelled, and he knocked me down. I am level with him on that, anyhow. Then I lost sight of him. That was when he picked up with this cast padre29 here. I found that they had set up housekeeping together at this place on the line that she had to pass for the station. I kept my eye on her after that, for I knew there was some devilry in the wind. I saw them from time to time, for I was anxious to know what they were after. Two days ago Woodley came up to my house with this cable, which showed that Ralph Smith was dead. He asked me if I would stand by the bargain. I said I would not. He asked me if I would marry the girl myself and give him a share. I said I would willingly do so, but that she would not have me. He said, ‘Let us get her married first, and after a week or two she may see things a bit different.’ I said I would have nothing to do with violence. So he went off cursing, like the foul-mouthed blackguard that he was, and swearing that he would have her yet. She was leaving me this week-end, and I had got a trap to take her to the station, but I was so uneasy in my mind that I followed her on my bicycle. She had got a start, however, and before I could catch her the mischief was done. The first thing I knew about it was when I saw you two gentlemen driving back in her dog-cart.”
Holmes rose and tossed the end of his cigarette into the grate. “I have been very obtuse, Watson,” said he. “When in your report you said that you had seen the cyclist as you thought arrange his necktie in the shrubbery, that alone should have told me all. However, we may congratulate ourselves upon a curious and, in some respects, a unique case. I perceive three of the country constabulary in the drive, and I am glad to see that the little ostler is able to keep pace with them; so it is likely that neither he nor the interesting bridegroom will be permanently damaged by their morning’s adventures. I think, Watson, that in your medical capacity you might wait upon Miss Smith and tell her that if she is sufficiently recovered, we shall be happy to escort her to her mother’s home. If she is not quite convalescent you will find that a hint that we were about to telegraph to a young electrician in the Midlands would probably complete the cure.30 As to you, Mr. Carruthers, I think that you have done what you could to make amends for your share in an evil plot. There is my card, sir, and if my evidence can be of help in your trial it shall be at your disposal.”
“Holmes tossed the end of his cigarette into the grate.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
In the whirl of our incessant activity it has often been difficult for me, as the reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those final details which the curious might expect. Each case has been the prelude to another, and the crisis once over, the actors have passed for ever out of our busy lives. I find, however, a short note at the end of my manuscripts dealing with this case, in which I have put it upon record that Miss Violet Smith did indeed inherit a large fortune, and that she is now the wife of Cyril Morton, the senior partner of Morton & Kennedy, the famous Westminster electricians. Williamson and Woodley were both tried for abduction and assault, the former getting seven years and the latter ten. Of the fate of Carruthers I have no record, but I am sure that his assault was not viewed very gravely by the Court, since Woodley had the reputation of being a most dangerous ruffian, and I think that a few months were sufficient to satisfy the demands of justice.
BICYCLING IN THE TIME OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
IN THE century following the 1819 introduction of the first two-wheeled vehicle, a wooden contraption (invented by Baron Karl Drais von Sauerbronn) that the rider moved by pushing his feet along the ground, the bicycle went through numerous incarnations on its way to its current form. There was the first self-propelled two-wheeler, which was invented by Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan in 1839 and made use of swinging foot cranks that were moved back and forth; the first popular two-wheeler, invented by the French Pierre and Ernest Michaux—father and son—in 1861 and propelled by rotating pedals attached to the front wheel; and the ordinary or “penny-farthing” model invented in 1870 by James Starley of the Coventry Sewing Machine Company. Incorporating a large front wheel and smaller back wheel (the penny and the farthing were England’s largest and smallest coins) and weighing far less than previous versions of the vehicle, Starley’s bicycle remained fashionable for twenty years until the arrival of the chain-driven “safety” bicycle, which boasted two wheels of equal size and was far less likely to tip over. First manufactured in 1885 by Starley’s nephew John, the safety bicycle had supplanted the ordinary bicycle by the early 1890s.
Cycling in London.
Queen’s London (1897)
Cycling’s popularity spread rapidly in the 1880s; clubs were founded, and both men and women enjoyed taking leisurely bicycle rides in the country, either separately or in tandem. But the bicycle’s importance extended beyond mere novelty and sport. As a means of transportation, this new vehicle vastly expanded employment opportunities for working people who, unable to afford carriages or train fare, had previously been forced to work only as far away as they could walk. According to M. Haddon-MacRoberts’s “The Mystery of the Missing Bicycles,” millions of bicycles were being used between 1870 and 1890. Brand-new bicycles were expensive, naturally, but cheaper second- and third-hand models were always available for rent or sale as newer, more innovative models were continually being introduced and snapped up by enthusiasts. Victorians, once sedentary, became gloriously mobile. “It apparently was truly a sight,” writes Haddon-MacRoberts, “to see the thousands of cyclists pouring out of the cities on weekends to escape the smog-congested haunts where they lived and worked, and to experience, for a few hours at least, an individual freedom never before known to so many people.”
Some, by contrast, viewed the phenomenon with alarm, fearing the implications of this newfound emancipation, particularly in regard to young women. In 1897, Mrs. F. Harcourt Williamson, in “The Cycle in Society,” moralised, “The beginning of cycling was the end of the chaperon in England, and now women, even young girls, ride alone or attended only by some casual man friend for miles together through deserted country roads. The danger of this is apparent; but parents and guardians will probably only become wise after the event. Given a lonely road, and a tramp desperate with hunger or naturally vicious, and it stands to reason that a girl, or indeed any woman riding alone must be in some considerable peril.” There seems little doubt that
Mrs. Williamson would have greeted Violet Smith’s predicament with a knowing, “I told you so.”
It is easy, then, to picture Miss Smith as a member of this new, bicyling society, taking advantage of a liberty—as well as the consequences of that liberty—largely unavailable to her a mere two decades before. It is even easier to picture her in light of the surprising discovery of the apparent origin of her bicycle. The Raleigh Bicycle Company was founded in 1890 by an Englishman named Frank Bowden, who, told by doctors he had six months to live, began bicycling and became not only healthy but also a cycling champion. Of the many bicycles manufactured by Bowden’s company, one may have been delivered for the use of Violet Smith. The Catalogue of an Exhibition on Sherlock Holmes Held at Abbey House Baker Street, London NW1, May-September 1951 sets forth (without comment) a letter from Mr. George H. B. Wilson, the managing director of Raleigh Industries Limited, Nottingham, which accompanied a bicycle lent to the exhibition by Raleigh. It reads:
Dear Lord Donegall,
Referring to your letter of the 20th April, in which you inform me of your present researches into the whereabouts of the cycle belonging to Miss Violet Smith . . . , I am pleased to be able to tell you that on looking back through our files for 1895 and 1896 we have been able to trace a Humber bicycle which we delivered to Miss Smith’s father at Charlington Hall. As you recall in your letter, Miss Smith married and having no further use for the vehicle sold it back to us. Many years later when it became apparent that our earliest products would be of historical interest, it was placed among other examples of this firm’s craftsmanship. It was not, however, until your letter called attention to the fact, that Raleigh Industries Limited realised the very special value of this bicycle, in view of its association with the immortal detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
The company records are obviously in error, however, for Charlington Hall was, at the time of the events recounted by Miss Smith, occupied by Williamson, who lived there alone, and Miss Smith’s father was deceased. It is possible that when the delivery person discovered the distance to Chiltern Grange from the station, the bicycle was negligently presented to Williamson, who was thought to be Miss Smith’s father.
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 17