"Your boy, Arthur, went to bed after his interview with you buthe slept badly on account of his uneasiness about his club debts.In the middle of the night he heard a soft tread pass his door,so he rose and, looking out, was surprised to see his cousinwalking very stealthily along the passage until she disappearedinto your dressing-room. Petrified with astonishment, the ladslipped on some clothes and waited there in the dark to see whatwould come of this strange affair. Presently she emerged from theroom again, and in the light of the passage-lamp your son sawthat she carried the precious coronet in her hands. She passeddown the stairs, and he, thrilling with horror, ran along andslipped behind the curtain near your door, whence he could seewhat passed in the hall beneath. He saw her stealthily open thewindow, hand out the coronet to someone in the gloom, and thenclosing it once more hurry back to her room, passing quite closeto where he stood hid behind the curtain.
"As long as she was on the scene he could not take any actionwithout a horrible exposure of the woman whom he loved. But theinstant that she was gone he realised how crushing a misfortunethis would be for you, and how all-important it was to set itright. He rushed down, just as he was, in his bare feet, openedthe window, sprang out into the snow, and ran down the lane,where he could see a dark figure in the moonlight. Sir GeorgeBurnwell tried to get away, but Arthur caught him, and there wasa struggle between them, your lad tugging at one side of thecoronet, and his opponent at the other. In the scuffle, your sonstruck Sir George and cut him over the eye. Then somethingsuddenly snapped, and your son, finding that he had the coronetin his hands, rushed back, closed the window, ascended to yourroom, and had just observed that the coronet had been twisted inthe struggle and was endeavouring to straighten it when youappeared upon the scene."
"Is it possible?" gasped the banker.
"You then roused his anger by calling him names at a moment whenhe felt that he had deserved your warmest thanks. He could notexplain the true state of affairs without betraying one whocertainly deserved little enough consideration at his hands. Hetook the more chivalrous view, however, and preserved hersecret."
"And that was why she shrieked and fainted when she saw thecoronet," cried Mr. Holder. "Oh, my God! what a blind fool I havebeen! And his asking to be allowed to go out for five minutes!The dear fellow wanted to see if the missing piece were at thescene of the struggle. How cruelly I have misjudged him!"
"When I arrived at the house," continued Holmes, "I at once wentvery carefully round it to observe if there were any traces inthe snow which might help me. I knew that none had fallen sincethe evening before, and also that there had been a strong frostto preserve impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, butfound it all trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it,however, at the far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stoodand talked with a man, whose round impressions on one side showedthat he had a wooden leg. I could even tell that they had beendisturbed, for the woman had run back swiftly to the door, as wasshown by the deep toe and light heel marks, while Wooden-leg hadwaited a little, and then had gone away. I thought at the timethat this might be the maid and her sweetheart, of whom you hadalready spoken to me, and inquiry showed it was so. I passedround the garden without seeing anything more than random tracks,which I took to be the police; but when I got into the stablelane a very long and complex story was written in the snow infront of me.
"There was a double line of tracks of a booted man, and a seconddouble line which I saw with delight belonged to a man with nakedfeet. I was at once convinced from what you had told me that thelatter was your son. The first had walked both ways, but theother had run swiftly, and as his tread was marked in places overthe depression of the boot, it was obvious that he had passedafter the other. I followed them up and found they led to thehall window, where Boots had worn all the snow away whilewaiting. Then I walked to the other end, which was a hundredyards or more down the lane. I saw where Boots had faced round,where the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle,and, finally, where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show methat I was not mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, andanother little smudge of blood showed that it was he who had beenhurt. When he came to the highroad at the other end, I found thatthe pavement had been cleared, so there was an end to that clue.
"On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, thesill and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I couldat once see that someone had passed out. I could distinguish theoutline of an instep where the wet foot had been placed in comingin. I was then beginning to be able to form an opinion as to whathad occurred. A man had waited outside the window; someone hadbrought the gems; the deed had been overseen by your son; he hadpursued the thief; had struggled with him; they had each tuggedat the coronet, their united strength causing injuries whichneither alone could have effected. He had returned with theprize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of his opponent. Sofar I was clear. The question now was, who was the man and whowas it brought him the coronet?
"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded theimpossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be thetruth. Now, I knew that it was not you who had brought it down,so there only remained your niece and the maids. But if it werethe maids, why should your son allow himself to be accused intheir place? There could be no possible reason. As he loved hiscousin, however, there was an excellent explanation why he shouldretain her secret--the more so as the secret was a disgracefulone. When I remembered that you had seen her at that window, andhow she had fainted on seeing the coronet again, my conjecturebecame a certainty.
"And who could it be who was her confederate? A lover evidently,for who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which she mustfeel to you? I knew that you went out little, and that yourcircle of friends was a very limited one. But among them was SirGeorge Burnwell. I had heard of him before as being a man of evilreputation among women. It must have been he who wore those bootsand retained the missing gems. Even though he knew that Arthurhad discovered him, he might still flatter himself that he wassafe, for the lad could not say a word without compromising hisown family.
"Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I tooknext. I went in the shape of a loafer to Sir George's house,managed to pick up an acquaintance with his valet, learned thathis master had cut his head the night before, and, finally, atthe expense of six shillings, made all sure by buying a pair ofhis cast-off shoes. With these I journeyed down to Streatham andsaw that they exactly fitted the tracks."
"I saw an ill-dressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening,"said Mr. Holder.
"Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my man, so I came homeand changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had toplay then, for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avertscandal, and I knew that so astute a villain would see that ourhands were tied in the matter. I went and saw him. At first, ofcourse, he denied everything. But when I gave him everyparticular that had occurred, he tried to bluster and took down alife-preserver from the wall. I knew my man, however, and Iclapped a pistol to his head before he could strike. Then hebecame a little more reasonable. I told him that we would givehim a price for the stones he held--1000 pounds apiece. Thatbrought out the first signs of grief that he had shown. 'Why,dash it all!' said he, 'I've let them go at six hundred for thethree!' I soon managed to get the address of the receiver who hadthem, on promising him that there would be no prosecution. Off Iset to him, and after much chaffering I got our stones at 1000pounds apiece. Then I looked in upon your son, told him that allwas right, and eventually got to my bed about two o'clock, afterwhat I may call a really hard day's work."
"A day which has saved England from a great public scandal," saidthe banker, rising. "Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, butyou shall not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Yourskill has indeed exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now Imust fly to my dear boy to apologise to him for the wrong which Ihave done him. As to what you
tell me of poor Mary, it goes to myvery heart. Not even your skill can inform me where she is now."
"I think that we may safely say," returned Holmes, "that she iswherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, thatwhatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more thansufficient punishment."
XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES
"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked SherlockHolmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the DailyTelegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliestmanifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It ispleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far graspedthis truth that in these little records of our cases which youhave been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say,occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so muchto the many causes celebres and sensational trials in which Ihave figured but rather to those incidents which may have beentrivial in themselves, but which have given room for thosefaculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have mademy special province."
"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolvedfrom the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against myrecords."
"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, taking up a glowingcinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-woodpipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in adisputatious rather than a meditative mood--"you have erredperhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of yourstatements instead of confining yourself to the task of placingupon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which isreally the only notable feature about the thing."
"It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,"I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotismwhich I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in myfriend's singular character.
"No, it is not selfishness or conceit," said he, answering, aswas his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. "If I claim fulljustice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing--athing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore itis upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you shoulddwell. You have degraded what should have been a course oflectures into a series of tales."
It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat afterbreakfast on either side of a cheery fire in the old room atBaker Street. A thick fog rolled down between the lines ofdun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark,shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was litand shone on the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, forthe table had not been cleared yet. Sherlock Holmes had beensilent all the morning, dipping continuously into theadvertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last,having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no verysweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.
"At the same time," he remarked after a pause, during which hehad sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire,"you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out ofthese cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourselfin, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense,at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the Kingof Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, theproblem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and theincident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which areoutside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, Ifear that you may have bordered on the trivial."
"The end may have been so," I answered, "but the methods I holdto have been novel and of interest."
"Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservantpublic, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or acompositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades ofanalysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannotblame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or atleast criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. Asto my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into anagency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice toyoung ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touchedbottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks myzero-point, I fancy. Read it!" He tossed a crumpled letter acrossto me.
It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, andran thus:
"DEAR MR. HOLMES:--I am very anxious to consult you as to whetherI should or should not accept a situation which has been offeredto me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten to-morrow if Ido not inconvenience you. Yours faithfully, "VIOLET HUNTER."
"Do you know the young lady?" I asked.
"Not I."