THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
                              A Case of Identity
      "My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of
      the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely
      stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We
      would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere
      commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window
      hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs,
      and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange
      coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful
      chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the
      most outre results, it would make all fiction with its
      conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and
      unprofitable."
          "And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases
      which come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and
      vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to
      its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed,
      neither fascinating nor artistic."
          "A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing
      a realistic effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the
      police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the
      platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an
      observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend
      upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."
          I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your
      thinking so," I said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial


      adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled,
      throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all
      that is strange and bizarre. But here"--I picked up the morning
      paper from the ground--"let us put it to a practical test. Here
      is the first heading upon which I come. `A husband's cruelty to
      his wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without
      reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of
      course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the
      bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of
      writers could invent nothing more crude."
          "Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your
      argument," said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down
      it. "This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I
      was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with
      it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and
      the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit
      of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling
      them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely
      to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a
      pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over
      you in your example."
          He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in
      the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his
      homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon
      it.
          "Ah," said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some
      weeks. It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return
      for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers."
          "And the ring?" I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant


      which sparkled upon his finger.
          "It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter
      in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide
      it even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two
      of my little problems."
          "And have you any on hand just now?" I asked with interest.
          "Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of
      interest. They are important, you understand, without being
      interesting. Indeed, I have found that it is usually in
      unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and
      for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm
      to an investigation. The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler,
      for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule, is the
      motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter
      which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing
     which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however,
      that I may have something better before very many minutes are
      over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken."
          He had risen from his chair and was standing between the
      parted blinds, gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London
      street. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement
      opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her
      neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which
      was tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her
      ear. From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous,
      hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated
      backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove
      buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves
      the bank, she 

hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp
      clang of the bell.
          "I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his
      cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always
      means an affaire de coeur. She would like advice, but is not sure
      that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet
      even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously
      wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom
      is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love
      matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed, or
      grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts."
          As he spoke there was a tap at the door, and the boy in
      buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady
      herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed
      merchant-man behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed
      her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and,
      having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked
      her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was
      peculiar to him.
          "Do you not find," he said, "that with your short sight it is


      a little trying to do so much typewriting?"
          "I did at first," she answered, "but now I know where the
      letters are without looking." Then, suddenly realizing the full
      purport of his words, she gave a violent start and looked up, with
      fear and astonishment upon her broad, good-humoured face. "You've
      heard about me, Mr. Holmes," she cried, "else how could you know
      all that?"
          "Never mind," said Holmes, laughing; "it is my business to
      know things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others
      overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?"
          "I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs.
      Etherege, whose husband you found so easy when the police and
      everyone had given him up for dead. Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you
      would do as much for me. I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred
      a year in my own right, besides the little that I make by the
      machine, and I would give it all to know what has become of Mr.
      Hosmer Angel."
          "Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?" asked
      Sherlock Holmes, with his finger-tips together and his eyes to the
      ceiling.
          Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of
      Miss Mary Sutherland. "Yes, I did bang out of the house," she
      said, "for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr.
      Windibank--that is, my father--took it all. He would not go to
      the police, and he would not go to you, and so at last, as he
      would do nothing and kept on saying that there was no harm done,
      it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away
      to you."
          "Your father," said Holmes, "your stepfather, surely, since


      the name is different."
          "Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds
      funny, too, for he is only five years and two months older than
      myself."
          "And your mother is alive?"
          "Oh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasn't best pleased,
      Mr. Holmes, when she married again so soon after father's death,
      and a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself.
      Father was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and he left a
      tidy business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy,
      the foreman; but when Mr. Windibank came he made her sell the
      business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines.
      They got 4700 pounds for the goodwill and interest, which wasn't near as
      much as father could have got if he had been alive."
          I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this
      rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he
      had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.
          "Your own little income," he asked, "does it come out of the
      business?"
          "Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate and was left me by my
      uncle Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying 4 1/2 per
      cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can
      only touch the interest."
           "You interest me extremely," said Holmes. "And since you draw
      so large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the
      bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in
      every way. I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely
      upon an income of about 60 pounds."
          "I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you
      understand that as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a
      burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while I
      am staying with them. Of course, that is only just for the time.
      Mr. Windibank draws my interest every quarter and pays it over to
      mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at
      typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can often do
      from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day."
          "You have made your position very clear to me," said Holmes.
      "This is my friend, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as
     freely as before myself. Kindly tell us now all about your
      connection with Mr. Hosmer Angel."


          A flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face, and she picked
      nervously at the fringe of her jacket. "I met him first at the
      gasfitters' ball," she said. "They used to send father tickets
      when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us, and
      sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank did not wish us to go. He
      never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I
      wanted so much as to join a Sunday-school treat. But this time I
      was set on going, and I would go; for what right had he to
      prevent? He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all
      father's friends were to be there. And he said that I had nothing
      fit to wear, when I had my purple plush that I had never so much
      as taken out of the drawer. At last, when nothing else would do,
      he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went,
      mohther and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it
      was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel."
          "I suppose," said Holmes, "that when Mr. Windibank came back
      from France he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball."
          "Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember,
      and shrugged his shoulders, and said there was no use denying
      anything to a woman, for she would have her way."
          "I see. Then at the gasfitters' ball you met, as I
      understand, a gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel."
          "Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to
      ask if we had got home all safe, and after that we met him--that
      is to say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that
      father came back again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the
      house any more."
          "No?"
          "Well, 

you know, father didn't like anything of the sort. He
      wouldn't have any visitors if he could help it, and he used to say
      that a woman should be happy in her own family circle. But then,
      as I used to say to mother, a woman wants her own circle to begin
      with, and I had not got mine yet."
          "But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to
      see you?"
          "Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and
      Hosmer wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see
      each other until he had gone. We could write in the meantime, and
      he used to write every day. I took the letters in in the morning,
      so there was no need for father to know."
          "Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?"
           "Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk
      that we took. Hosmer--Mr. Angel--was a cashier in an office in
      Leadenhall Street--and--"
          "What office?"
          "That's the worst of it, Mr. Holmes, I don't know."
          "Where did he live, then?"
          "He slept on the premises."
          "And you don't know his address?"
          "No--except that it was Leadenhall Street."
          "Where did you address your letters, then?"
          "To the Leadenhall Street Post-Office, to be left till called
      for. He said that if they were sent to the office he would be
      chaffed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady,
      so I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn't
      have that, for he said that when I wrote them they seemed to come
      from me, but 

when they were typewritten he always felt that the
      machine had come between us. That will just show you how fond he
      was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think
      of."
          "It was most suggestive," said Holmes. "It has long been an
      axiom of mine that the little things are infinitley the most
      important. Can you remember any other little things about Mr.
      Hosmer Angel?"
          "He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with
      me in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated
      to be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentelmanly he was. Even
      his voice was gentle. He'd had the quinsy and swollen glands when
      he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat,
      and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always
      well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as
      mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare."
          "Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather,
      returned to France?"
          "Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we
      should marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest
      and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever
      happened I would always be true to him. Mother said he was quite
      right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion.
      Mother was all in his favour from the first and was even fonder of


leave me so. Why,
       all the morning he was saying to me that, whatever happened, I was
      to be true; and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred
      to separate us, I was always to remember that I was pledged to
      him, and that he would claim his pledge sooner or later. It
      seemed strange talk for a wedding-morning, but what has happened
      since gives a meaning to it."
          "Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then, that some
      unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him?"
          "Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he
      would not have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw
      happened."
          "But you have no notion as to what it could have been?"
          "None."
          "One more question. How did your mother take the matter?"
          "She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the
      matter again."
          "And your father? Did you tell him?"
          "Yes; and he seemed to think, with me, that something had
      happened, and that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said,
      what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the doors of the
      church, and then leaving me? Now, if he had borrowed my money, or
      if he had married me and got my money settled on him, there might
      be some reason, but Hosmer was very independent about money and
      never would look at a shilling of mine. And yet, what could have
      happened? And why could he not write? Oh, it drives me half-mad
      to think of it, and I can't sleep a wink at night." She pulled a
      little handkerchief out of her muff and began to sob heavily into
      it.
          "I 

      to him as a counsellor, and, having lit it, he leaned back in his
      chair, with the thick blue cloud-wreaths spinning up from him, and
      a look of infinite languor in his face.
          "Quite an interesting study, that maiden," he observed. "I
      found her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the
      way, is rather a trite one. You will find parallel cases, if you
      consult my index, in Andover in `77, and there was something of
      the sort at The Hague last year. Old as is the idea, however,
      there were one or two details which were new to me. But the
      maiden herself was most instructive."
          "You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite
      invisible to me," I remarked.
          "Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where
      to look, and so you missed all that was important. I can never
       bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness
      of thumails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.
      Now, what did you gather from that woman's appearance? Describe
      it."
          "Well, she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat, with
      a feather of a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black
      beads sewn upon it, and a fringe of little black jet ornaments.
      Her dress was brown, rather darker than coffee colour, with a
      little purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were
      grayish and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots
      I didn't observe. She had small round, hanging gold earrings, and
      a general air of being fairly well-to-do in a vulgar, comfortable,
      easy-going way."
          Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and
      chuckled.
          "'Pon 

my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You
      have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have
      missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method,
      and you have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general
      impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My
      first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man it is
      perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you
      observe, this woman had plush upon her sleeves, which is a most
      useful material for showing traces. The double line a little
      above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against the table,
      was beautifully defined. The sewing-machine, of the hand type,
      leaves a similar mark, but only on the left arm, and on the side
      of it farthest from the thumb, instead of being right across the
      broadest part, as this was. I then glanced at her face, and,
      observing the dint of a pince-nez at either side of her nose, I
      ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed
      to surprise her."
          "It surprised me."
          "But, surely, it was obvious. I was then much surprised and
      interested on glancing down to observe that, though the boots
      which she was wearing were not unlike each other, they were really
      odd ones; the one having a slightly decorated toe-cap, and the
      other a plain one. One was buttoned only in the two lower buttons
      out of five, and the other at the first, third, and fifth. Now,
      when you see that a young lady, otherwise neatly dressed, has come
      away from home with odd boots, half-buttoned, it is no great
      deduction to say that she came away in a hurry."
          "And what else?" I asked, keenly interested, as I always was,
      by my friend's incisive reasoning.
          "I 

          "Oh, it won't do--really it won't," said Holmes suavely.
      "There is no possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is
      quite too transparent, and it was a very bad compliment when you
      said that it was impossible for me to solve so simple a question.
      That's right! Sit down and let us talk it over."
          Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face and a
      glitter of moisture on his brow. "It--it's not actionable," he
      stammered.
          "I am very much afraid that it is not. But between ourselves,
      Windibank, it was as cruel and selfish and heartless a trick in a
      petty way as ever came before me. Now, let me just run over the
      course of events, and you will contradict me if I go wrong."
          The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon
      his breast, like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his
      feet up on the corner of the mantelpiece and, leaning back with
      his hands in his pockets, began talking, rather to himself, as it
      seemed, than to us.
          "The man married a woman very much older than himself for her
      money," said he, "and he enjoyed the use of the money of the
      daughter as long as she lived with them. It was a considerable
      sum, for people in their position, and the loss of it would have
      made a serious difference. It was worth an effort to preserve it.
      The daughter was of a good, amiable disposition, but affectionate
      and warm-hearted in her ways, so that it was evident that with her
      fair personal advantages, and her little income, she would not be
      allowed to remain single long. Now her marriage would mean, of
      course, the loss of a hundred a year, so what does her stepfather
      do to prevent it? He takes the obvious course of keeping her at


      home and forbidding her to seek the company of people of her own
      age. But soon he found that that would not answer forever. She
      became restive, insisted upon her rights, and finally announced
      her positive intention of going to a certain ball. What does her
      clever stepfather do then? He conceives an idea more creditable
      to his head than to his heart. With the connivance and assistance
      of his wife he disguised himself, covered those keen eyes with
      tinted glasses, masked the face with a moustache and a pair of
      bushy whiskers, sunk that clear voice into an insinuating whisper,
      and doubly secure on account of the girl's short sight, he appears
     as Mr. Hosmer Angel, and keeps off other lovers by making love
      himself."
          "It was only a joke at first," groaned our visitor. "We never
      thought that she would have been so carried away."
          "Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was
      very decidedly carried away, and, having quite made up her mind
      that her stepfather was in France, the suspicion of treachery
      never for an instant entered her mind. She was flattered by the
      gentleman's attentions, and the effect was increased by the loudly
      expressed admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel began to call,
      for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as far as it
      would go if a real effect were to be produced. There were
      meetings, and an engagement, which would finally secure the girl's
      affections from turning towards anyone else. But the deception
      could not be kept up forever. These pretended journeys to France
      were rather cumbrous. The thing to do was clearly to bring the
      business to an end in such a dramatic manner that it would leave a
      permanent impression upon the young lady's mind and prevent her
      from looking upon any other suitor for some time to come.