Chapter 1

Introduction

In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity and in the reluctance which Mr. Holmes has shown to the continued publication of his experiences. So long as he was in actual professional practice the records of his successes were of some practical value to him, but since he has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs, notoriety has become hateful to him, and he has peremptorily requested that his wishes in this matter should be strictly observed.

To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation. It was indeed this attitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not any lack of interesting material which has caused me of late years to lay few of my records before the public.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes was always of opinion that I should eventually publish the singular facts connected with this case, if only to dispel once for all the ugly rumours which some years ago agitated the world and were echoed in London. There were, however, certain obstacles in the way, and the true history of this curious case remained entombed in the tin box which contains so many records of my friend’s adventures. It was, then, with considerable surprise that I received a telegram from Homes last Tuesday - he has never been known to write where a telegram would serve - in the following terms:

Why not tell them of the secret treaty, the French Gold and the Great War - most important case I have mishandled.

I have no idea what sweep of memory had brought the matter fresh to his mind, or what freak had caused him to desire that I should recount it; but I hasten, before another cancelling telegram may arrive, to hunt out the notes which give me the exact details of the case and to lay the narrative before my readers. Now I have at last obtained permission to ventilate the facts which formed the last case handled by Holmes before his retirement from practice. Even now a certain reticence and discretion have to be observed in laying the matter before the public. My participation in some of his adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion and reticence upon me. It is only appropriate that this long series of episodes should culminate in the most important international case which he has ever been called upon to handle.

It was July 1914 - the most terrible time in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God’s curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air. That evening it was quite dark by the time I reached home. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining brightly, and below, the lights of the great city twinkled and glimmered on the winding river in the night. My companion’s book and pipe lay by his chair, but he had disappeared. I looked about in the hope of seeing a note, but there was none.

The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me - many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead - but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.

“I suppose that Mr. Sherlock Holmes has gone out,” I said to Mrs. Hudson as she came up to lower the blinds.

“No, sir. He has gone to his room, sir. Do you know, sir,” sinking her voice into an impressive whisper, “I am afraid for his health!”

Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience. His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the worst tenant in London. On the other hand, his payments were princely. I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him.

The landlady stood in the deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem. She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women. He disliked and distrusted the sex, but he was always a chivalrous opponent. Knowing how genuine was her regard for him, I listened earnestly to her as she told me of the sad condition to which my poor friend was reduced.

“Well, he’s that strange, sir. After you was gone he walked and he walked, up and down, and up and down, until I was weary of the sound of his footstep. Then I heard him talking to himself and muttering, and every time the bell rang out he came on the stairhead, with ‘What is that, Mrs. Hudson?’ And now he has slammed off to his room, but I can hear him walking away the same as ever. I hope he’s not going to be ill, sir. I ventured to say something to him about cooling medicine, but he turned on me, sir, with such a look that I don’t know how ever I got out of the room.”

“I do not think that you have any cause to be uneasy, Mrs. Hudson,” I answered. “I have seen him like this before. He has some small matter upon his mind which makes him restless. You know his way when he is keen on a case.”

“Yes, sir, he is very hard at it just now. He gets paler and thinner, and he eats nothing. ‘When will you be pleased to dine, Mr. Holmes?’ I asked. ‘Within the week,’ he said.”

I had tried to speak lightly to our worthy landlady, but I was myself somewhat uneasy when through the long night I still from time to time heard the dull sound of his tread, and knew how his keen spirit was chafing.

It was at a time Holmes’s iron constitution again showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own. The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself took the faintest interest, for his mental detachment was absolute. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes was his power of throwing his brain out of action and switching all his thoughts on to lighter things whenever he had convinced himself that he could no longer work to advantage. All the more reason why his agitation made me uneasy.

I do not know how far Sherlock Holmes took any sleep that night, but when I came down to breakfast I found him pale and harassed, his bright eyes the brighter for the dark shadows round them. The carpet round his chair was littered with cigarette-ends. An open letter lay upon the table. My friend had no breakfast himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition. “At present I cannot spare energy and nerve force for digestion,” he would say in answer to my medical remonstrances. I was not surprised, therefore, when this morning he left his meal untouched.

It was a blazing hot day. He was a late riser, as a rule, and Baker Street was like an oven. The glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the house across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs of winter. Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes was reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship yet I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.

“I am inclined to think-” said I.

“I should do so,” Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.

I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I will admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. “Really, Holmes,” said I severely, “you are a little trying at times.”

He was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any immediate answer to my remonstrance. He leaned upon his hand, with his untasted breakfast before him, and he stared at the slip of paper which he had drawn from its envelope. Then he took the envelope itself, held it up to the light, and carefully studied both the exterior and the flap.

“There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues.”

He was speaking to himself rather than to me; but my vexation disappeared in the interest which the words awakened.

“The address, you observe is printed in rough characters. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel.”

“How in the world can you say that? We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork,” said I.

“Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else.

“Halloa! Halloa! What’s this? It is Petrovic’s writing,” said he thoughtfully. “I can hardly doubt that it is Petrovic’s writing, though I have seen it only twice before. The Cyrillic e with the peculiar top flourish is distinctive. But if it is Petrovic, then it must be something of the very first importance.”

“Who then is Petrovic?” I asked.

“Petrovic, Watson, is a nom-de-plume, a mere identification mark; but behind it lies a shifty and evasive personality. In a former letter he frankly informed me that the name was not his own, and defied me ever to trace him among the teeming millions of this great city. Petrovic is important, not for himself, but for the man with whom he is in touch. Picture to yourself the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion - anything that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but sinister - in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. You have heard me speak of Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević also known as Apis?”

“The leader of the group of Servian officers who brutally assassinated and then mutilated the bodies of the king and queen of Servia at Belgrade in 1903?”

“The very same.”

“The infamous criminal, as notorious-”

“My blushes, Watson!” Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.

“I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public.”

“A touch! A distinct touch!” cried Holmes. “You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Dimitrijević a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law - and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer since the death of Professor Moriarty, the organiser of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which may make or marr the destiny of nations - that’s the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s pension as a solatium for his wounded character. The Servian parliament described Dimitrijević as “the saviour of the fatherland” and he was appointed Professor of Tactics at their Military Academy. Is this a man to traduce? Foul-mouthed doctor and slandered Colonel - such would be your respective roles! That’s genius, Watson. But if I am spared by lesser men, our day will surely come.”

“May I be there to see!” I exclaimed devoutly. “But you were speaking of this man.”

“Ah, yes - the so-called Petrovic is a link in the chain some little way from its great attachment. Petrovic is not quite a sound link - between ourselves. He is the only flaw in that chain so far as I have been able to test it.”

“But no chain is stronger than its weakest link.”

“Exactly, my dear Watson! Hence the extreme importance of Petrovic. Led on by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged by the judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value - that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication is of the nature that I indicate.”

Holmes flattened out the paper upon his unused plate. I rose and, leaning over him, stared down at the curious inscription, which ran as follows:

534 C2 13 1 293 31 4 10

“What do you make of it, Holmes?”

“It is obviously an attempt to convey secret information.”

“But what is the use of a cipher message without the cipher?”

“In this instance, none at all.”

“Why do you say ‘in this instance’?”

“Because there are many ciphers which I would read as easily as I do the apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it. But this is different. It is clearly a reference to the words in a page of some book. Until I am told which page and which book I am powerless.”

“Then why has he not indicated the book?”

“Your native shrewdness, my dear Watson, that innate cunning which is the delight of your friends, would surely prevent you from inclosing cipher and message in the same envelope. Should it miscarry, you are undone. As it is, both have to go wrong before any harm comes from it. Our second post is now overdue, and I shall be surprised if it does not bring us either a further letter of explanation, or, as is more probable, the very volume to which these figures refer.”

Holmes’s calculation was fulfilled within a few minutes by the appearance of Billy, the page, with the very letter which we were expecting.

“The same writing,” remarked Holmes, as he opened the envelope, “and actually signed,” he added in an exultant voice as he unfolded the epistle. “Come, we are getting on, Watson.” His brow clouded, however, as he glanced over the contents.

“Dear me, this is disappointing! I fear, Watson, that all our expectations come to nothing. I trust that the man Petrovic will come to no harm.”

“DEAR MR. HOLMES [he says]:

“I will go no further in this matter. It is too dangerous - he suspects me. I can see that he suspects me. He came to me quite unexpectedly after I had actually addressed this envelope with the intention of sending you the key to the cipher. I was able to cover it up. If he had seen it, it would have gone hard with me. But I read suspicion in his eyes. Please burn the cipher message, which can now be of no use to you.

“Petrovic.”

Holmes sat for some little time twisting this letter between his fingers, and frowning, as he stared into the distance.

“After all,” he said at last, “there may be nothing in it. It may be only his guilty conscience. Knowing himself to be a traitor, he may have read the accusation in the other’s eyes.”

“The other being, I presume, Apis.”

“No less! When any of that party talk about ‘He’ you know whom they mean. There is one predominant ‘He’ for all of them.”

“But what can he do?”

“Hum! That is a large question. When you have one of the first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities. Anyhow, Friend Petrovic is evidently scared out of his senses - kindly compare the writing in the note to that upon its envelope; which was done, he tells us, before this ill-omened visit. The one is clear and firm. The other hardly legible.”

“Why did he write at all? Why did he not simply drop it?”

“Because he feared I would make some inquiry after him in that case, and possibly bring trouble on him.”

“No doubt,” said I. “Of course.” I had picked up the original cipher message and was bending my brows over it. “It is maddening to think that an important secret may lie here on this slip of paper, and that it is beyond human power to penetrate it.”

Sherlock Holmes had pushed away his untasted breakfast and lit the unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest meditations. “I wonder!” said he, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. “Perhaps there are points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the problem in the light of pure reason. This man’s reference is to a book. That is our point of departure.”

“A somewhat vague one.”

“Let us see then if we can narrow it down. As I focus my mind upon it, it seems rather less impenetrable. What indications have we as to this book?”

“None.”

“Well, well, it is surely not quite so bad as that. The cipher message begins with a large 534, does it not? We may take it as a working hypothesis that 534 is the particular page to which the cipher refers. So our book has already become a LARGE book, which is surely something gained. What other indications have we as to the nature of this large book? The next sign is C2. What do you make of that, Watson?”

“Chapter the second, no doubt.”

“Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the page be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.”

“Column!” I cried.

“Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. If it is not column, then I am very much deceived. So now, you see, we begin to visualize a large book printed in double columns which are each of a considerable length, since one of the words is numbered in the document as the two hundred and ninety-third. Have we reached the limits of what reason can supply?”

“I fear that we have.”

“Surely you do yourself an injustice. One more coruscation, my dear Watson - yet another brain-wave! Had the volume been an unusual one, he would have sent it to me. Instead of that, he had intended, before his plans were nipped, to send me the clue in this envelope. He says so in his note. This would seem to indicate that the book is one which he thought I would have no difficulty in finding for myself. He had it - and he imagined that I would have it, too. In short, Watson, it is a very common book.”

“What you say certainly sounds plausible.”

“So we have contracted our field of search to a large book, printed in double columns and in common use.”

“The Bible!” I cried triumphantly.

“Good, Watson, good! But not, if I may say so, quite good enough! Even if I accepted the compliment for myself I could hardly name any volume which would be less likely to lie at the elbow of one of Apis’ associates. Besides, the editions of Holy Writ are so numerous that he could hardly suppose that two copies would have the same pagination. This is clearly a book which is standardised. He knows for certain that his page 534 will exactly agree with my page 534.”

“But very few books would correspond with that.”

“Exactly. Therein lies our salvation. Our search is narrowed down to standardised books which anyone may be supposed to possess.”

“Bradshaw!”

“There are difficulties, Watson. The vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for the same reason. What then is left?”

“An almanac!”

“Excellent, Watson! I am very much mistaken if you have not touched the spot. An almanac! Let us consider the claims of Whitaker’s Almanac. It is in common use. It has the requisite number of pages. It is in double column. Though reserved in its earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I remember right, quite garrulous towards the end.” He picked the volume from his desk. “Here is page 534, column two, a substantial block of print dealing, I perceive, with the trade and resources of British India. Jot down the words, Watson! Number thirteen is ‘Mahratta.’ Not, I fear, a very auspicious beginning. Number one is ‘Government’; which at least makes sense, though the Mahratta government is somewhat irrelevant to ourselves, Apis and the Black Hand. Now let us try again. What does the Mahratta government do? Alas! the next word is ‘pig’s-bristles.’ We are undone, my good Watson! It is finished!”

He had spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy eyebrows bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless and unhappy. A long silence was broken by a sudden exclamation from Holmes, who dashed at a cupboard, from which he emerged with a second yellow-covered volume in his hand.

“We pay the price, Watson, for being too up-to-date!” he cried. “We are before our time, and suffer the usual penalties. Being more methodical, we have properly laid in the new almanac. It is possible that Petrovic took his message from the old one. No doubt he would have told us so had his letter of explanation been written. Now let us see what page 534 has in store for us. Number thirteen is ‘watch,’ which is much more promising. Number one is ‘the’-’Watch the’ - Holmes’s eyes were gleaming with excitement, and his thin, nervous fingers twitched as he counted the words-”gold. Ha! Ha! Capital! Put that down, Watson. ‘Watch the gold - in - number - could.’ We were good till the last.”

“But the last, the number 10, is underlined like no other.”

“Correct again Watson! Brilliant. It is meant itself as the number 10. ‘Watch the gold in number 10.’ There, Watson! What do you think of pure reason and its fruit? If the green-grocer had such a thing as a laurel wreath, I should send Billy round for it.”

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. “The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits in a very precise fashion.”

“Yes,” I answered, laughing. “It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis.”

Holmes grinned at the last item. “Well,” he said, “I say now, as I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which has been submitted to us, we need certainly to muster all our resources.”

I was staring at the strange message which I had scrawled, as he deciphered it, upon a sheet of foolscap on my knee.

“What a queer, scrambling way of expressing his meaning!” said I.

“On the contrary, he has done quite remarkably well,” said Holmes. “When you search a single column for words with which to express your meaning, you can hardly expect to get everything you want. You are bound to leave something to the intelligence of your correspondent. The purport is perfectly clear. Some deviltry is intended against the gold at number 10. There is our result - and a very workmanlike little bit of analysis it was!”

“But Holmes, it still means nothing to me. What gold is there at what number 10?”

“It can only refer to 10 Downing Street, Watson, the headquarters of the British Government and the official residence and office of the First Lord of the Treasury. It is where our gold reserves are stored. There is little we can do about it just now. However, I will make some inquiries.”

Holmes had the impersonal joy of the true artist in his better work, even as he mourned darkly when it fell below the high level to which he aspired. He was still chuckling over his success when the door swung open into the room.

“By Jove! Here comes something else to break our dead monotony.”

It was the maid with a telegram this time. Holmes tore it open and burst out laughing.

“Well, well! What next?” said he. “Brother Mycroft is coming round.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Why not? It is as if you met a tram-car coming down a country lane. Mycroft as you know has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club, Whitehall - that is his cycle. He has an extraordinary faculty for figures, and audits the books in some of the government departments. Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner into Whitehall every morning and back every evening. From year’s end to year’s end he takes no other exercise, and is seen nowhere else, except only in the Diogenes Club, which is just opposite his rooms. Only twice has he been here, you will recall. What upheaval can possibly have derailed him this time?”

“Does he not explain?”

Holmes handed me his brother’s telegram.

Must see you over Wilson. Coming at once.

MYCROFT

“What on earth can it mean? Who is Wilson, and what is he to Mycroft?” mused Holmes out loud.

“I have it,” I cried, and plunged among the litter of morning papers I had left upon the sofa. “Yes, yes, here he is, sure enough!” I read aloud, “At around midnight yesterday, Field-Marshal Henry Wilson was found dead on the steps leading up to his front door.”

Holmes sat up at attention, his pipe halfway to his lips.

“This must be serious, Watson. A death which has caused my brother to alter his habits can be no ordinary one. A distinguished soldier. Behold the link with Brother Mycroft! That Mycroft should break out in this erratic fashion! A planet might as well leave its orbit. By the way, do you recall his last visit?”

I had, of course, some recollection of the Adventures of the Greek Interpreter and of the Bruce Partington Plans.

“You at first told me that Mycroft had some small office under the British government.”

Holmes chuckled.

“I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet when one talks of high matters of state. You were right in thinking that he was under the British government. I was also right in a sense when I said that occasionally he IS the British government. Mycroft draws four hundred and fifty pounds a year, remains a subordinate, has no ambitions of any kind, will receive neither honour nor title, and remains the most indispensable man in the country.”

“Well, his position is assuredly unique.”

“He has made it for himself. There has never been anything like it before, nor will be again. As you may have observed, he has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. He is my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. What is to me a means of livelihood is to him the merest hobby of a dilettante. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for his particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, Belgium, France, Austria-Hungary and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant. Again and again his word has decided the national policy. He lives in it. He thinks of nothing else save when, as an intellectual exercise, he unbends if I call upon him and ask him to advise me on one of my little problems. But Jupiter is descending to-day. What on earth can it mean?”

“No data yet,” I answered. “I have heard you say, ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.’”

“Good!” said Holmes. “Excellent! Really, Watson, you excel yourself,” said he, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. “I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”