We did rent two rooms on the first floor. A retired major Brown just from India and his medicine doctor Adams lived the next door. Because of constant nightmares Adams recommended Brown to have a rest at some cozy place. There, in Scottish boarding-house Brown was getting better.
Once in the morning loud voices made me get up. I got my dressing-gown on and left the room. I saw Holmes, he looked worried.
“What the hell, Watson?” asked Holmes me. “They did not let me watch my good dream.”
“Something happened in Brown’s room,” I answered.
“The very guy that came from India with his nightmares? He saw something bad again?”
The lady-host Mrs. Carry appeared right at this moment. She was pale.
“Oh, my God! Death!” cried out she. “In my boarding-house! Oh my God!”
“Mrs. Carry!” Holmes did not look sleepy any more. “What is going on?”
“Gosh!” cried out the woman again. “You don’t know yet? Major Brown! Poor Brown! He is dead! Because of nightmare!”
Me and Holmes looked at each other. This news was very strange.
In the room we saw doctor Adams, a nervous man in round glasses and small beard, and dead Mr. Brown, who lied in the bed with a grimace of terror on his face.
Holmes got closer to the bed, touched the Brown’s hand. The major was really dead.
“What’s happened?” he asked, turning to Adams.
“Brown was sick,” the doctor began to explain, gathering his instruments into his bag. “A month ago he addressed to recover a very strange illness. Some Indian wizard cursed him. The wizard whispered that Brown would die while sleeping because of the awful dream. When Brown returned back from India he began to suffer from nightmares, he had seen the wizard who moved out from the darkness and stretched his long – about several feet – hands to him. And then Brown awaked.”
“Well,” said Holmes, looking at the dead face of Brown. “They say it is mystic. But I would better to say of hypnotizing. Well, please continue.”
“There is nothing to continue,” answered Adams. “We have come to this house, nightmare disappeared… But some days ago these awful dreams came back. Last morning Brown told me about another nightmare. Indian temple. Snakes on the walls, poison green smoke out of the windows… And an awful voice of the wizard… Then this damned old man came out to the major and caught his throat by his curling nails… Brown then could not sleep until the light.
Afternoon I made Brown to sleep for an hour upon my control. He slept not well. The wizard came again, but that time he appeared from the great hole of the black tree. He stretched his fingers to him. Each finger was a scorpion.
Brown shouted and got up. He was in cold sweat. Last night the wizard looked like dead man with worms on his face, with empty eyes holes, and a big knife in the hand. He said “I came to murder you’.”
Adams stopped his tale, a policeman and a police doctor came in. Then Adams continued:
“This is simple and dramatic circumstances that took place. In the moment I slightly touched his neck by two fingers to test his pulse Brown saw the wizard in the shape of a great snake hitting his neck by two teeth as. And his heart did not stand it. A sheer heart attack happened. His face turned red, he opened his eyes and tried to get up from the bed, but fell down… I called Mrs. Carry. We tried to recover Brown, but useless. The wizard said he would die. Alas! That happened…”
Suddenly Holmes loudly said:
“But Sherlock Holmes from London is saying that you are liar and would be arrested. Constable! Arrest this man!”
I was puzzled. Holmes again saw something that I did not. What?
ANSWER:
“My friend! It is so easy!” Holmes laughed, getting out his pipe.
“Please don’t! I want to know what have you got this time! Adams looks a good man! How did you see that he was telling not truth?”
Holmes smiled.
“It’s so easy! How could Adams know what did Brown see before his death? May be he is not a killer, but he is a liar at least… Darkness!” Holmes knocked his forehead and turned back to me. “This his word sounded strange also…”
In two weeks, in London, we received the letter from Scotland Yard. The Scottish police thanked us for the help. They informed that Adams was hunting for rich men’s priorities. He was not a medicine doctor at all! Adams decided to fool Brown using his specific psycho disease. This bustard gave to former major hallucination pills which caused nightmares. Then he poised Brown. If not Holmes Adams could fool Scotland Yard as well. Frankly speaking, as Holmes said to me secretly, in this case he was risking. The story about the last nightmare any doctor could just propose as a version. But Holmes’ deduction did not let him down.
5. Incident in the Museum
“In works of art, frankly speaking, I’m attracted to not their artistic merits. I’m attracted to their criminal history. I look at them as a subject around which con artists and thieves always commit their crimes. Agree, it is not less interesting aspect of the artwork, you may say, its second life and the second story. Now, Watson, can you tell me about this pretty thing?”
Holmes pointed at a golden medallion with a large diamond hanging behind glass on the Museum wall… We were spending that evening at London’s Museum of Fine Arts as according to inspector Lestrade’s information, in the night there was supposed to be a robbery over there. The police knew that a robbery will certainly happen this night (agent Lestrade heard about this at the meeting in the thieves’ environment), but no one knew exactly who would be a robber. The inspector did not rule out that it may be a good skilled recidivist, that’s why he invited to the Museum Holmes, who knew with photographic accuracy the faces of hundreds of dangerous criminals.
“Oh, this is the famous locket Messalina!” I exclaimed. “In 1701 it was made by the Italian master Casacci. Then it belonged to the Pope, then uh… someone else. And was donated to the Museum by Lord Verrington.”
I expected that my extensive knowledge will make an impression on Holmes. But Holmes looked disappointed.
“You see, my friend,” sadly he said. “It turns out you know nothing. This medallion was stolen 27 times, 8 times they sold its fake copy, eleven people were killed in the struggle for the possession of it, three of them were strangled, one drowned, four poisoned, two stabbed and one was killed by a fireplace stick. I can tell you all the details of each case. That’s what I name by a phrase ‘to know something about things’…”
I didn’t have time to answer Holmes because suddenly out of the dark halls of the long Museum corridors a police whistle sounded and a woman screaming for help. It was certainly one of the Museum caretaker who called the police: all of caretakers had police whistles to signal in urgent cases.
“Quick, Watson!” cried out Holmes. “The robbery occurred!”
I hurried up after him…
A woman of about forty-five, the curator of the Museum, looked worried and confused. A green lantern shining from the street through the assembled from colored glass window painted the woman’s face scared to death. But I thought it was just an illusion. Holmes, inspector Lestrade, me and two policemen listened to the story of the woman.
“I, as Mr. Inspector ordered, was walking from room to room, trying to notice strange and not to frighten anybody who intends to commit theft. I was over there,” she pointed across the corridor to the far room, “when