The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free Page A

courts of law. As you know, there was no leniency. Mrs. Paige was sentenced for life.
    â€œIt was then that Darlington vowed she would be free, that he would find some way of gaining her release, to repay her for shielding him. It was a daring scheme he concocted, but Rufus Darlington was a daring man . . . It took him many months of ‘scouting the field’ until he spotted a young woman who sufficiently resembled the new inmate of the Women’s Prison. He wooed her passionately, and won her easily. She was beneath his station, of course, but that did not matter. All that mattered was—the resemblance.”
    Now the light began to dawn in my own mind. “Her ‘delusion’! It was all play-acting, wasn’t it? She was only pretending that she believed herself to be Lady Darlington.”
    â€œIt was preparation,” Holmes said gravely. “Establishing themental madness that would precede the
real
Mrs. Darlington’s mental condition when the two women traded places.”
    â€œSo that was the purpose of their visit—to effect the trade.”
    â€œOf course. They overpowered the innocent Mrs. Darlington, switched clothing, and started the fire they hoped might destroy all possible evidence.”
    â€œYou mean they would not have been concerned if the poor girl burned to death!”
    â€œNo,” Holmes said grimly. “But it hardly mattered when she survived. She was still recognized as a prisoner, with the very same delusion of grandeur . . . And Lord and ‘Lady’ Darlington were free to travel the world and then live on an idyllic island where no one would ever question her identity . . .”
    â€œAnd that’s why you visited Dr. Blevin. To determine if there were identifying marks or scars which only his wife would know.”
    â€œThe Ace of Spades,” Holmes said. “I wonder if Lord Darlington ever considered his birthmark an evil omen, a harbinger of early doom.” He picked up the evening paper, and handed it to me without another word. In the first column was the account of a British steamer called the
Craithie
that had collided with a German ship in the North Sea. Among the listed dead were the names of Lord and Lady Darlington. I tried to evoke a feeling of pity within myself, but failed. As for Sherlock Holmes, he was only concerned with the lighting of his pipe, the pleasures of tobacco once again restored by his return to health.
    * A descendant of Lord Darlington, Palmer Leeds of Manchester, did solicit the courts to prevent the publication of this story, but his petition was denied.

T he Adventure of the Old Russian Woman” is a case-to-be-told that Watson referred to in “The Musgrave Ritual.” His suppression of this narrative probably stemmed from Holmes’s reluctance to discomfit those erstwhile artistic “superstars” concerned in the case
, J OHN S INGER S ARGENT
(1856-1925) and
J AMES M C N EILL W HISTLER
(1834-1903)
.
The Adventure of the
Old Russian Woman
    Composed from Notes in the Files
of Dr. John H. Watson
    BY H. P AUL J EFFERS
    I n the two years which passed since I entered into an arrangement to share rooms at 221 Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes, I had through diligent effort accommodated myself to the many singular, even peculiar, traits of character and habits which had brought him increasing respect and work in his unique occupation—private consulting detective. I had grown used to his brooding silences, smelly chemical experiments, many unsavoury-looking callers in the parlour that he insisted on referring to as his “consulting room,” and an array of Scotland Yard detectives who appeared to be incapable of solving crimes without his keen guidance. Like Mrs. Hudson, our patient landlady, I accepted the unusual hours he kept and nolonger felt astonished or affronted by his abrupt arrivals and departures, which frequently stretched into lengthy, unexplained absences.
    I