“Great Heavens!” I cried. “That is incredible!”

“Indeed,” said Holmes. “There are things in the professor’s battered old trunk that would probably fetch more at auction than we three could earn in a lifetime!”

“Good Lord!” said Gregson. “That is, I suppose, enough to tempt some men to any sort of wickedness. But Martin was an intelligent, educated man,” he added with a shake of his head, “a young gentleman and graduate of Oxford University! You would have thought he would be above that sort of temptation.”

“Perhaps there are things about his character that we don’t yet know,” said Holmes. “Now,” he continued, rising to his feet, “our investigation is completed, and we come to the most difficult part of the business.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I must explain the true facts of the case to Miss Calloway, Watson. It is undoubtedly my responsibility to do so, but it is not a responsibility I particularly welcome. You will come with me, old man?”

“Of course.”

“As to Martin,” Holmes continued, addressing Inspector Gregson, “I recommend a thorough investigation into his antecedents. There may be dark secrets there, unknown to anyone. But the terrible, simple truth is that once evil enters into the heart of a man, it cannot easily be eradicated, but will drive all else out, and poison every fibre of his being.”

Sherlock Holmes’s speculations as to Martin’s character and antecedents were very soon borne out. Two days after the events recorded above, a firm of solicitors in the Temple handed in to Scotland Yard a sealed letter, which had been left with them the previous Friday by Professor Palfreyman, with the instruction that, in the event of his sudden death, it should be handed at once to the authorities. In this letter the professor mentioned that one of his valuable artefacts, a primitive oil lamp of Phoenician origin, was missing from the house, and although he had no proof, he could not see how anyone but Timothy Martin could have taken it. He also mentioned that he had seen Martin, believing himself to be unobserved, looking through other things in the house in what the professor described as “a sly and furtive manner”. The professor had therefore come to have strong suspicions about the man and his motives, but had felt unable, without further proof, to voice them, for fear of alienating the affections of Miss Calloway, who, he believed, had developed a liking for Martin, and whose affections he had come to value above all else.

The suspicions the professor had harboured about Martin had led him to speculate that it was Martin who had sent him the tile and the letter with the face on it. Indeed, he was, he said, “practically certain” that the handwriting on the envelope of the first letter, although disguised, was Martin’s. As to why Martin should have sent these things to him, the professor admitted he had no idea. This had led him to speculate further that Martin was perhaps simply, as he put it, “one of those strange people one encounters occasionally, who have a warped and vicious cast of mind, who smile a lot, but seem devoid of all real human emotion, and who lie almost every time they open their mouths. ‘‘If so,” the professor concluded, “he keeps his true nature well hidden, especially from Miss Calloway.”

Subsequently, when the police made a thorough examination of Martin’s lodgings in Bloomsbury, they found Professor Palfreyman’s Phoenician oil lamp there and, among numerous other things, a small early sketch by Poussin, later identified as having also been taken from Bluebell Cottage. Another surprising find was a small oval framed portrait by Nicholas Hilliard of the Earl of Essex, dating from around 1590, which was at length identified as having been stolen from St Aidan’s College, Oxford, three years previously, at the time Martin had been an undergraduate there. In the course of that robbery – which had remained a perfect mystery until this discovery – one of the college servants had been so severely beaten about the head that he had been unable to work again for nearly a year.

Of Georgina Calloway, I am pleased to say, I have happier information to record. She eventually recovered from the shock and horror of what had taken place at Bluebell Cottage, and was offered a position with Professor Ainscow similar to the one she had held with Professor Palfreyman, which she accepted. She remained in that position for nearly three years, while at the same time pursuing her studies in botany. During this period we kept in touch, she dined with us a number of times, and I had the privilege of escorting her to the theatre on two or three occasions. Then, with the kind assistance of Professor Ainscow, she at last succeeded in gaining a position at the Royal Botanical Institute at Kew, where to the best of my knowledge she remains to this day.

The Adventure of

THE FOURTH GLOVE

THE LATCHMERE DIAMOND is without doubt one of the most celebrated gems ever to have found its way to England. Unearthed in some remote corner of India, it is first recorded in Golconda, from where it passed to the trading post at Madras. There it was purchased, in 1783, by Samuel Tollington, later the third Viscount Latchmere, who had been travelling in the Far East with his uncle, Sir George Tollington, the well-known diplomat. Its arrival in England later that year created a sensation, for it was the largest diamond ever seen, and everyone, from the King downwards, wished to behold this prodigy. However, within six months of its arrival, the first of many attempts to steal it had been made. A second attempt was made in 1792, which cost the viscount his life, and a third in 1799, during which two of the robbers were killed. The tumultuous period of the Napoleonic Wars proved a relatively quiet time for the Latchmere Diamond, but in 1819 another attempt was made to steal it, and in 1834 yet another, which again cost the robbers their lives.

In 1842, the fifth viscount had the diamond re-cut and mounted as a pendant, to be worn by each future viscountess on her wedding day, but this change in the diamond’s appearance brought no change in its violent history, for within six months it was stolen, and was not recovered for three years. In 1865, a further attempt was made upon the diamond, in which two of the robbers and one of Viscount Latchmere’s servants were killed. Throughout this history of violence, the diamond was also gaining the reputation of being an unlucky possession for the Tollington family. Indeed, the first tragedy had struck before the diamond even reached these shores, when Sir George Tollington was lost at sea in a terrible storm off the coast of Madagascar when returning from India, and, in addition to the viscount who was murdered in 1792, two more to bear that title also met an untimely end, one in a riding accident and one who was drowned while sailing on the Solent.

Like most people, I imagine, I had read the history of this fabulous stone with mere idle curiosity, never thinking for a moment that I should ever have any personal connection with it. Yet, surprisingly, in early October 1885, that was precisely what happened, as a result of my sharing chambers with the renowned detective Mr Sherlock Holmes.

We were seated at breakfast, on a fine, crisp autumn morning. The dawn mist had already cleared, and the bright sun gave promise of a fine day. But this attractive prospect outside our sitting-room window aroused mixed feelings in my own breast. The wound in my leg, which I had brought back with me as an unwanted memento of my service in Afghanistan, had begun to throb painfully in recent days and became worse whenever I tried to walk. I was thus condemned, on what promised to be the loveliest day of the autumn, to a day spent in a chair by the fire with my left leg raised up on a cushion. It will be readily imagined what a thoroughly depressing prospect this was, and why I applied myself with unusual zeal to the morning papers, in an effort to distract my mind.