|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 53
"Underneath is written in a hand so shaky as to be
hardly legible, 'Beddoes writes in cipher to say H.
Has told all. Sweet Lord, have mercy on our souls!'
"That was the narrative which I read that night to
young Trevor, and I think, Watson, that under the
circumstances it was a dramatic one. The good fellow
was heart-broken at it, and went out to the Terai tea
planting, where I hear that he is doing well. As to
the sailor and Beddoes, neither of them was ever heard
of again after that day on which the letter of warning
was written. They both disappeared utterly and
completely. No complaint had been lodged with the
police, so that Beddoes had mistaken a threat for a
deed. Hudson had been seen lurking about, and it was
believed by the police that he had done away with
Beddoes and had fled. For myself I believe that the
truth was exactly the opposite. I think that it is
most probable that Beddoes, pushed to desperation and
believing himself to have been already betrayed, had
revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the
country with as much money as he could lay his hands
on. Those are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if
they are of any use to your collection, I am sure that
they are very heartily at your service."
Adventure V
The Musgrave Ritual
An anomaly which often struck me in the character of
my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his
methods of thought he was the neatest and most
methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a
certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less
in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that
ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I
am in the least conventional in that respect myself.
The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on
the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has
made me rather more lax than befits a medical man.
But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who
keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in
the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered
correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the
very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to
give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too,
that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air
pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors,
would sit in an arm-chair with his hair-trigger and a
hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the
opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in
bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the
atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved
by it.
Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of
criminal relics which had a way of wandering into
unlikely positions, and of turning up in the
butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his
papers were my great crux. He had a horror of
destroying documents, especially those which were
connected with his past cases, and yet it was only
once in every year or two that he would muster energy
to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned
somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts
of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable
feats with which his name is associated were followed
by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie
about with his violin and his books, hardly moving
save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after
month his papers accumulated, until every corner of
the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which
were on no account to be burned, and which could not
be put away save by their owner. One winter's night,
as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest
to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into
his common-place book, he might employ the next two
hours in making our room a little more habitable. He
could not deny the justice of my request, so with a
rather rueful face he went off to his bedroom, from which
he returned presently pulling a large tin box behind
him. This he placed in the middle of the floor and,
squatting down upon a stool in front of it, he threw
back the lid. I could see that it was already a third
full of bundles of paper tied up with red tape into
separate packages.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|