This afternoon, our landlady Mrs. Hudson begged me to come see her ailing terrier downstairs. I thought she had mistaken me for a veterinary surgeon, but she already knew her little dog was doomed, and her only request was that I spare the unfortunate beast its continued suffering. Poor creature! I could not bring myself to do the deed, so I said that I had not the proper drugs to put the dog down.
"Surely Mr. Holmes has something?"
"Well, I know he has some poisons in his lab, but I believe those might produce a violently painful or lingering death. Wait until he comes home, and I shall consult with him about what exactly he has, and if there is nothing of use, I shall look up a veterinary surgeon to do the thing for you."
"Soon?" she pled, obviously feeling badly about having left the matter so long already.
"Yes, soon." I headed guiltily upstairs again, assuring myself that the matter was best left in the hands of an experienced professional. In the meantime I glanced through my old medical bag to see what drugs I had. How much would it take to kill the suffering terrier? What would merely paralyse him or produce a deceptive coma? Would not my hand slip? Indeed, it must be a professional.
I waited for Holmes, but he was very late in returning--so late that I knew that the concert could not have detained him all the time. Dinner was on the table before he appeared.
When Holmes joined me, he spoke rather fancifully about Darwin and music, and I was surprised by the broadness of his ideas.
"One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature," he said sententiously. Having filled his plate with food, he finally glanced up at me and observed my exhausted state. "What's the matter? You're not looking quite yourself." Ever perceptive, he answered his own question. "This Brixton Road affair has upset you."
I nodded wearily. "To tell the truth, it has. I ought to be more case-hardened after my Afghan experiences. I saw my own comrades hacked to pieces at Maiwand without losing my nerve."
"I can understand. There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror."
I was glad that Holmes had returned, for even if his words were not as tender and comforting as another man's might be, his mere presence was a great solace after my long afternoon. "I can imagine the poor dog's suffering," I said, remembering Mrs. Hudson's terrier. I briefly related to him the landlady's request.
"I see. It is just as well that you did not do it, Watson. I will go out with you later to find a vet for the beast. I suppose you and I should split the cost between us, as a courtesy to Mrs. Hudson. She will likely take it hard, even knowing that it is for the best; women are emotional that way."
I found him cold. Men are emotional that way too. I remembered my attachment to my own dog in my youth. We were called a couple of bull-pups, our temperaments were so alike.
Holmes took no notice of me, for his eyes had been fixed on the Times. "Have you seen the evening paper?"
"No."
"It gives a fairly good account of the Lauriston Gardens affair. It does not mention the fact that when the man was raised up a woman's wedding ring fell upon the floor. It is just as well it does not."
"Why?"
"Look at this advertisement. I had one sent to every paper this morning immediately after the affair."
It was the first announcement in the "Found" column, and it ran, "In the Brixton Road, this morning, a plain gold wedding ring, found in the roadway between the White Hart Tavern and Holland Grove. Apply Dr. Watson, 221B, Baker Street, between eight and nine this evening."
He smiled. "Excuse my using your name. If I used my own, some of these dunderheads would recognise it, and want to meddle in the affair."
I did not mind it, but I protested that I had no ring.
He handed me one out of his pocket. "This will do very well. It is almost a facsimile."
Indeed it was. Part of his afternoon must have been spent getting this ring. I slipped it into my own pocket. "And who do you expect will answer this advertisement?"
"Why, the man in the brown coat--our florid friend with the square toes. If he does not come himself, he will send an accomplice."
"Would he not consider it as too dangerous?"
"Not at all. If my view of the case is correct, and I have every reason to believe that it is, this man would rather risk anything than lose the ring." Holmes did not explain how he knew that, but he insisted on the likelihood that, having tried to retrieve the ring once, Square-toes would try again, on the off chance that he had lost the ring in the road, rather than within the empty house. "He would come. He will come. You shall see him within an hour."
"And then?"
"Oh, you can leave me to deal with him then. Have you any arms?"
"I have my old service revolver and a few cartridges."
"You had better clean it and load it. He will be a desperate man; and though I shall take him unawares, it is as well to be ready for anything."
I went to my bedroom to do as he suggested, wondering with trepidation why Holmes chose to take such a serious risk, rather than contact Gregson or Lestrade for some help. A man over six feet tall and in the prime of life would be hard to tackle, as I was still suffering from weakness and stiffness due to my war wound. I did remember that Holmes had demonstrated a certain wiry strength in our battles, hostile and sexual, but I remained worried.
When I returned to the sitting-room with my pistol, the table had been cleared, and Holmes was scraping upon his violin.
"The plot thickens," he remarked as I entered; "I have just had an answer to my American telegram. My view of the case is the correct one."
"And that is--?"
"My fiddle would be the better for new strings," he teased me. Holmes put aside his violin and lit his pipe, completely calm. "Put your pistol in your pocket. When the fellow comes, speak to him in an ordinary way, then leave the rest to me. Don't frighten him by looking at him too hard."
"It is eight o'clock now."
"Yes. He will probably be here in a few minutes. Open the door slightly. That will do. Now put the key on the inside. Thank you!"
I sighed and sat down beside him to wait. He endeavoured to distract me from my anxiety by talking about an old legal book he had bought the other day, printed in 1642. It was an odd, whimsical choice for his shelves, and perhaps an indication that his library would be expanding in new directions.
As Holmes spoke there came a sharp ring at the bell. He rose softly and moved his chair in the direction of the door. We heard the servant pass along the hall, and the sharp click of the latch as she opened it.
"Does Dr. Watson live here?" asked a clear but rather harsh voice. After a moment, the visitor began to ascend the stairs with an uncertain and shuffling gait. It surprised us to hear it. Had Square-toes received grievous injury in the struggle with Enoch J. Drebber?
There finally came a feeble tap at our door.
"Come in," I cried.
Instead of the man of violence whom we expected, a very old and wrinkled woman hobbled into the apartment. I glanced at my companion, and his face had assumed such a disconsolate expression that it was all I could do to keep my countenance.
The old crone drew out an evening paper, and pointed at our advertisement. She told us in a rambling, chatty way that the gold wedding ring belonged to her daughter Sally, who had not been married long and who feared what her husband would think if he found her without her ring.
I interrupted the woman's perambulating speech by removing the gold band from my pocket. "Is that her ring?"
"The Lord be thanked! Sally will be a glad woman this night. That's the ring."
I thereupon took note of the old woman's name and address, while Holmes disputed her story that Sally had lost the ring while going to a circus last night. "The Brixton Road does not lie between any circus and Houndsditch."
She fixed him with a keen look, and responded, "The gentleman asked me for my address. Sally lives in lodgings at 3, Mayfield Place, Peckham."
I finally gave Mrs. Sawyer the ring, and she took it with many mumbled blessings and protestations of gratitude. Then she rose and shuffled off down the stairs.
Holmes sprang up at once and rushed into his room, returning in a few seconds enveloped in an ulster and a cravat. "I'll follow her," he said, hurriedly; "she must be an accomplice, and will lead me to him. Wait up for me."
It was close upon nine when he set out; it is now well past eleven. I worry that some terrible evil has befallen him at the hands of the murderous Square-toes. Holmes should not have gone out unarmed and alone. What use is my pistol sitting here at home with me? What shall I do if he is not back by morning?
Nearly midnight, Holmes returned. I met him at the sitting-room door, nearly kissed him. He saw it in my eyes and stared back for a moment, saying nothing. Then shutting the door behind him, he caught me close in his arms and kissed my cheek with a smile. "Poor dear Watson," he whispered, "waiting up so long, when he hadn't any sleep at all today."
How I loved his touch.
He soon pulled away from me and sat me down on the sofa with him.
"Where were you?"
"Where wasn't I? Wandering around trying to find some new thread. Cursing myself for my stupidity. Hating to come home empty-handed."
"But what happened?"
"Our florid friend was too smart, and his accomplice too. So much for the brains of Mr. Sherlock Holmes!" He shook his head. "I wouldn't have the Scotland Yarders know it for the world; I have chaffed them so much that they would never have let me hear the end of it."
Then Holmes sighed and recounted his experiences shadowing Mrs. Sawyer. She had after a while hailed a cab and ordered it to the address she had given in Houndsditch, so Holmes had surreptitiously perched himself on the back of the cab and rode the whole way without a stop. He hopped off the cab a little early and waited for the passenger to alight. At that point the driver jumped down for his fare, only to find his cab empty.
Holmes explained that the supposed old woman must have been an active young man in disguise, who had noticed Holmes's pursuit and thus used the cab to give him the slip. Because of this skilled accomplice, we were no nearer to finding the murderer than we were before.
I wished to stay awhile and commiserate with Holmes over his setback, but he looked at my tired eyes and insisted that I go to bed. "Come with me," I said unthinkingly.
He glanced at me sharply, then shook his head. "No, Watson."
I finally obeyed him, going to my room and leaving him seated in front of the smouldering fire. I can still hear the low melancholy wailings of his violin now, and I hope desperately that he is not regretting moving in with me.
Holmes has not mentioned last night at all. Since breakfast I have tried carefully to not show that I dreamed of him last night, holding me again, kissing me in a far less chaste way. It helped that he kept his eyes squarely focused on the many newspapers he had ordered this morning. I was so nervous that I at first forgot all about Mrs. Hudson's dog.
We read the accounts of the "Brixton Mystery" as it was dubbed in the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Standard, and the Daily News, among others. Holmes was amused by the notices and asked me to make clippings.
"I told you that, whatever happened, Lestrade and Gregson would be sure to score."
"That depends on how it turns out."
He chuckled. "Oh, bless you, it doesn't matter in the least. If the man is caught, it will be on account of their exertions; if he escapes, it will be in spite of their exertions. It's heads I win and tails you lose. Whatever they do, they will have followers. 'Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.'"
I could not help but smile. Holmes had read poetry; more, he could speak it very well. Before I could reply, there came a tremendous pattering of many steps in the hall and on the stairs, accompanied by audible expressions of disgust upon the part of our landlady.
"What on earth is this?" I cried.
Holmes answered, "It's the Baker Street division of the detective police force."
Into the room rushed half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on, and I recognised two of them from the day that Holmes first moved in.
"'Tention!" cried Holmes, in a sharp tone, and the six dirty little scoundrels stood in a line like so many disreputable statuettes. "In future you shall send up Wiggins alone to report, and the rest of you must wait in the street. Have you found it, Wiggins?"
"No, sir, we hain't," answered one of the youths I had seen before.
"I hardly expected you would," he sighed. "You must keep on until you do. Here are your wages." He handed each of them a shilling. "Now, off you go, and come back with a better report next time."
He waved his hand, and they scampered away downstairs like so many rats, and we heard their shrill voices next moment in the street.
"There's more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force," Holmes remarked. "The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men's lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organisation."
"Which you give in the form of an army of sorts? Is it on this Brixton case that you are employing them?" I asked hopefully.
It was, and he referred vaguely to some point that he needed to ascertain. Was he no longer confiding in me about his case? I would have questioned him further had he not turned and pointed out Gregson coming towards our street door, bringing fresh news for us.
Gregson violently rang the bell and rapidly came up our stairs three at a time, bursting into our sitting-room. "My dear fellow," he cried, wringing Holmes's unresponsive hand, "congratulate me! I have made the whole thing clear as day."
"Do you mean that you are on the right track?" Holmes looked a shade anxious.
"The right track! Why, sir, we have the man under lock and key."
"And his name is?"
"Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty's navy."
Holmes gave a sigh of relief and relaxed into a smile. He offered Gregson a seat and a cigar, asking for an account of how the man was caught. Holmes even poured a whisky and water for the detective.
Gregson half reclined in the chair, and, gloating that he alone had efficiently solved the murder while Lestrade had gone off after Joseph Stangerson, he related all that he had done since yesterday morning. First he had traced Enoch J. Drebber's hat to its maker, who had been able to provide Drebber's London address, a boarding house belonging to Madame Charpentier. Next he called upon Madame Charpentier, who at first attempted to protect her son Arthur from suspicion, only to have her daughter Alice insist that no good could come of falsehood.
Thereupon Gregson recorded Madame Charpentier's reluctant confession, and he read out her exact statement to us from the shorthand in his notebook. Drebber had been a drunken, brutish, ill-mannered boarder, only tolerated for the fourteen pounds a week he paid, and after he had the nerve on one occasion to embrace the lady's daughter Alice, he had been given notice to leave the house. However, on the night that he and his secretary Stangerson were supposed to depart on the Liverpool express from Euston Station, Drebber had unexpectedly returned alone. He forced his way into the house and endeavoured to get Alice to elope with him. The poor girl had shrunk away from him in fright, and the mother's scream had brought the son Arthur into the room.
Arthur instantly came to his sister's aid and chased away Drebber with a heavy stick. Remarking that he would follow after Drebber to make sure that he had left for good, Arthur took his hat and coat and started off down the street. He did not return home until four or five hours later, as far as Mrs. Charpentier could tell; she had already gone to her bed.
"What was he doing during that time?" Gregson had asked.
"I do not know," she had answered, turning white to her very lips.
After hearing such a bleak, convincing case against Arthur Charpentier, Gregson of course quickly located the sub-lieutenant and arrested him. The young navy man was not at all surprised to be arrested, having no illusions about how suspicious things looked against him; he still had his heavy stick with him, which was a stout oak cudgel. Gregson believed that a blow to Drebber's stomach from such a weapon might have easily killed him without leaving any mark upon his body.
"I flatter myself that I have managed it rather neatly," Gregson spoke with pompous delight. "The young man volunteered a statement, in which he said that after following Drebber some time, the latter perceived him, and took a cab in order to get away from him. On his way home he met an old shipmate, and took a long walk with him. On being asked where this old shipmate lived, he was unable to give any satisfactory reply. I think the whole case fits together uncommonly well. What amuses me is to think of Lestrade, who had started off upon the wrong scent. I am afraid he won't make much of it," he sneered.
Just then, Lestrade burst into the room, having ascended the stairs while we were talking. His face was disturbed and troubled, while his clothes were disarranged and untidy. Evidently embarrassed and put out at seeing Gregson, he stood in the centre of the room, fumbling nervously with his hat and uncertain what to do. "This is a most extraordinary case," he said at last--" a most incomprehensible affair."
"Ah, you find it so, Mr. Lestrade!" cried Gregson, triumphantly. "I thought you would come to that conclusion. Have you managed to find the secretary, Mr. Joseph Stangerson?"
"The secretary, Mr. Joseph Stangerson," said Lestrade, gravely, "was murdered at Halliday's Private Hotel about six o'clock this morning."
We were dumbfounded, and Gregson sprang out of his chair, upsetting the remainder of his whisky and water.
"Stangerson too!" Holmes muttered. "The plot thickens."
"It was quite thick enough before," grumbled Lestrade, taking a chair. "I seem to have dropped into a sort of council of war."
"Are you--are you sure of this piece of intelligence?" stammered Gregson.
"I have just come from his room," said Lestrade. "I was the first to discover what had occurred."
Holmes asked Lestrade to detail all that he had done since yesterday morning at Lauriston Gardens, and he did so.
Lestrade had been of the opinion that Stangerson was concerned in the death of Drebber. Full of that idea, he set himself to find out what had become of the secretary. They had been seen together at Euston Station about half-past eight on the evening of the 3rd, and at two in the morning Drebber had been found in the Brixton Road, which made it imperative to find out what had become of Stangerson in all that time.
Therefore Lestrade had telegraphed to Liverpool, giving a description of Stangerson, and warning them to keep a watch upon the American boats. He then set to work calling upon all the hotels and lodging-houses in the vicinity of Euston. "You see, I argued that if Drebber and his companion had become separated, the natural course for the latter would be to put up somewhere in the vicinity for the night, and then to hang about the station again next morning."
Lestrade spent the whole of yesterday evening in making his inquiries, entirely without avail. "This morning I began very early, and at eight o'clock I reached Halliday's Private Hotel, in Little George Street. On my inquiry as to whether a Mr. Stangerson was living there, they at once answered me in the affirmative."
Stangerson, they said, had been waiting at the hotel for a certain gentleman for two days. Hoping to catch the fellow unawares, Lestrade immediately went up to Stangerson's room, for they said he was still in bed at this hour. As the boots showed Lestrade to the door, they soon perceived to their shock a little red ribbon of blood curling from underneath the door and meandering into the passage. The door was locked on the inside, but they put their shoulders to it and knocked it in, finding the window open and beside the window, all huddled up, the body of a man in his nightdress. He had been dead for some time, stabbed on his left side into his heart, and the boots recognised him at once as Joseph Stangerson.
"What do you suppose was above the murdered man?" Lestrade asked.
Holmes answered, "The word RACHE, written in letters of blood."
"That was it," said Lestrade, in an awestruck voice; and we were all silent for a while.
Then Lestrade continued his remarkable tale. "The man was seen. A milk boy, passing on his way to the dairy, happened to walk down the lane which leads from the mews at the back of the hotel. He noticed that a ladder, which usually lay there, was raised against one of the windows of the second floor, which was wide open. After passing, he looked back and saw a man descend the ladder. He came down so quietly and openly that the boy imagined him to be some carpenter or joiner at work in the hotel."
I wondered at the arrogance and coolness of the assassin, to let himself be seen in broad daylight. As I listened to the description of the man that Lestrade had got from the milk boy, I noticed that it tallied almost exactly with Holmes's description of Square-toes.
Holmes asked gravely, "Did you find nothing in the room which could furnish a clue to the murderer?"
"Nothing." Lestrade told us that Stangerson's pockets had contained Drebber's purse, filled with eighty-odd pounds, and one unsigned telegram dated from Cleveland about a month ago, consisting of the words, "J. H. is in Europe."
"And there was nothing else?" Holmes asked.
"Nothing of any importance. The man's novel, with which he had read himself to sleep, was lying upon the bed, and his pipe was on a chair beside him. There was a glass of water on the table, and on the window-sill a small chip ointment box containing a couple of pills."
At this, Holmes sprang from his chair with an exclamation of delight. "The last link! My case is complete."
We stared at him in amazement, and he continued exultantly, declaring that he had all the threads in his hands and now knew with certainty what had happened. The Yard detectives were understandably sceptical, and Holmes replied, "I will give you a proof of my knowledge. Could you lay your hand upon those pills?"
Lestrade produced a small white box, remarking that he had only picked it up by chance along with the purse and the telegram. He attached no importance to the pills.
"Give them here," said Holmes impatiently, and showed the pills to me. "Now, Doctor, are those ordinary pills?"
They certainly were not. They were of a pearly grey colour, small, round, and almost transparent against the light. I remarked that they were probably soluble in water.
"Precisely so." Then without explanation, Holmes asked me to step downstairs and fetch Mrs. Hudson's poor little devil of a terrier, mentioning its condition for the benefit of the two Yard detectives. Up until that moment I had forgotten about the suffering animal, and thought that Holmes had too.
I did not understand Holmes's request, but obeyed him and returned with the old dog in my arms. Gregson and Lestrade showed sympathy for its laboured breathing and glazing eye, but remained puzzled while I placed it upon a cushion on the rug.
Holmes appeared unaffected by the sight of the ailing dog and simply embarked on his demonstration. He cut one of the pills in half with his penknife, returning one half to the box "for future purposes" and dissolving the other half in a teaspoonful of water, in a wineglass.
Lestrade impatiently interrupted, not seeing what this had to do with the murder of Stangerson.
"Patience, my friend, patience!" He next added a little milk into the mixture and poured it out into a saucer that he set before the dog. Ill as it was, the terrier licked the saucer dry. Holmes watched it earnestly, and we all sat in silence waiting for something to happen.
But minute after minute passed without result, and the dog continued to lie stretched upon the cushion, breathing in its laboured way. Holmes took out his watch, growing more chagrined and disappointed as time passed. By the time he gnawed his lip and drummed his fingers upon the table, the two detectives were derisively smiling at him.
"It can't be a coincidence," Holmes cried, springing from his chair and pacing wildly. "The very pills which I suspected in the case of Drebber are actually found after the death of Stangerson. And yet they are inert. What can it mean? Surely my whole chain of reasoning cannot have been false. It is impossible! And yet this wretched dog is none the worse." Finally Holmes's desperation ended as an idea came to him, and he shouted, "I have it!" just like old Archimedes and his bathtub cry of "Eureka!"
Holmes rushed back to the box, cut the other pill in two, and repeated the same procedure on half of it that he had performed before. This time when he presented the mixture to the terrier, the unfortunate creature's tongue seemed hardly to have been moistened in it before it gave a convulsive shiver in every limb, and lay as rigid and lifeless as if it had been struck by lightning.
Holmes expressed his relief and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, explaining that of the two pills in the box, one was deadly poison while the other was entirely harmless.
I verified that the dog was dead, and knew that I would soon be able to bring our landlady bittersweet news. For the moment, though, I remained in the room consumed with curiosity about the mystery. The dog's convulsive posture reminded me of the terrible contortions of Enoch J. Drebber's body.