She gave a gasp, and her head dropped back in the chair.
“Come, Lady Hilda. You have the letter. The matter may still be adjusted. I have no desire to bring trouble to you. My duty ends when I have returned the lost letter to your husband. Take my advice and be frank with me; it is your only chance.”
Her courage was admirable. Even now she would not own defeat.27
“I tell you again, Mr. Holmes, that you are under some absurd illusion.”
Holmes rose from his chair.
“I am sorry for you, Lady Hilda. I have done my best for you; I can see that it is all in vain.”
He rang the bell. The butler entered.
“Is Mr. Trelawney Hope at home?”
“He will be home, sir, at a quarter to one.”
Holmes glanced at his watch.
“Still a quarter of an hour,” said he. “Very good, I shall wait.”
The butler had hardly closed the door behind him when Lady Hilda was down on her knees at Holmes’s feet, her hands outstretched, her beautiful face upturned and wet with her tears.
“Oh, spare me, Mr. Holmes! Spare me!” she pleaded, in a frenzy of supplication. “For heaven’s sake, don’t tell him! I love him so! I would not bring one shadow on his life, and this I know would break his noble heart.”
Holmes raised the lady. “I am thankful, madam, that you have come to your senses even at this last moment! There is not an instant to lose. Where is the letter?”
She darted across to a writing-desk, unlocked it, and drew out a long blue envelope.
“Here it is, Mr. Holmes. Would to heaven I had never seen it!”
“How can we return it?” Holmes muttered. “Quick, quick, we must think of some way! Where is the despatch-box?”
“Still in his bedroom.”
“What a stroke of luck! Quick, madam, bring it here!”
A moment later she had appeared with a red flat box in her hand. “How did you open it before? You have a duplicate key? Yes, of course you have. Open it!”
From out of her bosom Lady Hilda had drawn a small key. The box flew open. It was stuffed with papers. Holmes thrust the blue envelope deep down into the heart of them, between the leaves of some other document. The box was shut, locked, and returned to his bedroom.
“Now we are ready for him,” said Holmes; “we have still ten minutes. I am going far to screen you, Lady Hilda. In return you will spend the time in telling me frankly the real meaning of this extraordinary affair.”
“Mr. Holmes, I will tell you everything,” cried the lady. “Oh, Mr. Holmes, I would cut off my right hand before I gave him a moment of sorrow! There is no woman in all London who loves her husband as I do, and yet if he knew how I have acted—how I have been compelled to act—he would never forgive me. For his own honour stands so high that he could not forget or pardon a lapse in another. Help me, Mr. Holmes! My happiness, his happiness, our very lives are at stake!”
“Quick, madam, the time grows short!”
“It was a letter of mine, Mr. Holmes, an indiscreet letter written before my marriage28—a foolish letter, a letter of an impulsive, loving girl.29 I meant no harm, and yet he would have thought it criminal. Had he read that letter his confidence would have been forever destroyed. It is years since I wrote it. I had thought that the whole matter was forgotten. Then at last I heard from this man, Lucas, that it had passed into his hands, and that he would lay it before my husband. I implored his mercy. He said that he would return my letter if I would bring him a certain document which he described in my husband’s despatch-box. He had some spy in the office who had told him of its existence.30 He assured me that no harm could come to my husband. Put yourself in my position, Mr. Holmes! What was I to do?”
“Take your husband into your confidence.”31
“I could not, Mr. Holmes, I could not! On the one side seemed certain ruin; on the other, terrible as it seemed to take my husband’s papers, still in a matter of politics I could not understand the consequences, while in a matter of love and trust they were only too clear to me. I did it, Mr. Holmes! I took an impression of his key; this man, Lucas, furnished a duplicate. I opened his despatch-box, took the paper, and conveyed it to Godolphin Street.”
“What happened there, madam?”
“I tapped at the door as agreed. Lucas opened it. I followed him into his room, leaving the hall door ajar behind me, for I feared to be alone with the man. I remembered that there was a woman outside as I entered.32 Our business was soon done. He had my letter on his desk; I handed him the document. He gave me the letter. At this instant there was a sound at the door. There were steps in the passage. Lucas quickly turned back the drugget, thrust the document into some hiding-place there, and covered it over.
“What happened after that is like some fearful dream. I have a vision of a dark, frantic face, of a woman’s voice, which screamed in French, ‘My waiting is not in vain.33 At last, at last I have found you with her!’ There was a savage struggle. I saw him with a chair in his hand, a knife gleamed in hers. I rushed from the horrible scene, ran from the house, and only next morning in the paper did I learn the dreadful result.34 That night I was happy, for I had my letter, and I had not seen yet what the future would bring.
“It was the next morning that I realized that I had only exchanged one trouble for another. My husband’s anguish at the loss of his paper went to my heart. I could hardly prevent myself from there and then kneeling down at his feet and telling him what I had done. But that again would mean a confession of the past. I came to you that morning in order to understand the full enormity of my offence. From the instant that I grasped it my whole mind was turned to the one thought of getting back my husband’s paper. It must still be where Lucas had placed it, for it was concealed before this dreadful woman entered the room. If it had not been for her coming, I should not have known where his hiding-place was. How was I to get into the room? For two days I watched the place, but the door was never left open. Last night I made a last attempt. What I did and how I succeeded, you have already learned. I brought the paper back with me, and thought of destroying it,35 since I could see no way of returning it without confessing my guilt to my husband.36 Heavens, I hear his step upon the stair!”
The European Secretary burst excitedly into the room.
“Any news, Mr. Holmes, any news?” he cried.
“I have some hopes.”
“Ah, thank heaven!” His face became radiant. “The Prime Minister is lunching with me. May he share your hopes? He has nerves of steel, and yet I know that he has hardly slept since this terrible event. Jacobs, will you ask the Prime Minister to come up? As to you, dear, I fear that this is a matter of politics. We will join you in a few minutes in the dining-room.”
The Prime Minister’s manner was subdued, but I could see by the gleam of his eyes and the twitchings of his bony hands that he shared the excitement of his young colleague.
“I understand that you have something to report, Mr. Holmes?”
“Purely negative as yet,” my friend answered. “I have inquired at every point where it might be, and I am sure that there is no danger to be apprehended.”
“But that is not enough, Mr. Holmes. We cannot live forever on such a volcano. We must have something definite.”
“I am in hopes of getting it. That is why I am here. The more I think of the matter the more convinced I am that the letter has never left this house.”
“Mr. Holmes!”
“If it had it would certainly have been public by now.”
“But why should anyone take it in order to keep it in this37 house?”
“I am not convinced that anyone did take it.”
“Then how could it leave the despatch-box?”
“I am not convinced that it ever did leave the despatch-box.”
“Mr. Holmes, this joking is very ill-timed. You have my assurance that it left the box.”
“Have you examined the box since Tuesday morning?”
<
br /> “No; it was not necessary.”
“You may conceivably have overlooked it.”
“Impossible, I say.”
“But I am not convinced of it; I have known such things to happen. I presume there are other papers there. Well, it may have got mixed with them.”
“It was on the top.”
“Someone may have shaken the box and displaced it.”
“No, no; I had everything out.”
“Surely it is easily decided, Hope,” said the Premier. “Let us have the despatch-box brought in.”
The Secretary rang the bell.
“Jacobs, bring down my despatch-box. This is a farcical waste of time, but still, if nothing else will satisfy you, it shall be done. Thank you, Jacobs; put it here. I have always had the key on my watch-chain. Here are the papers, you see. Letter from Lord Merrow, report from Sir Charles Hardy, memorandum from Belgrade, note on the Russo-German grain taxes, letter from Madrid, note from Lord Flowers—Good heavens! what is this? Lord Bellinger! Lord Bellinger!”
The Premier snatched the blue envelope from his hand.
“The Premier snatched the blue envelope from his hand.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1904
“Yes, it is it—and the letter intact. Hope, I congratulate you!”
“Thank you! Thank you! What a weight from my heart. But this is inconceivable—impossible! Mr. Holmes, you are a wizard, a sorcerer! How did you know it was there?”
“Because I knew it was nowhere else.”
“I cannot believe my eyes!” He ran wildly to the door. “Where is my wife? I must tell her that all is well. Hilda! Hilda!” we heard his voice on the stairs.
The Premier looked at Holmes with twinkling eyes.
“Come, sir,” said he. “There is more in this than meets the eye. How came the letter back in the box?”
Holmes turned away smiling from the keen scrutiny of those wonderful eyes.
“We also have our diplomatic secrets,”38 said he and, picking up his hat, he turned to the door.
“LORD BELLINGER” AND THE “RIGHT HONOURABLE TRELAWNEY HOPE”
“The one, austere, high-nosed, eagle-eyed, and dominant, was none other than the illustrious Lord Bellinger, twice Premier of Britain. The other, dark, clear-cut, and elegant, hardly yet of middle age, and endowed with every beauty of body and of mind, was the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope, Secretary for European Affairs, and the most rising statesman in the country.”
IS IT POSSIBLE to identify the faces behind the masks created by Dr. Watson in “The Second Stain”?
The first to be considered is “the illustrious Lord Bellinger,” who Watson reveals was “twice Premier of Britain.” Since Watson deliberately hides the year and even the decade of “The Second Stain” from readers, relying upon chronological clues is an uncertain task. Only three prime ministers held office more than once during the lifetimes of Holmes and Watson: Benjamin Disraeli (1868, 1874–1880), William Gladstone (1868– 1874, 1880–1885, 1886, 1892–1894), and Robert Salisbury (1885–1886, 1886–1892, 1895–1902). Only Salisbury and Gladstone did so for a second time during the Partnership.
Gavin Brend makes a case for Lord Salisbury, placing “The Second Stain” during Salisbury’s second term. Acknowledging that Holmes’s description of Lord Bellinger as “austere, high-nosed, eagle-eyed, and dominant” resembles Gladstone more than it does Salisbury, he insists that this is another point in Salisbury’s favour, because Watson was so careful in disguising his characters that he would never give Gladstone such an accurate portrait. June Thomson contrarily argues that Salisbury would be described as “dominant” and “eagle-eyed” and therefore agrees with Brend’s identification. She also finds the letter in “The Second Stain” consistent with the kaiser’s dispatch of the Kruger telegram (see note 10, above) and therefore likely to have occurred between December 1895 and January 1896, during Salisbury’s second term of office.
Others disagree with Brend’s assessment, taking Watson’s description at its face value, so to speak. O. F. Grazebrook, in Volume 2 of Studies in Sherlock Holmes, identifies Lord Bellinger as Mr. Gladstone on that basis, suggesting also that Gladstone’s involvement explains Lord Holdhurst’s remark to Holmes in “The Naval Treaty”: “Your name is very familiar to me, Mr. Holmes.” Presumably, Grazebrook deduces, Gladstone had told his successor, Lord Salisbury—Grazebrook identifies Salisbury with Lord Holdhurst—about Holmes’s involvement with the affair of the missing document. Otherwise, it would have been nearly impossible for Holdhurst/Salisbury to have heard of Holmes, given that by 1889, the date generally assigned to “The Naval Treaty,” only A Study in Scarlet (1887) had been published and had not achieved much attention.
Jon L. Lellenberg, in “Revised Treatise,” claims to have confirmed conclusively the identification of Lord Bellinger as Gladstone, using documentation, not description, as his triumphal proof. Turning to the British government’s official history of World War II, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive 1940–1944, written by M. R. D. Foot and published by the government in 1966, Lellenberg opens to the third chapter, which discusses recruiting and training. This chapter, according to Lellenberg, addresses
the necessity of avoiding public disclosure and recognition of even successful exploits; and a footnote on page 44 comments: “Sherlock Holmes’s interview with a thinly disguised Mr. Gladstone during his adventure of ‘The Second Stain’ is the locus classicus.” No doubt this passing reference by Professor Foot, a distinguished historian with access to the classified archives, escaped the notice of the Foreign Office censor during the security review.
Several alternate identifications for Lord Bellinger have been made. Marcella Holmes, in “Sherlock Holmes and the Prime Minister,” reviews the cases for Disraeli (who held the title of Lord Beaconsfield), Gladstone, Salisbury, and Archibald Rosebery (1894–1895). She concludes that Watson had no part in the affair, which took place in 1878 or 1879, and that Lord Beaconsfield was Lord Bellinger. Her case rests on Disraeli’s two terms in office, the similar initial of “Beaconsfield” and “Bellinger,” and the similarity of physical appearance to Watson’s description. Based solely on chronology, T. S. Blakeney identifies Lord Bellinger as Lord Rosebery and congratulates Watson on his skill in hiding Rosebery’s personality by claiming that he served as prime minister twice. The most surprising identification of Lord Bellinger must be D. A. Redmond’s, in “Lord Bellinger—Who Else?,” demonstrating that Lord Bellinger was John Albert Bellinger, first Baron Bellinger, and not the prime minister at all.
Turning to the “Right Honourable Trelawney Hope,” Watson has said that he was “hardly of middle age”; but no foreign secretary (Watson’s “Secretary for European Affairs”) throughout the relevant period was that young a man. Still, Gavin Brend calculates that if the events of “The Second Stain” had to have taken place, as Watson describes, “one Tuesday morning in autumn” when the prime minister and foreign secretary were two different people, then only 1886, the first year of Lord Salisbury’s second term, would fit the bill. Sir Stafford Northcote (the Earl of Iddesleigh) was Salisbury’s foreign minister that year, with Salisbury taking over the responsibilities of the office the following year, after Northcote’s death in January 1887.
Felix Morley, who also casts his vote with Salisbury and Northcote, elaborates upon the political situation in “The Significance of the Second Stain.” Northcote’s death came close upon the heels of relative turmoil in Salisbury’s cabinet. On Christmas Eve, Lord Randolph Churchill, Salisbury’s chancellor of the exchequer (or finance minister), resigned after submitting his first budget; soon after, W. H. Smith, the secretary of state for war—with whom Churchill had clashed—resigned as well. Northcote had just come to an agreement with Salisbury for his own resignation when he died suddenly, in the anteroom of the prime minister’s official residence. “How tragic the circumstances were the reader of The Adventure of the Second Stai
n can fully realize,” Morley explains. He theorises that after Holmes’s recovery of the document, word of Northcote’s “reckless carelessness with state papers” would surely have spread to other members of the cabinet. Morley blames Lady Hilda’s feminine naivete for the leak, writing, “I am on delicate ground, but it may be stated as a general rule that a lady who has twice been terribly indiscreet is not unlikely to err a third time.” Assuming that Lady Hilda may have foolishly spoken to the butler about Holmes’s restoration of her husband’s mysterious document, Morley continues, “At any rate a new light is thrown on the unexplained resignation from Lord Salisbury’s Cabinet and the sudden, ‘almost tragic’ death of his Foreign Secretary.”
Taking a contrary view, C. Arnold Johnson, in “Lord Iddesleigh?,” suggests that Trelawney Hope was not Northcote but rather Lord Randolph Churchill, with his true cabinet position disguised by Watson. Similarly, June Thomson proposes Joseph Chamberlain for the rôle, during his term of service as “Secretary of State for the Colonies” for Salisbury during his second term. Chamberlain fits the description as well, as an “elegant” man.
Adherents of the “Gladstone” identification of Lord Bellinger generally point to Lord Rosebery, who served as Gladstone’s foreign secretary in 1886 (for five months) and from 1892 to 1894, as the original of Trelawney Hope. Rosebery, who served as prime minister in late 1894–early 1895, certainly qualified as a “rising statesman in the country.” Lady Hannah Rosebery was the only daughter of Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild of Mentmore and thus might well have been disguised as Lady Hilda.
Watson’s “carefully guarded” account succeeds in leaving little definitive evidence of the faces behind the masks!
1 “The Second Stain” was published in the Strand Magazine in December 1904 and in the January 28, 1905, issue of Collier’s Weekly. The manuscript is in the possession of Haverford College.
2 “The Abbey Grange” was published in the Strand Magazine in September 1904, three months before publication of “The Second Stain.”
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 50