“To smoke,” he answered. “It is quite a three pipe problem, andI beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.” He curledhimself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawklikenose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black claypipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. I had cometo the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and indeed wasnodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with thegesture of a man who has made up his mind and put his pipe downupon the mantelpiece.
“Sarasate plays at the St. James’s Hall this afternoon,” heremarked. “What do you think, Watson? Could your patientsspare you for a few hours?”
“I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very absorbing.”
“Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the Cityfirst, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that thereis a good deal of German music on the programme, which is rathermore to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and Iwant to introspect. Come along!”
We travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; anda short walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of thesingular story which we had listened to in the morning. It was apoky, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy twostoriedbrick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclosure,where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurelbushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenialatmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with “JABEZWILSON” in white letters, upon a corner house, announcedthe place where our red-headed client carried on his business.
Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on oneside and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly betweenpuckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the street, and then downagain to the corner, still looking keenly at the houses. Finally hereturned to the pawnbroker’s, and, having thumped vigorouslyupon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he wentup to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a brightlooking,clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step in.
“Thank you,” said Holmes, “I only wished to ask you how youwould go from here to the Strand.”
“Third right, fourth left,” answered the assistant promptly,closing the door.
“Smart fellow, that,” observed Holmes as we walked away. “Heis, in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and fordaring I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third. I haveknown something of him before.”
“Evidently,” said I, “Mr. Wilson’s assistant counts for a gooddeal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that youinquired your way merely in order that you might see him.”
“Not him.”
“What then?”
“The knees of his trousers.”
“And what did you see?”
“What I expected to see.”
“Why did you beat the pavement?”
“My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk.
We are spies in an enemy’s country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it.”
The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round thecorner from the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as greata contrast to it as the front of a picture does to the back. It wasone of the main arteries which conveyed the traffic of the City tothe north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immensestream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward,while the footpaths were black with the hurrying swarm ofpedestrians. It was difficult to realise as we looked at the line offine shops and stately business premises that they really abuttedon the other side upon the faded and stagnant square which wehad just quitted.
“Let me see,” said Holmes, standing at the corner and glancingalong the line, “I should like just to remember the order of thehouses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledgeof London. There is Mortimer’s, the tobacconist, the littlenewspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and SuburbanBank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane’s carriagebuildingdepot. That carries us right on to the other block. Andnow, Doctor, we’ve done our work, so it’s time we had some play.
A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, whereall is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no redheadedclients to vex us with their conundrums.”
My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself notonly a very capable performer but a composer of no ordinarymerit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the mostperfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time tothe music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamyeyes were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmesthe relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as itwas possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual naturealternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astutenessrepresented, as I have often thought, the reaction against thepoetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominatedin him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languorto devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so trulyformidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in hisarmchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions.
Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come uponhim, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the levelof intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methodswould look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge wasnot that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon soenwrapped in the music at St. James’s Hall I felt that an evil timemight be coming upon those whom he had set himself to huntdown.
“You want to go home, no doubt, Doctor,” he remarked as weemerged.
“Yes, it would be as well.”
“And I have some business to do which will take some hours.
This business at Coburg Square is serious.”
“Why serious?”
