The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Part 10 (1/2)
”Really, Mr Holmes,” said Mr Merryweather as we followed them from the cellar, ”I do not kno the bank can thank you or repay you There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience”
”I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr
John Clay,” said Holmes ”I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I a had an experience which is inthe very reue”
”You see, Watson,” he explained in the early hours of the lass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, ”it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertise of the 'Encyclopaedia,' ht pawnbroker out of the way for a nu it, but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better The enious mind by the colour of his accomplice's hair The 4 pounds a as a lure whichfor thousands?
They put in the advertiseue incites the e to secure his absence everyin the week Fro coes, it was obvious tothe situation”
”But how could you guess what the motive was?”
”Had there been woue That, however, was out of the question Thein his house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure as they were at Itout of the house What could it be? I thought of the assistant's fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishi+ng into the cellar The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clue Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest andin the cellar--so which took many hours a day for months on end What could it be, oncea tunnel to soot ent to visit the scene of action I surprised you by beating upon the pave whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind
It was not in front Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant answered it We have had some skirmishes, but we had never set eyes upon each other before I hardly looked at his face His knees hat I wished to see You must yourself have remarked hoorn, wrinkled, and stained they were They spoke of those hours of burrowing The only re for I walked round the corner, saw the City and Suburban Bank abutted on our friend's premises, and felt that I had solved my problem When you drove home after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard and upon the chairman of the bank directors, with the result that you have seen”
”And how could you tell that they would ht?” I asked
”Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that they cared no longer about Mr Jabez Wilson's presence--in other words, that they had completed their tunnel But it was essential that they should use it soon, as it ht be removed Saturday would suit theive them two days for their escape
For all these reasons I expected theht”
”You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclai a chain, and yet every link rings true”
”It saved”Alas! I already feel it closing in uponeffort to escape from the commonplaces of existence These little problems help me to do so”
”And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I
He shrugged his shoulders ”Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,” he remarked ”'L'homme c'est rien--l'oeuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand”
ADVENTURE III A CASE OF IDENtitY
”My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Hols at Baker Street, ”life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of s which are really mere commonplaces of existence If we could fly out of thathand in hand, hover over this great city, gently reoing on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable”
”And yet I am not convinced of it,” I answered ”The cases which coh, and vulgar enough We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is, itnor artistic”
”A certain selection and discretiona realistic effect,” re in the police report, where istrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the wholeso unnatural as the commonplace”
I s so,” I said ”Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre But here”--I picked up the round--”let us put it to a practical test Here is the first heading upon which I come 'A husband's cruelty to his wife' There is half a colu it that it is all perfectly familiar to me There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude”
”Indeed, your exau his eye down it ”This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct co up everythem at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the ie story-teller Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your exareat amethyst in the centre of the lid Its splendour was in such contrast to his ho upon it
”Ah,” said he, ”I forgot that I had not seen you for so of Bohemia in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers”
”And the ring?” I asked, glancing at a reer
”It was froh the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems”