I came to know Holmes through a mutual friend, Reginald Musgrave, whom the former had helped out in the course of a family tragedy suffered by the latter. Upon my getting to know Holmes more closely, I came to realize that, although he affected the detached and unimpassioned ways of a strictly logical machine devoted to the tasks of observation, categorization, and deduction, he was, as it happened, a man greatly dedicated to the pursuit of justice and fairness in human affairs – a fact that would greatly influence his determination to make a career of fighting crime, in a manner that was always sensitive to the distinction between morally understandable and morally unjustifiable transgressions of the law. In his quiet and private way, which could nevertheless assume a public dimension if the occasion so demanded, he defended the weak and the disadvantaged, was kind to animals and street-urchins, and detested all forms of bullying.
Given the last, it is no great surprise that Sherlock Holmes did not count among his best friends the Rt. Hon. Frederick Thursgood, son and heir of Bertram, sixth Earl of Blackburn. Thursgood was a typical representative of his class in those days – a member of the constituency of the idle rich formed by the landed gentry: Selfish, insensitive, shallow, and endowed with more money than was good for his soul. He had a small following of toadies and spongers and hangers-on who exchanged their loyalty to him for the favours of the good life which his wealth enabled him to shower upon them. Thursgood’s gang once tried to crowd Holmes in a busy corner of the High – but such ambitions of bullying had to be permanently laid to rest after a brief but effective demonstration by Holmes of his skills in baritsu.
The effect of the vulgar noisiness of Thursgood and his associates was matched only by that of the exquisite flamboyance of Lord Armine de Mornay who, in every way – down to his club foot and his splendid flowing cape – cut a Byronesque dash in the university of those days. He was rich and handsome, daring and cynical – a supremely gifted young poet who was as dissolute as he was romantic, as irresistible as he was fickle in affairs of the heart. He had the reputation, in addition, of being something of a conjurer, necromancer, and prestidigitator: His alleged skills of léger de main only added to the aura of mystery and magic that shrouded the man’s personality. He conformed faithfully to Lady Caroline Lamb’s famous description of Byron, as a person who was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.
One of the accessories which de Mornay employed to good effect, in order to embellish his image of the flawed knight, was the aluminium crutch he wielded to take the strain off his clubbed foot. The crutch was a piece of exquisite craftsmanship, fashioned out of an extravagantly expensive metal. De Mornay’s crutch became a famous artifact in the undergraduate’s Varsity of those days. It was rumoured to be equipped with secret receptacles designed to hold valuable jewellery in them, while the tip of the crutch, it was broadcast, concealed a wickedly pointed sword-end, for use in the event of an attack upon the person of the owner, who was known to have enemies amongst gamblers, disappointed lovers, and rivals in affection.
I speak of the final year of our undergraduate degree. I was preoccupied then with my theological studies, as much as by the financial difficulties attending my family’s circumstances, which threatened to cut short my career at the university and force me to leave without acquiring a degree. I had confided my woes in Musgrave and Holmes, the only men with whom I felt comfortable about sharing my confidences. Both men were sympathetic, but neither was in a position to do much about the situation: Musgrave was on a strict allowance from his father, and Holmes on a much stricter allowance from his. It was in the midst of these circumstances that Lord Bertram Blackburn arrived one evening at our college to visit his son Frederick Thursgood. On the way, he had attended a Royal Banquet in the capacity of a Member of the House of Lords. It came to light that Lord Blackburn was proceeding further north on work, and that he had left his invaluable family heirloom – a pair of diamond-studded golden cuff-links which he had worn at the Royal Banquet – in his son’s care, to be picked up by the father on the latter’s return journey a couple of days hence.
It was typical of Thursgood and his penchant for “sticking side” and showing off that he should, immediately upon his father’s departure, have advertised the fact that his family heirloom was in his temporary possession. His father would have been horrified to learn that his son was thus jeopardizing the safekeeping of the golden cuff-links. Indeed, Thursgood thought it was a good idea to invite
