7 Fort Dodge, established in 1864, is a southwestern Kansas town on the north bank of the Arkansas River. With the laying of the Santa Fe Railway, Fort Dodge would be eclipsed by the exploits of its neighbouring cousin, Dodge City. That town was settled in 1872 a mere four miles away from Fort Dodge, and soon played host to the gunslinging adventures of Bat Masterson (1853–1921) and Wyatt Earp (1848–1929).
8 A vast sum now, this was an astronomical fortune then, the modern equivalent of over $100 million. At least one statistical source estimates that the average net worth of the top one percent of the population of Victorian England was about $265,000—roughly one-twentieth of what was being offered to each Garrideb.
9 Whether this was a directory of the National Telephone Company (which had 25,000 lines in London in 1902) or the post office (which had 5,500 lines in London at that time) is unknown. At present there is only one N. Garrideb listed in the public directories for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, that being in St. Charles, MO (actually the home telephone number of Sherlockians Michael and Kathleen Bragg), and no one has ever discovered another Garrideb.
10 Many scholars note that Holmes comes up with a fictitious name very similar to that of both Lysander Stark, the alias of the counterfeiter in “The Engineer’s Thumb,” and Sir Leander Starr Jameson, Bt. (1853–1917), friend and collaborator of Cecil Rhodes. After impetuously leading five hundred volunteers on a failed invasion of the South African Transvaal on December 29, 1895, “Doc Jim,” as Jameson, a physician and statesman, was known, was captured and sent back to England, where he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison. Upon his release, he returned to South Africa and served as prime minister of Cape Colony from 1904 to 1908. The similarity to “Lysander Stark” may be due to Watson’s penchant for disguising the names of persons figuring in his tales, while Jameson may have been on Holmes’s (or Watson’s) mind as the result of his recent trial and imprisonment.
11 In hunting or shooting, a covert is a blind, shelter, or bit of thick underbrush that provides cover for game. To “put up” a bird is to flush it out of the covert, alarming it so that it flies out into the open.
12 In late June?
13 The infamous tree at Tyburn was one of the sites of public executions from 1196 until 1783, when they were transferred to Newgate. The hangings at Tyburn took on a carnival-like atmosphere: A two-hour procession, heavy with drink and festivity (prisoners were often drunk by the time they reached the gallows), would lead the condemned and an accompanying crowd from Newgate prison to Tyburn on the Mondays scheduled for executions. Criminals, particularly those with any sort of élan, were treated like heroes, as was the occasional executioner. One hangman of the early 1600s, known as Derrick, was immortalised in Thomas Dekker’s Bellman of London (1608), which wrote of a horse-thief, “And Derrick must be his host, and Tyborne the inn at which he will light.” A hoisting device that could hang several criminals at once became known as a Derrick, and the name eventually came to refer to cranes aboard ships. Recent research reveals that the site of the gallows may have been at Connaught Square, not Edgware Road.
14 Named after Neander Valley in Germany, where the first remains of this early Homo sapiens subspecies were found in 1856, the cave-dwelling Neanderthals inhabited Europe and the Mediterranean (as well as parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa) in the late Pleistocene epoch. Their physiognomy was marked by a low, sloping brow; a chinless jaw that jutted forward; and a thick, squat build, suitable for the cold climate of the era. The large front teeth of the Neanderthals possibly derived from chewing on animal skins to soften them, as the Eskimos do. They were supplanted by Cro-Magnons some 30,000 years ago, although the exact circumstances of the Neanderthals’ extinction are unknown.
15 The 400,000-year-old jawbone of Heidelberg man, thought to be an example either of Homo erectus (a species that lived 1.6 million to 250,000 years ago) or of an early form of Homo sapiens, was discovered in 1907 in a sand pit near Heidelberg, Germany. Chinless and very large, the jaw has relatively small teeth and dates to the middle Pleistocene epoch. Because the date of discovery conflicts with that of “The Three Garridebs” (“The latter end of June, 1902”), either Watson, in writing this story sometime just before its publication date in 1924, substituted the Heidelberg name for some other specimen, or Garrideb possessed a model of some hitherto unknown relic.
16 The most recent of the three types of skulls owned by Garrideb, Cro-Magnon is a modern version of Homo sapiens, dating from the Upper Paleolithic period of 10,000 to 35,000 years ago. Several skeletons of this type were discovered in 1868, in a cave at Cro-Magnon in the Dordogne area of southern France. More advanced than the Neanderthals that preceded them, Cro-Magnons were tall and strong, anatomically similar to modern humans but with a slightly larger brain capacity. They lived in caves and makeshift huts and created sculptures and cave paintings, the first art produced by prehistoric peoples.
17 Syracuse (a city-state in Sicily) was conquered by the Romans in 212 B.C. Coin collectors share Garrideb’s high regard for Syracusan coins. According to A. Carson Simpson, in his “Numismatics in the Canon,” “the period 400–336 B.C. is generally accepted as that in which the numismatic art reached the highest point of excellence it ever attained. Thereafter, although portraiture on coins became more lifelike and individual, the general level of artistic treatment declined.”
18 What Garrideb means by “the Alexandrian school” is unclear. Presumably he means coins minted in the city of Alexandria—but which Alexandria? A. Carson Simpson concludes that the Roman city of Alexandria is probably meant, for it struck numerous coins of highly diverse design. “There were, literally, thousands of varieties issued from the time of Augustus to that of Valerius,” he notes; “as a result, they offer a fertile field for study.”
19 The two rival auction houses of Sotheby’s and Christie’s were founded in 1744 and 1766, respectively. The former got its start when bookseller Samuel Baker put the private library of the late Rt. Hon. Sir John Stanley, Bt., “containing several Hundred scarce and valuable books in all branches of Polite Literature,” up for sale on March 11, 1744, earning a few hundred pounds for 457 books. In 1767 he went into business with George Leigh and began handling the sale of several more libraries, including the books that Napoleon took with him to exile on St. Helena. When Baker passed away in 1778, the business was taken over by Leigh and John Sotheby, a nephew of Baker’s. Sotheby and his successors would control the fortunes of the firm for the next eighty years, until the last Sotheby’s death in 1861. (Thereafter, Sotheby’s was controlled by a series of partners.) Under the Sotheby family’s direction, the firm focussed on rare manuscripts, prints, and coins; and it was not until after World War I that Sotheby’s began branching out into paintings and other works of art, necessitating a move from 13 Wellington Street to its current quarters at 34-35 New Bond Street.
Christie’s first auction was conducted by James Christie, a former navy officer, on December 5, 1766. Over the ensuing years, Christie’s budding friendships with artists and aristocrats turned his auction house into a gathering place for collectors, dealers, and tastemakers of London’s high society. After Christie’s death, his son, also named James, assumed responsibility for the business, specialising in Greek and Italian vases and sculpture. He, in turn, was succeeded by his sons James Stirling and George Henry, who later added brothers William and Edward Manson and then Thomas J. Woods in 1859. At that point, the firm became formally known as Christie, Manson & Woods. Christie’s handled many high-profile transactions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the sale of Sir Robert Walpole’s art collection to Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, in 1778; the auction of portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds’s studio in 1794; and the seventeen-day sale of pictures from Scotland’s Hamilton Palace in 1882.
20 Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), naturalist, physician, collector, and benefactor of the British Museum (see “The Musgrave Ritual,” no
te 13). Legend has it that Sloane also helped introduce chocolate to the western world, having observed locals drinking cocoa in Jamaica. Finding the drink personally unpalatable, Sloane mixed his cocoa with milk, and his recipe was manufactured as medicine in England until John Cadbury began selling the beverage at his tea-and-coffee shop in 1824.
21 Recall that upon phoning Nathan Garrideb earlier, Holmes told him that he “need not mention [the visit] to the American lawyer”; yet here, he evinces no surprise when Garrideb confesses that he has told him of the appointment after all. “Had he already summed up the eccentric collector as a hopeless nincompoop,” asks D. Martin Dakin, “who could be assumed to be incapable of carrying out instructions?”
22 A farming implement consisting of a metal or wooden frame supporting sharp teeth or circular blades. Harrows are used to break up and smooth soil, to extract weeds, and to cover newly planted seeds.
23 A four-wheeled carriage; it had a long board, running between the front and rear axles, on which a seat was placed.
24 Georgian style is an umbrella term given to the various architectural trends common during the reigns of George I, II, III, and IV, from 1714 to 1830. At first inspired by the work of Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (see “The Abbey Grange,” note 9), architects of the Georgian era then turned to neoclassicism, imitating the designs of classical Greece and Rome. Toward the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, simpler lines prevailed, and the red-brick house with white woodwork became a hallmark of the Georgian style. During this period, furniture and interior design also took precedence, with wallpaper, subdued colours, and furniture pieces by Thomas Chippendale all claiming influence in London townhouses of the day. It is likely that Garrideb’s house was from the later period, because Queen Anne houses also were predominately brickwork.
25 The Newgate Calendar was a series of wildly popular books containing accounts of prisoners who had been incarcerated at Newgate. In the various editions—the first of which was entitled The Malefactor’s Register or New Newgate and Tyburn Calendar—readers could learn all about criminals such as Hannah Dagoe, from Ireland, “of that numerous class of women who ply at Covent Garden Market as basket-women.” The accused broke into the house of the widow Eleanor Hussey, stealing all of her possessions, and was promptly tried and sentenced to death. According to the account, Dagoe was “a strong, masculine woman, the terror of her fellow-prisoners, and actually stabbed one of the men who had given evidence against her; but the wound happened not to prove dangerous.” After being transported to Tyburn on May 4, 1763, for her execution, Dagoe wrestled free of the constraints binding her hands, struck the executioner, and began removing articles of her clothing and throwing them into the crowd. The executioner managed to get the rope around her neck, whereupon she hurled herself out of the cart, in effect killing herself before the signal was given. Or Holmes might have happened upon the story of George Allen, an epileptic who murdered his three children in 1807. “Insanity probably caused the horrid deed to be committed which we are now going to relate,” the account opens sadly. Allen’s wife had barely escaped her husband’s attack on her when “one of the children (the girl) fell at her feet, with her head almost cut off, which he had murdered and thrown after her. The woman opened the door and screamed out that her husband was cutting off their children’s heads. A neighbour soon came to her assistance, and when a light was procured the monster was found standing in the middle of the house-place with a razor in his hand. When asked what he had been doing, he replied coolly: ‘Nothing yet: I have only killed three of them!’ ”
26 “Presbury” in the Strand Magazine text, here and throughout the remainder of the account.
27 This was probably a Webley Metropolitan Police Model (see appendix to “The Speckled Band”). Yet H. T. Webster considers the Webley inadequate for the task for which Holmes soon uses it, which is to strike Evans over the head and render him momentarily senseless. In “Observations on Sherlock Holmes as an Athlete and Sportsman,” he describes the Webley as “a very inefficient bludgeon” and guesses that Holmes was using another type of gun—perhaps a Colt Frontier Model .45 or some other type of sturdy American gun, possibly given to Holmes by a grateful client such as Sir Henry Baskerville (who lived in Canada and likely in America as well).
28 The ingenuity of the plot seems far superior to the ingenuity of the man, in the opinion of Gavin Brend. He deems the crime “a work of art” but declares Killer Evans to possess “rather a humdrum personality”—so much so that he may not have cooked up the scheme himself, but instead sought the advice of one of his more clever associates. And who might this associate have been? “There exists a theory,” Brend proposes, “that most criminals repeat certain details every time they commit a crime, so that they may be said to write their signatures across it. If this be so then the signature on The Three Garridebs can easily be read. It is one that we have met before . . . in the matter of The Red-Headed League. It is the signature of the most interesting of all Holmes’s opponents, our old acquaintance, John Clay, once of Eton and Oxford, the grandson of a Royal Duke.” Of course, one might also recognise this case’s strong similarity to “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk.” Perhaps Killer Evans devised the plan after a careful reading of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes!
29 Where, one wonders, did Evans obtain a key?
30 Why did Holmes not let Garrideb down easily, sparing him the shock which evidently led to his breakdown? Perhaps, asserts W. W. Robson, because Holmes was intent on capture of the criminal and (as noted above) had concluded that Garrideb could not be trusted with the truth. If so, Nathan Garrideb must join the short list of clients ill-served by having engaged Holmes’s services (including John Openshaw of “The Five Orange Pips” and Hilton Cubitt of “The Dancing Men”).
31 It is no tribute to the “worthy C.I.D. men” that the Prescott outfit could be successfully hidden in Prescott’s own apartment and yet not be discovered.
THE PROBLEM OF THOR BRIDGE1
Although Watson is surely the writer of “Thor Bridge,” here he mistakenly claims service in the “Indian Army.” Perhaps his memory was beginning to dim as he celebrated his seventy-first birthday in 1922, when the case was published. In this tale, Watson records another confrontation of Holmes’s with money and power, in the guise of Neil Gibson, the “Gold King.” Although his true identity has been the subject of much speculation, this American millionaire seems to be almost a caricature of the British idea of “Gilded Age” Americans—fabulously rich, crude, stubborn, cold, and violent. Here too are other staples of Holmes’s world: the beautiful governess, the dark South American beauty. But all is not what it seems here, and Holmes must reach deep to solve the clue of the chipped stonework.
SOMEWHERE IN THE vaults of the bank of Cox & Co.,2 at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H.3 Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army,4 painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine. Some, and not the least interesting, were complete failures, and as such will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming. A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader. Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.5 No less remarkable is that of the cutter Alicia, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew.6 A third case worthy of note is that of Isadora Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science.7 Apart from these unfathomed cases, there are some which involve the secrets of private families to an extent which would mean conste
rnation in many exalted quarters if it were thought possible that they might find their way into print. I need not say that such a breach of confidence is unthinkable, and that these records will be separated and destroyed now that my friend has time to turn his energies to the matter. There remain a considerable residue of cases of greater or less interest which I might have edited before had I not feared to give the public a surfeit which might react upon the reputation of the man whom above all others I revere. In some I was myself concerned and can speak as an eye-witness, while in others I was either not present or played so small a part that they could only be told as by a third person.8 The following narrative is drawn from my own experience.
It was a wild morning in October, and I observed as I was dressing how the last remaining leaves were being whirled from the solitary plane tree9 which graces the yard behind our house. I descended to breakfast prepared to find my companion in depressed spirits, for, like all great artists, he was easily impressed by his surroundings. On the contrary, I found that he had nearly finished his meal, and that his mood was particularly bright and joyous, with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments.
“You have a case, Holmes?” I remarked.
“The faculty of deduction is certainly contagious, Watson,” he answered. “It has enabled you to probe my secret. Yes, I have a case. After a month of trivialities and stagnation the wheels move once more.”
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 97