The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [191]
“Now, you villain,” I cried. “We shall have the truth of it.”
But even before the man had had time to turn in my grasp I heard from behind me the sound of sudden, wild, grim, evil laughter. I looked back. Peering at the two of us from the shelter of the rhododendrons was that same brown, wrinkled face I had glimpsed looking in at my patient’s window. I loosened my grip on the gipsy, swung about and once more set out in pursuit.
This time I did not have so far to go. No sooner had I reached the other side of the shrubbery than I came face to face with my man. But he was my man no longer. He wore the same nondescript clothes that I had caught sight of among the brittle rhododendron leaves and his face was still brown-coloured. But that look of hectic evil in it had vanished clear away and in its place were the familiar features of my friend, Sherlock Holmes.
“I am sorry, Watson, to have put you to the trouble of two chases in one afternoon,” he said. “But I had to draw you away from that fellow before revealing myself.”
“Holmes,” I cried. “Then it was you at the window up there?”
“It was, doctor. I knew that it was imperative that I myself should take a good look at this mysterious patient of yours, and so I took the liberty of following you, knowing that this was your day for visiting the case. But you were a little too quick for me in the end, my dear fellow, and I had to beat a more hurried retreat than I altogether cared to.”
“Yes, but all the same, Holmes,” I said. “You cannot have had any good reason to suppose that it was necessary to spy upon my patient in that manner.”
“No good reason, doctor? Why, I should have thought the third finger of his right hand was reason enough, were there no other.”
“The third finger of his right hand?”
“Why, yes, my dear fellow. Surely you are not going to tell me that you noticed nothing about that? Come, I was at that window for little more than three or four minutes and I had grasped its significance long before you turned and saw me.”
“Now that I think about it,” I replied, “my patient does wear a finger-stall on the third finger of his right hand. Some trifling injury, I suppose. It certainly could in no way contribute to his condition.”
“I never suggested that it did, doctor. I am sure you know your business better than that. Trust me, then, to know mine.”
“But does his concealing that finger have some significance?” I asked.
“Of course it does. Tell me, what does a man customarily wear upon his third finger?”
“A ring, I suppose. But that would not be upon the right hand, surely?”
“Yes, Watson, a ring. You have arrived at the point with your customary perspicacity. But why should a man wish to conceal a particular ring? Tell me that.”
“Holmes, I cannot. I simply cannot.”
“Because the ring has a particular meaning. And who is it who would wear a ring of that nature? Why, a monarch, of course. I tell you that man in bed there is a king, and he is hiding for some good reason. There can scarcely be any doubt about that.”
To my mind, there was at least room for a measure of disagreement with this conclusion. Smith was perhaps a name that anyone wishing to live anonymously might take, but certainly my patient had shown not the least trace of a foreign accent, as he was surely likely to do if he were the ruler of one of the lesser European states whose appearance, especially since he wore a full beard, might be unknown to me. Yet he did have a manservant of European origin, though here again this was not an altogether uncommon circumstance for a single English gentleman who might be something of a traveller. I would have liked to put all these doubts and queries to my friend, but from the moment that he had told me what he had deduced from my patient’s concealed finger he lapsed into one of those moods of silence well familiar to me, and for the whole of our