Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bruce F. Murphy

With each spine-tingling mystery, the legend of Sherlock Holmes comes to life. Page by page, Holmes uses his uncanny deductive skills to solve the toughest of cases. After reading this classic collection, you’ll discover why this eccentric detective from 221B Baker Street in London rose to celebrity status throughout the world. This book includes such favorites as The Red-Headed League, Five Orange Pips, and Adventure of the Speckled Band.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411435063

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, writing his debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle wrote notable books in the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.

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You villain! said he. Where's your daughter?

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

ILLUSTRATED BY SIDNEY PAGET

INTRODUCTION BY BRUCE F. MURPHY

Introduction and Suggested Reading

© 2009 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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New York, NY 10011

ISBN: 978-1-4114-3506-3

To

MY OLD TEACHER,

JOSEPH BELL, M.D., &c.,

OF

2, MELVILLE CRESCENT,

EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

THE ADVENTURE OF A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE

THE ADVENTURE OF A CASE OF IDENTITY

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY

THE ADVENTURE OF THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER'S THUMB

THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET

THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES

SUGGESTED READING

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

YOU VILLAIN! SAID HE. WHERE'S YOUR DAUGHTER?

THEN HE STOOD BEFORE THE FIRE

I CAREFULLY EXAMINED THE WRITING AND THE PAPER

HE GLANCED DOWN THE ADVERTISEMENT COLUMN, WITH THE PAPER FLATTENED OUT UPON HIS KNEE

HE CONGRATULATED ME WARMLY UPON MY SUCCESS

AT THE GASFITTERS' BALL

I FOUND SHERLOCK HOLMES HALF ASLEEP

HE TOOK TWO SWIFT STEPS TO THE WHIP

TRIED TO INTEREST MYSELF IN A YELLOW-BACKED NOVEL

THE MAID SHOWED US THE BOOTS

WHAT ON EARTH DOES THIS MEAN?

HIS EYES BENT UPON THE GLOW OF THE FIRE

SITTING BY THE FIRE, WAS NONE OTHER THAN SHERLOCK HOLMES

HE OPENED HIS GLADSTONE BAG

A VERY SEEDY HARD FELT HAT

HAVE MERCY! HE SHRIEKED

SHE RAISED HER VEIL AS SHE SPOKE

HOLMES LASHED FURIOUSLY WITH HIS CANE

COLONEL LYSANDER STARK

HE CUT AT ME WITH HIS HEAVY WEAPON

LORD ROBERT ST. SIMON

THE GENTLEMAN IN THE PEW HANDED IT UP TO HER AGAIN

AT MY CRY, HE DROPPED IT FROM HIS GRASP

I CLAPPED A PISTOL TO HIS HEAD BEFORE HE COULD STRIKE

I READ FOR ABOUT TEN MINUTES

INTRODUCTION

INCLUDING SUCH MASTERPIECES AS THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE AND The Adventure of the Speckled Band, the twelve short stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)—the first collection of Holmes short stories to appear—fully justify his reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had first introduced Holmes in the novel A Study in Scarlet (1887) but it was in the short story that he really excelled. Serialized in the Strand magazine, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes became less a fad than required reading (when Conan Doyle later tried to kill Holmes, Londoners literally went into mourning). Although Holmes' astounding feats of deduction are the most famous hallmark of the stories—he concludes from the appearance of a hat found in the street that the owner's wife has ceased to love him—he is hardly just the reasoning and observing machine that his chronicler and companion, Dr. John Watson, makes him out to be. Not always involving murder, and sometimes not even crime, these adventures are filled with the love of all that is bizarre shared by both the creator and his creation. Holmes himself delights in deception, and is a master of disguises; he is prey to vices (addiction) as much as the wretches lolling in East End opium dens; and when his action leads to the death of a monster, he observes that it does not weigh very heavily upon my conscience. He affects aloofness and has no romantic or sexual relationships, but he is most strongly attached to Watson, whom he calls his only friend. Holmes is a monkish bachelor who asks for a beautiful woman's portrait as payment for his services, a man who reads only the murder and agony columns but owns a Stradivarius and adores music. Far from being a cold and calculating cipher, Holmes reveals his humanity in the most human way, by his very inconsistency.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), a doctor by training and a writer by temperament, saw no small amount of adventure in his own life. Conan Doyle grew up in Edinburgh, where he took his medical degree in 1885. Afterward he became a ship's surgeon and made two voyages. He married and set up a medical practice, but success eluded him. He turned to writing, and after fits and starts, created Sherlock Holmes. The early works, such as A Study in Scarlet (1887), were hampered by melodrama, but when Conan Doyle turned to the short story and forged a relationship with the Strand magazine, he never looked back. He gave up medicine—though his knowledge of it was integral to his success—and became a writer, a famous figure of his age. Conan Doyle's interests were many, including history, science, and the occult. With his wide-ranging concerns his dependence on Holmes eventually chafed, and he tried to do away with him in The Final Problem (1893), which turned out not to be final, and Holmes was brought back eight years later, literally (in one of the few genuine examples of the phrase) by popular demand. Conan Doyle wrote many other works, including science-fiction tales about Professor Challenger, beginning with The Lost World (1912), in which the professor discovers a land where dinosaurs have survived. His novel The White Company (1891) is a medieval romance set in the fourteenth century, one of several historical novels. Later in life he would write a history of spiritualism, an account of the first year of World War I, and numerous other works. But nothing equaled the Holmes stories. As intrepid as his most famous characters, Conan Doyle served in the Boer War, about which he wrote two books, and was knighted in 1902. Most admirably, he twice dared to use his sleuthing skills to free real men unjustly accused of crimes—and with the doggedness of Watson, succeeded.

At the beginning of A Scandal in Bohemia, the first story in this collection, Watson describes Holmes as having a cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. We can agree with the first two, but possibly not the third; Holmes is also an injecting cocaine addict, antisocial (he loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul); and can be seen as the prototypical ascetic sleuth. Conan Doyle's father had been an amateur painter and his grandfather a cartoonist, and perhaps this is why Holmes is a Bohemian and a scientist rolled into one. The most obvious influence of Conan Doyle's biography on the work is, of course, his choice of a doctor as Holmes' fictional biographer, and the considerable part that forensics and science take in the stories. Other doctors would become successful mystery authors, for example R. Austin Freeman; but while Holmes' personality is enigmatic, essentially artistic, and unpredictable, Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke is perhaps realistic to a fault, a brilliant but eminently normal physician with a scientific mind.

Holmes is scientific, but he is also obsessed. He avoids social life, is a voracious reader, and keeps files on the most bizarre events and most important persons; he is a connoisseur of crime, and an amasser of practical knowledge (he can identify the mud from any place within fifty miles of London from its composition). He may pad about the house at 221B Baker Street for weeks in his dressing gown, or go without sleep for days when he is on the hunt, smoking pipe after pipe of tobacco. And yet, he says, My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so. In this only, one suspects he deceives himself, which makes him all the more endearing. Holmes risks death to save a young woman from murder in The Speckled Band, not because it is amusing, but because it is right, just as Conan Doyle took up the cases of the half-Indian George Edalji and the German Jew Oscar Slater.

Holmes may not be a model of the common man, but perhaps of the uncommon one: he is gallant when bested by a woman in a battle of wits; often consulted by royalty, he artfully disdains their pretensions and pomposity; he lets a pathetic and frightened man go, presumably to sin no more, and lets an evil one die, never to kill again. He is exceptional yet also universal—he does what he can, and what he can do is quite amazing. He not only solves crime but predicts crime in The Red-headed League. In various stories collected here he convincingly impersonates an ancient opium addict, a conventional clergyman, and a young groom. Not only does he do what he pleases; he is who he wants to be.

The Holmes stories set the pattern for at least half a century of crime writing. The genius detective and his slightly less astute but loyal friend—often noted for his valor, action, and bravery—is a pattern that appears again and again. Nero Wolfe has his Archie Goodwin, Hercule Poirot his Captain Hastings, and Albert Campion his Magersfontein Lugg; even Batman has his Robin. It is a pattern that goes back to Don Quixote and beyond, though Conan Doyle adapted it to the investigation of crime. He borrowed from other writers, too—Edgar Allan Poe being the most obvious precursor, who in his C. Auguste Dupin stories, such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue, combined the ingenious with the entertaining and macabre. Holmes famously tells Watson, You see, but you do not observe, and there is a sort of logical consistency in the fact that we can never anticipate many of Holmes' amazing deductions from details because Watson simply didn't observe them.

The first story, A Scandal in Bohemia, is one of Holmes' most famous, for it is where he meets the New Jersey-born adventuress Irene Adler, whom he ever after refers to as "the woman." (This encounter has so fascinated Sherlockians—fans of Holmes—that one later novelist, John Lescroart, created a fictional offspring of the ascetic sleuth and the beautiful and enchanting Irene in Son of Holmes.) Holmes pits his steely wits against her cleverness and daring and . . . it wouldn't be fair to say what happens, except that everyone wins—a less than conventional Victorian ending. And in fact, we would be selling Conan Doyle short if we didn't recognize that he is able to produce endings that are inconclusive but satisfying, and he can even let Holmes lose, either when fate takes the decision out of his hands or the villain gets away.

It must have been difficult at times for Conan Doyle, with his interest in the occult, to bar the supernatural from his stories, but he does. However, the uncanny and the weird are constantly making their presence felt. The rich, dirty, marvelous, and sometimes frightening background of Victorian London is also present. The Strand began to publish these tales only three years after the Jack the Ripper murders, so perhaps the footfalls in the fog struck the contemporary reader more chillingly than they do us. When in The Man with the Twisted Lip a gentlewoman goes to seek for her husband in Upper Swandam Lane, a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge, there is a sense of foreboding (which is not disappointed). In fact, a marked number of these stories are about women in trouble, like Helen Stoner in The Speckled Band, living in a decrepit manor house with her vicious stepfather; Kate Whitney and Mrs. St. Claire in The Man with the Twisted Lip, both of whose husbands have gone missing in the bowels of London; and Violet Hunter, the plucky governess lured to the sinister Copper Beeches, where for an exorbitant salary she must wear a certain dress and sit motionless in a certain chair with her back to the window. Holmes, though he does not seek out relationships with women, can admire and respect them; he remarks that no sister of his should ever have accepted such a situation. Miss Hunter has notable powers of observation herself, and Watson wistfully remarks that my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the center of one of his problems. (Watson met his own wife during the adventure of The Sign of Four.)

Occultists and psychologists have long questioned where the boundary between the bizarre and the normal lies. Holmes is a man who can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart. If we look carefully enough—and these are stories that bear rereading, which is not always the case in the genre—we see that Holmes encounters a variety of characters and motives as wide as the range of crimes. A man who could go free stays in jail out of embarrassment; a weak character is corrupted by opportunity, and a strong character is perverted by circumstances. One of Holmes' favorite ideas is that truth is stranger than fiction, or as he says more aptly, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace. Incomprehensible actions result from all too understandable motives. The London of the 1890s was a place of dazzling wealth and incredible filth, and more than one Holmes character is haunted by the specter of poverty and tempted by the lure of gain.

In reality, of course, crime is usually ugly, pedestrian, and sad. But even the disgusting can be tinged with imagination, which is no doubt what inspired the famous essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts by Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859). To come to real cases, there is a world of difference between, say, John Dillinger and the infamous H. H. Holmes, who built a Chicago hotel with a concealed gas chamber and crematorium to dispose of his victim's bodies. And this is how the genius amateur detective, a creature that never existed in reality, is able to fit into his background; Holmes finds scope for his gifts in acts that grow out of the commonplace but give rise to the incomprehensible. We, the readers, in Watson's hands, retrace the chain in the opposite direction, as the links between the abnormal and the normal are inexorably wound up one by one in the mind of Holmes. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Although we want to know whodunit, it's really all about the journey.

The Holmes stories were a sensation, and they spawned many imitators as well as some worthy rivals, both in England and in the United States and Europe. Arthur Morrison, Jacques Futrelle, and R. Austin Freeman all wrote during the heyday of the mystery short story that Sherlock Holmes so subjugated, before the dominance of the mystery novel (not to mention television; adaptations of Holmes began in the silent era and show no sign of abating) virtually put an end to the short form. All these writers benefited from what Conan Doyle had done with the short story; Freeman made it more rigorous and scientific, while Futrelle had some of the germs of police procedure, not reducing the official investigators to bumbling fools, like Lestrade, Holmes' opposite number. Futrelle went down on the Titanic; had he lived it seems likely he would have taken forward the Holmes legacy in even more interesting ways. Later, in the twenties, would come Solar Pons, an outright imitation of Sherlock Holmes, created by the American writer August Derleth; Conan Doyle was still alive, and Derleth sought and obtained the master's permission for his homage. Holmes had already become a part of history.

To bring together the real and the unreal, the believable and the strange, in a story of only a few pages through which runs a chain of causality convincing enough but also hidden—this is no small feat. The mystery genre has produced countless utterly forgettable performances. Even among those who have been successful, the true classics are relatively few. Conan Doyle had a talent; many just have a shtick. Holmes is original. If his inconsistency makes him seem human, his consistency makes him seem real. When on a journey into the country Watson remarks on the healthy atmosphere, Holmes responds darkly, You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there. It is just what we would expect from a man as obsessed as Holmes with the underside of human nature and its more interesting manifestations. And it is a reminder that where Watson has merely seen, Holmes combines both sight and insight in the fine art of observation.

Bruce F. Murphy is the author of The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery (2001) and the editor of the fourth edition of Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia (1996). His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Paris Review, Poetry, TriQuarterly, and other journals.

THE ADVENTURE OF A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

I

TO SHERLOCK HOLMES SHE IS ALWAYS THE WOMAN. I HAVE SELDOM heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen: but, as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention; while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries, which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.

One night—it was on the 20th of March 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest, and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams, and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell, and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.

His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire, and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.

Then he stood before the fire

Wedlock suits you, he remarked. I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.

Seven, I answered.

Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.

Then, how do you know?

I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?

My dear Holmes, said I, this is too much. You would certainly have been burned had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess; but, as I have changed my clothes, I can't imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice; but there again I fail to see how you work it out.

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long nervous hands together.

It is simplicity itself, said he; my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of idio-form, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the side of his top hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull indeed if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. When I hear you give your reasons, I remarked, the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled, until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.

Quite so, he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.

Frequently.

How often?

Well, some hundreds of times.

Then how many are there?

How many! I don't know.

Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. By the way, since you are interested in these little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences, you may be interested in this. He threw over a sheet of thick pink-tinted notepaper which had been lying open upon the table. It came by the last post, said he. Read it aloud.

The note was undated, and without either signature or address.

There will call upon you tonight, at a quarter to eight o'clock, it said, a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the Royal Houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask.

This is indeed a mystery, I remarked. What do you imagine that it means?

I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?

I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.

The man who wrote it was presumably well to do, I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. Such paper could not be bought under half-a-crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff.

I carefully examined the writing and the paper

Peculiar—that is the very word, said Holmes. It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up to the light.

I did so, and saw a large E with a small g, a P, and a large G with a small t woven into the texture of the paper.

What do you make of that? asked Holmes.

The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather.

"Not at all. The G with the small t stands for 'Gesellschaft,' which is the German for 'Company.' It is a customary contraction like our 'Co.' P, of course, stands for 'Papier.' Now for the Eg. Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer. He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. 'Eglow,' 'Eglonitz'—here we are, 'Egria.' It is in a German-speaking country—in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. 'Remarkable as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous glass factories and paper mills.' Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make of that?" His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.

The paper was made in Bohemia, I said.

Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper, and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts.

As he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses' hoofs and grating wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Holmes whistled.

A pair, by the sound, said he, Yes, he continued, glancing out of the window. A nice little brougham and a pair of beauties. A hundred and fifty guineas apiece. There's money in this case, Watson, if there is nothing else.

I think that I had better go, Holmes.

Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it.

But your client——

Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he comes. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best attention.

A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap.

Come in! said Holmes.

A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste. Heavy bands of Astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and fronts of his double-breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his shoulders was lined with flame-coloured silk, and secured at the neck with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by his whole appearance. He carried a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper part of his face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black vizard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment, for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. From the lower part of the face he appeared to be a man of strong character, with a thick, hanging lip, and a long straight chin, suggestive of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy.

You had my note? he asked, with a deep harsh voice and a strongly marked German accent. I told you that I would call. He looked from one to the other of us, as if uncertain which to address.

Pray take a seat, said Holmes. This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, who is occasionally good enough to help me in my cases. Whom have I the honour to address?

You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman. I understand that this gentleman, your friend, is a man of honour and discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most extreme importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate with you alone.

I rose to go, but Holmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me back into my chair. It is both, or none, said he. You may say before this gentleman anything which you may say to me.

The Count shrugged his broad shoulders. Then I must begin, said he, by binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years, at the end of that time the matter will be of no importance. At present it is not too much to say that it is of such weight that it may have an influence upon European history.

I promise, said Holmes.

And I.

You will excuse this mask, continued our strange visitor. The august person who employs me wishes his agent to be unknown to you, and I may confess at once that the title by which I have just called myself is not exactly my own.

I was aware of it, said Holmes dryly.

The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution has to be taken to quench what might grow to be an immense scandal and seriously compromise one of the reigning families of Europe. To speak plainly, the matter implicates the great House of Ormstein, hereditary kings of Bohemia.

I was also aware of that, murmured Holmes, settling himself down in his armchair, and closing his eyes.

Our visitor glanced with some apparent surprise at the languid, lounging figure of the man who had been no doubt depicted to him as the