The Datafile PD-CD 5/DATAFILE_PDCD5.iso/utilities/c/crstrip/5PIPS

Text File | 1991-04-14 | 40KB | 695 lines

                             THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS

     When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes
cases between the years '82 and '90, I am faced by so many which
present strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to
know which to choose and which to leave.  Some, however, have already
gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a
field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so
high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to
illustrate.  Some, too, have baffled his analytical skill, and would
be, as narratives, beginnings without an ending, while others have
been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded
rather upon conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical proof
which was so dear to him.  There is, however, one of these last which
was so remarkable in its details and so startling in its results that
I am tempted to give some account of it in spite of the fact that
there are points in connection with it which never have been, and
probably never will be, entirely cleared up.
     The year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater
or less interest, of which I retain the records.  Among my headings
under this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the
Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a
luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the
facts connected with the loss of the British bark Sophy Anderson, of
the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa,
and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case.  In the latter, as may
be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man's
watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that
therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time -- a deduction
which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case.  All
these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present
such singular features as the strange train of circumstances which I
have now taken up my pen to describe.
     It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales
had set in with exceptional violence.  All day the wind had screamed
and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the
heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for
the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of
those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars
of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage.  As evening drew
in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed
like a child in the chimney.  Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side
of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the
other was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea-stories until the
howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and the
splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea
waves.  My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a few days I
was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.
     "Why," said I, glancing up at my companion, "that was surely the
bell.  Who could come to-night?  Some friend of yours, perhaps?"
     "Except yourself I have none," he answered.  "I do not encourage
visitors."
     "A client, then?"
     "If so, it is a serious case.  Nothing less would bring a man out
on such a day and at such an hour.  But I take it that it is more
likely to be some crony of the landlady's."
     Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there
came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door.  He stretched
out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the
vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit.  "Come in!" said he.
     The man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty at the
outside, well-groomed and trimly clad, with something of refinement
and delicacy in his bearing.  The streaming umbrella which he held in
his hand, and his long shining waterproof told of the fierce weather
through which he had come.  He looked about him anxiously in the glare
of the lamp, and I could see that his face was pale and his eyes
heavy, like those of a man who is weighed down with some great
anxiety.
     "I owe you an apology," he said, raising his golden pince-nez to
his eyes.  "I trust that I am not intruding.  I fear that I have
brought some traces of the storm and rain into your snug chamber."
     "Give me your coat and umbrella," said Holmes.  "They may rest
here on the hook and will be dry presently.  You have come up from the
south-west, I see."
     "Yes, from Horsham."
     "That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps is
quite distinctive."
     "I have come for advice."
     "That is easily got."
     "And help."
     "That is not always so easy."
     "I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes.  I heard from Major Prendergast
how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal."
     "Ah, of course.  He was wrongfully accused of cheating at
cards."
     "He said that you could solve anything."
     "He said too much."
     "That you are never beaten."
     "I have been beaten four times -- three times by men, and once by
a woman."
     "But what is that compared with the number of your successes?"
     "It is true that I have been generally successful."
     "Then you may be so with me."
     "I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me
with some details as to your case."
     "It is no ordinary one."
     "None of those which come to me are.  I am the last court of
appeal."
     "And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you
have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of
events than those which have happened in my own family."
     "You fill me with interest," said Holmes.  "Pray give us the
essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question
you as to those details which seem to me to be most important."
     The young man pulled his chair up and pushed his wet feet out
towards the blaze.
     "My name," said he, "is John Openshaw, but my own affairs have,
as far as I can understand, little to do with this awful business.  It
is a hereditary matter; so in order to give you an idea of the facts,
I must go back to the commencement of the affair.
     "You must know that my grandfather had two sons -- my uncle Elias
and my father Joseph.  My father had a small factory at Coventry,
which he enlarged at the time of the invention of bicycling.  He was a
patentee of the Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his business met with
such success that he was able to sell it and to retire upon a handsome
competence.
     "My uncle Elias emigrated to America when he was a young man and
became a planter in Florida, where he was reported to have done very
well.  At the time of the war he fought in Jackson's army, and
afterwards under Hood, where he rose to be a colonel.  When Lee laid
down his arms my uncle returned to his plantation, where he remained
for three or four years.  About 1869 or 1870 he came back to Europe
and took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham.  He had made a very
considerable fortune in the States, and his reason for leaving them
was his aversion to the negroes, and his dislike of the Republican
policy in extending the franchise to them.  He was a singular man,
fierce and quick-tempered, very foul-mouthed when he was angry, and of
a most retiring disposition.  During all the years that he lived at
Horsham, I doubt if ever he set foot in the town.  He had a garden and
two or three fields round his house, and there he would take his
exercise, though very often for weeks on end he would never leave his
room.  He drank a great deal of brandy and smoked very heavily, but he
would see no society and did not want any friends, not even his own
brother.
     "He didn't mind me; in fact, he took a fancy to me, for at the
time when he saw me first I was a youngster of twelve or so.  This
would be in the year 1878, after he had been eight or nine years in
England.  He begged my father to let me live with him, and he was very
kind