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Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I
had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base
hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to
walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda, when I was struck down
by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired
of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated
that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to
England. I was despatched, accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a
month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission
from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as
free as air–or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will
permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great
cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, [16] meaningless existence, and spending
such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of
my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and
rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style
of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the
hotel, and take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.
On the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was
standing at the Criterion Bar, when someone tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I
recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Bart’s. The sight of a
friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely
man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him
with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the
exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off
together in a hansom.
“Whatever have you been doing with yourself,
Watson?” he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London
streets. “You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.”
I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly
concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.
“Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had
listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”
“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to
solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable
price.”
“That’s a strange thing,” remarked my
companion; “you are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.”
“And who was the first?” I asked.
“A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at
the hospital. He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get someone to go
halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his
purse.”
“By Jove!” I cried; “if he really wants someone
to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a
partner to being alone.”
Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his
wineglass. “You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,” he said; “perhaps you
would not care for him as a constant companion.”
“Why, what is there against him?”
“Oh, I didn’t say there was anything against him. He
is a little queer in his ideas–an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I
know he is a decent fellow enough.”
“A medical student, I suppose?” said I.
“No–I have no idea what he intends to go in for. I
believe he is well up in anatomy, and he is a first-class chemist; but, as far as I know,
he has never taken out any systematic medical classes. His studies are very desultory and
eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the-way knowledge which would astonish his
professors.”
“Did you never ask him what he was going in for?” I
asked.
“No; he is not a man that it is easy to draw out, though
he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him.”
“I should like to meet him,” I said. “If I am
to lodge with anyone, I should [17]
prefer a man of studious and quiet habits. I am not strong enough yet to stand much noise
or excitement. I had enough of both in Afghanistan to last me for the remainder of my
natural existence. How could I meet this friend of yours?”
“He is sure to be at the laboratory,” returned my
companion. “He either avoids the place for weeks, or else he works there from morning
till night. If you like, we will drive round together after luncheon.”
“Certainly,” I answered, and the conversation
drifted away into other channels.
As we made our way to the hospital after leaving the Holborn,
Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the gentleman whom I proposed to take as a
fellow-lodger.
“You mustn’t blame me if you don’t get on with
him,” he said; “I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting him
occasionally in the laboratory. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold me
responsible.”
“If we don’t get on it will be easy to part
company,” I answered. “It seems to me, Stamford,” I added, looking hard at
my companion, “that you have some reason for washing your hands of the matter. Is
this fellow’s temper so formidable, or what is it? Don’t be mealymouthed about
it.”
“It is not easy to express the inexpressible,” he
answered with a laugh. “Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes–it
approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the
latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a
spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I
think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion
for definite and exact knowledge.”
“Very right too.”
“Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to
beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a
bizarre shape.”
“Beating the subjects!”
“Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after
death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.”
“And yet you say he is not a medical student?”
“No. Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are.
But here we are, and you must form your own impressions about him.” As he spoke, we
turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door, which opened into a wing
of the great hospital. It was familiar ground to me, and I needed no guiding as we
ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista
of whitewashed wall and dun-coloured doors. Near the farther end a low arched passage
branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory.
This was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless
bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes,
and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in
the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work. At the sound of our
steps he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. “I’ve
found it! I’ve found it,” he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a
test-tube in his hand. “I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin,
and by nothing else.” Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have
shone upon his features.
“Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford,
introducing us.
“How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand
with a strength for which [18]
I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I
perceive.”
“How on earth did you know that?” I asked in
astonishment.
“Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself.
“The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this
discovery of mine?”
“It is interesting, chemically, no doubt,” I
answered, “but practically– –”
“Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal
discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood
stains? Come over here now!” He seized me by the coat-sleeve in his eagerness, and
drew me over to the table at which he had been working. “Let us have some fresh
blood,” he said, digging a long bodkin into his finger, and drawing off the resulting
drop of blood in a chemical pipette. “Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a
litre of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water.
The proportion of blood cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however,
that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction.” As he spoke, he threw
into the vessel a few white crystals, and then added some drops of a transparent fluid. In
an instant the contents assumed a dull mahogany colour, and a brownish dust was
precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar.
“Ha! ha!” he cried, clapping his hands, and looking
as delighted as a child with a new toy. “What do you think of that?”
“It seems to be a very delicate test,” I remarked.
“Beautiful! beautiful! The old guaiacum test was very
clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter
is valueless if the stains are a few hours old. Now, this appears to act as well whether
the blood is old or new. Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now
walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes.”
“Indeed!” I murmured.
“Criminal cases are continually hinging upon that one
point. A man is suspected of a crime months perhaps after it has been committed. His linen
or clothes are examined and brownish stains discovered upon them. Are they blood stains,
or mud stains, or rust stains, or fruit stains, or what are they? That is a question which
has puzzled many an expert, and why? Because there was no reliable test. Now we have the
Sherlock Holmes’s test, and there will no longer be any difficulty.”
His eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand
over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination.
“You are to be congratulated,” I remarked,
considerably surprised at his enthusiasm.
“There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last
year. He would certainly have been hung had this test been in existence. Then there was
Mason of Bradford, and the notorious Muller, and Lefevre of Montpellier, and Samson of New
Orleans. I could name a score of cases in which it would have been decisive.”
“You seem to be a walking calendar of crime,” said
Stamford with a laugh. “You might start a paper on those lines. Call it the
‘Police News of the Past.’”
“Very interesting reading it might be made, too,”
remarked Sherlock Holmes, sticking a small piece of plaster over the prick on his finger.
“I have to be careful,” he continued, turning to me with a smile, “for I
dabble with poisons a good deal.” He held out his hand as he spoke, and I noticed
that it was all mottled over with similar pieces of plaster, and discoloured with strong
acids.
“We came here on business,” said Stamford, sitting
down on a high three-legged stool, and pushing another one in my direction with his foot.
“My friend [19] here
wants to take diggings; and as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves
with you, I thought that I had better bring you together.”
Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his
rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which
would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind the smell of strong tobacco, I
hope?”
“I always smoke ‘ship’s’ myself,” I
answered.
“That’s good enough. I generally have chemicals
about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?”
“By no means.”
“Let me see–what are my other shortcomings? I get in
the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am
sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right. What have you to
confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another
before they begin to live together.”
I laughed at this cross-examination. “I keep a bull
pup,” I said, “and I object to rows because my nerves are shaken, and I get up
at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when
I’m well, but those are the principal ones at present.”
“Do you include violin playing in your category of
rows?” he asked, anxiously.
“It depends on the player,” I answered. “A
well-played violin is a treat for the gods–a badly played one– –”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he cried, with a merry
laugh. “I think we may consider the thing as settled–that is, if the rooms are
agreeable to you.”
“When shall we see them?”
“Call for me here at noon to-morrow, and we’ll go
together and settle everything,” he answered.
“All right–noon exactly,” said I, shaking his hand.We left him working among his chemicals, and we walked together towards my
hotel.
“By the way,” I asked suddenly, stopping and turning
upon Stamford, “how the deuce did he know that I had come from Afghanistan?”
My companion smiled an enigmatical smile. “That’s
just his little peculiarity,” he said. “A good many people have wanted to know
how he finds things out.”
“Oh! a mystery is it?” I cried, rubbing my hands.
“This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. ‘The
proper study of mankind is man,’ you know.”
“You must study him, then,” Stamford said, as he
bade me good-bye.
“You’ll find him a knotty problem, though. I’ll
wager he learns more about you than you about him. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I answered, and strolled on to my hotel,
considerably interested in my new acquaintance.
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