The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventure of the Purple Hand

In the year 1890 I saw little of my friend, Sherlock Holmes. From time to time I was able to follow his progress in the columns of the daily press and he appeared from all accounts to be as busy as a man could wish to be, but I missed the close involvement with his cases that I had enjoyed before my marriage, and which a variety of circumstances, both on his side and on mine, now prevented. In one respect at least, however, I was fortunate: that on each of the few occasions I was able to renew our acquaintance, I gained a new story for my records which was the equal in interest of any which I had entered in my note-book in the days when we shared bachelor chambers in Baker Street. Holmes himself observed with amusement on more than one occasion that I was for him the stormy petrel of adventure, and if fate had indeed cast me in that role, I was not one to complain of the fact.

It was a gloriously sunny afternoon towards the end of June. I had had a busy day, but having no further calls upon my time I dismissed my cab in Portman Square and walked the short distance to my friend’s lodgings. He was not at home, but the landlady expected him back for tea, so I sat down to wait. I was not the only caller he had had that afternoon, I observed, for a card had been left upon the table, bearing the gilt inscription, ‘Star of Kandy Tea Company, 37A Crutched Friars; Mark Pringle, Proprietor.’ Across the reverse of the card was printed ‘The Company employs only one salesman: His name is Quality’ and beneath that, in pencil, ‘Vital to consult you. Will call back later’, to which the initials ‘M.P.’ were appended.

Holmes was not long in arriving and it was with evident pleasure that he greeted me. He seemed in high spirits and tossed across to me an old leather-bound volume he had just purchased at a shop in the Strand. It was a German book, a black-letter edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, its binding cracked and faded with age.

‘Printed at Mainz, some time in the sixteenth century,’ remarked my friend. ‘According to the bookseller, there is a curious error on page 348, where “honey” is for some unfathomable reason rendered as “rags”; but I know the man of old and there is no more barefaced rogue in the whole of London. He invents these freaks of printing himself, you see, to excuse his exorbitant prices, and in the hope of attracting the custom of those whose only interest is in such oddities and who are unlikely ever to actually read the books they buy from him. Unfortunately, he himself neither speaks nor reads any language but English and, like the crow in the fable, is evidently incapable of conceiving that anyone else can do what he cannot, so he was somewhat discomfited when I was able to point out to him that neither word occurs on the page in question. But it really is very good to see you, my dear fellow! Indeed, the arrival of a doctor in my consulting-rooms rather completes my cosmopolitan day, for my morning’s visitors, if you would believe it, were a Member of Parliament, a lighterman, a coal-heaver and a theologian!’

‘There is yet another,’ I remarked, indicating the card upon the table by the window.

‘Hum! Tea-merchant! Smoked a cigar while he was here. Has helped himself to a drink, too, I see! Why soda water, I wonder? Hum!’

‘No doubt a wealthy, comfortable, City type,’ I suggested with a chuckle, ‘who sells tea from the Orient, but has never been farther east than Ramsgate in his life and would not recognise a tea plant if one were growing in his own garden. It is not difficult to picture him sitting at that table an hour ago, a stout, florid-faced man, with a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other, the very picture of a well-fed, easy life. An impatient and possibly self-important fellow, too,’ I added, ‘if he could not wait for your return.’

‘There is such a type,’ replied Holmes, smiling, ‘but I very much fancy that Mr Pringle is not of it. If you were to dip your finger into this glass of soda water, Watson, you would taste upon your finger-end the unmistakable bitterness of quinine. What would that suggest to you, as a physician, bearing in mind that the man who has been dosing himself with it includes upon his visiting-card the name of Kandy, in Ceylon?’

‘Malaria!’

‘Precisely. Now, malaria is not contracted west of Ramsgate with any great frequency, as I’m sure you would agree, and nor are its unfortunate victims generally marked for their stoutness or their florid faces. Mr Pringle has evidently spent some time in Ceylon, where he has picked up this most tenacious of diseases, but whether it be his illness or some less tangible worry which disturbs him so today, we cannot tell.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You observed the used matches that he left us?’

‘I believe I saw one in the dish, with the remains of his cigar.’

‘Not one, Watson, but five; five matches for one cigar, mark you. Now, while there is some truth in the popular notion that the pleasure of a good cigar helps one to forget one’s troubles, it is also true that one must already be untroubled to some extent, in order to derive any pleasure from the cigar in the first place. Anyone who can let a cigar go out, not once, but four times, is very evidently not in the appropriate state of mind. He has also been pacing the floor and has dropped cigar-ash in several places, as you no doubt observed, which also indicates a mood of distraction.’

‘Perhaps he is simply careless,’ I suggested.

‘I think not, for you can see that where he noticed that he had dropped the ash – just by the corner of the hearth-rug – he has made some attempt to pick it up with his fingers. As to the impatience you ascribed to him, we cannot say; but it seems at least possible that he went out chiefly to get a little fresh air into his lungs, one of the unavoidable effects of quinine being, as you are aware, an unpleasant sensation of nausea.

‘You must admit, Watson,’ continued my friend, seating himself by the window and gazing down into the street below, as he proceeded to fill his pipe, ‘that the balance of probability has swung against your snug, rosy-cheeked City man, and in favour of my perturbed and ague-cheeked tea-planter.’

‘No doubt you are correct,’ I conceded. ‘You almost make me regret that ever I opened my mouth! But, come,’ I continued, laughing, ‘you have constructed so much of the unknown Mr Pringle; surely you can round out the picture a little now. What age, for instance, would you put upon the fellow and how would you say he is dressed today?’

‘He is, I should say, about forty years of age and wearing a tweed suit.’

‘Well I never!’ I cried in astonishment. ‘How in the name of Heaven can you tell that?’

‘Quite simply because I see the fellow standing on the front doorstep at this moment,’ replied Holmes drily.

The man who was shown in a few moments later accorded in every respect with the inferences my friend had drawn. A tall, handsome, well-built man, he had, nevertheless, an air of weakness and debility about him, as one worn down by a chronic disease. His face was unnaturally lined and leathery for one his age, his cheeks were sunken and of a sickly, yellowish hue and his hair was quite grey. But his grip as he shook my hand was firm and strong, and there was a spark in his blue eyes which showed that the disease had not broken his spirit, at any rate.

‘Are you quite recovered?’ asked Holmes in a kindly voice; ‘or is there perhaps something we can offer you? I observed that you had been dosing yourself with quinine and I know how horribly that can affect the stomach.’

Pringle shook his head. ‘It is not the nausea so much with me,’ he replied, ‘as the infernal ringing in the ears that the stuff gives me. But I’ve walked about a bit, and looked in a few shop-windows to take my mind from it, and I’ll be all right now. Don’t ever consider yourselves unlucky,’ he added with a flash of his eyes, ‘until you’ve had what I’ve got. No man ever had a more implacable enemy than malaria, I can tell you: no matter how many battles it may lose against you, it will never give up the war. But I did not come here to discuss pathology with you, gentlemen, and in any case I have learnt recently that there are things which can strike you harder than any disease. I wish your advice, Mr Holmes.’

‘I shall be only too pleased to give it, if you will acquaint me with the facts.’

‘Well, we’ll call them facts for the moment, but what you will make of them, I don’t know. A few snatches of conversation here, a trivial incident there – even as I think of these things now, they strike me as amounting to nothing.’

‘You had best let me be the judge of that,’ said Holmes. ‘Pray proceed with your account.’

‘I have lived most of my life in Ceylon,’ began our visitor after a moment. ‘My father had been a successful coffee-planter there, but he lost everything when the crash came – when, in a single season, those infernal spots of mould destroyed both the island’s plantations and its prosperity – and, sadly, neither he nor my mother lived to see the success which was later achieved so rapidly with tea. I was fortunate, for I managed to get in on the new business early on and after a couple of successful seasons, with a planter by the name of Widdowson, I decided to strike out on my own. I went in with two other fellows of like mind, Bob Jarvis and Donald Hudson, and by working all the hours in the day, and sometimes, it seemed, more than that, we soon made our plantation one of the finest on the island.

‘It was just then, when I was successful – and proud of that success, I don’t mind admitting – and more wealthy than I could ever have imagined, that this cursed swamp-fever struck me down. It took poor Jarvis clean away in under a week, so, in a way, I suppose I must count myself fortunate; but I cannot pretend to feel it. For weeks my life was despaired of, until eventually the doctor gave it as his opinion that my only hope lay in quitting the island altogether until the fever was beaten. With great reluctance, then, I returned to England, leaving Hudson in charge of the plantation.

‘That was three years ago and things have since gone very well for me in most ways. The attacks of malaria had become so infrequent, until a couple of months ago, that I fondly believed myself fully cured and I have managed to set up a company to sell our own tea – a long-standing ambition of ours – which has been at least moderately successful. I have also during my stay here met and married Laetitia Wadham, the most delightful woman in all the world. We met at Willoughby Hall, near Gloucester, where she was acting as companion to Lady Craxton, and soon discovered that we had much in common. Her father had been for a time a district magistrate in Ceylon and she had thus spent some years there as a child. It was at Gloucester that we were married, a small, quiet affair, for she was almost as without kin as I was myself. She had no brothers or sisters, and her mother and father were both dead. After a brief holiday at Lyme Regis, we took a fine modern villa, known as Low Meadow, which lies beside the Thames between Staines and Laleham. It has splendid gardens, about sixty yards in length, which sweep down from the house almost to the river itself, from which they are separated by a narrow belt of trees. It is a place where flowers bloom and birds sing, and there is all a man could wish for to complete his domestic bliss. Once more my life seemed upon an even keel; once more it seemed that nothing could come to blight my happiness.’

Our visitor paused and, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped his brow, which glistened with beads of perspiration.

‘Once more,’ he continued after a moment, his voice lower and softer than before, ‘once more I have been struck low. And if I had thought malaria to be unseen, insidious, intangible, how much more so is the present evil! Thank you, Dr Watson, a glass of water would be most welcome.

‘About seven weeks ago I was, quite suddenly and without warning, laid low with the fever. It came quite out of the blue, for I had not had an attack for nearly a year; but it was as if the disease had been storing its energies for one almighty battle, for I had never been so knocked up by it since I left Colombo and I felt quite at death’s door. There I lay, prostrate in my bed, while outside, the sun warmed the garden, and birds sang gaily and a beautiful English spring day took its course. How much worse did it make me feel, to know that just beyond my bedroom window was such peace and tranquillity! It was then that an odd thing happened, from which I now believe I can date the beginning of the trouble which has beset me.

‘It was, I believe, early in the afternoon. I had been lying for some time in a fevered sweat, slipping in and out of delirious dreams and barely ever fully conscious. From time to time the warm breeze through my window set the curtains fluttering and I was, I recall, observing this gentle movement when I gradually became aware of voices, speaking softly, in the garden below. I could not tell if they had at that moment begun, or if they had been speaking for some time whilst I had been asleep, but as I listened it seemed to me that one of the voices was that of my wife. Who her companion might be, I did not know, nor, in truth, did I much care. That low, hushed whisper might have been a friend or a stranger, a man or a woman, for all I could tell; for the chief part of my mind was concentrated upon the fiery struggle within my own body and I had little energy left over to eavesdrop upon the conversation of others. By and by, however, I heard a chinking sound, as of a spoon’s being stirred in a jug of lemonade, and a few snatches of the low conversation came to my ears.

‘“How is he?” came one voice.

‘“Bad, very bad,” replied the other. “The doctor has practically given him up.”

‘“How much longer must we endure this torment?” asked the first.

‘“A few weeks at the most, so I understand; then all our troubles will be at an end.”

‘“Good. You do not know how I have prayed for the day it will all be over, and you and I can know happiness once more.”

‘Whether I drifted back to sleep then, or whether the conversation ceased, I cannot tell, but I heard no more. That night, however, I was sleeping only fitfully, as a result of the fever, when I was rendered suddenly wide awake by a sharp noise outside my bedroom window. The room was in darkness and I was alone, for my wife slept in another room during the course of my illness. For a few moments I lay still and listened, but no further sound came to my ears. Then I heard it, a soft, rustling sound, as of the wind disturbing the shrubs in the garden below; but I could see from the stillness of my curtains that there was no wind blowing. I left my bed, crept to the window and drew the curtain quietly aside. The garden appeared at first to be of a uniform blackness, but gradually I was able to make out the dark shapes of the shrubs and trees. Even as I looked, one shadow seemed to detach itself from the larger shadow of a bush, and flit without a sound across the lawn and into the darkness beside an old stone shed. Almost petrified – for the fever had set my nerves jangling quite enough already, before this unwonted visitation – I watched for fully ten minutes, but saw nothing more.’

‘One moment,’ interrupted Holmes. ‘What was the size of this moving shadow?’

‘It seemed at the time somewhat smaller than a man, but it could, of course, have been someone crouching low. It was certainly not an animal I saw, if that is what you have in mind.’

‘Do you believe, then, that it was in fact a man?’

‘So I should judge,’ replied Pringle after a moment, ‘especially in the light of subsequent events. But, I must say, it was not a man I should care to meet. There was something so horribly skulking and furtive in the way he scuttled across the lawn.’

‘Very well. Pray continue with your most interesting narrative.’

‘The next day I was feeling a little better and could not bear the thought of being cooped up in my bedroom again. I dressed, therefore, and took breakfast with my wife downstairs. I described to her the dark apparition I had seen in the night-time, but she was inclined to dismiss it as simply the product of a fevered imagination. I did not agree with her, but it is true enough that my eyes have in the past been affected both by my illness and by the medicines I have been given to alleviate it, so I did not argue the point. In any case, I had myself devised an explanation which satisfied me at the time: there is a footpath which runs along the bank of the river, at the very foot of our garden, which the locals sometimes use; no doubt the figure I saw was some fellow the worse for drink, who had strayed from the path in the darkness and ended up by trampling through our shrubbery.

‘After breakfast I took my stick with the intention of walking to the riverside.’

‘Did you not mention to your wife the conversation you had overheard the previous afternoon?’ Holmes interrupted.

‘Not at that time, no. You will gain some notion of my state of mind if I tell you that the whole incident had quite passed out of my head. When I left the house that morning I had no other thought than that it would be pleasant to sit beside the river for a little while and watch the sunlight catching the ripples on the surface of the water.

‘The path to the river runs down the right-hand side of the garden, separated from the boundary fence for the first twenty or thirty yards of its length by a succession of low sheds and storage buildings, in various stages of dilapidation. My way therefore took me past the very spot where I had seen the figure vanish the night before. Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw that upon the whitewashed wall of the shed was the print of a human hand.’

‘What sort of print?’ said Holmes sharply, sitting forward in his chair with an expression of heightened interest upon his face.

‘It had been deliberately done, for it was quite clear and un-smudged. It was of a bright purple colour and showed the whole of the hand. I thought at first that it was a drawing, but saw when I got closer that it was a true print, for all the lines and finger-joints showed up clearly. I also saw then that there was something most peculiar and horrible about it: there, at one side, as one would expect, was the print of the thumb, but directly above the palm were not four fingers, but five.’

‘The right or the left hand?’ enquired Holmes.

‘The right.’

‘How high above the ground?’

‘I cannot say exactly. About five feet, I suppose.’

‘Very good,’ said Holmes, refilling his pipe. ‘Your case, Mr Pringle, begins to assume the colours of something truly recherché! I am most grateful that you have brought it to my attention and I will endeavour to return the favour by bringing a little light into your darkness. Pray continue!’

‘Over luncheon that day I mentioned to my wife the mark I had seen upon the wall. ‘‘There,’’ I said; ‘‘you see, there was someone in the garden last night.’’

‘“Perhaps,” said she, “although why anyone should do such a silly thing I cannot imagine.”

‘“Well, it has made a confounded mess of the wall, anyway. I shall have to have it repainted. Incidentally,” I added, as something stirred my memory, “did I hear you speaking to someone in the garden yesterday afternoon?”

‘“I do not believe so,” she answered after a moment, “unless it was the postman. But, wait: you are quite correct dear: a charming woman called, collecting for some good cause or other. She was very tired with the heat, so I offered her a glass of lemonade and we sat chatting for five or ten minutes. That must have been what you heard.”

‘“I suppose it must,” said I. I did not mention to my wife the words which I had thought had passed between them, for I was convinced now that they were entirely of my own invention. I had in the past suffered badly with nightmares when the fever was upon me and had always felt utterly foolish the next day – when my bad dream would strike me as simply absurd and trivial – so I had learnt to keep such things to myself.

‘My health picked up rapidly after a few days, thanks to the fine weather and the good clean air I was breathing, and life continued as before. Some time later – about the twenty-seventh of May, if my memory serves me correctly – I returned home, after a week of travelling in the north upon business, to find my wife in high spirits.

‘“I hope you do not mind, Mark,” said she, “but I have taken the initiative while you were away and employed a gardener.”

‘“Not at all,” I replied. “That is excellent news.” We had previously relied on the intermittent services of an old fellow from the nearby village, but he was really past coping with so large a garden as ours now; for although always pretty and full of colour, it has a tendency to run riot if left to its own devices, and for all my wife’s enthusiasm and endeavour it had been deteriorating for some time. “Is he a local man?” I asked.

‘“No,” said she. “He is from Hampshire, a man by the name of Dobson. He had placed an advertisement in the gardening journal and I thought such enterprise should be rewarded. His testimonials were first class and I am sure he will make an excellent gardener. His wife, too, seemed a splendid woman and she will be able to help Mary about the house. I thought they could have the old cottage near the river, and I have arranged for a firm of builders from Staines to come tomorrow to set it to rights for them.”

‘“You have been busy!” I cried. “And I agree entirely! It would do the old cottage good to have someone living in it again. I was thinking only last week what a pity it was, to have had it standing empty all this time.”

‘The cottage is an old, low building, which stands just beyond the belt of trees which separates the garden from the river, and has stood upon that spot since long before ever our own house was built. It had become dilapidated over the years, but within a few days, the men my wife had hired had brightened it up considerably: the broken slates upon the roof had been replaced, the guttering mended and the whole of the outside given a fresh, bright coat of white paint. All was finished by the end of the week, when the gardener and his wife arrived to take up residence.

‘They struck me as a pleasant enough couple, although oddly matched, I thought, in both appearance and manner. The husband, John Dobson, a thin, angular sort of fellow, with hair as black as his face was white, was taciturn almost to the point of rudeness and had the air about him of one who has suffered much. His wife, Helen, on the other hand, was a small, pink-cheeked and dainty woman, with hair the colour of sand, and quite the most chirrupy and voluble person I had ever met. Still, it was not for their conversation or appearance that they were employed and, in truth, I took little notice of them, leaving it to my wife to issue instructions as to the work they were to do.

‘A few days later, rising early, as is my habit, I discovered that I had misplaced my cigar-case. Recalling that I had had it with me the previous evening, when I had sat for a while on the bench by the river, I set out to see if I had left it there. The garden seemed bright and fresh in the morning air, and I smiled as I approached the gardener’s little white-washed cottage, nestled so prettily beneath the towering horse-chestnuts, all adorned as they were with their great pink and white candles.

‘“What a splendid little house it is!” I said aloud to the morning air. But no sooner were the words past my lips than I saw something which quite stopped me in my tracks and struck the smile from my face. For there, in the very centre of the clean white wall of the cottage, was the print of a human hand. It was in every respect the same as the one I had seen four weeks earlier upon the outhouse wall. It was the print of a right hand, a livid purple in colour, and again with that grotesque and horrible extra finger.’

‘It had not been there the previous evening?’ interrupted Holmes.

‘No. If it had been, I should have seen it.’

‘You are certain upon the point?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Very well. Pray continue.’

‘Anger rose within me that someone had again crept uninvited upon my property in the night and had besmirched this freshly painted wall. A pail stood nearby with a little water in it and next to it was a piece of rag with which someone had evidently been cleaning the cottage windows. In my fury I plunged the rag into the water, with the intention of expunging the odious mark from the wall. To my surprise and disgust, the rag emerged from the water as purple as the mark it was intended to erase. I tipped the water from the pail and looked with horror at the violet stream which ran out and splashed about my boots. I felt quite unable to comprehend the meaning of this sinister transformation, but I did not loiter to ponder the matter. I quickly located my cigar-case at the nearby bench and hurried in a daze of bewilderment to the house. Just once I glanced back at the cottage to reassure myself that that evil-looking mark was really there upon its wall, and that I had not imagined the whole episode, and as I did so it seemed to me that a curtain quivered at one of the windows, as if someone had hurriedly closed it as I turned.’

‘The date of this incident?’ enquired Holmes.

Pringle took a small diary from his pocket and leafed through it for a moment in silence. ‘I believe it must have been the third of June,’ he said at last; ‘about three weeks ago.’

Holmes scribbled a note upon a scrap of paper, as his client continued his account.

‘The days passed, the wall was cleaned and the incident forgotten; but I began to have serious misgivings about the new gardener. I had soon learnt to tolerate his dark, silent manner – indeed, on the one occasion he had overcome his reserve so far as to actually hold a conversation with me, I had found him both amusing and intelligent, if a little cynical – but what I could not tolerate was the fact that he appeared to do nothing whatsoever to justify the wages he was being paid. Each day I arrived home from town expecting to see some improvement in the appearance of the garden and each day I was disappointed, until eventually I raised the matter with my wife.

‘“Dobson does not seem much of a gardener to me,” I remarked one evening. “Where are the testimonials he gave you?”

‘“I am afraid I have lost them, Mark,” she replied in an apologetic tone. “But I do not think you are being entirely fair to the man. He has, after all, only recently begun and there is such a lot to be done in the garden at this time of the year.”

‘I could see from the expression upon my wife’s face that she felt my remarks were impugning her judgement, so I shrugged my shoulders and let the matter drop. When I chanced later to recall the conversation, however, it seemed to me then that she had been just a little too ready with the information that the testimonials were lost. It was almost as if she had been waiting for me to ask; as if, indeed, she had been expecting it.

‘A day or two after this, I arrived home in the afternoon and went straight into the garden, intending to sit for five minutes in the sunshine and finish the newspaper I had been reading in the train. After a few moments, however, I became aware of voices in the distance. From where I was sitting, a double row of elms and rhododendron bushes formed a natural corridor, along which I had a perfect view. Even as I looked, two people appeared round the corner at the far end of this corridor, my wife and the gardener. They were walking close together, very slowly, apparently in deep conversation. I was about to call out to them – for they had evidently not seen me – when I realised with a shock that they were entwined in embrace, he with his arm across her shoulder and she with her arm around his waist. My greeting froze upon my lips, and at that very moment my wife looked up and met my gaze. Her mouth fell open and her arms dropped to her side, and for several seconds we stared at each other in silence.

‘“What is wrong?” I called, without really knowing why I did so. My wife’s face was such a mask of guilt that I could scarcely bring myself to look at it and, to be frank, it was evident to me that the only thing that was wrong was that I had surprised their little tête-à-tête. But I called out, nevertheless, and thus presented my wife with an exit from her embarrassment. Why one should wish to assist another to lie to one, I do not know, but my wife took the cue and responded with alacrity.

‘“Dobson has sprained his ankle,” she called back. “I am helping him back to his house.”

‘I threw down my newspaper and hurried over to where they stood. There seemed little wrong with his ankle so far as I could see, but, without comment, I helped him to the cottage and left him in the care of his wife. Lettie had returned to the house, and when I saw her later she made no reference to the incident. As I had decided that I would certainly not be the first to bring the matter up, it remained therefore unaired, although I twice caught her looking at me in an odd fashion that evening, as though wondering what was passing in my mind. Since that time I have never seen the two of them together so intimately, but I cannot of course speak for the times I am away from home.

‘If I thought then that I had cause to resent the gardener, I was soon to find out that his wife’s behaviour could be equally uncongenial to me. Lettie began to refer to the woman continually, in a way which gradually began to irritate me intensely. It was always “But dear Mrs Dobson says this,” or “Helen thinks that we ought to do that”.

‘One afternoon, I returned home from town earlier than usual and, hearing the sound of female laughter from the garden, I strolled in that direction. As I approached a rose-covered pergola, on the other side of which was a small arbour, I recognised the voices of my wife and Mrs Dobson.

‘“I really don’t think I can agree with you, Helen,” I heard my wife say.

‘“But you must, Lettie, you foolish girl. You are simply being stubborn!” retorted the other. There followed a further remark which I did not catch, then peals of laughter. I was surprised to hear my wife indulging in such banter, but I endeavoured not to show it, as I turned into the arbour where they were sitting.

‘“Hello!” I cried. “You sound jolly!” But even as I spoke I saw the smiles vanish from their faces.

‘“Yes, dear. We were discussing the garden,” replied my wife, attempting unconvincingly to force a smile to her lips.

‘“Really? And what were you saying about it that was so amusing?”

‘My wife gave some response, but it was not very interesting and, in any case, I was not really listening. It was clear that my appearance had as good as thrown a funeral pall over their gaiety.

‘Later that evening, when we were alone, I spoke to my wife about the Dobsons.

‘“It does not strike me as an altogether good thing for you to encourage Mrs Dobson in such a degree of intimacy,” I remarked somewhat stiffly.

‘“But we were only talking together!” she retorted hotly. “I suppose you think she is not good enough for me, being only a gardener’s wife!”

‘“Not at all,” I returned. “You know that I do not possess a single ounce of snobbery and you may take what friends you please; but in this case you are the woman’s employer and such intimacy can lead to difficulties.”

‘“I think not,” said she simply, “so let us drop the matter.”

‘I had never heard my wife speak in this way before and I do not mind admitting that I was cut to the quick. I could raise no specific objection to this Dobson woman, other than that she had often struck me as somewhat over-bold in her manner for one in her position, but this, in any case, was not really the point. I felt that I was being excluded in my own house by my own beloved wife and it was this that hurt me so deeply. Lettie perhaps saw this, for after we had remained some time in silence she began to speak to me in a softer tone, but I treated her advances coldly and left the room.

‘I could not begin to tell you all the wild thoughts that coursed then through my seething brain, but outside in the night air my head seemed to clear and my resolve to harden. If I had nothing specific against the gardener’s wife, I had a veritable catalogue of complaints against the gardener himself. I returned to inform my wife of my decision.

‘“It is no good,” I began. “The Dobsons will have to go. You should not look so surprised, Laetitia: Dobson has done scarcely a day’s work since he came here. I am sure that no one else would have tolerated the fellow as long as I have. Apart from anything else, his gardening skills seem to be non-existent. Why, the man is a perfect imbecile! Only yesterday he pulled up all my sweet williams in the belief that they were weeds!”

‘“He has been ill,” she protested. “He has had a touch of the sun. He will improve, Mark; you will see.”

‘“He is certainly sickly-looking: he makes me feel ill every time I see him. But this house is not a charitable institution, Laetitia, and much as I dislike the thought of turning a man out when he has no other post to go to, he will have to go.”

‘I thought then that the matter was settled and I certainly intended that it should be; but my wife begged and pleaded and cajoled, until once more, much against my better judgement, I relented. I have little doubt that I am a fool, but I could not resist the imploring look in her eyes. There the matter rested and rests still. Do I weary you with my story, Mr Holmes?’

‘Not at all,’ replied my friend languidly, as he knocked his pipe out upon the hearth. ‘But I fail to see in what way I can help you in these matters, Mr Pringle. I make it an invariable rule not to interfere in domestic affairs, for there is generally profit in it for no one.’

‘At least hear the end of my story, Mr Holmes, before you make up your mind. On Sunday last I was so weighed down with these problems and, as I now realise, with the beginnings of another bout of the fever, that I found I was quite unable to sleep. About one in the morning I dressed quietly and slipped out into the darkened garden, thinking that a little fresh air would help to soothe my nerves. It had been a very hot, close day, as you no doubt recall, and the night was heavy and black and lowering. As I stepped down the path to the river, a single large drop of rain landed upon my cheek, and before I had gone another thirty yards the skies had opened and the rain was fairly crashing down. I ran for the shelter of an old yew tree which I knew to be just ahead of me, although I could scarcely make out its shape in the darkness. There I was standing, thankful for the dense cover that the tree provided, when there came a series of mighty flashes directly overhead, accompanied by the violent and deafening crack and rumble of the thunder. In an instant the veil of darkness was lifted from the garden and all was illuminated with that strange, ghastly light. With a thrill of horror that set my hair on end, I saw that there was someone upon the path, not thirty feet away and looking straight at me.’

‘A man or a woman?’ said Holmes sharply.

‘A man – so I believe; but I had only a moment in which to judge the matter. For as abruptly as the light had come, the darkness descended once more, just as if a black cloth had been cast across my eyes. I shifted my position and prepared to defend myself, though against whom, or what, I did not know. I must have stood there in that rigid pose for several minutes, but nothing fell upon me but a few drops of the icy rain. Then for a second time the sky was split asunder by the zigzag strokes of the lightning, for a second time the garden was bathed in its eerie white light and I saw that the path was deserted. Whoever I had seen was no longer there. The rain was still teeming down, but I left my shelter and dashed at the top of my speed back to the house. To my surprise I found the garden door wide open, the rain splashing in and forming a puddle upon the parquet floor of the corridor. I was certain that I had closed the door firmly as I went out, and although it was possible that the sudden force of the storm had blown the door open – for in truth the catch is not a very secure one – I was not prepared to take a risk upon the point. I loaded my revolver and made a thorough search of every room in the house, but found nothing amiss.

‘My walk had done little for my insomnia, as you will appreciate, and I spent a sleepless night with the loaded pistol at my bedside. In the morning I scoured the garden for any trace of the intruder, but discovered nothing. I had half expected to see another of those infernal hand-prints, but that at least I had been spared. At breakfast my wife announced that she would accompany me up to town, as there was a sale of oriental fabrics at Liberty’s which she wished to attend, but I felt too ill and tired to go to work, so she travelled up alone and I returned to my bed, where I slept half the day away. In sleep, at least, I could escape from the troubles which beset me; but it was a false escape, for when I awoke, these troubles seemed to weigh yet more heavily upon my mind and appear yet more insoluble and impenetrable. What power is possessed by this woman, Helen Dobson, that she can gain such an influence over my wife in so short a time? What manner of man is her brooding, taciturn husband? Why does he pretend to be a gardener – which he very evidently is not – and what does he hope to gain by such an imposture? Who is it that creeps about my garden in the night-time and prints his freakish hand upon my wall? Does someone wish me dead? All day long, and late into the night, I cudgelled my brains with these questions and a thousand others, until I began to think that it was all a fevered nightmare, in which no answers or explanations might ever be found, but from which dawn would release me. Alas, this morning I woke up and saw my pistol beside the bed, and knew that some answer must be sought in the world of reality.

‘I had heard your name, Mr Holmes, in connection with the Claygate disappearance case, a couple of years ago, and it seemed to me that in you might lie my only means of retaining my sanity. And yet, even as the thought of your reputation brought a flicker of hope to my reeling mind, I still was not sure that consulting you would be the right thing to do. For the matter is so dark and in some ways so delicate and personal—’

‘And yet you have come.’

‘This arrived by the morning post.’

Our visitor drew from his inside pocket a long blue envelope, from which he extracted a folded sheet of paper. This he passed across to Holmes, who unfolded it carefully and examined it upon his knee. With a quickening of the pulse and a prickling sensation in the hairs upon my neck, I saw that the paper bore but a single mark: the vivid violet print of a human hand.

‘Be so good as to pass me the lens, Watson,’ said my friend, an expression of intense interest upon his face. ‘It is a man’s hand,’ he remarked after a moment; ‘a coarse hand, with short, thick fingers; no stranger to physical work, I should judge, from the general development. Hello! He has a ring upon his second finger. Is this the same as the previous prints you observed?’

‘So I believe.’

‘There is one point upon which I can set your mind at rest at once, Mr Pringle,’ said Holmes with a grim smile. ‘Whoever made this print has no more fingers than you or I have: the sixth digit is counterfeit.’

‘What do you mean, Mr Holmes?’

‘The anatomy is quite wrong. If you will look closely at the fingers you will see that whereas the first three and the last arise from a pad on the palm, the fourth does not, but arises from between the pads of the two adjacent fingers. Do you see, Watson? There is no indication whatever of a metacarpal. He has, it is evident, printed his third finger twice, having previously splayed out his little finger, in order to make room for the addition.’

‘Why, so he has!’ cried our visitor. ‘I can see it clearly now! But why should anyone do such a thing?’

‘Ah! That is another question! May I see the envelope which contained this remarkable communication? Hum! Common enough sort of stationery! Posted yesterday afternoon in the West End. Dear me! What a dreadful nib the pen must have – no doubt the address was written in a post office, or the writing-room of an hotel. Well, well! Your name has been curiously misspelt! The remainder of the address is correct, I take it?’

Pringle nodded as Holmes passed the envelope to me and I saw that his client’s name had been rendered as ‘Mr Pringel’.

‘What a most interesting detail!’ said Holmes slowly and quietly, apparently addressing himself. With his elbows upon his knees and his chin cupped in his hands, he sat in silence for several minutes, an expression of intense concentration upon his face.

‘Do you see some clue, Mr Holmes?’ cried his client at last, clearly unable to endure the silence a moment longer.

‘Eh? Oh, possibly, Mr Pringle, possibly,’ replied Holmes in an abstracted tone. ‘The misspelling of your name is certainly a singular thing. It is so grotesque, so un-English, you see, that it argues not simply for the hand of a stranger, who was obliged to enquire your name, but for that of an illiterate or a foreigner, who was then unable to spell correctly the name he was given. The remainder of the address is so neatly and correctly rendered, however, that the first of these alternatives seems unlikely. It also suggests—’

‘What?’ Pringle enquired eagerly.

‘Something I must think about,’ Holmes replied at length. ‘There is of course a further possibility,’ he added more briskly.

‘Which is?’

‘That the sender of this letter is someone known to you, who wishes to disguise the fact.’

‘If so, it is an absurdly crude attempt!’ said Pringle with a snort.

‘I quite agree. Nevertheless, it is a possibility we must bear in mind. The case is at present a chaotic and confused one, and we cannot afford to dismiss any chance, however remote. Tell me, have you ever travelled in the Balkans?’

‘Never!’ replied Pringle in some surprise. ‘I have not even been near that part of the world, except for a passage through the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal.’

‘Your wife?’

‘To the best of my knowledge she has only twice been away from England since she returned from Ceylon, and on both occasions it was to stay with a distant cousin who lives on the outskirts of Paris.’

‘No matter,’ said Holmes, shaking his head; ‘you are a finger short, in any case. Is there anyone you would call an enemy – someone who might perhaps feel he had cause to persecute you?’

‘None that I know of. I was once called upon to act as a witness to a hanging, during my time in Ceylon, and there was some ill feeling in the area for a while afterwards, stirred up by the man’s family; but it was not directed principally at me, for I had no other connection with the matter. In any case the trouble subsided fairly quickly, for the poor wretch had certainly been guilty of the most ghastly murders, as even his own family conceded.’

‘You were married at Gloucester, I believe you said,’ Holmes remarked after a moment. ‘Was that simply because your wife was living in that part of the country at the time?’

‘Not entirely. Her family had always lived in the town. Her maternal grandfather, she told me, had at one time been Dean of Gloucester Cathedral.’

‘Very well,’ said Holmes, leaning back in his chair and tapping the tips of his fingers together. ‘The problem you have presented us with, my dear sir, is a most remarkable one, with several features which are not yet clear to me. But if you leave these papers here, I shall give the matter my consideration and let you have my opinion in due course.’

‘You have hopes, then, of uncovering a solution?’ cried Pringle eagerly. There was something almost pathetic about the beseeching look upon his face, which was terrible to see in so fine a figure of a man.

‘There is always hope,’ said Holmes shortly. ‘Will you be in your office tomorrow? You will? Then I shall call in to see you if I have any news; otherwise please be so good as to call in here on Thursday, if that is convenient.’

‘Certainly, Mr Holmes,’ responded the other, who was evidently much cheered by Holmes’s confident manner. ‘But might I ask what steps you propose to take?’

‘The only steps I shall take this evening, my dear sir, are to the chair in which you are now sitting, which is somewhat better appointed for prolonged meditation than this one.’

‘That is all?’ cried Pringle in disappointment. ‘You will do nothing more?’

‘I shall consume a great quantity of the strongest shag tobacco. It is quite a four-pipe problem and it would be unwise to attempt to come to any premature conclusions.’

Pringle shot a questioning glance at me, then shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation.

‘Did you show this letter to your wife?’ asked Holmes, as his visitor rose to leave.

‘I saw no point,’ the other replied simply, with a shake of the head.

‘You are probably correct – at least for the moment – and nor should you mention to anyone that you have consulted me.’

‘I should not dream of doing so!’

‘Nevertheless, you might let it slip without intending to. Be upon your guard at all times, Mr Pringle! One final thing—’

‘Yes?’

‘On no account venture into the garden after dark. I cannot pretend to have fathomed yet the mystery which surrounds you, but that you walk amidst great danger I am convinced.’

‘Well, Watson,’ said my friend when our visitor had left us. ‘What do you make of it?’

‘Nothing whatever,’ I replied with perfect honesty.

‘You are a singular fellow, indeed!’ cried Holmes with a chuckle. ‘I sometimes think that you are quite the most remarkable man in London, Watson; for I have certainly never known another so honest! There are few, I should imagine, who would care to announce their ignorance so candidly; yet, in this case, I should not believe anyone who did not confess himself baffled, for Mr Mark Pringle has brought us quite the most outré little problem I have encountered these past twelve months. As he himself remarked, the incidents taken separately could almost all bear an innocent, trivial, even prosaic explanation; but place them together and something more sinister begins to be discernible. The individual incidents are like the flourishes of the piccolo, the flute, the horn; but underlying all of these, barely perceptible save when the piece is regarded in its entirety, is a deep and continuous theme upon the ’cello and the double bass.’

‘And yet,’ I remarked, ‘perhaps these things are just coincidences. Perhaps there is not, after all, any connection between them.’

‘No, it cannot be,’ replied Holmes, his brow furrowed with thought. ‘Every nerve of intuition I possess tells me that the events are in some way connected – must be connected; and it is for us to find the connection. The difficulty lies in the fact that the incidents, as reported to us, are not only quite distinct, but, in some cases at least, mutually contradictory. One might, for instance, suspect a mere vulgar affair of some kind between Mrs Pringle and this man, Dobson, were it not for the extremely friendly relations which seem quite genuinely to subsist between Mrs Pringle and Dobson’s wife, Helen.’

‘There is certainly something suspicious about the Dobsons,’ I remarked. ‘They have some secret aim in view, of that I am convinced; although what it might be I cannot imagine.’

‘And yet,’ Holmes replied, shaking his head slowly, ‘it does not quite make sense. Consider the matter, Watson: imagine for a moment that you were the one with the secret aim in view. You are not a man remarked for duplicity, nor to any degree a natural schemer, yet surely even you would take great care to conduct yourself with modesty, self-effacement and propriety, and to do all that was required of you, in order to disarm any suspicions that might arise. But the Dobsons, so far from being discreet, seem to have gone out of their way to be conspicuous and irritating to their employer. There seems a want of cunning there!’

‘Considered in that light, their behaviour is certainly odd,’ I concurred.

‘These are deep waters, Watson,’ continued my friend after a moment, ‘and may yet prove far deeper than we can at present imagine. I cannot help feeling that there is some factor in the case of which we are as yet unaware; some hidden strand, which, if we could but grasp it, might at once pull together all the other strands, unconnected though they now seem.’

‘It is certainly a tangled skein at present,’ I remarked, ‘and I confess that the more I reflect upon it, the more baffling it seems to become. Whatever can be the significance, for instance, of the violet liquid in the pail that Pringle found one morning by the cottage?’

‘Ah, there, my dear Watson, you put your finger on what is perhaps the one point in the whole of his narrative to which no mystery attaches,’ responded Holmes, breaking into a smile. ‘For whoever had printed his hand upon the wall that morning – using perfectly ordinary ink, to judge from this sheet which we have examined – would, in the process, have marked his hand quite as conspicuously as he had marked the wall, as I am sure you would agree. He could of course cover his hand with a glove, but at this time of the year that would excite almost as much comment as an ink-stained hand and, in any case, there may be other circumstances which would render such a device impossible. What does he do, then, to remove the stain and thus preserve his secret, but plunge his hand into the water and rinse off the incriminating ink? It is certainly what I should do in his position. But, come, we are beginning to circle around the problem without ever approaching any closer to it, after the style of our good friend, Inspector Athelney Jones!’

‘Very well,’ said I, laughing. ‘I shall leave you to your solitary meditations.’

‘Drop by tomorrow afternoon,’ said Holmes, as I took my hat and stick, ‘and we can review any progress in the case.’

At three o’clock the following afternoon I was seated by the window in my friend’s rooms, reading the evening paper, when he returned. His face was drawn and tired, but the slight smile which played about his lips told me that his day had not been a fruitless one.

‘Tiring weather!’ said he by way of greeting, tossing his hat on to the table.

‘You have made some progress with the Pringle case?’ I ventured.

‘More than that,’ he replied. ‘I have quite cleared up Mr Pringle’s little mystery and am now in a position to lay the whole of the facts before him. It was a simple affair after all. You will come with me? If we leave within the half-hour we should be in time to catch him at his office in the Crutched Friars. As to the advice I should give him, however—’

His voice tailed off and an introspective look came into his eyes. It was clear that despite the solution of the mystery, there was something about the case which vexed him still. Without a word he threw off his coat and began slowly to fill his old black pipe with tobacco from the pewter caddy upon the mantelpiece, his eyes all the while far away. A score of questions welled up in my mind at once, but I forbore to voice them, for I knew well enough, from ten years’ experience, that he would enlighten me of his own volition when he himself chose to do so and that to question him at any other time was a profitless exercise.

I also knew that he rarely jested when his profession was the subject and I had never once known him exaggerate his achievements, so that if he said he had solved the case, then I knew it must he so, incredible though such a claim seemed. How on earth, I wondered, had he, in less than twenty-four hours, discovered the key that would unlock the mystery which surrounded his unfortunate client? Again my mind turned over the remarkable series of events which Mark Pringle had narrated to us the previous evening, again I pondered the significance of all that he had told us – the disturbing conversation he had overheard upon his sick-bed, the mysterious and grotesque hand-prints, his wife’s unfathomable behaviour towards both the Dobsons and her own husband, and the dark, sinister figures that came in the night – but again I was obliged to admit utter and total defeat.

‘Your client’s part of the country seems to be having more than its share of mysteries at the moment,’ I remarked at length.

‘What is that?’ said Holmes in a vague, abstracted tone, as if so far away in his thoughts that he found it difficult to refocus his mind upon the present time and place. ‘What did you say?’

‘There is a report in the early editions that the body of a man was found in the river early this morning, just by Chertsey Bridge. There was a knife stuck in his side.’

‘What!’

‘The police believe that the body had been washed down the river from the Staines area.’

He took the paper from me and ran his eye rapidly down the column, a look of alarm upon his face. ‘“A short, squat man!”’ he cried after a moment, a note almost of relief in his voice; ‘“with a swarthy complexion and curly black hair, and with a single gold ear-ring.” Well, it is no one we know, anyhow.’

‘So I judged.’

‘Nevertheless, Watson, it bears upon the case.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so. You remarked the contents of his pockets? “Very little was found in the dead man’s pockets by which his identity might be established, although he does not appear to have been robbed: three bank notes in a clip and a small amount of loose change, six whiffs in a pigskin case, a box of wax vestas and a bottle of ink being the sum total; in addition, the cork from a wine-bottle was discovered in the lining of his jacket.” Now, why should a man carry a bottle of ink, who does not also carry a pen of any sort?’

‘The purple hand!’

‘Precisely! Listen: “All labels and marks appear to have been removed from his clothing, as if to prevent any discovery of his antecedents, but inside one pocket of his waistcoat was found a small tag bearing a single word – believed to be the maker’s name – in the Cyrillic script in use in parts of Eastern Europe. The possibility that the murdered man was from those parts is given some support by the evidence of the knife that killed him. This is a narrow fixed-blade type, with an elaborately carved bone handle, which is stamped on the blade with the word ‘Belgrade’.”’

‘What does it mean, Holmes?’

‘It means that events have moved faster than I expected. If we are to prevent another death we must act at once. Will you come with me?’

‘Most certainly. We are going to Crutched Friars?’

‘No; to Low Meadow.’

He donned his outer clothes as quickly as he had thrown them off, and in a minute we were in a hansom and driving furiously through the traffic to Waterloo station.

‘No doubt you have by now formed an opinion upon the matter,’ said Holmes as our railway carriage rattled along the viaduct and through Vauxhall station.

I shook my head. ‘I should be very much interested to hear your own conclusions,’ I replied.

‘You will recall,’ said he, after a moment, ‘that my client felt confident of only two facts about his nocturnal visitor: that he had a deformed hand and that he was unusually small in his overall figure. But in both these opinions he was mistaken. The hand, as we saw, is in reality quite unexceptional; and it seemed likely, once we had heard that the hand-print was made approximately five feet from the ground, that his figure was unexceptional, too.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because it would be the natural tendency of anyone making such a print to do it at shoulder height – try it for yourself some time and you will see – and anyone who is five feet to the shoulders is obviously of a fairly normal build. So the intruder ceases to be inhuman and freakish, and becomes instead a perfectly ordinary specimen of humanity.’

‘I can see that that would make the matter yet more baffling and difficult of discovery,’ I remarked.

‘On the contrary, it admits a tiny ray of light into the mystery for the first time.’

‘I do not follow you.’

‘Consider: if the intruder is not equipped by nature with six digits upon his right hand, then the fact that he prints it in that bizarre fashion is evidently a matter of deliberate choice upon his part. Clearly the print has some very definite significance for him and he must expect that it will have the same significance for others, otherwise there would be little point to the exercise. Thus the print as an unfathomable, purely personal thing quite disappears and in its place we see an item of public communication, which is far more amenable to investigation.’

‘And yet I am not convinced,’ said I. ‘For what possible significance could be possessed by such a grotesque daub?’

‘You have not heard anyone speak of the Seven-Fingered Hand?’ said Holmes in a quiet voice.

‘Never!’

‘I must admit that that does not surprise me; there is really no reason why you should; for its activities receive little enough publicity in this country. Indeed, until today my own knowledge of it was exceedingly sketchy and yet it almost comes within my field of speciality. It is a secret society, Watson – that most vile excrescence of civilisation. It sits like a vile beast upon the Balkans, its evil tentacles stretched out to every remote corner, so that there is scarcely a town or village there where it cannot command the allegiance of at least one person; and that allegiance is rarely commanded but for terrorism and murder.’

‘It sounds monstrous, Holmes! Whatever is the purpose of such an organisation?’

‘Ah! The answer to that question illustrates rather nicely the divergence between theory and practice in human endeavours; for the surprising thing is that the society of which I speak was originally formed of principled, high-minded men, who would never have chosen to meet in secret conclave had they not felt driven to it. Their purposes originally were quite altruistic, their only aim being to petition the authorities on behalf of those of their fellow countrymen whose lot they considered a woeful one. But the society was soon taken over – some would say inevitably so – by those whose very delight it is to be secret, to pass unseen in the night-time with the knife beneath the cloak, to feel a sense of power in the anonymous assassination of the innocent. Soon all pretence of altruism was as good as abandoned and the sole raison d’être of the society became its own continued existence, an existence which is sustained and nourished on the terror of the very people in whose name it was originally founded.

‘The society’s somewhat fanciful name derives partly from the fact that it was constituted originally of groups from seven different provinces, and also from an initiation ceremony in which the new recruit is obliged to make a hand-print upon a document of allegiance to the society. This hand-print, embellished with the addition of two extra fingers, eventually became the symbol of the society. It is used to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies – and this it will surely do, for the society has the deserved reputation of being both implacable and ruthless. I tell you, Watson, a man had rather be in a cage of ravenous tigers than have these gentlemen upon his trail.

‘So much I managed to glean this morning, from long hours among the files of old newspapers – steep, steep work, Watson! I also learnt a further fact there, which brings the history of this unholy gang up to date: the Eastern Roumelian section, having evidently transgressed some rule or other, was last year expelled from the society, amid considerable blood-letting. One finger was accordingly removed from the society’s symbol, leaving just six – as in the letter my unfortunate client received yesterday morning at his breakfast table.’

‘But why?’ I cried. ‘What possible business can this abominable society have in England? And why do they seek to terrorise Mark Pringle?’

Holmes did not reply at once, but leaned back in his seat and surveyed the tranquil countryside through which our train was now speeding. On either side of the track, a broad expanse of heath-land stretched far away, all dotted over with bright patches of poppies and buttercups. It seemed to me incredible that upon such a day, and in such a spot, these desperate men from across the seas could be pursuing their evil ends.

‘Mark Pringle is not their primary quarry,’ said my companion at length. ‘You will recall that our first surmise upon seeing the envelope with the misspelt name was that Pringle was not personally known to the sender. This suggests as a possibility that it was only because he had been seen in the garden on Sunday night that they had gone to the trouble of learning his name – no doubt from a neighbour – in order to send him a specific warning that he should not interfere in their business. The fact that they were evidently not previously aware of his identity further suggests, of course, that the first two hand-prints were not in fact made for his benefit at all.’

‘I do not understand,’ I interrupted. ‘Does this mean that he is not, then, in danger?’

‘I should not go so far as to say that,’ replied my friend. ‘Indeed, I believe that he is exceedingly fortunate still to be alive. But to answer your questions more fully, it is necessary to go back a dozen years, to when a gentleman by the name of James Green deposited a large sum of money in the vaults of the Anglo-Hellenic Bank in King William Street, in the City. He was, according to his own testimony, the principal in a firm of wine-shippers, who specialised in wines from Greece and the Aegean Islands. At regular intervals after that, further sums were deposited and, from time to time, withdrawals made, either in London or at the branch office in Athens.

‘It was only when the bank collapsed, amid a terrific scandal, early in ’82, that in the course of attempts to locate all the creditors and settle with them as best they could – which was hardly at all – the authorities discovered that no such person as James Green existed and no more did his supposed firm of wine-importers. The whole elaborate charade had been devised to conceal the fact that the funds were those of the Seven-Fingered Hand – money which had been extorted from the peasants of Eastern Europe, and which was employed in the furtherance of the society’s own evil ends and to keep its leaders snug. This emerged at the bankruptcy hearing and the subsequent fraud trial, which created quite a sensation at the time.’

‘I believe I recall it,’ said I. ‘The chief clerk had used his clients’ money in a series of wild speculations, each of which had in turn failed. He had thus been driven further and further into desperate measures, and yet wilder schemes, in his attempt to recoup the losses, until in the end the bank had scarcely a penny to its name.’

‘You recall it precisely. The chief clerk’s name was Arthur Pendleton, who distinguished himself at his trial by showing not the slightest shred of remorse and who was, as I learnt from the court records this morning, sentenced to fifteen years for his troubles. A junior clerk whom he had somehow managed to embroil in his criminal schemes received a shorter sentence, of ten years, in recognition of his lesser culpability and in the certain knowledge that had it not been for the strong and evil influence which the older man had had over him, he would never have become involved at all. The bank was sold off, lock, stock and barrel, but the creditors received scarcely one part in a hundred of what they were owed.’

‘You have evidently had a busy day,’ said I, impressed by the speed at which my remarkable friend had been able to gather information on such remote matters; ‘but I still cannot grasp the pertinence of these matters to the case in hand. Are you convinced that there is a connection?’

‘The matter is beyond the realm where it is appropriate to speak of conviction and into that of certainty,’ replied Holmes. ‘I spent some time this afternoon at Somerset House, which was enlightening, and when I read that the man found in the river at Chertsey had carried an old wine cork in his coat, there remained no doubt what was afoot.’

‘A wine cork?’

‘He would use it to protect the point of the knife and to prevent the blade from slitting the lining of his jacket, which is where the knife would be concealed.’

‘Are you suggesting that the knife which killed him was his own?’

‘Precisely. He was an assassin, Watson; that is apparent. But he whom he sought to kill has turned his own weapon upon him. You read that all labels had been removed from his clothes? That is a trade-mark of such men: anonymity is the very essence of their work. No connection must ever be traced between the assassin and the organisation which commands him.’

‘Such precautions would appear to suggest,’ I remarked after a moment, ‘that the man thought it quite likely that he might, indeed, lose his own life.’

‘Well, it is an ever-present hazard for the assassin, as you will imagine. But it is not one upon which he may dwell; for he will be aware that failure to carry out his commission will result in the next such commission having his name upon it, not as agent, but as victim. But come! This is Staines and we must make all haste.’

A short journey in the station-trap down a sun-baked country road brought us to the gates of Low Meadow, where we paid off the driver and entered on foot. Up the drive we hurried, round the corner of the house and into the rear gardens. Not a breath of wind disturbed the leaves upon the trees and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers. Ahead of us on the lawn, a handsome young woman in a white dress was sitting on a rug, with a sewing-basket beside her. She started up when she saw us, a look of surprise upon her face.

‘Mrs Pringle?’ enquired my friend.

‘Yes, but—’

‘My name is Sherlock Holmes. Pray forgive this abrupt intrusion into your privacy, but our mission is most urgent.’

‘You had best explain yourself,’ said she with some sharpness, rising to her feet.

‘There is no time.’

‘I insist upon it.’

‘Very well. I have been employed by your husband to make inquiries on his behalf into certain matters which have recently perplexed him. All I have learnt convinces me that there is mortal danger here at Low Meadow.’

‘Mortal danger?’ she repeated in a tone of disbelief. ‘For my husband?’

‘No, for your brother.’

At this she paused for a moment and took a sharp breath, then threw her head back with a peal of laughter.

‘All you have learnt has evidently been nonsense!’ said she. ‘I have neither brother nor sister, so whoever has a brother in mortal danger, it is not I!’

Holmes remained quite unmoved by this outburst. ‘You cannot afford to play games,’ said he gravely, ‘when it is your brother’s life which may be the forfeit.’

‘I tell you I have no—’

‘I understand well enough the reasons for your pretence, Mrs Pringle,’ Holmes interrupted her, ‘but believe me when I tell you that the time for such pretence is past. Perhaps if I tell you all I know, it may convince you that I speak the truth.’

She seemed about to reply, but hesitated, and Holmes hurriedly continued: ‘Your brother, John Aloysius Wadham, was born upon the fifteenth of October in the year 1858, at Gloucester. In 1880 he married Helen Montgomery at Guildford. In 1882, whilst employed at the King William Street branch of the Anglo-Hellenic Bank, he became involved in a massive series of embezzlements, as a result of which, when the matter came to light, he was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.’

‘It is false!’ she cried out passionately. ‘The conviction was false! He only became involved with Arthur Pendleton in an attempt to save that wretched, ungrateful man, but soon found himself ensnared in the other’s web of deceit, from which, struggle as he might, he could not extricate himself. No thought of personal gain had ever crossed his mind. One word of the truth from that villain might have saved my brother from an unjust fate; but his heart was stone, his friendship hollow.’

‘I do not doubt, madam, that what you say is true; however I come not to accuse your brother but to save him. A few weeks ago, having earned the maximum remission from his sentence and being seriously ill, he was released from prison. Shortly before his release, his wife, who had remained loyal and faithful to him through all the long years of his imprisonment, had been to see you to discuss the matter. Your husband, who for some reason knew nothing whatever of your brother, overheard a part of your conversation, but misconstrued it as referring to himself.’

‘Dearly would I have loved to tell Mark the whole truth,’ Mrs Pringle interrupted, a tear forming in her eye, ‘but John begged and pleaded with me not to do so. He would not, he said, have his shame and disgrace inflicted upon his sister and her fine husband. I told him many times that Mark would welcome him like a true brother and think none the worse of him for what had happened in the past; but he refused absolutely to presume upon Mark’s generosity and I was obliged to keep his existence a secret. I have acted according to his wishes all along.’

‘I understand that,’ said Holmes. ‘It was therefore arranged that he would come here, under an assumed name, in the guise of a gardener, in the hope that he might recover his health in the fresh country air. Am I correct?’

‘You are,’ said she simply. ‘How you have learnt these things, I do not know, but you appear to know all.’

‘Unfortunately, that is not all. There are those whose thirst for vengeance is not satisfied by your brother’s term of imprisonment.’

‘Surely you are not serious, Mr Holmes!’ she cried in alarm. ‘My brother has more than paid for his foolishness. Can the law not restrain these people?’

‘Nothing can restrain them, Mrs Pringle. They recognise no law but their own. You must get your brother away from here. There has already been one attempt upon his life and I fear that the second may not be long delayed. You look disbelieving! Did you not read of the man found in the river this morning?’

‘The police believe he came from Eastern Europe.’

‘That is from where the danger comes. You recall the strange hand-print which was found upon the shed wall after your sister-in-law’s visit? That was the work of these men. They were evidently watching her every movement, aware that her husband would shortly be released from prison, and left their mark to give notice of their presence. Later, when your brother and sister-in-law moved into the old cottage, they came again and again left their mark, to announce that retribution was at hand. Last Sunday night, whilst walking in the garden, your husband surprised one of these men, so I believe, and they subsequently sent him a warning note. In the event, of course, the purple hand meant nothing whatever to him; but these men have the arrogance of all who submerge and hide their own identities in that of an anonymous organisation, and clearly believe that there is no one who will not understand, and know fear, upon seeing their sign. Your husband was fortunate, I should say, to escape with his life. Only the fact that the assassin’s work was not completed saved him; for human life is as nothing to these men.’

‘But, surely, if the assassin is now dead, we have nothing to fear,’ said Mrs Pringle.

‘He will not have come alone to England.’

For a minute the three of us stood in silence upon that neat and sunny lawn, and these words of Sherlock Holmes seemed like the evil and insane inventions of a madman. Laetitia Pringle shook her head from side to side, over and over again.

‘You cannot simply wish these things away,’ said Holmes at length, as if perceiving the poor bewildered woman’s innermost thoughts; ‘you must act, and act swiftly.’

‘What should I do?’

‘You must get your brother out of England – yes, and out of Europe, too. You must tell your husband everything—’

His sentence remained unfinished, for with a shrill cry of alarm, a sandy-haired woman burst upon our little gathering from behind a row of laurels.

‘Lettie! Lettie!’ she cried; ‘John has vanished.’

She stopped abruptly as she saw that Mrs Pringle was not alone, swaying from side to side with a wild look in her eye, as if she were upon the verge of fainting. Holmes stepped forward and took her arm gently.

‘Do not fear, Mrs Wadham. We come as friends.’

‘It is Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ said Mrs Pringle to her sister-in-law.

‘Indeed?’ responded the other. ‘Your name is familiar to me, sir, and I have heard that there is no problem you cannot solve; but I fear that in this case your powers are of no avail. My husband seemed so dreadfully ill today that I left him in his bed. Just now I returned from tending the vegetable plot and found him gone, and this note upon the kitchen table.’

With a shaking hand she offered a slip of paper to my friend, which he unfolded and read aloud.

‘“My dear Helen,”’ he read; ‘“You will remember how often we strengthened each other with the hope that once I had served my sentence, our troubles would be over and we could put the past behind us. Alas! that hope was futile. I have learnt recently that some who lost money in the Anglo-Hellenic fiasco will not rest until those they regard as responsible are dead. As old Pendleton died in prison three years ago, I am the sole focus for their vengeance, unjust as you know that is. It is a turn of events I had always feared, although I prayed constantly that the threat might be lifted from me. Now hopes and fears alike ill become the moment and I must meet my fate with my own hand. Last night, as I sat beside the river shortly before retiring, the first assassin came; but I am not one who surrenders his life without a struggle, despite the weakness of my limbs. He thrust at me with his knife, but I managed to parry the blow and threw him to the ground. For a time we struggled together on the river-bank, then, without any deliberate intention on my part, his own knife pierced his side, his hand still upon the hilt. I cast his lifeless body into the water and determined to say nothing of the incident to you. I have brought enough trouble upon you and upon my dear sister and her husband: it is time for me to go. It is I alone these devils want; if I am not with you, you will be safe. Please forgive this silent way of leaving, but I know you would not let me go if I spoke these words to your face. Your loving husband, John.”’

‘What am I to do?’ cried Helen Wadham, her voice suffused with anguish.

‘When did you last see your husband?’ enquired Holmes in an urgent tone, handing back the letter to her.

‘About an hour ago; but he cannot be long gone, for I was close by the cottage until this past twenty minutes.’

‘He has not passed this way, so he has evidently taken the path beside the river,’ cried my friend. ‘Come, Watson; there may yet be time to dissuade him from this foolhardy course of action. Alone he does not stand a chance against these men.’

We ran down the path towards the river, the women following close behind. At the cottage Holmes darted in, but was out again in a trice, shaking his head in answer to my query. A little further on, we emerged from the wood and came out upon the river-bank, where the bare earth of the riverside path was baked into hard ruts by the summer sun. To left and right we looked, and a grim sight met our eves. About fifty feet upstream, the crumpled figure of a man lay athwart the path, his boots trailing in the water. Holmes hurried forward and I followed at his heels.

A swift glance told me that the man was beyond all human help. His shirt-front was dark and horrible with blood, and at the very centre of the stain protruded the carved handle of a knife. A torn sheet of paper had been forced over the knife-handle, upon which was the purple print of a human hand. I knew then that the pale, gentle face which gazed unseeing up at me was that of Mark Pringle’s strange gardener and unknown brother-in-law. I pulled the knife from his chest and cast it aside and with Holmes’s help lifted the body upon a grassy bank.

‘Keep the women back!’ said Holmes in an urgent tone, as he bent down on all fours and examined the riverside path intently. But it was too late; they ran forward and would not be restrained. What a horrible thing it was for them to see, and how that horror was marked upon their faces!

I turned as a cry came from somewhere behind us. There, at the foot of the garden path, stood my friend’s client. He hurried forwards, a puzzled look upon his face. ‘The maid told me she had seen you—Why! What melancholy business is this!’ he cried as he caught sight of the grief-stricken faces of the two women.

Quickly, in a very few sentences, Holmes gave him the gist of all that had passed. I have never in my life seen a man so stricken and mortified in so short a space of time. For a long minute he gazed down at the body of his wife’s brother, a deep and unfathomable expression upon his face. ‘Had he lived I would have loved him,’ he said softly at last. ‘Come,’ he continued, turning to me. ‘Help me bear his body to the house. Though in life he rejected my hospitality, in death shall he have it.’

At the house Holmes secured a map, which he studied intently for a few moments.

‘The river twists and turns here,’ said he at last. ‘If we take the main road we may yet be able to intercept the murderer before he can escape.’

On this occasion, however, my friend’s resourcefulness proved insufficient and no trace of the assassin could be found in the area. An abandoned skiff was later discovered upon the opposite bank of the river, and inquiries indicated that the fugitive had crossed over to the Surrey side and made his way down to Chertsey, where he had caught a train to London.

Acting upon certain information provided by Sherlock Holmes, the police later arrested a Serbian who was staying at Green’s Hotel in the West End. No effective case could be made out against him, however, and when diplomatic protests threatened to make an international incident of the affair, the police were obliged to let him go. ‘There goes a certain murderer!’ said Holmes with bitterness, when he read in the paper one morning that the man had been put upon the Calais packet, with the formal warning that he should never again set foot in England.

As for Mark Pringle and his wife, I heard later that he had overcome his illness, and that they had returned to Ceylon and taken with them Helen Wadham, in the hope that a new life amid fresh surroundings might help to erase from their hearts and minds the painful memory of the tragedy which had fallen so heavily upon them at Low Meadow.