The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

writer from an adjoining room. But Sir Gervase, long before he was so carefully watched, must have urged you to keep your ears open and communicate with him in this ingenious way should you acquire information of value.

'At first the method seemed almost too ingenious. Indeed, I could not understand why you did not merely write to him, until when he arrived here I learned that even his letters are steamed open. The cards were the only possible way. But we have the evidence now—'

'No, by God!' said Sir Gervase Darlington. 'You've got no evidence at all!'

His left hand, quick as a striking snake, snatched the cards from Holmes's grasp. As my friend instinctively stood up, the pain in his swollen ankle making him bite back a cry, Sir Gervase's open right hand drove into Holmes's neck and sent him sprawling back on the sofa. Again the triumphant laugh rang out. 'Gervase!' pleaded Miss Baxter, wringing her hands. 'Please! Don't look at me so! I meant no harm!'

'Oh, no!' said he, with a sneer on his brutal face. 'N-no-o-o!  Come here and betray me, would you? Make me jump when I see you, hey? You're no better than you should be, and I'll tell that to anybody who asks. Now stand aside, damn you!'

'Sir Gervase,' said I, 'already I have warned you for the last time.'

'Sawbones interfering, eh? I'll—' Now, I am the first to admit that it was luck rather than judgment, though perhaps I may add that I am quicker on my feet than my friends suppose. Suffice to say Miss Baxter screamed.

Despite the pain of his ankle, Sherlock Holmes again leaped from the sofa.

'By Jove, Watson! A finer left on the mark and right to the head I never witnessed! You've grassed him so hard he will be unconscious for ten minutes!'

'Yet I trust,' said I, blowing upon cracked knuckles, 'that poor Miss Baxter has not been unduly distressed by the crash with which he struck the floor? It would also grieve me to alarm Mrs. Hudson, whom I hear approaching with bacon and eggs.'

'Good old Watson!'

'Why do you smile, Holmes? Have I said something of a humorous character?'

'No, no. Heaven forbid! Yet sometimes I suspect that I may be much shallower, and you far more deep, than customarily I am wont to believe.'

'Your satire is beyond me. However, there is the evidence. But you must not publicly betray even Sir Gervase Darlington, lest you betray Miss Baxter as well!'

'Humph! I have a score to settle with that gentleman, Watson. His offer to open for me a career as a professional boxer I could not in honesty resent. In its way, it is a great compliment. But to confuse me with a Scotland Yard detective! That was an insult, I fear, which I can neither forget nor forgive.'

'Holmes, how many favours have I ever asked of you?'

'Well, well, have it as you please. We shall keep the cards only as a last resort, should that sleeping beauty again misbehave. As for Miss Baxter—'

'I loved him!' cried the poor young lady passionately. 'Or—well, at least, I thought I did.'

'In any event, Miss Baxter, Watson shall remain silent as long as you like. He must not speak until some long, long distant date when you, perhaps as an ancient great-grandam, shall smile and give your leave. Half a century ere that, you will have forgotten all about Sir Gervase Darlington.'

'Never! Never! Never!'

'Oh, I fancy so,' smiled Sherlock Holmes. 'On s' enlace; puis, un jour, on se lasse; c'est l'amour. There is more wisdom in that French epigram than in the whole works of Henrik Ibsen.'

----:----

4

The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle

Though we were accustomed to receiving strange tele­grams at our rooms in Baker Street, there was one which served to introduce an affair unique even in the annals of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

I had met Holmes for a stroll in the Regent's Park one dark, drizzling, but not too cold afternoon in December, during which we discussed certain personal affairs of mine with which I need not burden the reader. When we returned to the snug sitting-room at four o'clock, Mrs. Hudson brought up the telegram along with a substantial tea-tray. It was addressed to Holmes, and ran thus:

'Can you imagine man worshipping umbrella? Hus­bands are irrational. Suspect chicanery with diamonds. Will call upon you tea-time.—Mrs. Gloria Cabpleasure.'

I rejoiced to see a gleam of interest flash in Sherlock Holmes's deep-set eyes.

'What's this, what's this?' said he, as with unusual appetite he attacked the hot buttered scones and jam.

'Highgate postmark, hardly a fashionable area, and dispatched at three-seventeen. Study it, Watson!'

At this time—to be more precise, it was late December of the year 1896—I was not living in Baker Street, but I had come for a few days to visit old haunts. Under the heading for this year, my note-book records few cases. Of these only one, the affair of Mrs. Ronder, the veiled lodger, have I seen fit so far to set down; and Mrs. Ronder's problem afforded little scope for my friend's great powers.

Thus Holmes entered a brief period of stagnation and desperation. As I saw his gaunt countenance in the shaded light of the table-lamp, I could not but rebuke myself. Of what moment were my trivial affairs against the thirst for abstruse problems raging in that extraordinary intellect?

'It is possible,' continued Holmes, snatching back the telegram to read it again, 'that there may be in London two women with the singular and even striking name of Gloria Cabpleasure. But I doubt it.'

'You are acquainted with the lady, then?'

'No, no, I have never even seen her. Still, I fancy she must be a certain beauty-specialist who—in any event, what do you make of this?'

'Well, it presents that feature of the bizarre which is so dear to you. 'Can you imagine man worshipping umbrella?' But it is a little difficult.'

'True, Watson. A woman, however extravagant she may be in large matters, is usually economical in small. Mrs. Cabpleasure has been so thrifty of her 'an's' and 'the's' that I am not at all sure of her meaning.'

'Nor I.'

'Does it mean that a certain man worships a certain umbrella? Or is man in the abstract, Englishmen perhaps, desired to bow down to the umbrella as his tribal deity and shield against the climate? At least, what can we deduce from it?'

'Deduce? From the telegram?'

'Of course.'

I was glad to laugh, since for that same brief time I had been feeling rheumatic and less than young.

'Holmes, we cannot possibly deduce. We can only guess.'

'Tut, how often must I tell you that I never guess? It is a shocking habit, destructive of the logical faculty.'

'And yet, were I to adopt your own somewhat didactic manner, I should say that nothing affords less opportunity to the reasoner than a telegram, because it is so brief and impersonal.'

'Then I fear you would be wrong.'

'Confound it, Holmes—'

'Yet, consider. When a man writes me a letter of a dozen pages, he may conceal his true nature in a cloud of words. When he is obliged to be terse, however, I know him at once. You may have remarked a similar thing in public speakers.'

'But this is a woman.'

'Yes, Watson, no doubt the fact makes a difference. But let me have your views. Come! Apply to a study of this telegram your own natural shrewdness.'

Thus challenged, and flattering myself that in the past I had not been altogether unhelpful to him, I did as I was requested.

'Well,' said I, 'Mrs. Cabpleasure is surely very in­considerate, since she makes an appointment without confirming it, and seems to think your time is her own.'