The Sherlock Holmes Experience: The Man With The Twisted Lip, The Adventure Of The Speckled Band (Ox

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Late at night, Kate Whitney, a friend of Dr. Watson 's wife, calls on them. Her husband Isa has been absent for several days. Frantic with worry, she begs Dr. Watson to fetch him home from the opium den where he goes. The case involves Mr. Clair, a prosperous, respectable, and punctual man, who is missing. His family's home is in the country, but he visits London every day on business matters. One day when Mr. Clair was in London, Mrs. Clair also went to London separately. She happened to pass down Upper Swandam Lane, a "vile alley" near the London docks, where the opium den is located.

Glancing up, she saw her husband at a second-floor window of the opium den. He vanished from the window immediately, and Mrs. Clair was sure that there was something wrong. She tried to enter the building, but her way was blocked by the opium den's owner, a lascar. She fetched the police, but they did not find Mr. The room behind the window was the lair of a dirty, disfigured beggar known to the police as Hugh Boone.

The police were about to put her story down as a mistake of some kind when Mrs. Clair noticed a box of wooden toy bricks that her husband said he would buy for their son. A further search turned up some of St. Later, his coat, with the pockets stuffed with hundreds of pennies and halfpennies , was found on the bank of Thames , just below the building's back window.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Hugh Boone was arrested at once, but would say nothing, except to deny any knowledge of St. He also resisted any attempt to make him wash. Holmes was initially quite convinced that St. Clair had been murdered, and that Boone was involved. Thus his investigation of the den in disguise. He and Watson return to St. Clair's home, to a surprise.

It is several days after the disappearance, but that day Mrs. Clair had received a letter from her husband in his own handwriting, with his wedding ring enclosed, telling her not to worry. This forces Holmes to reconsider his conclusions, leading him eventually to an extraordinary solution. Holmes and Watson go the police station where Hugh Boone is held; Holmes brings a bath sponge in a Gladstone bag. Filled with the most maddening doubts and fears, she rushed down the lane and, by rare good-fortune, met in Fresno Street a number of constables with an inspector, all on their way to their beat.

The inspector and two men accompanied her back, and in spite of the continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their way to the room in which Mr. Clair had last been seen. There was no sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that floor there was no one to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who, it seems, made his home there. Both he and the lascar stoutly swore that no one else had been in the front room during the afternoon. So determined was their denial that the inspector was staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs.

Clair had been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. It was the toy which he had promised to bring home. The rooms were carefully examined, and results all pointed to an abominable crime. The front room was plainly furnished as a sitting-room and led into a small bedroom, which looked out upon [ ] the back of one of the wharves.

Between the wharf and the bedroom window is a narrow strip, which is dry at low tide but is covered at high tide with at least four and a half feet of water. The bedroom window was a broad one and opened from below. On examination traces of blood were to be seen upon the window-sill, and several scattered drops were visible upon the wooden floor of the bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the front room were all the clothes of Mr. Clair, with the exception of his coat. There were no signs of violence upon any of these garments, and there were no other traces of Mr.

Out of the window he must apparently have gone, for no other exit could be discovered, and the ominous bloodstains upon the sill gave little promise that he could save himself by swimming, for the tide was at its very highest at the moment of the tragedy. The lascar was known to be a man of the vilest antecedents, but as, by Mrs.

Logging out…

Now for the sinister cripple who lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was certainly the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. His name is Hugh Boone, and his hideous face is one which is familiar to every man who goes much to the City.

He is a professional beggar, though in order to avoid the police regulations he pretends to a small trade in wax vestas. Some little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the left-hand side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in the wall. Here it is that this creature takes his daily seat, cross-legged, with his tiny stock of matches on his lap, and as he is a piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends into the greasy leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him.

I have watched the fellow more than once before ever I thought of making his professional acquaintance, and I have been surprised at the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants, and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by.

This is the man whom we now learn to have been the lodger at the opium den, and to have been the last man to see the gentleman of whom we are in quest. Surely your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that weakness in one limb is often compensated for by exceptional strength in the others.

Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the window, and [ ] she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her presence could be of no help to them in their investigations. Inspector Barton, who had charge of the case, made a very careful examination of the premises, but without finding anything which threw any light upon the matter. One mistake had been made in not arresting Boone instantly, as he was allowed some few minutes during which he might have communicated with his friend the lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he was seized and searched, without anything being found which could incriminate him.

There were, it is true, some blood-stains upon his right shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his ring-finger, which had been cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from there, adding that he had been to the window not long before, and that the stains which had been observed there came doubtless from the same source.

He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr. Clair and swore that the presence of the clothes in his room was as much a mystery to him as to the police. He was removed, loudly protesting, to the police-station, while the inspector remained upon the premises in the hope that the ebbing tide might afford some fresh clue. It was Neville St. Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded.

And what do you think they found in the pockets? It was no wonder that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a human body is a different matter. There is a fierce eddy between the wharf and the house. It seemed likely enough that the weighted coat had remained when the stripped body had been sucked away into the river.

Would the body be dressed in a coat alone? Suppose that this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the window, there is no human eye which could have seen the deed. What would he do then? It would of course instantly strike him that he must get rid of the tell-tale garments. He would seize the coat, then, and be in the act of throwing it out, when it would occur to him that it would swim and not sink.

He has little time, for he has heard the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard from his lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He throws it out, and would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the window when the police appeared.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the station, but it could not be shown that there had ever before been anything against him. He had for years been known as a professional beggar, but his life appeared to have been a very quiet and innocent one. I confess that I cannot recall any case within my experience which looked at the first glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties. Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.

See that light among the trees? Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal, and you may rest assured that she will have nothing but a welcome for my friend and colleague. I hate to meet her, Watson, when I have no news of her husband. As we approached, the door flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at her neck and wrists.

She stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing question. You must be weary, for you have had a long day. He has been of most vital use to me in several of my cases, and a lucky chance has made it possible for me to bring him out and associate him with this investigation. If I can be of any assistance, either to you or to my friend here, I shall be indeed happy. I am not hysterical, nor given to fainting.

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I simply wish to hear your real, real opinion. Sherlock Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by the question. Holmes, you will be good enough to explain how it is that I have received a letter from him to-day. I had left my chair and was gazing at it over his shoulder. The envelope was a very coarse one and was stamped with the Gravesend postmark and with the date of that very day, or rather of the day before, for it was considerably after midnight. The rest is of the grayish colour, which shows that blotting-paper has been used.

If it had been written straight off, and then blotted, none would be of a deep black shade. This man has written the name, and there has then been a pause before he wrote the address, which can only mean that he was not familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles. Let us now see the letter. It is very unlike his usual writing, and yet I know it well. All will come well. There is a huge error which it may take some little time to rectify. Posted to-day in Gravesend by a man with a dirty thumb.

And the flap has been gummed, if I am not very much in error, by a person who had been chewing tobacco. Neville wrote those words. Clair, the clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the danger is over. The ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from him.

It may, however, have been written on Monday and only posted to-day. I know that all is well with him. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I should know if evil came upon him. On the very day that I saw him last he cut himself in the bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room rushed upstairs instantly with the utmost certainty that something had happened. Do you think that I would respond to such a trifle and yet be ignorant of his death? And in this letter you certainly have a very strong piece of evidence to corroborate your view.

But if your husband is alive and able to write letters, why should he remain away from you? He waved his hands. Astonishment at the unexpected sight of you might cause him to throw up his hands? You did not see anyone else in the room? Your husband, as far as you could see, had his ordinary clothes on?

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I distinctly saw his bare throat. Those are the principal points about which I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little supper and then retire, for we may have a very busy day to-morrow. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient.

It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features.

So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out. As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was stirring.

It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly finished when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was putting in the horse. I deserve to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the key of the affair now. Come on, my boy, and we shall see whether it will not fit the lock. In the road stood our horse and trap, with the half-clad stable-boy waiting at the head. We both sprang in, and away we dashed down the London Road.

A few country carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, [ ] but the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as some city in a dream. Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the river, and dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the right and found ourselves in Bow Street.

Sherlock Holmes was well known to the force, and the two constables at the door saluted him. Step into my room here. The inspector sat down at his desk. He was brought up and remanded for further inquiries. You have him here? But he is a dirty scoundrel. Well, when once his case has been settled, he will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you saw him, you would agree with me that he needed it.

That is easily done. You can leave your bag. Come this way, if you please. The prisoner lay with his face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up one side of the upper lip, so that three teeth were exposed in a perpetual snarl.

A shock of very bright red hair grew low over his eyes and forehead. The sleeper half turned, and then settled down once more into a deep slumber. Clair, of Lee, in the county of Kent. Gone was the coarse brown tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face! A twitch brought away the tangled red hair, and there, sitting up in his bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and smooth-skinned, rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy bewilderment.

Then suddenly realizing the exposure, he broke into a scream and threw himself down with his face to the pillow.

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