The room seemed cold and quiet as I read the conclusion of the message.
“I believe that the knowledge I now carry exposes me to danger and indeed the threat of death. My only defence is in sharing it so that my adversaries may be assured that the truth will be published if anything should happen to me. It has been my calling to serve God in India rather than in England, but I have been away too long. I now come back to London almost as a foreigner and am attending the medical ‘First Aid’ short course at the London Mission School. After an absence of eleven years, there seems no one else but you in whom I can safely confide.
“I beg, sir, that I may call upon you and your colleague Mr. Sherlock Holmes on Tuesday the 27th of March at 2 P.M. Should this not be convenient, I entreat that you will reply by return. In that case, I would ask you to nominate at once any other hour that might better suit you.
“I remain yours faithfully,
“Samuel Dordona, B. D., Evangelical Overseas Medical Mission
“49 Carlyle Mansions, London SW.”
“The deuce!” said Holmes thoughtfully, as I finished reading. “Our clerical friend has a turn for melodrama worthy of the stage of the Hoxton Britannia, has he not? You have never heard of him before this, I take it?”
I shook my head. “Indeed I have not. Nor have I the faintest idea where he can have heard of me. But this letter is so curious. Why would an overseas medical mission be housed in a block of mansion apartments in Victoria?”
“I daresay it is our client’s pied-a-terre during the month or two of his meagre furlough in England, before he returns to the Indian climate.”
“He is to be our client, then?”
Holmes’s mouth twisted a little with impatience. “To tell you the truth, Watson, we are not overburdened with clients just now.”
“You do not think that the whole story of a mystery in Captain Carey’s death might be schoolboy nonsense?”
“The Army and Navy Gazette seems not to think so. It talks of a mystery, but I daresay the libel laws prevent it from putting the details into print.”
With that, he turned and stared past me at the curtained window for a moment. Then he said, “Captain Carey was not otherwise mentioned to you during your time in India?”
“My dear Holmes! We had more urgent business! When the Prince Imperial was killed, our brigade was marching to meet Ayub Khan at Maiwand! It was all over before I saw another newspaper from home.”
“Of course,” he said quietly, “you are quite right.”
“I recall there was small talk among the fellows convalescing at Peshawar about how quickly the loss of Isandhlwana was followed by the death of the prince, one disaster coming so soon on top of another. Then, of course, those were followed by reverses in our battles against the Dutch Boers at Laings Nek and Majuba Hill, only a little distance away from the first two. By rights, we should have beaten the Boer farmers hands-down. I call that curious.”
He stared into the fireplace.
“No, Watson. Not curious. Tragic, certainly. Dangerous to our military and imperial reputation indeed. But the word ‘curious’ might imply that these improbable disasters have no common connection. On the contrary, I should say that a common connection almost certainly unites them all.”
“Where is your evidence? Where is the connection, at least?”
We had not talked of evidence as yet. He sat upright in his chair and the languid indifference dropped away.
“That, I cannot yet tell you at this moment. However, the Reverend Samuel Dordona interests me. He knows far more than he has told us—of that you may be sure. I believe it is of some importance that we should probe his story at our earliest convenience. I cannot speak for you, of course, but two o’clock tomorrow afternoon would suit me admirably.”
He refilled his pipe, struck a match, and crossed to the net-curtained window of our sitting-room. There he stood, staring down into the street, watching the passers-by in the silence of his thoughts for a full half hour.
6
Next afternoon, we played host to our clerical correspondent. Long before Mr. Dordona’s arrival, Sherlock Holmes had made good use of Palmer’s Index to the Times and annual volumes of the Army List. These held details of Captain Carey’s career and death. The manner of that death might seem tragic, but nothing so far suggested that it was sinister.
Thanks to Holmes’s