Part 14

“I prefer to look on,” said Holmes, and when I had likewise declined to play, the Prince and the Princess and Princess Barbara sat down at the table. Prince Alexander also declined to play, on the ground that he was too busy.

“As you are not going to play, Prince Alexander,” said Holmes, “perhaps you will help me presently to conduct my preliminary investigations.”

“Certainly,” said the young prince.

“Nobody can possibly have stolen the skat-book, in any case,” said the Princess.

“I’m not so sure,” said Prince Alexander, “if I left my money in it, as I think I did.”

Holmes took no notice of this remark, but after he had watched three games in perfect silence he suddenly addressed the Princess: “You said you had several bad characters in the village; is there any one whom you would particularly suspect? Who, for instance, is the worst character?”

“There are several in the village,” said the Princess; “and one of the clerks in our office--what we call the ‘Kontora’--an educated man, is suspected of carrying on social revolutionary propaganda, but there is no evidence against him. They say, too, that he steals--only not saucepans.”

“Yes, but that’s all rubbish,” said the young Prince. “He’s an honest, hard-working man.”

“Why don’t you send him away?” asked Holmes.

“Oh, he would burn our house!” said the Princess, laughing. “Besides, he’s quite harmless.”

“Most interesting,” said Holmes. “And can I see this gentleman?”

“Oh, certainly,” said the Princess. “Alexander will take you to the Kontora.”

“Let us go to the other house,” said the young Prince to Holmes, “and you can begin your investigations. It will be great fun.”

“May Watson come too?” asked Holmes.

“Of course,” said the young Prince; “the investigations would have no value without Dr. Watson’s presence.”

“Before we do anything else,” said Holmes, “will you show me the kitchen, and we will solve the question of the saucepans?” The kitchen was in a building by itself, separate from both houses, and situated on an elevation beyond the further stone house, in which were our rooms and that of the young Prince. We went there, and the white-frocked Parisian cook explained in precise phrases exactly what had disappeared, ending up his narrative with an exclamation of disgust. Sherlock Holmes was soon on all fours beneath the kitchen window. He examined the wall, the window-sill, and the ground, with a strong magnifying glass; then, like a hound following a strong scent, he walked swiftly from the kitchen into the garden, and stopped before a heap of snow beside a clump of trees. “If we could have a spade”--a spade was soon brought, and Holmes, after a few vigorous strokes, revealed to the astonished gaze of the Prince, the cook, and a crowd of moujiks, four large kitchen saucepans. “Now,” said Holmes to the young Prince, “I will continue the investigations, if you permit it, in your room.” And we went into the stone house together.

As we entered the house, a young man approached the Prince and said a few words to him; he wore top-boots, long hair, a dark blue sarsenet shirt without a collar, buttoned at the side, a pince-nez, a black jacket, and an astrakhan cap.

The Prince said something to this man in Russian, and led us into a room on the ground floor adjoining his own sitting-room, saying: “I beg your pardon, Mr. Holmes, but do you mind waiting here one moment? I have to speak to a man on business; it is a matter of a few minutes only.”

The Prince then went into his sitting-room, which was connected with the room in which we were by a door; the door was ajar, and appeared, indeed, to be one of those doors which never shut, so that fragments of the conversation which took place between the Prince and the young man were audible. They were, of course, speaking Russian.

Holmes lit a pipe and sat down on a divan; presently one of the voices next door sank to a whisper, and the opening and shutting of a drawer were heard. Then the young man took his departure, and the Prince, opening the door, invited us into his room. “Please sit down,” he said, pointing to a divan, and he himself took a seat at a writing-table which was placed sideways in the middle of the room. “Now that we have found the saucepans, I suppose all further investigations are needless, Mr. Holmes?” he said.

“We have not yet found the thief,” replied Holmes.

“That, I am afraid, will be more difficult,” said the Prince.

“Nor have we found your skat-scoring book,” said Holmes.

“Oh, that’s sure to turn up!” said the Prince. “I will send for the maid who cleans our rooms and you can examine her. She is an old peasant woman who has been with us ever since I have been born,” and saying this the Prince went to the door and shouted, “Mavra!”

An elderly woman dressed in a peasant’s dress, consisting of a blue cotton petticoat and a large apron, and a black handkerchief over her head, entered the room, and smilingly greeted the company. What followed I was unable to understand, but Holmes later in the afternoon dictated to me at my request what took place in detail. The Prince asked Holmes to examine her, and Holmes did not allude to the saucepans, but asked her whether she had seen a small green book anywhere.

She said she had seen it, she had seen it every day. It was there.

“In the other house?” asked Holmes.

“Yes, in the other house,” she answered.

“Did you see it yesterday?”

“Yes, yesterday it was lying _there_.”

“In this house?” asked Holmes.

“Yes,” she replied. “There.”

“Somebody said,” interrupted the Prince, “that some books were left on the window-sill upstairs in this house, and that they had got wet and had been taken to be dried?”

“Yes,” said Mavra, smiling cheerfully, “they say some books got wet and were taken to be dried.”

“Where?” asked Holmes.

“They were lying _there_. And then to-day I said to Masha: ‘Where are those books?’ And she said: ‘What have I got to do with books, and what have you got to do with books?’”

“In this house?”

“Yes, _there_.”

“Who dried them?” asked Holmes.

“I cannot know,” she answered; “perhaps André knows.”

“Who is André?” asked Holmes.

“The night watchman,” answered the young Prince.

“And after the books were dried did you see them?” asked Holmes.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Where?” he asked.

“They were lying _there_,” she replied.

“In the other house?”

“Yes, _there_.”

At that moment the butler entered, and the Prince asked him whether the skat-book or any other books had got wet from being left on the window-sill and had been dried. He replied that there were two books on the window-sill upstairs; they were still there, but nobody had dried them, because they had never been wet, and the skat-book was not among them. The young Prince repeated that they had played skat the preceding evening and had used the scoring book, which had been left on the drawing-room table.

“Thank you,” said Holmes to the maid. “That is quite sufficient for the present. I should now like, if possible, to go to your office.” “Certainly,” said the Prince, “let us go.” We walked down to the office, which was about five minutes’ walk from the house, during which time Holmes carried on an animated conversation with the Prince on the political situation in Russia. We reached the office, and entered into a bare room, furnished with a stove and a writing-table, where we found two clerks at work. One of the clerks was the young man whom the Prince had just interviewed. “Which is the gentleman you mentioned?” asked Holmes in an aside to the Prince. “The man with a blue shirt,” replied the Prince: “would you like to examine him?” “No thank you,” replied Holmes. “I have seen all I wanted to see. I will now, if you permit me, go for a walk in the village by myself; I wish to think over a few things.” We returned to the house, and Holmes set out by himself for the village. I went up to my room to take a nap, for I was still rather tired after the journey.

Holmes returned towards five o’clock in the afternoon, and, settling himself in an arm-chair, he said: “If you care to hear, Watson, I will tell you the result of my investigations.”

“If you found the thief,” I said, “you deserve credit, for the vagueness of this family and the unconcern with which they regard this robbery appals me.” “Very true,” replied Holmes. “The matter was, as I had anticipated, far more complicated than appeared at first sight. It frequently happens that problems which appeared to consist of mere trifles turn out to be matters of deep importance and difficult of solution. In this case, what put me on the scent was the disappearance of the skat-book. It is obvious that a thief, whose object is money, would not steal such a thing. When I found the saucepans in the garden my supposition was confirmed. The theft was a blind.”

“But there was money in the book,” I interrupted; “and, besides, some shirts and a pair of links disappeared.”

“I am coming to that presently,” answered Holmes. “I concluded from the manner in which the saucepans had been stolen and hidden that the thief was no ordinary thief. Further data in our possession told me that one of the clerks was under suspicion of carrying on revolutionary propaganda. The young Prince interviews him and receives from him a small cardboard box which he was carrying when we met him, a fact which you no doubt overlooked. He placed the box in a drawer which has no lock. (Note once more the vagueness and the carelessness of these people!) While the young Prince was interviewing the clerk I overheard a portion of their conversation, and I ascertained that the contents of the cardboard box consisted of bombs, and that it was proposed to bring about a _coup_ to-morrow, which was to take place at the railway station.”

“With what object?” I asked.

“We will come to that later,” said Holmes. “Let us take things in their order. When we visited the office, I noticed that on the clerk’s table lay a sheet of paper perforated at the edge, covered on one side with figures, and evidently torn from a card scoring book, for it had divisions and lines printed on it for scoring. When I returned from the office on my way to the village the young Prince took me once more into his room, and by skilfully leading the conversation into a channel of argument (the young man is, you have noticed, argumentative) I finally made him a bet on the matter of a date, the settling of which made it necessary for him to fetch a book of reference; he went eagerly in search of a dictionary of biography, which I knew was in the other house, and once left alone I made two important discoveries. In one of his writing-table drawers I found a cardboard box containing four narrow bombs made of a high explosive, and in another drawer I found the silver links and nine roubles in paper which the young Prince said he had lost at cards last night. But more important still was my second discovery. I found several pages torn from a scoring book and covered with figures, which are not those which occur in skat or in any other game; and I also found on the edge of the fireplace a half-burnt piece of paper, torn from the same book, but, mark this, from the text of the book, and not a blank leaf perforated at the edge, likewise covered with figures. I then went to the village and had a notable conversation with the village policeman. He furnished me with interesting information with regard to the inhabitants of the village and the political situation generally. When asked as to the clerk we saw to-day he said he was very ‘red,’ meaning revolutionary. He said the old Prince refused to send him away at the instigation of his son. The young Prince was also ‘red,’ he said, and this was the most dangerous feature in the situation. The policeman had no doubt that he communicated with the revolutionary party through the channel of the clerk.

“I questioned him as to the theft of the saucepans, and to my astonishment he said he knew quite well who had stolen them. I asked who. He said there was a man in the village formerly employed in the Prince’s office who had once been sent to Siberia but who had returned. He was now a professional pick-pocket, and was enjoying a holiday. ‘But if you know he did this why don’t you arrest him?’ I asked.

“‘God be with him, no,’ replied this astonished and astonishing policeman. ‘Why arrest him? He has already been in prison once.’

“‘What for?’ I asked.

“‘He killed the brother of the gamekeeper,’ said the policeman, ‘and he stole hens.’ Of course I knew that he was lying, because a real thief would have taken the saucepans away, and had the policeman known him he would have arrested him. ‘Does the Prince know this?’ I asked. ‘Of course he knows it,’ answered the policeman. ‘Then why does not he insist on his arrest?’ I asked. ‘The Prince has pity on us,’ said the policeman. ‘We are poor people. If he were arrested he would soon come back again and probably kill me; he would certainly burn my house. The Prince knows. What does it matter if he stole a few saucepans? The Prince will buy new ones. The Prince does not mind. He will do no further harm. He has come back to see his home and his native village.’ Questioned as to whether the clerk was connected with the theft, the policeman laughed. He said the clerk was ‘red,’ and busied himself with politics, but was not a hooligan.

“I asked him if sufficient proof were found whether he would arrest the thief. ‘May God forfend!’ answered this amazing policeman. I also ascertained from him that a large sum of money, about half a million roubles, will be transported from the town of O---- to the town of X---- to-morrow. Then I returned home.

“You now doubtless understand the object of the _coup_. It is to obtain money for the revolutionary funds, and the object of the theft of saucepans was to throw suspicion, when the _coup_ should take place, on an indefinite band of robbers who would be supposed to be lurking in the neighbourhood.

“Now we come to further links in the chain. The young Prince, as you remember, was in the habit of taking the skat-scoring book every evening from the drawing-room in the wooden house to his sitting-room in this house, and of bringing it back every morning and leaving it in the front hall. Why did he do this; and why the front hall? I suppose that even you, Watson, have already concluded that the spurious thief of the saucepans and the leading spirit of this dark conspiracy is none other than the young Prince. He could not communicate openly with the clerk, nor see him too often without raising suspicion, so every evening he wrote what he had to say in cipher on the blank leaves provided at the end of the book for scoring purposes, and left the book in a prominent place. The clerk called at the house on business matters and tore off a leaf from the book and left an answer in it, if he wished to do so.”

“Most ingenious,” I interrupted; “but why did the book disappear?”

“The Prince destroyed it. The scrap of burnt paper I found in the fireplace told me that; since it was not, as I told you, one of the blank leaves, but a page of the text of the book itself. The Prince being, like all the members of his family, as you yourself have observed, and like most Russian revolutionaries, excessively vague happy-go-lucky, had worked out his cipher all over the book, and as the _coup_ is to come off to-morrow he thought it best to be on the safe side and to destroy a document which might possibly prove compromising. By the ingenious lie of the money left in it he included it in the robbery.”

“And what steps have you taken?” I asked.

“I sent an express telegram, in cipher, to my friend L---- of the Chief Department of the Police in St. Petersburg acquainting him of the facts.”

“And what will be the result?” I asked.

“They will prevent the _coup_ coming off--it was to be to-morrow evening,” answered Holmes.

The bell now rang for tea, and during the rest of the evening the matter of the theft was only once or twice jokingly referred to. Holmes and the Prince appeared to think that as the saucepans had been found there was no further use bothering about the thief. After dinner, Holmes, the young Prince, and the young Princess delighted us with a trio for flute, violin and piano, and the time passed rapidly and pleasantly. I found it difficult to believe that the young man who was so carelessly and easily “entertaining” us was really a dangerous criminal on the eve of carrying out a gigantic _coup_; but my experience as Holmes’ biographer has convinced me that such cases are, alas! only too frequent. The next morning I spent in writing letters, and Holmes did nothing but lie on the sofa and smoke a quantity of shag tobacco. We all met once more at luncheon. After luncheon, as we were drinking our coffee in the drawing-room, the young Prince said he had an interesting communication to make to us, which was as follows: At the railway station there is a large wooden building made for storing corn. The merchants store their corn there, for which they receive a receipt stating the value of what is stored. If it is destroyed the Government is responsible for the amount.

Now it appeared that the stationmaster had arranged with one of the merchants to give him a duplicate receipt for an amount of corn worth an immense sum. He made out a false duplicate for this immense sum. It was further arranged that the merchant should deliver an infinitesimal quantity of corn, worth a few shillings, and that the corn storing-house should be set on fire and burnt. The stationmaster was to receive a handsome commission. But, as it was impossible to tamper with the books, owing to the number of officials employed, in which the amounts received were entered and kept at the station, it was likewise settled to burn the station and thus destroy the compromising documents it contained, and render comparison between the false duplicate received by the merchant and the original receipt entered in the station books impossible. It was further settled to do the burning by means of bombs and to attribute the whole affair to the revolutionaries. The plot, however, had been discovered by the clerk in the Prince’s office who was a friend of a new assistant stationmaster, and he had brought the bombs to the house and had told the whole story to the young Prince, who had immediately communicated with the Police Captain of the district in the town of O----. As he finished his story the young Prince added: “It shows what idiots our local police are, because they suspected this very clerk of being a revolutionary.” Holmes’ face remained impassive during the recital of this story, but I could not help feeling that my friend was somewhat anxious. “It was quite a problem in your line Mr. Holmes,” said the Princess, “but I feel you have done enough for us in finding our saucepans, only I do wish we could find the scoring book.” “I can’t remember,” said the young Prince, “whether it was yesterday or the day before yesterday morning that the book was in my room. I remember tearing a leaf out of it, having no other paper handy, to write a receipt for the clerk who brought me some money from the Kontora. But there was no money in it, because I found the money I won last night, and the silver links also, in a drawer. So the book wasn’t stolen.”

“Has any one looked in the card table?” asked the young Princess. And as no one had looked there, a leaf of the card table was raised, and there lay a small green book--the skat scoring book. At that moment the butler entered the room endeavouring to master convulsions of laughter, and said that the village police-inspector, the Stanovoi, was outside saying he had received orders from St. Petersburg to arrest Prince Alexander and to send him immediately to the town of O---- for being implicated in an “expropriation” plot to rob the train. The whole family burst into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and the old Prince explained to Holmes that the police-inspector had probably made this idiotic mistake on purpose, since he had twice been found poaching in their woods and that they had complained and asked for his removal.

Then together with his son he went and interviewed the police-inspector. They came back presently saying that the matter was an idiotic and inexplicable mistake connected with the affair of the station, but that the police-inspector, although he was well aware of this, owing to the grudge he bore the family insisted on carrying out his orders. So the young Prince had to leave for O---- that afternoon, amidst universal merriment, and he exhorted Holmes as he departed to obtain his release. We also left for Moscow the next day, whither Holmes said he had suddenly been summoned upon urgent business. When we arrived at Moscow we received a telegram saying that Prince Alexander had been immediately released with many apologies for the mistake, that the police-inspector had been dismissed from his post, and that the merchant and the stationmaster had been arrested. Holmes never referred to the matter again, nor does he like any mention made of the game of skat. But it seems to me that this comparative failure only serves to heighten the brilliance of his many successes, and it is for this reason I have recorded it.

_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED _Edinburgh_

Transcriber's Note

Errors in punctuation have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained, except as noted below.

1. Page xii: "the government of Karkov" has been changed to "the government of Kharkov".

2. Page 80: "as Virgil lead Dante" has been changed to "as Virgil leads Dante".

3. Page 114: "and was the poineer of a movement" has been changed to "and was the pioneer of a movement".

4. Page 122: "which appear to Count Tolstoy" has been changed to "which appear to Count Tolstoi".

5. Page 182: "which acccompanied similar conditions" has been changed to "which accompanied similar conditions".

6. Page 226: "sing and play on the Babalaika" has been changed to "sing and play on the Balalaika".

7. Page 238: "hot and cold _zabouski_" has been changed to "hot and cold _zakouski_".

8. Page 246: "When we got home he saw" has been changed to "When he got home he saw".

9. Page 257: "Death to the Bourgoisie" has been changed to "Death to the Bourgeoisie".

10. Page 272: "the dress of the Saxo Berussen Korps" has been changed to "the dress of the Saxo-Borussen Korps".