Eight Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  “A bloody tale, indeed, that one,” said Holmes.

  As I have remarked elsewhere, Holmes’s knowledge of literature was limited, but it did not surprise me that he knew something of one of the Bard’s gorier tales.

  “It was a bloody tale that played out that day in Afghanistan, as well,” said I. “The temperature had climbed to well over one hundred degrees, perhaps to as much as one hundred and twenty. The enemy forces had increased to more than twenty-five thousand men, more than eight times our own strength. The only cover to be had was dry ravines and watercourses. The battle was, of course, a disaster.”

  “But you survived,” said Mrs. Murray.

  “Thanks only to your husband. There were thirty cannon ranged against us, and though the enemy fell by the score under the fire of the Martini-Henry rifles of our troops, there were far too many of them for us to overcome. Our casualties mounted nearly as swiftly as did theirs, and there were far, far fewer of us.”

  “How did you come to be shot?” asked Holmes.

  Remembering, I wiped my face and felt yet another twinge in my old wound.

  “I was ministering to a wounded man,” I said, “though there was little I could do for him. He had been shot through the lungs, of that there was no doubt. I could hear the air whistle in the wound as he tried to breathe. In any case, I was doing what I could when someone else called for me. I looked and saw another wounded man, not more than twenty feet away. Mind you, he was not the only one calling. There were wounded and dying all around me, and many of them were crying or screaming their need for help or water, for their wives and sweethearts.”

  I shook my head to rid it of the picture that had formed in my brain, but the picture persisted. I could remember the cries of the men, the smell of blood and fear.

  “In any case,” I said after a moment, “There was one man quite nearby. The pleading in his eyes was terrible to see. I stood up to go to him, and at that very moment I was struck by a musket shot. There was no pain, just the sudden shock, but when I tried to take a step, I fell on my face. I lay there for a while, how long I do not know. There was a strange buzzing in my ears, but I could still hear the wounded man calling for my help. I tried to call back to him, but no sound came from my lips. I must have lost consciousness then, for the next thing I was aware of was the motion of the horse that was carrying me to safety.”

  I stopped my narrative and looked at Mrs. Murray.

  “I never think of that day without thinking of your husband,” I told her. “His courage and devotion saved me, and I will do whatever is in my power to return that favor.”

  “Edward is counting on you,” she said. “He has great faith in your medical skills.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Holmes said, “As well he should have. Dr. Watson will soon set him right.”

  “I appreciate your confidence, Holmes,” said I, wishing that I shared it.

  Our destination was a sizeable house at the end of a blind street. The houses on either side of the street were small but neat. While the Murray’s home was on a grander scale, it was in ill repair. As we left the coach, I could hear the muffled sounds of hammering from inside it.

  “When did you begin work on your house?” Holmes asked.

  “Shortly before Edward became ill,” Mrs. Murray said. “We have only recently moved here from a much smaller place. One of my aunts died almost a year ago, and this house was my inheritance.”

  “It is often hard to find good workmen these days,” said Holmes. “Reliable men, I mean, who will stick to a job until it is finished.”

  “The men who are working here came highly recommended. They were quite busy, and at first I did not think they would take the job, but when they met Edward, they were convinced to do it.”

  We entered the house, where the sound of the workmen was louder. Our coats were taken by a tall sallow man with thin lips and a shiny bald head.

  “Thank you, Oliver,” said Mrs. Murray. When he had departed, she added, “Oliver and his wife worked for my aunt, she as cook and he as butler. They have stayed on to help me and Edward.”

  “I suppose they knew him before his illness,” Holmes said.’

  “Oh, no. We never visited here. In fact, the inheritance was quite unexpected. Please, follow me, and I will take you to Edward’s room.”

  We went down a dim hallway and ascended the stairs to the second floor, where the noise of hammers and saws was louder than ever. There were men building a bookcase in the room from which the noise emanated, and as we followed Mrs. Murray past a second open room, Holmes paused to look inside. The old wallpaper and backing had been peeled away to expose the wood, and a man was getting ready to apply fresh paper.

  “That is Mr. Gordon,” said Mrs. Murray, joining Holmes at the door.

  The man turned at the sound of her voice. He had a thicket of beard from which two dark eyes peered at us. He set the glue pot he was holding on the floor and said, “Good morning, ma’am.” He limped slightly as he stepped toward us and raised his hand to touch his forehead. “And how is the mister today?”

  “As well as could be expected, Mr. Gordon,” Mrs. Murray replied in a voice that indicated that was not very well at all. She indicated me. “This is Dr. Watson, who has come to examine him, and this is Dr. Watson’s friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

  Gordon saluted us, muttered a greeting of some sort, and immediately turned away to get back to his work.

  Mrs. Murray started to speak again, but she refrained and took us down the hall to her husband’s room.

  I confess that I hardly recognized Edward Murray. I had known him but briefly those fourteen years ago, and then he had been young and hale, strong enough to lift a man of my size across the back of a horse. Now, however, he was shrunken and jaundiced, his cheeks hollow, his neck thin and wrinkled. He sat with his back braced by several pillows as he stared blankly out a window.

  “Edward,” his wife said, “I have brought Dr. Watson.”

  He turned his dark and sunken eyes in our direction.

  “Dr. Watson,” he said. His voice was weak. “You have not changed.”

  “Hello, Murray,” I said. “It is good to see you again.”

  “You know me, then?”

  “I do, indeed.”

  “It is a wonder. Until recently, I looked much the same as ever, or so it pleased me to think, but now….”

  “You have changed,” said I, stepping forward. “But I know you nevertheless. Let me introduce my friend Sherlock Holmes.”

  He raised a hand and made a feeble wave. “I have read of your adventures, Mr. Holmes, and you have told them ably, Dr. Watson.”

  “Please call me John,” I told him. “We are old friends, after all.”

  “And will my old friend be able to help me?” he asked.

  “I am sure he will,” said Holmes, once again expressing his confidence in me.

  “Then he will be the first. I have almost despaired of any cure. And that is odd indeed, for until recently I was always the healthiest of men.”

  I walked to the bedside and cleared a space for my medical bag. Then I took Murray’s stick-like wrist in my hand and felt for his pulse. Its beat was feeble at best beneath the hot, papery skin, flakes of which lay on the bedclothes, and I knew that Murray was in dire straits indeed.

  “We have come a long way since Afghanistan,” said he.

  “Indeed we have, and I have come thanks entirely to you,” said I. “Had you not put me on that horse, I would never have survived Maiwand.”

  “I am glad I was able to help,” said Murray. “It was all that I could do that day.”

  “But it was enough,” said Holmes. “I do not know how I would cope without Watson’s help.”

  There was no response to that, and I went about my examination. When it was completed, I had deduced no more about Murray’s disease than his wife had confided to us earlier.

  “Have you an appetite?” I asked, taking in his wasted frame. />
  “I eat very little,” said he. “Mrs. Oliver prepares my meals, but they are meager indeed. Bread and soup, though the soup does not taste as soup should. A consequence of my disease, no doubt.”

  “And no doubt Watson will have you in good appetite again, and quite soon,” said Holmes. “I have no doubt of it. Is that not right, Watson?”

  “Of course,” said I, wishing that I believed it, for the case seemed quite beyond me. I had, in fact, seen nothing like it in my career as a medical man, and I was not at all certain that there was anything I could do.

  “I knew I could count on you,” Murray said. “It is not that I believed you owe me a debt, you understand.”

  “But I do. Had it not been for your efforts, I would be long since dead on the Afghan plains. And I will do all that I can to aid you.”

  I did not add that I thought the all I promised was little enough, and Murray seemed satisfied with my assurance. He sank back into the pillows and closed his eyes.

  “Thank you, Dr. Watson,” said his wife. “He does not often rest well, but your presence here has given him hope. What will you prescribe?”

  “I must think about that,” said I.

  The noise of the carpenters, which I had forgotten, came to my ears again, and Holmes said, “You must be very proud of your new home. Did the Olivers feel that you were intruding when you moved here?”

  Mrs. Murray smiled. “No, they did not. I believe they were quite pleased, as our coming meant they did not have to seek other employment.”

  I hardly saw what this exchange had to do with Murray’s medical problem, but I did not interrupt.

  “And are they pleased with the changes you are making in the house?”

  “Oh, I am sure they must be. My aunt had let it fall into a sad state of disrepair, but soon we will have things set to rights.”

  “I can see that you will,” said Holmes. “Well, Watson, shall we have a look around the place?”

  “Whatever for?” I asked.

  “Why, so Mrs. Murray can sit with her husband while you mull over his treatment, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, though I had no idea why.

  Holmes turned, and I followed him from the room. When we were outside, I asked where we were going.

  “To the kitchen,” said he, “to meet Mrs. Oliver.”

  Mrs. Oliver was her husband’s opposite: round, smiling, and cheerful. She welcomed us to the kitchen where a pot of savory-smelling soup bubbled on the stove.

  “Poor Mr. Murray does not eat much, but he must keep up his strength,” she said, and invited us to share some of the meal she was preparing as there was plenty for all.

  “All?” said Holmes.

  “Yes, sir. The carpenters often share a meal with us here.”

  “I am not surprised,” said Holmes. “I am sure they enjoy your cooking.”

  Mrs. Oliver laughed. “Oh, go along with you, sir. But it is true, nevertheless.”

  “Do they ever help you out?” Holmes asked. “By way of repaying your hospitality?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do they, for example, ever take Mr. Murray his meals?”

  “Why, yes, they sometimes do.”

  “All of them, or only Mr. Gordon?”

  “Indeed, Mr. Gordon is the very one. How did you know that?”

  “He knows a great deal more than anyone would suspect,” said I. “Where is all this leading us, Holmes?”

  “To a diagnosis, my dear Watson. Come along.”

  We returned to Murray’s room. He was lying back on the pillows, his eyes closed, with his wife watching over him. She looked up when we entered, and Holmes said to her, “Dr. Watson will soon have your husband on the way to recovery. We have discovered that he is being slowly poisoned.”

  Murray struggled to sit up in his surprise, and I confess that I was no less amazed than he. His wife said, “But how can that be?”

  “Oh, it is quite easy if one has access to arsenic,” said Holmes. “And arsenic is indeed the poison being used. I thought as much when I first heard your description of Mr. Murray’s symptoms, and my observation of him has confirmed my opinion.”

  As I have often said, Holmes has no peer when it comes to knowledge of poisons, and I had no doubt that he was correct in this case. No wonder that I, and the other doctors whom Murray had consulted, had been unable to determine what was afflicting him. Arsenic poisoning is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Once a diagnosis has been made, however, a cure can be effected, especially if the source of the poison is removed. Now I knew why Holmes was so confident that I would be able to help Murray.

  “Who would want to poison Edward?” Mrs. Murray asked.

  “There were a number of possibilities,” said Holmes, “including yourself.” At the look on her face, he added, “But I eliminated you at once, for you said that you and your husband knew of me. No guilty person who had read Watson’s somewhat exaggerated accounts of my cases would be likely to come to him for help for fear of my involvement.”

  Mrs. Murray did not appear much mollified by this remark, so I said, “Who were the other possibilities?”

  “The Olivers, of course, came to mind,” said Holmes, “but they harbor no resentments against their new employers, and Mrs. Murray has assured us that they are happy to have new tenants in the house.”

  “But there is no one else here,” I protested.

  “There are the workmen,” said Holmes.

  “The workmen?” I said.

  “Consider this,” said Holmes. “You were once a wounded man, rescued by your orderly, Edward Murray. But there was another wounded man. What might he have felt to see the two of you leaving the field while he lay there awaiting his fate, and no rifle to roll on, as Kipling so charmingly put it.”

  Murray’s voice came quaveringly from the bed. “He would have felt a hate deep and lasting. I could see it in his eyes that day. But my duty was to Dr. Watson.”

  “True,” said Holmes, walking to the bedside, “and you performed it admirably. But suppose that man lived and managed to escape the battlefield before the women came to cut up what remained of him. And suppose that eventually he returned to England. He might have tried to put the incident out of his mind, but every twinge of his wound would remind him of it. As it does you, Watson.”

  I nodded my agreement.

  “And suppose, then, that years later the man saw face to face the very person who had left him there that day so long ago and realizing that the person did not recognize him, might he not be tempted to extract a bit of revenge?”

  I remembered a heavily bearded face, a limp, and a half-conscious salute and said, “Gordon?”

  “Very good, Watson,” said Holmes. “As you are probably not aware, the dyes in wallpaper in houses of this age often contains arsenic. I am sure that Gordon scraped and pulverized a quantity of the old paper he removed from the wall. This he added to Mrs. Oliver’s soup that he so helpfully brought to Murray. Seeing the slow death of the man he believed had deserted him must have brought him a great measure of satisfaction.”

  “It did, indeed,” said Gordon from the doorway. “I am sorry that you have put an end to my game, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Now I will have to take a more direct approach.” He pulled a pistol from beneath the canvas apron he was wearing. “Please step back from the bed, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Very well,” said Holmes. “I …”

  His voice seemed to stick in his throat, and his face contorted horribly as he began to stumble forward.

  Gordon was momentarily distracted, but I, being better acquainted with Holmes than he, was not. As Gordon stared, I turned and grabbed the arm that held the pistol, jerking it downward and causing it to discharge a bullet into the floor. I twisted Gordon’s wrist with both hands, and he dropped the pistol just as Holmes reached us.

  “Hold him, Watson!” said Holmes, and I secured both Gordon’s arms. Though he struggled, he could not escape me.

  “Good ol
d Watson,” said Holmes. “I knew you would not be fooled by my ruse. Now if Mrs. Murray will be so kind as to send for the police, we will turn Mr. Gordon over to them. After that, you can begin caring for your former orderly.”

  Mrs. Murray, who had been somewhat shocked at the gunshot and the brief struggle, recovered herself and dashed from the room to summon the law. Her husband said, “I would never have left anyone on that field had I been able to help.”

  Gordon struggled in my grip.

  “Swine,” he said.

  “You should read more Kipling,” Holmes said to him.

  Gordon glared at him but did not deign to respond, so I said, “Whatever do you mean, Holmes?”

  “That poem you are fond of had some advice for people like Gordon,” said Holmes. “‘Be thankful you’re livin’, and trust to your luck, and march to your jail like a soldier.’”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “I do not believe that Kipling said jail, Holmes.”

  “Perhaps not,” said he. “But it fits the case.”

  As usual, he was correct.

  The Case of the Vanished Vampire

  In the spring of the year 1897, Sherlock Holmes was advised by Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, to take a complete rest from detective work for the sake of his health. I concurred with this opinion, and Holmes, being fatigued beyond measure, agreed. Thus he and I found ourselves in Cornwall, where we were almost immediately embroiled in the bizarre events which I have recounted in “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot.”

  Instead of tiring Holmes, as Dr. Agar and I would have had it, the activities in Cornwall invigorated him. It was then that I suspected his fatigue was not physical but more related to his mental activities. Holmes, as my readers may be aware, is a man who needs mental activity even more than the physical sort. When he lacks it, he falls into a dangerous state of ennui. That was exactly the case upon our return to London. The boredom did not return immediately, but as the days passed with no sign of an interesting client whose problems were greater than Holmes’s own, my friend began to evince signs that he might fall back into his dependence on other means of stimulation. Though I had long ago helped him reduce his dependence on the needle, I knew well enough that the fiend had not been conquered so much as rendered temporarily dormant, as certain references in the tale referred to above will have shown to the attentive reader.