“That rather settles the matter,” said Holmes. “I don’t know what this girl was doing before she came here, Jones, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was put up to this scheme by ‘One-eye’ Vokes or Elias Dack.”

“Elias Dack?” cried Maria abruptly in a voice suffused with contempt. “I spit on Elias Dack!”

“Well, at least that shows you know who he is,” remarked Holmes in a dry tone. “As I was saying, Jones, I can’t believe that having made her way all the way from Corunna to England, whether alone, or in the company of an English sailor, as she claimed, she just happened by sheer chance to land up in the household of the man she was later to accuse of being her father. What is more likely, I think, is that she had already fallen in with Elias Dack, or some member of his gang, and he saw the possibilities in the situation: that he could use this girl to blackmail Prentice into throwing in his lot with them in their dishonest activities, as he used to do in the days before his prison sentence. It is likely, I think, that Prentice himself had mentioned to Dack, many years ago, that he had given this ring to a young woman he had met in Corunna. Dack would know that the very last thing that Prentice would want would be a serious falling-out with his wife, and he could use this fact as a sort of evil leverage against him.”

“It may well be so,” agreed Jones. “And we may learn more about it later. Between you and me, gentlemen,” he continued, taking us to one side and lowering his voice, “the important business that Inspector Quirke and his men are undertaking today is a raid on The Cocked Hat. We have had reliable information that the loot from most of those West End robberies is being stored there at the moment. A search warrant has been issued, and the raid should be starting any time now. With a little luck we should get our hands on both the stolen goods and Dack and his gang!”

As Holmes and I walked along to the railway station, I reflected on the whole sorry business.

“I was thinking,” I remarked, “that Elias Dack, despite supposedly being an old friend of Prentice’s – in days gone by, at least – was perfectly prepared to destroy Prentice’s marriage just to get him to help them.”

“That should not surprise you, Watson,” returned Holmes with a harsh laugh. “Despite the efforts of some writers to romanticize criminals, in tales of highwaymen and other such villains, there is, in truth, as the old saying has it, no honour among thieves. These sort of people would sell their own sisters into slavery if it happened to suit their immediate purposes. People like Dack have no real friends.”

I was to remember my friend’s cynical words later, when I read a report in the newspaper of the police raid on The Cocked Hat. For during the chaos and violence that followed the arrival of the police, Dack evidently scented treachery, and formed the opinion – rightly or wrongly – that the information the police had received had been given to them by his lieutenant, “One-eye” Vokes. Seizing a moment when no one was looking, therefore, he attacked Vokes with a knife he had concealed in his sock, and, before anyone could stop him, had plunged it into the other man’s breast, killing him on the spot. That raid, and the trials that followed, marked the eradication of what Holmes had described as a “plague-spot” in south-east London, leaving the honest inhabitants of that district to thenceforth go about their business in peace. The part I had played in the matter was, of course, a very slight and peripheral one, and yet I do not mind admitting that it gives me a feeling of both pride and satisfaction to know that I played any part in it at all.

The Adventure of

THE WILLOW POOL

I: CAPTAIN JOHN REID

MR SHERLOCK HOLMES was always of the opinion that no record of his varied professional career would be complete without an account of the singular case of Captain John Reid of Topley Cross, late of the West Sussex Infantry. It was without question an unusual case, and I should certainly have placed the facts on record long ago, were it not that those intimately concerned in the matter had expressed a specific wish that I not do so. That prohibition having recently been withdrawn, I lay the following narrative before my readers, to remedy the omission. The events I describe occurred in the autumn of the very first year in which I shared chambers with Sherlock Holmes following my return to England from Afghanistan, and just a few weeks after an Army Medical Board had finally determined that I was unlikely ever again to be fit enough to serve my country, and had therefore discharged me from further duty.

The Second Afghan War has already taken its place in the pages of modern history. Drawn unwillingly into a violent fraternal quarrel, in which a simple overture from one side justified one’s slaughter in the eyes of the other, the British Army endured great suffering and reversals of fortune before its final triumph settled the matter and restored peace. I have little doubt that many years hence, when the history of the time is written from a longer perspective, the whole campaign will command but a paragraph or two in an account of the period. A vicious conflict, which no one had desired, marked by treachery and double-dealing, in a barren and inhospitable land in which no one had ever wished to set foot, it can scarcely be expected to excite that interest in future generations which other, more glorious, episodes in our military history might command. Yet the very misfortune and hardship that bedevilled the campaign brought forth courage and endurance in our forces such as has never been surpassed, and those who were in Afghanistan during this fateful period are unlikely ever to forget it.

Having been severely wounded at the Battle of Maiwand, where our forces had been outnumbered by ten to one, I was among the first to be sent home to England; but it was not very long before most of my compatriots had followed me, and by the end of April 1881, Afghanistan had been effectively evacuated. It may be imagined with what relief the returning troops set foot once more upon their native turf, with what hopes for rest and the sight of a friendly face they turned their steps towards the towns and villages of their youth. But for one man, at least, that relief proved short-lived and those hopes remained unfulfilled, for when Captain John Reid returned home to the scenes of his childhood, he encountered a hostility there which was, in its way, as implacable and incomprehensible as any he had endured with his companions abroad.

It was a dull, foggy day in October, and I had not ventured out of doors all day. Now, as the afternoon drew on, I stood for a minute at the window and surveyed the dismal scene outside. Like a dull brown sea, the fog swirled slowly about the street and lapped silently at our windowpanes, where it condensed in filthy, oily drops.

With a sigh I returned to the bright fireside and picked up the tedious yellow-backed novel I had been attempting to read before the ache from my old wound had driven me from my chair. Sherlock Holmes was engaged at his chemical bench, in some malodorous experiment that involved the rapid boiling of benzine in a flask, and neither looked up nor spoke as I passed. He had his watch on the table before him, and was clearly timing the process precisely. I watched as he took a pipette and extracted a little of the bubbling liquid. Evidently satisfied, he added a small amount of chemicals to the flask and watched as the liquid became suffused with a vivid violet tint. Smiling to himself, he came to the fireside and took his old brier pipe from the mantelshelf.

“Is your experiment of importance?” I asked. “Professionally speaking, not at all,” returned my companion