The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

wagon straight up to your house, where in the pitchdark entry you played the part of two men.

'Descending from the wagon, you disappeared into the entry as the milkman. Inside, already prepared, lay Mr. Cabpleasure's greatcoat, hat, and moustache. It required only eight seconds to put on hat and coat, and hastily to affix a moustache which on that occasion need be seen only briefly from a distance and in halflight.

'Out you walked as the elegant diamond-broker, seemed to remember your missing umbrella, and rushed back in again. It took but a moment to throw the trappings inside the front door, together with an umbrella already left there, and slam the front door from the outside. Again you reappeared as the milkman, completing the illusion that two men had passed each other.

'Though Inspector Lestrade honestly believes he saw two men, we all observed that the entry was far too dark for this to have been possible. But we must not too much blame Lestrade. When he stopped the milk-wagon and swore he had seen you before, it was no mere bullying. He really had seen you once before, though he could not remember where.

'I have said you had no fellow-conspirator; strictly speaking, this is true. Yet surely you must have shared the secret with your nominal partner, Mr. Mortimer Brown, who appeared this morning for the purpose of drawing away attention and preventing close scrutiny of the milkman. Unfortunately, his caution and apprehension rendered him useless. You made a bad mistake when you hid that false moustache in the hall. Still, the police might have found it when they searched you. This so-called miracle was possible because you very deliberately had accustomed your wife and her acquaintances to your worship of that umbrella. In reality, you cherished the umbrella because your plans could not have succeeded without it.'

Sherlock Holmes, though he had been speaking curtly and without heat, seemed to rise up like a lean avenger.

'Now, Mr. James Cabpleasure!' said he. 'I can per­haps understand why you were unhappy with your wife, and wished to leave her. But why could you not leave her openly, with a legal separation, and not this mummery of a disappearance into nowhere?'

Our guest's fair-complexioned face went red.

'So I should have,' he burst out, 'if Gloria had not been already married when she married me.'

'I beg your pardon?'

Mr. Cabpleasure made a grimace, with a sudden vivid flash of personality, which showed what he might have accomplished as a comic actor.

'Oh, you can prove it easily enough! Since she longs to go back to her real husband—never mind who he is; it's an august name—I'm afraid Gloria wants to be rid of me, preferably by seeing me in gaol. But I can earn money, whereas the august personage is too lazy to try, and Gloria's prudence has become notorious.'

'By Jove, Watson!' muttered Holmes. 'This is not too surprising. It supplies the last link. Did I not say the lady insisted too much on her married name of Cabpleasure?'

'I am tired of her chilliness; I am tired of her superior­ity; and now, at forty-odd, I wish only to sit in peace and read. However, sir, let me acknowledge that it was a cad's trick if you insist.'

'Come!' said Holmes. 'I am not the official police, Mr. Cabpleasure—'

'My name is not even Cabpleasure. That was forced upon me by my uncle, who founded the business. My real name is Phillimore, James Phillimore. Well! I have put all my possessions into Gloria's name, except twenty-six costly and negotiable diamonds. I had hoped to found a new life as James Phillimore, free of a blasted silly name. But I have been defeated by a master strategist, so do what you like.'

'No, no,' said Holmes blandly. 'Already you have made one bad blunder, though I was deplorably late in seeing it. When a milk-wagon is driven to the front door instead of to the tradesmen's entrance, the foundations of our social world are rocked. If I am to help you in forming this new life—'

'If you are to help me?' cried our visitor.

'Then you must not be betrayed by a real name of which someone is sure to be aware. From diplomatic necessity, until the day you die, Watson shall call the problem of your disappearance unsolved. Assume what other name you choose. But Mr. James Phillimore must never more be seen in this world!'

----:----

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.

FROM 'THOR BRIDGE'

5

The Adventure of the Black Baronet

'Yes, Holmes, the autumn is a melancholy time. But you are in need of this holiday. After all, you should be interested in such a country type as that man we see from the window.'

My friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, closing the book in his hands, glanced languidly out of the window of our private sitting-room at the inn near East Grinstead.

'Pray be explicit, Watson,' said he. 'Do you refer to the cobbler or to the farmer?'

In the country road past the inn, I could see a man on the driver's seat of a market-cart, clearly a farmer. But otherwise there was only an elderly workman in corduroy trousers, plodding towards the cart with his head down.

'Surely a cobbler,' observed Holmes, answering my thought rather than my words. 'He is left-handed, I perceive.'

'Holmes, you would have been accused of wizardry in another age from ours! Why the man should be a cobbler I cannot conceive, but a left-handed cobbler? You cannot have deduced it.'

'My dear fellow, observe the marks across the corduroy trousers where the cobbler rests his lap stone. The left hand side, you will remark, is far more worn than the right. He used his left hand for hammering the leather. Would that all our problems were so simple!'

That year of 1889 had brought some significant suc­cesses to Sherlock Holmes, which had added further laurels to his already formidable reputation. But the strain of almost unremitting work had left its mark upon him, and I was sincerely relieved when he had fallen in with my proposal that we should exchange the October fogs of Baker Street for the rich autumnal beauty of the Sussex country-side.

My friend possessed a marked resilience, and the few days of relaxation had already put back the old nervous spring in his step and a touch of colour in his cheeks. Indeed, I welcomed even his occasional outbursts of impatience as a sign that his vigorous nature had shaken off the lassitude which had followed upon his last case.

Holmes had lit his pipe, and I had picked up my book when there came a knock on the door and the landlord entered.

'There be a gentleman to see you, Mr. Holmes, sir,' he said in his soft Sussex burr, 'and so hurried-like that up I must come without even taking off me apron. Ah! Here he is now.'

A tall, fair-haired man, wearing a heavy ulster and a Scotch plaid swathed round his throat, rushed into the room, threw his Gladstone bag into the nearest corner, and, curtly dismissing the landlord, closed the door behind him. Then he nodded to us both.

'Ah, Gregson,' said Holmes, 'there must be something unusual in the wind to bring you so far afield!'

'What a case!' cried Inspector Tobias Gregson, sink­ing into the chair which I had pushed towards him. 'Whew! What a case! As soon as we had the telegram at the Yard, I thought it would do no harm to have a word with you in Baker Street—unofficial, of course, Mr. Holmes. Then, when Mrs. Hudson gave me your address, I decided to come on down. It's less than thirty miles from here to the place in Kent where the murder was committed.' He mopped at his forehead. 'One of the oldest families in the county, they tell me. By heaven, just wait till the papers get hold of it!'

'My dear Holmes,' I interposed, 'you are here on a rest.'

'Yes, yes, Watson,' said my friend hurriedly, 'but it will do no harm to hear the details. Well, Gregson?'

'I know no more than the bare facts given in this tele­gram from the county police. Colonel Jocelyn Daley, who was a guest of Sir Reginald Lavington at Lavington Court, has been stabbed to death in the banqueting-hall. The butler found him there at about ten-thirty this morning. He'd just died; blood still flowing.'

Holmes put down his book on the table. 'Suicide? Murder? What?' he asked.

'It couldn't be suicide; no weapon was discovered. But I've had a second telegram, and there's new