Chapter 1
Ms. Shyrlock Holmes
Ms. Shyrlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when she was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind her the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a 'Penang lawyer.' Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. 'To Jamie Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from her friends of the C.C.H.,' was engraved upon it, with the date '1884.' It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry--dignified, solid, and reassuring.
'Well, Watson, what do you make of it?'
Holmes was sitting with her back to me, and I had given her no sign of my occupation.
'How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.'
'I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,' said she. 'But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to mister her and have no notion of her errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the woman by an examination of it.'
'I think,' said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, 'that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical woman, well-esteemed since those who know her give her this mark of their appreciation.'
'Good!' said Holmes. 'Excellent!'
'I think also that the probability is in favour of her being a country practitioner who does a great deal of her visiting on foot.'
'Why so?'
'Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that she has done a great amount of walking with it.'
'Perfectly sound!' said Holmes.
'And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members she has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made her a small presentation in return.'
'Really, Watson, you excel yourself,' said Holmes, pushing back her chair and lighting a cigarette. 'I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.'
She had never said as much before, and I must admit that her words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by her indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to her methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered her system as to apply it in a way which earned her approval. She now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with her naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest she laid down her cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, she looked over it again with a convex lens.
'Interesting, though elementary,' said she as she returned to her favourite corner of the settee. 'There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions.'
'Has anything escaped me?' I asked with some self-importance. 'I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?'
'I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The woman is certainly a country practitioner. And she walks a good deal.'
'Then I was right.'
'To that extent.'
'But that was all.'
'No, no, my dear Watson, not all--by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves.'
'You may be right.'