The friends of Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be glad to learn that he is still alive and well, though somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism. He has, for many years, lived in a small farm upon the downs five miles from Eastbourne, where his time is divided between philosophy and agriculture. During this period of rest he has refused the most princely offers to take up various cases, having determined that his retirement was a permanent one. The approach of the German war caused him however, to lay his remarkable combination of intellectual and practical activity at the disposal of the government, with historical results which are recounted in His Last Bow. Several previous experiences which have lain long in my portfolio have been added to His Last Bow so as to complete the volume.

JOHN H. WATSON, M. D.

1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles

I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled scribbled a reply. He made no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

“I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,” said he. “How do you define the word ‘grotesque’?”

“Strange — remarkable,” I suggested.

He shook his head at my definition.

“There is surely something more than that,” said he; “some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognize how often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal. Think of that little affair of the red-headed men. That was grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which led straight to a murderous conspiracy. The word puts me on the alert.”

“Have you it there?” I asked.

He read the telegram aloud.

“Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult you?

“Scott Eccles,

“Post-Office, Charing Cross.”

“Man or woman?” I asked.

“Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come.”

“Will you see him?”

“My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers. My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.”

‘By Nottingham and Grantham.’

‘And then your sister would drop you somewhere and you’d walk or drive back here? Sounds very risky, to me.’

‘Does it? Well, then, Hilda could bring me back. She could sleep at Mansfield, and bring me back here in the evening, and fetch me again in the morning. It’s quite easy.’

‘And the people who see you?’

‘I’ll wear goggles and a veil.’

He pondered for some time.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You please yourself as usual.’

‘But wouldn’t it please you?’

‘Oh yes! It’d please me all right,’ he said a little grimly. ‘I might as well smite while the iron’s hot.’

‘Do you know what I thought?’ she said suddenly. ‘It suddenly came to me. You are the ‘‘Knight of the Burning Pestle’’!’

‘Ay! And you? Are you the Lady of the Red–Hot Mortar?’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Yes! You’re Sir Pestle and I’m Lady Mortar.’

‘All right, then I’m knighted. John Thomas is Sir John, to your Lady Jane.’

‘Yes! John Thomas is knighted! I’m my–lady–maiden–hair, and you must have flowers too. Yes!’

She threaded two pink campions in the bush of red–gold hair above his penis.

‘There!’ she said. ‘Charming! Charming! Sir John!’

And she pushed a bit of forget–me–not in the dark hair of his breast.

‘And you won’t forget me there, will you?’ She kissed him on the breast, and made two bits of forget–me–not lodge one over each nipple, kissing him again.

‘Make a calendar of me!’ he said. He laughed, and the flowers shook from his breast.

‘Wait a bit!’ he said.

He rose, and opened the door of the hut. Flossie, lying in the porch, got up and looked at him.

‘Ay, it’s me!’ he said.

The rain had ceased. There was a wet, heavy, perfumed stillness. Evening was approaching.

He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the riding. Connie watched his thin, white figure, and it looked to her like a ghost, an apparition moving away from her.

When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of the hut, with a blanket round her, looking into the drenched, motionless silence.

But he was coming back, trotting strangely, and carrying flowers. She was a little afraid of him, as if he were not quite human. And when he came near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the meaning.

He had brought columbines and campions, and new–mown hay, and oak–tufts and honeysuckle in small bud. He fastened fluffy young oak–sprays round her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden–hair were forget–me–nots and woodruff.