To question him had been impossible, but the moment we were assured of his condition Stackhurst turned upon me.33
“My God!” he cried, “what is it, Holmes? What is it?”
“Where did you find him?”
“Down on the beach. Exactly where poor McPherson met his end. If this man’s heart had been weak as McPherson’s was, he would not be here now. More than once I thought he was gone as I brought him up. It was too far to The Gables, so I made for you.”
“Did you see him on the beach?”
“I was walking on the cliff when I heard his cry. He was at the edge of the water, reeling about like a drunken man. I ran down, threw some clothes about him, and brought him up. For Heaven’s sake, Holmes, use all the powers you have and spare no pains to lift the curse from this place, for life is becoming unendurable. Can you, with all your world-wide reputation, do nothing for us?”
“I think I can, Stackhurst. Come with me now! And you, Inspector, come along! We will see if we cannot deliver this murderer into your hands.”
Leaving the unconscious man in the charge of my housekeeper, we all three went down to the deadly lagoon. On the shingle there was piled a little heap of towels and clothes left by the stricken man. Slowly I walked round the edge of the water, my comrades in Indian file behind me. Most of the pool was quite shallow, but under the cliff where the beach was hollowed out it was four or five feet deep. It was to this part that a swimmer would naturally go, for it formed a beautiful pellucid green pool as clear as crystal. A line of rocks lay above it at the base of the cliff, and along this I led the way, peering eagerly into the depths beneath me. I had reached the deepest and stillest pool when my eyes caught that for which they were searching, and I burst into a shout of triumph.
“Cyanea!” I34 cried. “Cyanea! Behold the Lion’s Mane!”
The strange object at which I pointed did indeed look like a tangled mass torn from the mane of a lion. It lay upon a rocky shelf some three feet under the water, a curious waving, vibrating, hairy creature with streaks of silver among its yellow tresses. It pulsated with a slow, heavy dilation and contraction.35
Cyanea capillata.
“It has done mischief enough. Its day is over!” I cried. “Help me, Stackhurst! Let us end the murderer forever.”36
There was a big boulder just above the ledge, and we pushed it until it fell with a tremendous splash into the water. When the ripples had cleared we saw that it had settled upon the ledge below. One flapping edge of yellow membrane showed that our victim was beneath it. A thick oily scum oozed out from below the stone and stained the water round, rising slowly to the surface.
“Well, this gets me!” cried the inspector. “What was it, Mr. Holmes? I’m born and bred in these parts, but I never saw such a thing. It don’t belong to Sussex.”
“Just as well for Sussex,” I remarked. “It may have been the south-west gale that brought it up. Come back to my house, both of you, and I will give you the terrible experience of one who has good reason to remember his own meeting with the same peril of the seas.”
When we reached my study we found that Murdoch was so far recovered that he could sit up. He was dazed in mind, and every now and then was shaken by a paroxysm of pain. In broken words he explained that he had no notion what had occurred to him, save that terrific pangs had suddenly shot through him, and that it had taken all his fortitude to reach the bank.
“Here is a book,” I said, taking up the little volume, “which first brought light into what might have been forever dark.37 It is Out of Doors, by the famous observer J. G. Wood.38 Wood himself very nearly perished from contact with this vile creature, so he wrote with a very full knowledge. Cyanea Capillata is the miscreant’s full name, and he can be as dangerous to life as, and far more painful than, the bite of the cobra.39 Let me briefly give this extract.
If the bather should see a loose roundish mass of tawny membranes and fibres, something like very large handfuls of lion’s mane and silver paper, let him beware, for this is the fearful stinger, Cyanea Capillata.40
“Could our sinister acquaintance be more clearly described?
“He goes on to tell his own encounter with one when swimming off the coast of Kent. He found that the creature radiated almost invisible filaments to the distance of fifty feet, and that anyone within that circumference from the deadly centre was in danger of death. Even at a distance the effect upon Wood was almost fatal.
The multitudinous threads caused light scarlet lines upon the skin which on closer examination resolved into minute dots or pustules, each dot charged as it were with a red-hot needle making its way through the nerves.
“The local pain was, as he explains, the least part of the exquisite torment.
Pangs shot through the chest, causing me to fall as if struck by a bullet. The pulsation would cease, and then the heart would give six or seven leaps as if it would force its way through the chest.
“It nearly killed him, although he had only been exposed to it in the disturbed ocean and not in the narrow calm waters of a bathing-pool. He says that he could hardly recognize himself afterwards, so white, wrinkled and shrivelled was his face.41 He gulped down brandy, a whole bottleful, and it seems to have saved his life. There is the book, Inspector.42 I leave it with you, and you cannot doubt that it contains a full explanation of the tragedy of poor McPherson.”
“And incidentally exonerates me,” remarked Ian Murdoch with a wry smile.43 “I do not blame you, Inspector, nor you, Mr. Holmes, for your suspicions were natural. I feel that on the very eve of my arrest I have only cleared myself by sharing the fate of my poor friend.”
“No, Mr. Murdoch. I was already upon the track, and had I been out as early as I intended I might well have saved you from this terrific experience.”
“But how did you know, Mr. Holmes?”
“I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles. That phrase ‘the Lion’s Mane’ haunted my mind. I knew that I had seen it somewhere in an unexpected context. You have seen that it does describe the creature. I have no doubt that it was floating on the water when McPherson saw it, and that this phrase was the only one by which he could convey to us a warning as to the creature which had been his death.”
“Then I, at least, am cleared,” said Murdoch, rising slowly to his feet. “There are one or two words of explanation which I should give, for I know the direction in which your inquiries have run. It is true that I loved this lady, but from the day when she chose my friend McPherson my one desire was to help her to happiness. I was well content to stand aside and act as their go-between. Often I carried their messages, and it was because I was in their confidence and because she was so dear to me that I hastened to tell her of my friend’s death, lest someone should forestall me in a more sudden and heartless manner. She would not tell you, sir, of our relations lest you should disapprove and I might suffer. But with your leave I must try to get back to The Gables, for my bed will be very welcome.”
Stackhurst held out his hand. “Our nerves have all been at concert-pitch,” said he. “Forgive what is past, Murdoch. We shall understand each other better in the future.” They passed out together with their arms linked in friendly fashion. The Inspector remained, staring at me in silence with his ox-like eyes.
“Well, you’ve done it!” he cried at last. “I had read of you, but I never believed it. It’s wonderful!”
I was forced to shake my head. To accept such praise was to lower one’s own standards.
“I was slow at the outset—culpably slow.44 Had the body been found in the water I could hardly have missed it. It was the towel which misled me. The poor fellow had never thought to dry himself, and so I in turn was led to believe that he had never been in the water. Why, then, should the attack of any water creature suggest itself to me? That was where I went astray. Well, well, Inspector,45 I often ventured to chaff you gentlemen of the police force, but Cyanea capillata very nearly avenged Scotland Yard.”46
1 A facsimile of the original manuscript of “The Lion’s Mane” was published by the Westminster Libraries and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London in 1992. There are numerous differences between the original text and the final published version, and significant additions to and deletions from the initial version are discussed in context, below.
2 The very nature of the Great Detective makes it difficult to understand why he would ever retire in the first place. Holmes’s explanation of yearning for “that soothing life of Nature” is rejected by D. Martin Dakin, who points to Holmes’s constant need for stimulation and his keen and restless mind, which would hardly be satisfied by academic research. Trevor H. Hall, in “The Late Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” proposes that Holmes developed amblyopia (a lazy eye) from his excessive tobacco use and faced total blindness, but this is pure speculation and seems unsupported by Holmes’s own comment in “The Lion’s Mane” about the “great view” from his villa. “Was there some enigmatic secret in his life to which even Watson never penetrated?” asks Dakin. “Distinction in Holmesian circles awaits the scholar who can read this perplexing riddle.”
3 “These revealing sentences, surely the most melancholy in the whole saga,” writes Trevor H. Hall, “refrained significantly from any mention of the detested Mrs. Watson.” This would be Watson’s fifth wife, Hall proposes in “The Problem of the Unpublished Cases,” and he declares that she is the one to blame for keeping such intimate friends apart. Hall envisions Watson, in the manner of many widowers, having married a younger, sexually desirable woman who possessed a “selfish lack of any understanding of the bond between himself and Holmes. . . .” Perhaps, as the marriage progressed, Watson found himself driven to consult Holmes for the “occasional week-end visit” in the aftermath of bitter fights with his young wife, when the differences between them began to come to light. Nonetheless, Hall sorrowfully concludes, “It is clear that for some years her physical charms continued to be irresistible to the infatuated Watson, for only in this way can we account for his going as far as he did to meet her cruelly intolerant objections to the continuance of his association with Holmes.”
June Thomson rejects Hall’s theory, citing far more mundane reasons for the change in Holmes and Watson’s friendship. “Their lack of contact,” she contends, “is due more to a slow drifting apart, brought about by the physical distance between them, rather than through any specific alienation. Both were busy men, absorbed in their own very different lives and, as can happen in even the closest friendships, they found they had less and less in common as the years passed and there were fewer opportunities to meet.”
4 The story was published, with the cooperation of Arthur Conan Doyle, in England in the Strand Magazine in December 1926 and in the United States in Liberty on November 27, 1926. The remainder of this paragraph replaces the following text in the manuscript: “It is possible that he would in any case have rejected this case from his records for in his loyalty he would always dwell upon my successes. I do not think that I can look back on the adventure of the Lion’s Mane with any particular personal pride and yet in its rarity I place it very high among my collection.” Perhaps on reflection, the aging Holmes decided at the last minute that if he were allowing the tale to be published, he should appear to have been proud of his part in discovering the secret. “Rarity,” after all, was a very slight reason for the readers of the Strand to appreciate the story.
5 If she is the same housekeeper Holmes employed in 1914, we learn in “His Last Bow” that her first name was Martha. Early commentators generally assume, without foundation, that Holmes’s housekeeper in retirement was Mrs. Hudson.
6 A “coach” is a private tutor, especially one employed in preparing for a particular examination. Note that Professor Moriarty was an army coach.
7 Gilchrist of “The Three Students” was a Blue in the hurdles and long jump. See “The Three Students,” note 18.
8 This would have been the modern trench coat, developed by Thomas Burberry, a former draper. Burberry became famous for inventing gabardine, an ingenious fabric made of yarn that was waterproofed before it was woven. Legend has it that his invention originated from a conversation he had with a local shepherd. When Burberry asked how it was that the shepherd’s smock kept the rain at bay, the shepherd replied that oil from sheep’s wool may have been a factor. Burberry patented gabardine in 1888, and eventually his name became synonymous with the unique style of overcoat manufactured by his company. Burberry opened his first shop in 1891; he would later design uniforms for the British army and outfit Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition (in 1911) and Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition (1914).
9 An irrational number (one with an infinite number of digits after the decimal point and never enteres a periodic pattern), such as the square root of three. More technically, a number which cannot be expressed as a/b, where a and b are integers.
10 In geometry, the intersection of a right circular cone and a plane; the intersection will always be a line, a circle, an ellipse, a hyperbola, or a parabola (depending on the angle of the plane and the angle of the edge of the cone).
11 The following deleted sentences appear in the manuscript: “Dr. Mordhouse the well-known naturalist who was summering on the South Coast had joined him. Morning, noon & evening the Doctor’s sunhat and butterfly net were familiar object on the Downs and along the beach. I need not explain that he is probably the most popular living writer upon the subject. What is more important at this crisis is that he was of a cheery sunny disposition a fit comrade for a man in trouble.” The source of the “Mordhouse” material and possible reasons for its deletion are considered in note 46, below.
12 Clay mixed with carbonate of lime.
13 A beach or other tract covered with loose stones or pebbles.
14 The manuscript continues: “The reader will see that I take him into my confidence as I go, and have, I fear, none of the literary wiles of Watson.”
15 The original version reads: “No one could emerge from them now unseen and they would all be examined in turn.”
16 The phrase “and Dr. Mordhurst” appears in the manuscript.
17 Lewes, as the county town of Sussex, was the location of the constabulary headquarters.
18 The first part of this sentence does not appear in the original version.
19 An enclosed, wagon-like contraption utilised by “modest” beachgoers uncomfortable with the concept of bathing attire. The vehicle could be pushed into the water, allowing bathers to enjoy the ocean without exposing themselves to the elements or—even worse—the general public.
20 The original version included the phrase “rather malevolent” here.
21 This encounter, in the opinion of Julia C. Rosenblatt, hides Holmes’s real reason for writing up the events of “The Lion’s Mane”: they mark his introduction to the lovely Maud Bellamy. Rosenblatt argues that Holmes loved Maud and married her, once her grieving over McPherson’s death had passed. “Unwilling to publish his true feelings for all the world to read, he modestly conceded ‘Maud Bellamy will always remain in my memory as a most complete and remarkable woman.’ Never before had he confessed such regard for a woman.”
22 Michael Harrison, in his monograph Cynological Mr. Holmes: Conanical Canines Considered, remarks how far Holmes has come emotionally in his response to a dog’s death, from his coldly clinical interest in the poisoning of the “experimental subject” dog in A Study in Scarlet to this passage.
23 Holmes’s observation here is in direct contradiction to what he told Watson of his mental habits in A Study in Scarlet. “ ‘I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic,’ he said then, ‘and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is v
ery careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.’ ”
24 The following appears here in the original text: “It was clear to me however that a premature arrest would be fatal.”
25 The following dialogue appears in the original text:
“Have you heard the Doctor about that?” asked the Inspector with a peculiar look.
“Has he anything fresh?”
“He considers that it was not a mere wire whip which could have done the mischief. He has examined the scars very carefully with a lens.”
“What then?”
26 The word “doctor” is capitalised in the original text, the apparent remains of Dr. Mordhouse/Mordhurst.
27 And a new method it apparently was, for photography is not previously mentioned among the various techniques Holmes employs throughout the Canon. Holmes had certainly witnessed the phenomenon of the amateur photographer many years earlier: John Clay, the villain of “The Red-Headed League,” was an avid amateur photographer, as was Jephro Rucastle of “The Copper Beeches,” both of which cases likely occurred prior to 1890. Arthur Conan Doyle was also an avid amateur photographer and in the early 1880s wrote numerous articles for the British Journal of Photography on photographic techniques. The use of photography in connection with the solving of crimes was not new either; in the 1840s, the French Sûreté (the national police force) began storing photographs of known criminals in their records, and in 1903, the first conviction in England based on photographs of crime-scene fingerprints was obtained.
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 107