Sherlock Holmes complete collection by sir arthur conan doyle

THE SIGN OF FOUR: Chapter 3 IN QUEST OF A SOLUTION

IT WAS half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, andin excellent spirits, a mood which in his case alternated with fits of theblackest depression."There is no great mystery in this matter," he said, taking the cup of teawhich I had poured out for him; "the facts appear to admit of only oneexplanation.""What! you have solved it already?""Well, that would be too much to say. I have discovered a suggestivefact, that is all. It is, however, very suggestive. The details are still to beadded. I have just found, on consulting the back files of the Times, thatMajor Sholto, of Upper Norwood, late of the Thirty-fourth BombayInfantry, died upon the twenty-eighth of April, 1882.""I may be very obtuse, Holmes, but I fail to see what this suggests.""No? You surprise me. Look at it in this way, then. Captain Morstandisappears. The only person in London whom he could have visited isMajor Sholto. Major Sholto denies having heard that he was in London.Four years later Sholto dies. Within a week of his death Captain Morstan'sdaughter receives a valuable present, which is repeated from year to yearand now culminates in a letter which describes her as a wronged woman.What wrong can it refer to except this deprivation of her father? And whyshould the presents begin immediately after Sholto's death unless it is thatSholto's heir knows something of the mystery and desires to makecompensation? Have you any alternative theory which will meet thefacts?""But what a strange compensation! And how strangely made! Why,too, should he write a letter now, rather than six years ago? Again, theletter speaks of giving her justice. What justice can she have? It is toomuch to suppose that her father is still alive. There is no other injustice inher case that you know of.""There are difficulties; there are certainly difficulties," said SherlockHolmes pensively; "but our expedition of to-night will solve them all. Ah,here is a [98] four-wheeler, and Miss Morstan is inside. Are you all ready?Then we had better go down, for it is a little past the hour."I picked up my hat and my heaviest stick, but I observed that Holmestook his revolver from his drawer and slipped it into his pocket. It wasclear that he thought that our night's work might be a serious one.Miss Morstan was muffled in a dark cloak, and her sensitive face wascomposed but pale. She must have been more than woman if she did notfeel some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were embarking, yet her self-control was perfect, and she readily answered thefew additional questions which Sherlock Holmes put to her."Major Sholto was a very particular friend of Papa's," she said. "Hisletters were full of allusions to the major. He and Papa were in commandof the troops at the Andaman Islands, so they were thrown a great dealtogether. By the way, a curious paper was found in Papa's desk which noone could understand. I don't suppose that it is of the slightestimportance, but I thought you might care to see it, so I brought it with me.It is here."Holmes unfolded the paper carefully and smoothed it out upon hisknee. He then very methodically examined it all over with his double lens."It is paper of native Indian manufacture," he remarked. "It has at sometime been pinned to a board. The diagram upon it appears to be a plan ofpart of a large building with numerous halls, corridors, and passages. Atone point is a small cross done in red ink, and above it is '3.37 from left,'in faded pencil-writing. In the left-hand corner is a curious hieroglyphiclike four crosses in a line with their arms touching. Beside it is written, invery rough and coarse characters, 'The sign of the four-Jonathan Small,Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, Dost Akbar.' No, I confess that I do notsee how this bears upon the matter. Yet it is evidently a document ofimportance. It has been kept carefully in a pocketbook, for the one side isas clean as the other.""It was in his pocketbook that we found it.""Preserve it carefully, then, Miss Morstan, for it may prove to be of useto us. I begin to suspect that this matter may turn out to be much deeperand more subtle than I at first supposed. I must reconsider my ideas."He leaned back in the cab, and I could see by his drawn brow and hisvacant eye that he was thinking intently. Miss Morstan and I chatted in anundertone about our present expedition and its possible outcome, but ourcompanion maintained his impenetrable reserve until the end of ourjourney.It was a September evening and not yet seven o'clock, but the day hadbeen a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city.Mud-coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down theStrand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw afeeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare fromthe shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air and threw amurky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, tomy mind, something eerie and ghostlike in the endless procession of faceswhich flitted across these narrow bars of light-sad faces and glad,haggard and merry. Like all humankind, they flitted from the gloom intothe light and so back into the gloom once more. I am not subject toimpressions, but the dull, heavy evening, with the strange business uponwhich we were engaged, combined to make me nervous and depressed. Icould see from Miss Morstan's manner that she was suffering from thesame feeling. Holmes alone [99] could rise superior to petty influences.He held his open notebook upon his knee, and from time to time he jotteddown figures and memoranda in the light of his pocket-lantern.At the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the side-entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and four-wheelerswere rattling up, discharging their cargoes of shirt-fronted men andbeshawled, bediamonded women. We had hardly reached the third pillar,which was our rendezvous, before a small, dark, brisk man in the dress ofa coachman accosted us."Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?" he asked."I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends," said she.He bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes upon us."You will excuse me, miss," he said with a certain dogged manner,"but I was to ask you to give me your word that neither of yourcompanions is a police-officer.""I give you my word on that," she answered.He gave a shrill whistle, on which a street Arab led across a fourwheeler and opened the door. The man who had addressed us mounted tothe box, while we took our places inside. We had hardly done so beforethe driver whipped up his horse, and we plunged away at a furious pacethrough the foggy streets.The situation was a curious one. We were driving to an unknown place,on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a completehoax-which was an inconceivable hypothesis-or else we had good reasonto think that important issues might hang upon our journey. MissMorstan's demeanour was as resolute and collected as ever. Iendeavoured to cheer and amuse her by reminiscences of my adventuresin Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at oursituation and so curious as to our destination that my stories were slightlyinvolved. To this day she declares that I told her one moving anecdote asto how a musket looked into my tent at the dead of night, and how I fireda double-barrelled tiger cub at it. At first I had some idea as to thedirection in which we were driving; but soon, what with our pace, the fog, and my own limited knowledge of London, I lost my bearings and knewnothing save that we seemed to be going a very long way. SherlockHolmes was never at fault, however, and he muttered the names as thecab rattled through squares and in and out by tortuous by-streets."Rochester Row," said he. "Now Vincent Square. Now we come out onthe Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side apparently.Yes, I thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch glimpses ofthe river."We did indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames, with thelamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on andwas soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon the other side."Wordsworth Road," said my companion. "Priory Road. Lark HallLane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbour Lane. Our quest doesnot appear to take us to very fashionable regions."We had indeed reached a questionable and forbidding neighbourhood.Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare andtawdry brilliancy of public-houses at the corner. Then came rows of twostoried villas, each with a fronting of miniature garden, and then againinterminable lines of new, staring brick buildings-the monster tentacleswhich the giant city was throwing out into the country. At last the cabdrew up at the third house in a new terrace. None of the other houses wereinhabited, and that at which we stopped was as dark as its neighbours,save for a single glimmer in the kitchen-window. On our [100] knocking,however, the door was instantly thrown open by a Hindoo servant, clad ina yellow turban, white loose-fitting clothes, and a yellow sash. There wassomething strangely incongruous in this Oriental figure framed in thecommonplace doorway of a third-rate suburban dwelling-house."The sahib awaits you," said he, and even as he spoke, there came ahigh, piping voice from some inner room."Show them in to me, khitmutgar," it said. "Show them straight in tome."