A Study in Sherlock. Raymond G. Farney
“Poisoned with a dart from a blow gun” “I never raised a hand against Mr. Sholto. It was the little hell-hound, Tonga, who shot one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir.”
Client:Mary Morstan. * “A firm step and an outward composure of matter. She was a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste. There was, however, a plainness and simplicity about her costume which bore with it a suggestion of limited means. The dress was a somber grayish beige, untrimmed and unbraided, and she wore a small turban of the same dull hue, relieved only by a suspicion of white feather in the side. Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and sympathetic. In an experience of women which extends over many nations in three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature. I could not but observe that as she took the seat which Sherlock Holmes placed for her, her lips trembled, her hand quivered, and she showed every sign of intense inward agitation.”Her mother is dead. Attended a boarding school in Edinburgh until seventeen.“You are certainly a model client. You have the correct intuition.”“She was seventeen at the time of her father’s disappearance, she must be seven-and-twenty now.”“Miss Morstan has done me the honor of accepting me as a husband in prospective.”“I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way: witness the way in which she preserved the Agra plan from all the other papers of her father.”“After the angelic fashion of women, she bore trouble with a calm face as long as there was someone weaker than herself to support. I had found her bright and placid by the side of the frightened housekeeper.”“She was clearly no mere paid dependent but an honoured friend” of Mrs. Forrester’s.“It sent a little thrill of joy to my heart to notice that she showed no sign of elation at the prospect. On the contrary, she gave a toss of her proud head, as though the matter were one in which she took small interest.”“She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and waist. The light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back in the basket chair, playing over her sweet grave face, and tinting with a dull metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy.”
Victims:Bartholomew Sholto, favorite son of Major Sholto. Thaddeus’ twin brother & finder of the Agra treasure hidden at Pondicherry Lodge.“Nothing would annoy brother Bartholomew more than any publicity.”“There hung a face—the very face of our companion Thaddeus. There was the same high, shining head, the same circular bristle of red hair, and the same bloodless countenance. The features were set, however, in a horrible smile, a fixed and unnatural grin, which in that still and moonlit room was more jarring to the nerves than any scowl or contortion. He pointed to what looked like a long dark thorn stuck in the skin just above the ear. “It is a thorn. You may pick it out. But be careful for it is poisoned.”Holmes said, “Just put your hand here on the poor fellow’s arm, and here on his leg. What do you feel?” — “The muscles are as hard as a board.”—“They are in a state of extreme contraction far exceeding the usual rigor mortis. Coupled with distortion of the face, his Hippocratic smile.”—“Death from some powerful vegetable alkaloid, some strychnine like substance which would produce tetanus.”“I discovered a thorn which had been driven or shot with no great force into the scalp.”“As far as the death of Bartholomew Sholto went, I had heard little good of him and could feel no intense antipathy to his murderers.”Achmet, a pretend merchant, who three members of the sign of four murdered at Agra fort for the treasure. A little fat, round fellow with a great yellow turban and a bundle in his hand, done up in a shawl. He seemed to be all in a quiver with fear, for his hands twitched as if he had the ague and his head kept turning to left and right with two bright little twinkling eyes, like a mouse when he ventures out from his hole.”
Crime Scene:Pondicherry Lodge, in Upper Norwood. Home of Major Sholto, where eleven years earlier he had retired, and shared with his late son Bartholomew.“The height of the building was seventy-four feet.”“Pondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds and was girt round with a very high stonewall topped with broken glass. A single narrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance.”“Inside, a gravel path wound through desolate grounds to a huge clump of a house, square and prosaic, all plunged in shadow save where a moonbeam struck one corner and glimmered in a garret window. The vast size of the building, with its gloom and its deathly silence, struck a chill to the heart.”“Holmes swung it (lantern) slowly round and peered keenly at the house and at the great rubbish-heaps which cumbered the grounds.”“The third flight of stairs ended in a straight passage of some length, with a great picture of Indian tapestry upon the right of it and three doors upon the left. The third door was to Bartholomew‘s room.”“Bartholomew Sholto’s chamber appeared to have been fitted up as a chemical laboratory. A double-line of glass-stoppered bottles was drawn upon the wall opposite the door, and the table was littered over with Bunsen burners, test tubes, and retorts. In the corners stood carboys of acid in wicker baskets. One of these appeared to leak or to have been broken, for a stream of dark-coloured liquid trickled out from it, and the air was heavy with a peculiarly pungent, tar-like odor. A set of steps stood at one side of the room in the midst of a litter of lath and plaster, and above them there was an opening in the ceiling large enough for a man to pass through. At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope was thrown carelessly together.“By the table in a wooden armchair the master of the house was seated all in a heap, with his head sunk upon his left shoulder and that ghastly, inscrutable smile upon his face. He was stiff and cold and had clearly been dead many hours. It seemed to me that not only his features but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion. By his hand upon the table there lay a peculiar instrument—a brown, close-grained stick, with the stone head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Beside it was a torn sheet of note-paper with some words scrolled up on it. The sign of four.”“I looked out the open window. The moon still shone brightly on the angle of the house. We were a good sixty feet from the ground, and, look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice in the brickwork.”“He mounted the steps, and, seizing a rafter with either hand, he swung himself up into the garret.—The chamber in which we found ourselves was about ten feet one way and six the other. The floor was formed by the rafters, with thin lath and plaster between, so that in walking one had to step from beam to beam. The roof ran up an apex and was evidently the inner shell of the true roof of the house. There was no furniture of any sort, and the accumulated dust of years lay thick upon the floor.”“The square, massive house, with its black, empty windows and high, bare walls, towered up, sad and forlorn behind us.”
Criminals:Jonathan Small, only member left of the sign of four, came to London to regain the Agra treasure.“A face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see the whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It was a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence.”“His name, I have every reason to believe, is Jonathan Small. He is a poorly educated man, small, active, with his right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away upon the inner side. His left boot has a coarse, square-toed sole, with an iron band round the heel. He is a middle-aged man, much sunburned, and has been a convict—there is a good deal of skin missing from the palm of his hand.”“Of course, as to his personal appearance, he must be middle-aged and must be sunburned after serving his time in such an oven as the Andaman’s. His height is readily calculated from the length of his stride, and we know that he was bearded. His hairiness was the one point which impressed itself upon Thaddeus Sholto when he saw him at the window.”“I don’t like the wooden-legged man, wi’ his ugly face and outlandish talk.” (Mordecai’s wife)“This man Small is a pretty shrewd fellow.”“He was a good-sized, powerful man, and as he stood posing himself with legs astride I could see that from the thigh downward there was but a wooden stump upon the right side.”“He was a sunburned reckless-eyed fellow, with a network of lines and wrinkles all over his mahogany features, which told of a hard, open-air life. There was a singular prominence about his bearded chin which marked a man who is not to be easily turned from his purpose. His age may have been