A NOTABLE INTERLUDE
It was evident that things had come to a deadlock between the two
detectives. They could not work together, and they would not work
apart. Mr Shapter was summoned at length to arbitrate between them. He
found Valombroso bristling, and Jannaway conscience-calm. The Italian
opened on him.
“Signore, if I am to have an English colleague, it shall be other than
this serene man. Yes, I will call him that for politeness.”
“What is the matter with him, detective?”
“The matter? Nothing is the matter. He enjoy the most perfect
constitution in my experience. Nothing shall move or trouble him. I
say to him ‘Suppose I think this Dalston somewheres in the
neighbourhood?’ ‘Well, think it,’ he say. Again if I remark, ‘I
believe of this letter that it is genuine,’ ‘You are quite welcome to
your belief,’ he answer. Once more, ‘Suppose I decide it the good
policy,’ I say, ‘to go and watch at the address which our man give for
his wife in London?’ What is his reply? Why ‘Go along and watch
yourself silly, if you like’--just that. But he will not come too; and
so I shall refuse to go without him. He desire anything to put me
wrong, so he may presently take to himself the credit when it arrive.
We are baffled here at present, yes. We shall continue the same while
this sort of thing shall last. But it shall not last. I say now at
once, that, unless you give me the colleague I desire, I throw up the
case. I cannot work at it any longer with a mule.”
“And who is this suggested colleague, Valombroso? Is it Mr Holmes?”
“Who else, signore? Am I not Valombroso?”
Mr Shapter shrugged his shoulders. But he had _carte blanche_ from
Johnny to employ whom he pleased; and expense was no consideration.
“Well, have you any objection, Jannaway?” he asked resignedly.
“None whatever, sir,” answered the inspector. “It won’t be the first
time me and Mr Holmes have met over a case. He’s got the makings of a
respectable detective in him, or used to have; and if he _should_ come
to fail here, like Mr Valombroso, why, there’s still me to fall back
upon for a forlorn hope.”
What _did_ he mean? Had he or had he not something up his sleeve,
which he was retaining merely for the greater discomfiture of his
rival, should that gentleman once come to admit his own defeat?
Nothing could be plausibly guessed but that he felt himself aggrieved
over our moral assumption of the other’s supremacy, and was regarding
with a mischievous enjoyment some _faux pas_ into which our mistaken
faith was leading us. It seemed incredible that a man of his
reputation could have _no_ ideas in the matter. We could so little
believe it, in fact, that, through all this puzzling perversity of his
mood, it never occurred to us for a moment, I think, to dispense with
his services, negative as those were. At the very least, he might
become, as he himself suggested, our ark of refuge.
Valombroso snorted fearfully over the assumption of his failure.
“_You_, to think you shall see to the end of my resource,
Inspec-tar-r-r-r Jannaway!” he said, and ended with a furious ironic
laugh.
Jannaway stood impassive.
“Very well, then,” said Mr Shapter hastily. “I will telegraph to Mr
Holmes. I cannot, of course, answer for his being disengaged at the
moment.”
But fortunately a favourable answer was received. Mr Holmes himself
would follow by the midday train.
I confess I was extremely curious to see this extraordinary man, with
whose eagle countenance, penetrating eyes and slender aristocratic
figure report had made me familiar. Nor, when I had my opportunity,
was it marked by that disillusionment which is often the penalty of
over-expectation. It is true that there was a trifle more grey in the
hair, a trifle more vagueness, or shall I say less brilliancy in the
eye than I had looked for; but it must be remembered that at this
period Mr Holmes was at least approaching that state of premature
superannuation which his adventures, countless and diversified beyond
the common human experience or endurance, had necessarily imposed upon
him. Nevertheless he was still a striking-looking man, very pale in
the face, and with a curious bump on his head, any mute and stealthy
observation of which he was wont characteristically to detect, and to
regard, it seemed, with suspicion or annoyance. He drove from Footover
in a station fly, and of course his friend Dr Watson accompanied him.
The two, it was well known, were inseparable.
Mr Shapter and I were waiting for him, as he alighted; but he took not
the least notice of us for a moment, turning to his companion with the
remark: “I believe you are perfectly right in what you are thinking,
my dear Watson. The breach between the D.’s is eternal; they will
never come together again.”
The doctor, long accustomed, it appeared, to the other’s method of
deductive reasoning, showed no astonishment, but merely replied, “Yes,
you have answered the thought in my mind exactly. No doubt it will
interest these gentlemen to hear the processes by which you reached
that conclusion.”
“Why, my dear Watson,” said Mr Holmes promptly, “do you not remember
that little oath you uttered under your breath when our flyman jogged
us over an offensively large stone? The ejaculation inevitably
suggested a big letter to you--the bigness of the letter a certain
popular operetta--the operetta, a pinafore--a pinafore, overcoats in
general. At that moment you glanced up; the coat our coachman was
wearing had obviously been made for a smaller man, and the seam had
parted at the back never to rejoin. I saw you observe it. The
association of ideas was complete. The D.’s and the breach between
them rushed into your mind at the very instant that we came to the
door of this capital hostelry, and into the presence, if I mistake
not” (he turned with a charming bow and smile), “of our respected
telegraphic correspondents.”
The formal greeting over, we conveyed our visitors into our private
sitting-room, where the two detectives were awaiting us. Mr Holmes
greeted the inspector with a “Ha, Jannaway!” and we promptly got to
business.
The great amateur was severely interested in the tale unfolded to him,
though his companion, I could not but think, appeared somewhat bored
by it. He yawned a good deal, and kept looking at his watch. I was not
mentally as familiar with his figure as with the other’s, and, beyond
the fact of his face being a mutton-chop-whiskered one, had no more
than an idea of his general appearance. Still, I had not seemed to
associate quite so much bulk with it. Doctor Watson, I fear, had grown
rather fat and inert, and, in suggestion, not unlike a prosperous
impresario.
The story related and the letter examined, Mr Holmes sat in profound
silence for a while.
“I take it, then,” he said presently, “that the point of contention is
the present whereabouts of Mr Dalston?”
I was a little surprised, as that _was_ the point; and no other, in
fact, had been raised.
“I believe,” said Mr Holmes after further reflection, “that Mr Dalston
went abroad, and that he wrote that letter _from_ abroad. That is not
necessarily to conclude, however, that he is abroad at this moment.
The farm, by your showing, offers itself a very potential retreat to
one desirous, shall we say, of evading his social obligations. At the
same time it does not appear to be rich in the material necessities of
existence. It is at least conceivable that this man, rendered
desperate by an enforced abstinence, may be caught sneaking from his
well-chosen burrow there at night, in order to satisfy those
insatiable appetites which his position renders him unable to indulge
by day. Your criminal is notoriously a sensuous animal, and one the
least capable of resisting the calls of his nature. Have you, may I
ask, ever thought of putting a watch upon the place at night?”
No, it appeared we had not. Our interlocutor smiled, shaking a long
finger at Jannaway.
“Inspector, inspector!” he murmured--“the old fundamental
insufficiency!”
Valombroso skipped with delight.
“Signore,” he began, “only show _me_ my man, and----”
Mr Holmes interrupted him, rising.
“I will do my best,” he said. “But this is very sad.”
He went out, and we did not see him again until dinner-time, when he
turned up--rather late, to Dr Watson’s obvious annoyance--and
luminous, so to speak, with preoccupation. He smoked a heavy pipe,
filled with tobacco of a peculiarly pungent brand, throughout the
meal, but ate very little--an abstinence which was fully compensated
by his friend, who, not to misjudge him, appeared to think a good deal
of his food, and eyed every dish interestedly as it was put on the
table. The fare, proving exhilarating, moved the doctor, even, to some
ill-timed levity; for when Mr Holmes at dessert slipped, apparently in
a fit of abstraction, the nutcrackers into his pocket, he asked him
banteringly if he hadn’t better send the dishful of nuts after them.
Mr Holmes was very angry, and demanded to know how, after all these
years of their acquaintance, he had learned no better than to question
him openly as to the meaning of any action of his however seemingly
uncalled for.
“For what do you exist, my dear Watson,” he said, with an infinite but
perfectly gentlemanly irony, “but as a screen of vulgar commonplace
between me and the public. You are not here to expose my methods, but
to cover them.”
The doctor was completely, and rightly, set down; though it is only
fair to him to admit that Mr Holmes afterwards confessed to us in
private that the act had been an involuntary one on his part, due, no
doubt, to some association of ideas between the implements, and his
recognition of the fact that he had here a particularly hard nut to
crack.
He left us again after dinner; and, seeing him well out of the room,
the doctor, presumably in a spit of resentment, took the occasion to
tap his own head significantly.
“He has never been,” he murmured, “quite the man he was since that
fall.”
If this admission, or insinuation served to “give us pause,” our
spirits were to be reassured in a few hours by the return of Mr Holmes
in a great state of suppressed excitement.
“Give me a foot-rule,” he said. “I believe my theory was correct and
that I am on his tracks.”
His enthusiasm communicated itself to us all.
“Great heavens, sir!” said Mr Shapter. “Do you mean to say you believe
him to be really in hiding at the farm?”
“I lend myself to no positive assertion, my dear sir,” answered the
other, with a smile. “I state, only, that I have come upon a number of
footmarks about the house that were not there this afternoon. They may
be his; they may not be. A great deal depends upon the postulate. But
nothing can be lost, at least, by following them up; and that is my
sole present intention. I shall be absent, probably, during the
greater part of the night, and even, it may be, well into to-morrow
morning. See that the door is left on the latch.”
You may be sure that none of us--save only Dr Watson, whose snores
shook the partitions--slept much that night. We were all awake with
daylight, and eager for news. It came, presently, with the astounding
information that Mr Holmes, returning to the house in the early hours
of the morning, had ordered incontinently a fly for the station, and
had left in it before any of us were down. We stared at one another in
mute consternation.
But Dr Watson, when he appeared, took the thunderbolt unruffled. This
sudden disappearance was only, in his opinion, part of the plot.
Likely enough the tracks had led his friend to Footover.
In the meantime he laid himself out to enjoy his respite in the
consumption of much excellent fare and tobacco, to which latter
indulgence he never resorted without first fitting on his head an
embroidered black velvet smoking-cap with a large gold tassel pendent
from its crown. His engagements, he said, left him free till Easter,
when he was to take his usual little holiday at Clacton-on-Sea. No
doubt there would be developments in a day or two.
But there were no developments, not that day nor the next, and we were
beginning to foresee a difficulty in ridding ourselves of this
self-complacent incubus, when there arrived a letter to him from Mr
Holmes, which settled the business. He read it, and, in a fit, I
cannot but think, of temporary aberration, threw it across to Mr
Shapter. It ran as follows:--
“My Dear Watson,--I find this must be counted among my unsuccessful
cases. I am under the necessity of admitting that the footmarks I have
been following were my own. I traced them all the way to the “Black
Dog,” and so up the stairs to my bedroom, where the boots themselves
lay under a chair. _En passant_, why did you never remind me, my dear
Watson, that they were a pair of yours which I had borrowed, and put
off for some of my own when I went out for the second time? It was
that misled me. Make my apologies to our friends. I enclose the half
of your third-class return ticket, and am off to Siberia by the night
mail. An important political prisoner has escaped from Kara Baigarama.
I believe him to be hidden under an ice-floe in the Arctic Ocean. Tell
this to nobody.”
Mr Shapter looked across at Dr Watson, who had sunk back in his chair,
with a piece of bloater sticking out of his mouth. He gasped and
swallowed it.
“I believe,” he said, “that that fall into the river gave him water on
the brain.”