Denis Smith - The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

‘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?’