(_By Cunnin Toil._)
No. III.--LADY HILDA'S MYSTERY.
A day or two after the stirring events which I have related as taking
place at Blobley-in-the-Marsh, and of which, it will be remembered,
I was myself an astonished spectator, I happened to be travelling,
partly for business, partly for pleasure, through one of the most
precipitous of the inaccessible mountain-ranges of Bokhara. It is
unnecessary for me to state in detail the reasons that had induced
me once more to go so far a-field. One of the primary elements in a
physician's success in his career is, that he should be able to guard,
under a veil of impenetrable silence, the secrets confided to his
care. It cannot, therefore, be expected of me that I should reveal why
his Eminence the Cardinal DACAPO, one of the most illustrious of the
Princes of the Church, desired that I should set off to Bokhara. When
the memoirs of the present time come to be published, it is possible
that no chapter of them will give rise to bitterer discussion than
that which narrates the interview of the redoubtable Cardinal with the
humble author of this story. Enough, however, of this, at present. On
some future occasion much more will have to be said about it. I
cannot endure to be for ever the scape-goat of the great, and, if the
Cardinal persists in his refusal to do me justice, I shall have, in
the last resort, to tell the whole truth about one of the strangest
affairs that ever furnished gossip for all the most brilliant and
aristocratic tea-tables of the Metropolis.
I was walking along the narrow mountain path that leads from Balkh
to Samarcand. In my right hand I held my trusty kirghiz, which I had
sharpened only that very morning. My head was shaded from the blazing
sun by a broad native mollah, presented to me by the Khan of BOKHARA,
with whom I had spent the previous day in his Highness's magnificent
marble and alabaster palace. As I walked I could not but be sensible
of a curiously strained and tense feeling in the air--the sort
of atmosphere that seems to be, to me at least, the invariable
concomitant of country-house guessing-games. I was at a loss to
account for this most curious phenomenon, when, looking up suddenly,
I saw on the top of an elevated crag in front of me the solitary and
impassive figure of PICKLOCK HOLES, who was at that moment engaged on
one of his most brilliant feats of induction. He evinced no surprise
whatever at seeing me. A cold smile lingered for a moment on his firm
and secretive lips, and he laid the tips of his fingers together in
his favourite attitude of deep consideration.
[Illustration: "Holes opened it, and read it."]
"How are you, my dear POTSON?" he began. "What? not well? Dear me,
dear me, what can it mean? And yet I don't think it can have been the
fifth glass of sherbet which you took with the fourteenth wife of the
KHAN. No, I don't think it can have been that."
"HOLES, you extraordinary creature," I broke in; "what on earth
made you think that I drank five glasses of sherbert with the KHAN'S
fourteenth wife?"
"Nothing simpler, my dear fellow. Just before I saw you a native
Bokharan goose ran past this rock, making, as it passed, a strange
hissing noise, exactly like the noise made by sherbert when immersed
in water. Five minutes elapsed, and then you appeared. I watched you
carefully. Your lips moved, as lips move only when they pronounce the
word fourteen. You then smiled and scratched your face, from which
I immediately concluded you were thinking of a wife or wives. Do you
follow me?"
"Yes, I do, perfectly," I answered, overjoyed to be able to say so
without deviating from the truth; for in following his reasoning I
did not admit its accuracy. As to that I said nothing, for I had drunk
sherbert with no one, and consequently had not taken five glasses with
the fourteenth wife of the KHAN. Still, it was a glorious piece of
guess-work on the part of my matchless friend, and I expressed my
admiration for his powers in no measured terms.
"Perhaps," said HOLES, after a pause, "you are wondering why I am
here. I will tell you. You know Lady HILDA CARDAMUMS?"
"What, the third and loveliest daughter of the Marquis of SASSAFRAS?"
"The same. Two days ago she left her boudoir at Sassafras Court,
saying that she would return in a quarter of an hour. A quarter of an
hour elapsed, the Lady HILDA was still absent. The whole household was
plunged in grief, and every kind of surmise was indulged in to account
for the lovely girl's disappearance. Under these circumstances the
Marquis sent for me, and that," said HOLES, "is why I am here."
"But," I ventured to remark, "do you really expect to find Lady HILDA
here in Bokhara, on these inhospitable precipices, where even the
wandering Bactrian finds his footing insecure? Surely it cannot be
that you have tracked the Lady HILDA hither?"
"Tush," said HOLES, smiling in spite of himself at my vehemence.
"Why should she not be here? Listen. She was not at Sassafras Court.
Therefore, she must have been outside Sassafras Court. Now in Bokhara
_is_ outside Sassafras Court, or, to put it algebraically,
in Bokhara = outside Sassafras Court.
Substitute 'in Bokhara' for 'outside Sassafras Court,' and you get
this result--
'She must have been in Bokhara.'