Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,33
“Sherlock Holmes.”
Those who have read my narrative of the Brixton Road murder, given to the public under the somewhat sensational title of A Study in Scarlet, may recall something of the events which led to my first meeting with this future friend. When I had disembarked from the Orontes at Portsmouth, I was classified as a military invalid with little or no prospect of a further career in my chosen profession. Until their final decision was communicated, the Army medical board left me to lead a comfortless London existence at a private hotel in the Strand. The place was no better than a boarding-house for impoverished widows and widowers in their last years. My princely income was an allowance of four pounds and six pence a week.
During convalescence in hospital, I had managed to put aside most of my pay and my invalid supplement. There had been little opportunity to spend it. Even the comfort of a pipe and tobacco was forbidden me. Yet as the weeks of 1881 passed in London, this little stock of capital ran lower and lower. I had no family in England, except a few distant cousins down in Devonshire. I had no expectations of a legacy and no one to whom I could turn for immediate assistance.
A city with as many attractions as London is not an easy place in which to do nothing. Week after week, I seemed to spend more money than I had meant to. My state of mind may easily be imagined, as I contemplated the loss of both health and independence. As for marriage and a settled existence, what woman of any sense would have a man with my prospects?
In this frame of mind I walked down Piccadilly one January morning, wondering what I should do. That famous avenue was busy with people who all seemed to look far richer than I should ever be. Swans-neck pilentum carriages passed me, drawn by glossy bay geldings. A coach with armorial bearings upon its door rumbled by. Even the hansom cabs were almost beyond my means to hire.
At that moment, the course of my future life was decided by a single stroke of coincidence. As I returned from the trees and carriages of Hyde Park Corner, the clocks struck twelve. I resolved that my first economy must be to leave the private hotel for cheaper accommodation. What could be cheaper? Goodness knows whether I should find anything short of a common lodging-house. All the same, I would celebrate my decision to live more cheaply by allowing myself a final luxury. I pushed open the door of the old Criterion Bar in Coventry Street, off Piccadilly Circus.
The stroke of coincidence was a tap on my shoulder and the friendly voice of young Stamford, who had been a surgical dresser under me at Barts Hospital before my days in the Army.
We exchanged all the formalities of friends long parted and then began to talk. I described my military experiences in Afghanistan and the situation in which I now found myself. I knew him well enough to mention that I must move from my present hotel to another abode—I knew not where. At once he told me of his acquaintance, a certain Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had informed him that very morning that he was in search of lodgings. More to the point, he had found a very nice set of rooms, in Baker Street, but must have someone to go halves with him in the cost. Stamford rather thought that Holmes was inviting him to share the rooms; but Stamford was already suited, as they say.
I recall, as if it were only a week ago, my excitement at this chance of solving my own problem so easily. If I could chum with someone, it would halve the cost straight away.
“By Jove!” I said with a laugh. “If your friend really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I may be the very man for him. In any case, I should prefer going halves to living alone!”
That afternoon, in the chemical laboratory of Barts, I came face to face with a studious-looking individual, a little over six feet in height. He was so lean that it made him look, if anything, taller still. The eyes were sharp and penetrating, the nose thin and hawk-like. His features made him appear at once alert and decisive. His jaw was firmly set, as if resolute and determined. In the matter of his physical strength, the moment