The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [63]
He sat before us, a broken man. I felt a keen sympathy for him, having experienced some of his fascination for the turf. Well I knew what it could do to a man, for I had seen many ensnared by its coils and dragged down. I had escaped, but I knew many who had not. Still, it could be done, and I said so to Forrester.
“Escape?” he said, in a tired voice. “But how? What shall I do?”
“Tell your wife,” said Holmes, who had been sitting quietly.
“My wife? But I cannot. The shame …”
“Is better than the ruin which will certainly come to you if you continue down this path. Come, Sir,” he continued in a softer tone, “your wife is a compassionate woman. She came to us out of concern for her maid, and I am sure that if you are honest with her you shall have nothing to regret. Go to her now and explain everything, then tell Sarah that she has nothing to fear.”
Holmes rose to go, but paused at the door. “I shall send a telegram, but please extend my regrets to your wife for not keeping our appointment. I am sure she will understand. Come, Watson.”
The Adventure of the Amateur Mendicant Society
John Gregory Betancourt
1887 was one of Holmes’s busiest years. We know for certain of at least thirteen cases that year, and indications of several others. Watson refers to some of these at the start of “The Five Orange Pips” although, in his usual devious way, the case of “The Five Orange Pips” itself did not happen in that year but in 1889.
The year began with Holmes facing one of his most formidable opponents, the King of Blackmailers, Charles Augustus Milverton. It was followed by the case of “The Paradol Chamber”, which I am still piecing together and hope to bring to you at a future date. After that Holmes was plunged into the major problems of the Netherland-Sumatra Company, which also resulted in the case enticingly referred to as “The Giant Rat of Sumatra”, for which the world is not yet ready, and the daring schemes of Baron Maupertuis. It is of some significance, I believe, that all record of these cases has been extinguished and my researches and those of my colleagues have revealed nothing. I have no doubt that Watson was, in any case, concealing identities here, but I also have no doubt that these were amongst some of Holmes’s most daring and important cases. His exertions upon them damaged his health to the extent that Watson ordered Holmes to join him on a few days vacation in Surrey to recuperate, whereupon Holmes promptly threw himself into the local case of “The Reigate Squires”. The case acted like therapy and within days Holmes was reinvigorated and back in London.
One of the next cases that Holmes took on was “The Adventure of the Amateur Mendicant Society” which Watson delayed from writing down for several years. That delay meant that some of his earlier jottings about the case did not end up in his final papers stored in the despatch box and instead surfaced amongst some other papers found by bookdealer Robert Weinberg, whose own researches I shall return to later. Weinberg sold these papers to John Betancourt who has helped piece the case together.
As I have written previously, my first years sharing lodgings with Mr Sherlock Holmes were among the most interesting of my life. Of all his cases – both public and private – which took place during this period, there remains one in particular of which I have hesitated to write until this time. Despite an ingenious resolution – and to my mind a wholeheartedly satisfactory one – contrived by my friend, the bizarre nature of this affair has made me reluctant to place it before a general readership. However, I feel the time has come to lay forth the facts concerning Mr Oliver Pendleton-Smythe and the most unusual organization to which he belonged.
My notebook places our first meeting with Mr Pendleton-Smythe, if meeting it can be called, at Tuesday 24 April, 1887. We had just concluded a rather sensitive investigation (of which I am still not at liberty to write), and Holmes’s