(_By Cunnin Toil._)
No. II.--THE DUKE'S FEATHER.
Two months had passed without my hearing a word of HOLES. I knew he
had been summoned to Irkoutsk by the CZAR of Russia in order to help
in investigating the extraordinary theft of one of the Government
silver mines, which had completely and mysteriously disappeared in
one night. All the best intellects of the terrible secret police, the
third section of the Government of the Russian Empire, had exhausted
themselves in the vain endeavour to probe this mystery to the bottom.
Their failure had produced a dangerous commotion in the Empire of the
CZAR; there were rumours of a vast Nihilist plot, which was to shake
the Autocracy to its foundations, and, as a last resource, the CZAR,
who had been introduced to HOLES by OLGA FIASKOFFSKAIA, the well-known
Russian Secret Agent at the Court of Lisbon, had appealed to the
famous detective to lend his aid in discovering the authors of a crime
which was beginning to turn the great white CZAR into ridicule in all
the bazaars of Central Asia. HOLES, whose great mind had been lying
fallow for some little time, had immediately consented; and the last
I had seen of him was two months before the period at which this story
opens, when I had said good-bye to him at Charing-Cross Station.
As for myself, I was spending a week in a farmhouse situated close to
the village of Blobley-in-the-Marsh. Three miles from the gates of the
farmhouse lay Fourcastle Towers, the ancestral mansion of Rear-Admiral
the Duke of DUMPSHIRE, the largest and strangest landowner of the
surrounding district. I had a nodding acquaintance with His Grace,
whom I had once attended for scarlatina when he was a midshipman.
Since that time, however, I had seen very little of him, and, to tell
the truth, I had made no great effort to improve the acquaintance. The
Duke, one of the haughtiest members of our blue-blooded aristocracy,
had been called by his naval duties to all parts of the habitable
globe; I had steadily pursued my medical studies, and, except for the
biennial visit which etiquette demanded, I had seen little or nothing
of the Duke. My stay at the farmhouse was for purposes of rest. I had
been overworked, that old tulwar wound, the only memento of the Afghan
Campaign, had been troubling me, and I was glad to be able to throw
off my cares and my black coat, and to revel for a week in the rustic
and unconventional simplicity of Wurzelby Farm.
One evening, two days after my arrival, I was sitting in the kitchen
close to the fire, which, like myself, was smoking. For greater
comfort I had put on my old mess-jacket. The winter wind was whistling
outside, but besides that only the ticking of the kitchen clock
disturbed my meditations. I was just thinking how I should begin my
article on Modern Medicine for the _Fortnightly Review_, when a slight
cough at my elbow caused me to turn round. Beside me stood PICKLOCK
HOLES, wrapped in a heavy, close-fitting fur _moujik_. He was the
first to speak.
[Illustration: "Beside me stood Picklock Holes, wrapped in a heavy,
close-fitting fur _moujik_."]
"You seem surprised to see me," he said. "Well, perhaps that is
natural; but really, my dear fellow, you might employ your time to
better purpose than in trying to guess the number of words in the
first leading article in the _Times_ of the day before yesterday."