‘Mr. Thaddeus Sholto,’ said the little man, still jerking and smiling. ‘That is my name. You are Miss Morstan, of course. And these gentlemen – ’
‘This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and this Dr. Watson.’
‘A doctor, eh?’ cried he, much excited. ‘Have you your stethoscope? Might I ask you – would you have the kindness? I have grave doubts as to my mitral valve,[35] if you would be so very good. The aortic I may rely upon, but I should value your opinion upon the mitral.’
I listened to his heart, as requested, but was unable to find anything amiss, save, indeed, that he was in an ecstasy of fear, for he shivered from head to foot.
‘It appears to be normal,’ I said. ‘You have no cause for uneasiness.’
‘You will excuse my anxiety, Miss Morstan,’ he remarked airily. ‘I am a great sufferer, and I have long had suspicions as to that valve. I am delighted to hear that they are unwarranted. Had your father, Miss Morstan, refrained from throwing a strain upon his heart, he might have been alive now.’
I could have struck the man across the face, so hot was I at this callous and offhand reference to so delicate a matter. Miss Morstan sat down, and her face grew white to the lips.
‘I knew in my heart that he was dead,’ said she.
‘I can give you every information,’ said he; ‘and, what is more, I can do you justice; and I will, too, whatever Brother Bartholomew may say. I am so glad to have your friends here not only as an escort to you but also as witnesses to what I am about to do and say. The three of us can show a bold front to[36] Brother Bartholomew. But let us have no outsiders – no police or officials. We can settle everything satisfactorily among ourselves without any interference. Nothing would annoy Brother Bartholomew more than any publicity.’
He sat down upon a low settee and blinked at us inquiringly with his weak, watery blue eyes.
‘For my part,’ said Holmes, ‘whatever you may choose to say will go no further.’
I nodded to show my agreement.
‘That is well! That is well!’ said he. ‘May I offer you a glass of Chianti, Miss Morstan? Or of Tokay? I keep no other wines. Shall I open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the balsamic odour of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative.’
He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with our heads advanced and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in the centre.
‘When I first determined to make this communication to you,’ said he, ‘I might have given you my address; but I feared that you might disregard my request and bring unpleasant people with you. I took the liberty, therefore, of making an appointment in such a way that my man Williams might be able to see you first. I have complete confidence in his discretion, and he had orders, if he were dissatisfied, to proceed no further in the matter. You will excuse these precautions, but I am a man of somewhat retiring, and I might even say refined, tastes, and there is nothing more unaesthetic than a policeman. I have a natural shrinking from all forms of rough materialism. I seldom come in contact with the rough crowd. I live, as you see, with some little atmosphere of elegance around me. I may call myself a patron of the arts. It is my weakness. The landscape is a genuine Corot, and though a connoisseur might perhaps throw a doubt upon that Salvator Rosa, there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau.[37] I am partial to the modern French school.’
‘You will excuse me, Mr. Sholto,’ said Miss Morstan, ‘but I am here at your request to learn something which you desire to tell me. It is very late, and I should desire the interview to be as short as possible.’
‘At the best it must take some time,’ he answered; ‘for we shall certainly have to go to Norwood and see Brother Bartholomew. We shall all go and try if we can get the better of Brother Bartholomew. He is very angry with me for taking the course which has seemed right to me. I had quite high words with him[38] last night. You cannot imagine what a terrible fellow he is when he is angry.’
‘If we are to go to Norwood, it would perhaps be as well to start at once,’ I ventured to remark.
He laughed until his ears were quite red.
‘That would hardly do,’ he cried. ‘I don’t know what he would say if I brought you in that sudden way. No, I must prepare you by showing you how we all stand to each other.[39] In the first place, I must tell you that there are several points in the story of which I am myself ignorant. I can only lay the facts before you as far as I know them myself.
‘My father was, as you may have guessed, Major John Sholto, once of the Indian Army. He retired some eleven years ago and came to live at Pondicherry Lodge in Upper Norwood. He had prospered in India and brought back with him a considerable sum of money, a large collection of valuable curiosities, and a staff of native servants. With these advantages he bought himself a house, and lived in great luxury. My twin-brother Bartholomew and I were the only children.
‘I very well remember the sensation which was caused by the disappearance of Captain Morstan. We read the details in the papers, and knowing that he had been a friend of our father’s we discussed the case freely in his presence. He used to join in our speculations as to what could have happened. Never for an instant did we suspect[40] that he had the whole secret hidden in his own breast, that of all men he alone knew the fate of Arthur Morstan.
‘We did know, however, that some mystery, some positive danger, overhung our father. He was very fearful of going out alone, and he always employed two prize-fighters to act as porters at Pondicherry Lodge. Williams, who drove you tonight, was one of them. He was once lightweight champion of England. Our father would never tell us what it was he feared, but he had a most marked aversion to men with wooden legs. On one occasion he actually fired his revolver at a wooden-legged man, who proved to be a harmless tradesman canvassing for orders.[41] We had to pay a large sum to hush the matter up. My brother and I used to think this a mere whim of my father’s, but events have since led us to change our opinion.
‘Early in 1882 my father received a letter from India which was a great shock to him. He nearly fainted at the breakfast-table when he opened it, and from that day he sickened to his death. What was in the letter we could never discover, but I could see as he held it that it was short and written in a scrawling hand. He had suffered for years from an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and towards the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope, and that he wished to make a last communication to us.
‘When we entered his room he was propped up with pillows and breathing heavily. He besought us to lock the door and to come upon either side of the bed. Then grasping our hands he made a remarkable statement to us in a voice which was broken as much by emotion as by pain. I shall try and give it to you in his own very words.
‘“I have only one thing,” he said, “which weighs upon my mind at this supreme moment. It is my treatment of poor Morstan’s orphan. The cursed greed which has been my besetting sin through life has withheld from her the treasure, half at least of which should have been hers. And yet I have made no use of it myself, so blind and foolish a thing is avarice. The mere feeling of possession has been so dear to me that I could not bear to share it with another. See that chaplet tipped with pearls beside the quinine-bottle. Even that I could not bear to part with, although I had got it out with the design of sending it to her. You, my sons, will give her a fair share of the Agra treasure. But send her nothing – not even the chaplet – until I am gone. After all, men have been as bad as this and have recovered.
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