Free Secret Archives of Sherlock Holmes, The, The by June Thomson Page A

know the importance of not giving away the ending before first building the story up to its climax. Well, then, to begin. I strolled up and down Orchard Street for a good ten minutes before Carruthers emerged from the Kandahar. From there, he walked into Oxford Street, where he caught a Bayswater omnibus, 13 alighting from it in Holborn. Having arrived there, he set out on foot down the Gray’s Inn Road before he turned into that maze of little streets in the Clerkenwell area, finishing up eventually in Pickard’s Close, at number 14, to be precise, where he let himself in at the front door.’
    ‘What sort of place is it?’ I asked, thinking thatfrom what Holmes had said about it, the district hardly sounded a suitable address for an army colonel – an unspoken criticism which my old friend expressed more succinctly out loud.
    ‘It is a terrace of shabby, run-down little houses,’ he said. ‘I am sure you know the type: no front gardens, grubby lace curtains at the windows … I leave the rest to your imagination, Watson. Anyway, Carruthers’ disappearance inside number 14 placed me in something of a dilemma. I had no idea how long he would remain within the house and I could hardly knock on the front door and ask to speak to him. That would have given the game away immediately.’
    ‘What did you do, Holmes?’ I asked, as tense with anxiety over the situation as if I had experienced it myself.
    ‘Thank goodness we English are a nation not so much of shopkeepers, as Napoleon would have had us believe, but of topers. There was a convenient little tavern on the corner named, most inappropriately, I thought, in view of the sooty bricks and the muddy doorsteps, “The Farmer’s Boy”, complete with a hanging sign depicting a cherry-cheeked, curly-haired youngster dressed in a spotlessly white smock and carrying an equally freshly laundered lamb on his shoulder.
    ‘I retired there and ordered half a pint of ale – a suitable beverage, I thought, given the circumstances – and carried it over to a table by the window, from whichI had a clear view of Pickard’s Close and the front door of number 14. I should add that I had dressed down for the occasion in a short jacket, pepper-and-salt trousers and a bowler hat.
    ‘Even so, I attracted some attention from the other customers. Thinking it over later, I came to the conclusion that my shoes were too clean. One has to be so careful in some districts of London such as Clerkenwell, which are almost tribal in their exclusiveness and regard any stranger as a potential enemy. So after looking me over suspiciously, they turned their backs on me as a man to show their disapproval. They may have concluded from my bowler hat that I was a debt collector or perhaps a nark: a police informer to you, Watson.
    ‘I waited for at least half an hour before Carruthers emerged, wearing a shabby overcoat and carrying several letters in his hand. There was also one other significant change in his appearance. He was no longer wearing the eyepatch, which was obviously a prop, such as an actor would wear, in his case to win public sympathy. There is nothing like a crutch or wooden leg to increase one’s earnings as a beggar or a confidence trickster. Remind me, by the way, to give you an account of the three-handed widow one of these days.’
    ‘The three-handed widow …!’ I began but Holmes, ignoring my interruption, pressed on with his own account.
    ‘Anyway, to return to Carruthers. His was a remarkabletransformation. In that short time, he had changed from an officer and a gentleman who had lost an eye, presumably in battle, to a down-at-heel individual, although he still walked with the brisk, upright gait of a soldier, which led me to believe that he had been in the army at some point in his life.’
    ‘How extraordinary, Holmes!’ I declared. ‘Why do you suppose Carruthers went to such lengths to falsify his appearance?’
    ‘The answer, I believe, lies in the letters he