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elapt1c
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ElapticAI-512

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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 to me in
his way. When he was sober he used to be fond of playing backgammon and
draughts with me, and he would make me his representative both with the
servants and with the tradespeople, so that by the time that I was
sixteen I was quite master of the house. I kept all the keys and could
go where I liked and do what I liked, so long as I did not disturb him
in his privacy. There was one singular exception, however, for he had a
single room, a lumber-room up among the attics, which was invariably
locked, and which he would never permit either me or anyone else to
enter. With a boy’s curiosity I have peeped through the keyhole, but I
was never able to see more than such a collection of old trunks and
bundles as would be expected in such a room.
“One day—it was in March, 1883—a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon
the table in front of the colonel’s plate. It was not a common thing
for him to receive letters, for his bills were all paid in ready money,
and he had no friends of any sort. ‘From India!’ said he as he took it
up, ‘Pondicherry postmark! What can this be?’ Opening it hurriedly, out
there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon