The Adventure of the Three Ghosts

Loren D. Estleman

Compliments of the season, Watson. I note Lady Featherstone retains her childhood infatuation with you. She thinks you twelve feet tall and two yards wide at the shoulders."

Scarcely had I entered the ground floor at 221 Baker Street and surrendered my outerwear to the redoubtable Mrs. Hudson when I was thus greeted by Sherlock Holmes, who stood upon the landing outside the flat we shared for so long. He wore his prized old mouse-coloured dressing-gown, and his eyes were brighter than usual.

"Good Lord, Holmes," said I, climbing the stairs. "How could you know I saw Constance Featherstone this morning? Her invitation to breakfast was the first contact I have had with her since the wedding."

"You forget, dear fellow, that I know your wardrobe as well as your wife does. I can hardly be expected not to notice a new muffler, particularly when it bears the Dornoch tartan. You told me once in a loquacious humour of your early romance with Constance Dornoch. Who but she would present you with such a token in honour of the holiday? And who but a sentimental lady who still thought you taller and broader than the common breed of man would knit one so long and bulky that it wound five times round your not inconsiderable neck and stood out like the oaken collar of a Mongolian slave?"

I simply shook my head, for to remark upon my friend's preternatural powers of observation and deduction would be merely to repeat myself for the thousandth time. Ensconced presently in my old armchair in the dear old cluttered sitting-room I knew so well, I accepted a glass of whisky to draw the December chill from my bones and enquired what he was up to at present.

"Your timing is opportune," said he, folding his long limbs into the basket chair, where with his hands resting upon his knees he bore no small resemblance to an East Indian shaman. "In ten minutes I shall hail a hansom to carry me to an address on Thread-needle Street, where I fully expect my fare to be paid by the Earl of Chislehurst."

I nodded, not greatly impressed, although Lord Chislehurst was a respected Member of Parliament and a frequent weekend guest at Balmoral and whispered about as the Queen's favoured candidate for Minister of Finance. In the hierarchy of Holmes's clients, which had included a pontiff, a Prime Minister of England, and a foreign king, a noble banker placed fairly low. "A problem involving money?" I asked.

"No, a haunting. Are you interested?"

I responded that I most certainly was; and ten minutes later, my friend having exchanged his dressing-gown for an ulster, warm woollen muffler, and his favourite earflapped travelling cap, we were in a hansom rolling and sliding over the icy pavement through a gentle fall of snow. Vendors were hawking roast chestnuts, and over everything, the grim grey buildings and the holiday shoppers hurrying to and fro, bearing armloads of brightly wrapped packages, there had settled a festive atmosphere which transformed our dreary old London into a magical kingdom. In two days it would be gone, along with Christmas itself, but for the moment it lightened the heart and gilded it with hope.

"The earl is not a fanciful man," explained Holmes, holding on to the side of the conveyance. "A decade ago he acquired a money-lending institution teetering on the precipice of ruin and within a few short years brought it to the point where it is now universally thought of as one of the ten or twelve most reliable banking firms in England. Such men do not take lightly to ghosts."

I could divine no more detail than this, as very soon we pulled up before a gloomy old pile which I suspected had shown no great ceremony in its construction under George III, and to which the lapse of nearly a century and a half had brought little in the way of dignity or character. It seemed a most unlikely shelter for the institution Holmes had described.

Lord Chislehurst, to whom we were shown by a distracted young clerk, ameliorated to a great extent this disappointing impression. Well along in his fifties, he had yet a youthful abundance of fair hair, with but a trace of grey in the side whiskers and the gracefully swelling abdomen that instilled confidence in those who would trust their fortunes to the care of one so well fed, contained in a grey waistcoat and black frock. His broad face was flushed and his manner cordial as he exhorted us to make ourselves comfortable in a pair of deep leather chairs facing his great desk. I noticed as he made his way round to his own seat that he walked with a pronounced limp.

"I am doubly honoured. Dr. Watson, to welcome you to my place of business," said he, leaning back and threading his fingers together across his middle. "I have read your published accounts of Mr. Holmes's cases with a great deal of interest. As a writer, you may be intrigued to learn that my father toiled for many years as a clerk in the counting-house you came through just now."

"You have done well for yourself," I said truthfully.

"So my father might say. Despite the hardship, he was a jovial man, and would laugh long and loud to see his youngest child making free with the cigars in this office." He helped himself to one from a cherrywood box upon the desk and proffered the box, but we declined.

"Hardship?" prompted Holmes.

"The former owner was a fierce old dragon in his time, and pinched the halfpenny till it shrieked. Changed quite a bit in his last years, though, I'll be bound; saw the light, I suspect, as Judgement neared. His generosity to his employees after that made it possible for Father to arrange an operation that saved my life. I was a sickly child—a cripple, in fact. Unfortunately, the old banker overdid it, and wound up sacrificing those same sound business principles that made him wealthy. His fortunes declined even as mine ascended. He died in debt, and I acquired the firm the very week I entered the Peerage."

Holmes lit a cigarette. "An inspiring story. Your Lordship. Your letter—"

"The tea is not always sweet," he interrupted. "I had hoped to move the offices to more suitable quarters down the street next spring, but this South African mess has got all our foreign securities tied up. Against my better judgement, I have been forced to cancel this year's employee gratuities."

"Your letter mentioned a ghost."

"Three ghosts, Mr. Holmes. As if one were not sufficient." Our host's genial smile had vanished. "I have been visited by them the past two nights, and I must say it's getting to be a dashed nuisance."

"What happened the first night?"

"I was not greatly alarmed by it, thinking the business a bad dream caused by exhaustion and overindulgence. That day had been long and frustrating, beginning with more bad news from Africa in the Times, and complicated by a discrepancy in the accounts totalling forty-two pounds, which required that the transactions of the entire week be gone over with a weather eye by everyone on the staff. When the error was finally discovered and the correction made, the hour was well past seven. As is my wont, I stopped at the tavern round the corner on my way home, where I confess I had rather more than my customary tot of sherry. My wife, recognising my condition at the door, put me to bed straightaway.

"I slept as one dead until the stroke of one, at which time I awoke, or thought I awoke, with the realisation that I was not alone in my chamber."

"One moment," interrupted Holmes. "You do not share sleeping quarters with your wife?"

"Not since the early months of our marriage. I often sleep fitfully, with much tossing and muttering, and my wife is a light sleeper. I prefer not to disturb her. Is it significant?"

"Perhaps not. Please proceed."

" 'Who is there?' I asked groggily; for I was aware of a shimmering paleness in a corner of the room that was usually dark, as of a shaft of moonlight reflecting off a human face.

" 'The Ghost of Christmas Past,' came the reply. The voice was most solemn but youthful, and very much of this earth.

" 'Whose past?' I demanded. 'Who let you in?'

" 'Your past,' said the shade; and then some rot about coming along with him."

Holmes, settled deep in his chair with his lower limbs stretched in front of him and his eyes closed, said nothing, listening. His cigarette smoked between his fingers. As for myself, I felt my brow wrinkling. The narrative had begun to sound familiar.

"The rest is quite personal," the earl continued. "Vivid memories of my childhood, Christmas dinner with my mother and father and my brother Peter and my sister Martha, and Father going on about a goose, and what-have-you. Obviously I was dreaming, but I had the distinct impression of having travelled a great distance, and that I was peeping at all this as through a window, with the Ghost of Christmas Past standing at my elbow. It was all very strange, but nice, and sad as well. My parents are dead, my sister married and gone to America, and my brother and I have not spoken in years. We quarrelled over our meagre inheritance. I suppose it is not unusual to feel wistful over the happier days of youth. Still, it was an odd coincidence."

Holmes opened his eyes. "How was it a coincidence?"

"I had spent much of that trying day shut up with Richard, my chief clerk, going over the accounts. W⁷hen at length the discrepancy was corrected, it seemed natural to invite him to join me in a glass of sherry at the tavern. He accepted, and we whiled away a convivial evening reminiscing about Christmases old and new. So it seems odd that I should dream about the very same thing that night."

"Not at all, Your Lordship," I put in. "Man is a suggestible creature. It would be far more unusual to dream about something that was not in one's mind recently."

"I think there is something in what you say, Doctor. Certainly it would help to explain the second part of my dream." The earl lit a fresh cigar, apparently forgetting the one he had left smouldering only half-smoked in the tray on his desk. "It seems I returned to my bed, for again the clock struck one and I found myself as I had previously, staring at a phosphorescence in the corner and asking who was there.

" 'The Ghost of Christmas Present,' responded a most remarkable voice, jolly and full of timbre, as of a man in the fullness of his middle years. Just this, and again the summons to come along.

"Now we were standing outside the window of a tiny flat in the City, witnessing what appeared to be a serious row between a young husband and his wife over money; something about not having sufficient funds to settle their bills, let alone celebrate the holiday. At the tavern, Richard had told me of a number of financial setbacks they had suffered because of unforeseen emergencies, but I had not perceived how serious the situation was until that moment. It appeared to threaten their union."

"Had you met his wife?" Holmes asked.

"I have not had that pleasure. However, he keeps a photographic portrait of her where he works. She is most comely."

"Women generally are, in photographs. What happened when the clock again struck one?"

Lord Chislehurst permitted himself a dry smile. "I should have been disappointed had you not seen the pattern. This phantom, who indicated through gestures that he was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, was the most unsettling of all, and the picture he showed me of some future yuletide was bleak and hideous. I saw Richard's home broken, his wife, stigmatised by divorce, forced to make her living from the streets, even as Richard pursued a bitter and lonely existence as an unloved and aging bachelor. Worse, I saw my own neglected grave. Evidently I had gone to it without obsequy, my harsh and penurious business practises having ruined lives and left none to mourn my passing." He shuddered.

Holmes finished his cigarette. "In your waking moments, my lord, are you given to dwelling morbidly upon the subject of your future demise?"

"Never. I regard it as an inevitability, which to brood over is to squander what little life we have. This was what I told Lady Chislehurst when she brought up the subject of my last will and testament.'

"Indeed?" Holmes lifted his brows. "Did this discussion take place before or after your dream?"

"Before. That very night, in fact. When 1 was late coming home from the tavern, she entertained various concerns over what might have befallen me, as wives will. When I arrived at last, she expressed relief, then scolded me as I was preparing to retire that I should be more careful, as the streets are not safe late at night for a man not in full possession of his wits, and that if I insisted upon placing myself in jeopardy I should make arrangements for the division of my estate before some footpad separates me from my watch and my life."

"A practical woman."

"Very much so. It is the quality which drew my attention to her in the first place. I met her when she came to work for me as a typist. Her suggestions for the improvement of the firm were inspired, and as she was of good family I soon realised that she was the woman to bring order to my existence away from the office. We were married within a year. From time to time, when the firm is shorthanded due to illness or personal emergency among the staff, she still comes in to help out."

"I assume she works well with Richard."

"They make an ideal team. Often I have seen them in conference, with many nods and expressions of agreement. But what has this to do with my ghosts?"

"Probably nothing. Perhaps everything. Let us return to this will. Were you persuaded to make it out?"

"My solicitor was in this morning. I signed the documents and Richard witnessed my signature. My wife is chief beneficiary, and Richard is executor; he is a reliable man, and the fee will come in handy should his financial difficulties continue."

"I commend Your Lordship upon his generosity. You had the dream again last night?"

"Yes, and I'm not certain it was a dream. I was cold sober, having gone straight home from the office without stopping at the tavern, and retired at a decent hour. A cup of tea with Lady Chislehurst before bed was my only indulgence. I shall not repeat myself, for the visitations were the same, including the redundant striking of the hour of one upon the clock, the shades of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come, and the visions which accompanied them. This time, however, it was all much more vivid. I awoke this morning with the conviction that it had all been true. And there was something else, Mr. Holmes: the condition of my bedroom slippers."

"Your bedroom slippers?"

"Yes." He leaned forward, placing his palms upon his desk. "They were soaked through, Mr. Holmes, exactly as if I had been walking in snow the whole night."

This intelligence had a profound effect upon my friend. Face thrust forward now, his eyes keen and his nostrils flaring, he said, "I must prevail upon Your Lordship to invite Dr. Watson and myself to be your guests tonight."

The earl frowned—less perturbed, I thought, by the inconvenience of entertaining two unexpected houseguests as by the impropriety of Holmes having made the suggestion himself. "You deem this necessary?"

"I consider it of the utmost importance."

"Very well. I shall send a messenger to inform my wife."

"That is precisely what I must ask you not to do. No one must know that we are in residence."

"May I ask why?"

"Everything depends upon the outward appearance that your nightly routine remains unchanged. I assure you I am not being melodramatic when I say your life is in danger."

"But of what, Mr. Holmes? By whom?"

Holmes stood, ignoring this reasonable question. "I will need time to lay my trap. Will it be possible to ensure that Lady Chislehurst and your servants are all away from home this evening between the hours of eight and nine?"

"That should not be difficult. Our cook will have left by then, and our maid is away visiting relatives for the holiday. I shall suggest my wife call upon her friend Mrs. Wesley down the street. She was widowed last spring and faces a lonely Christmas."

"Excellent. Pray inform her that you are exhausted and will probably have retired by the time she returns. Dr. Watson and I shall be watching from cover. Expect us immediately after she has gone. It is extremely important that you share none of these details with anyone, especially your clerk."

The earl agreed, and provided us with directions to his London lodgings, whereupon we moved towards the door. Upon the threshold I turned and said, "I should like to ask Your Lordship one question, a personal one."

"I have no secrets, Doctor."

"Is your family name by any chance Cratchit?"

He appeared surprised. "Why, yes, it is. I was born Timothy Cratchit. Did you read that in Brook's?"

"No, Your Lordship; in Dickens."

Lord Chislehurst scowled. "That meddler! I personally have not read his invasive little story, yet I cannot escape from it. Until I entered the nobility I could go nowhere without some new acquaintance hailing me as Tiny Tim, and thinking himself quite the clever fellow."

After we had been shown out of the counting-room by Richard, who seemed a personable sort, well groomed and dressed within the limitations of a clerk's salary, Holmes asked me the meaning of the last exchange. I was stupefied. "Surely you are familiar with Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'! Every English schoolboy has had the story force-fed to him each December."

"I was an uncommon schoolboy, and I haven't the faintest notion to what you are referring."

Briefly, in the hansom on the way back to Baker Street, I summarised that most English of Christmas tales and its unforgettable cast of characters: Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly, holiday-loathing banker; Bob Cratchit, his long-suffering clerk; Cratchit's loveable, crippled younger son Tiny Tim; and the three ghosts who visited Scrooge and brought about his conversion to the season of love and forgiveness. Holmes listened with keen interest.

"I recall telling you once that it is a mistake to imagine that one's brain-attic has elastic walls, and that the time will come when for every new shipment of information one accepts, another must be sacrificed," he said when I had finished. "However, I rather think I have an uncluttered corner still, and it seems to me that literature would not be an unwise thing to deposit there. What one man can invent, another can subvert. If you and I are not careful tonight, Watson, your Mr. Dickens may well be an unwitting accomplice before the fact of murder."

"Whom do you suspect, and what is the motive?" "Chiefly, I suspect Lady Chislehurst and Richard, the clerk. Whether their alliance is amorous or strictly mercenary has yet to be determined, but I am convinced they are in it together, and that Lord Chislehurst's estate is their object."

"But why the clerk? The wife is the sole beneficiary." "It was he who planted the suggestion in the earl's mind which led to his Christmas Present vision of strife in Richard's household. Our client was not aware of his clerk's dire financial situation before their most timely conversation. There is nothing so effective as a little haunting, combined with a wife's reminder of one's fiscal responsibilities to his family, to bring a man to a contemplation of his mortality, and consequently his last will and testament." "Are you suggesting Lord Chislehurst was mesmerised?" "I suspect something even more ambitious and diabolical. You may count upon it, Watson, there is skullduggery afoot. I am reminded most acutely of that business at the Baskerville estate during the early years of our association. If there is a ghost involved here at all, it is Stapleton's."

At this point Holmes fell into a dark reverie, from which I knew from long experience he would not be drawn until the hour of our appointment with our endangered client. As we clip-clopped homeward through those streets laden with snow, the seasonal spirit was significantly absent inside that cab.

Big Ben had just struck eight, and the resonance of its final chime was still in the air when a well-built woman in her middle years bustled out the doorway of an imposing pile not far from Thread-needle Street and started down the pavement wrapped in a heavy cloak. This, I assumed, was Lady Chislehurst; and she had not been out of sight thirty seconds when Holmes and I emerged from the shallow doorway across the street where we had stationed ourselves five minutes previously.

Holmes did not ring the bell right away, but paced the length of the front of the building, swinging his cane in the metronomic manner he often used to measure distance. Presently he climbed the front steps with me at his heels.

The bell was answered almost immediately by our client, whose attire of nightcap and dressing-gown assured us he had followed Holmes's advice and convinced his wife that he was retiring. Once we were admitted to the rather dark and gloomy foyer, the detective repeated the procedure he had observed outside, pacing the room deliberately from the left wall to the right.

"An interesting building/' he said when he was standing before the earl once again. "James the First, is it not?"

"James the Second, or so I was told when I acquired it from the Scrooge estate. It was a depressing old place, neglected and in disrepair. Lady Chislehurst has done much to improve it, although much remains to be done. The very first thing she did was to see to it that the hideous old door-knocker was removed. The lion's head frightened our nieces and nephews when they came to visit."

"It is admirable of you both to take the trouble to preserve the place. The loss of such an unusually substantial example of architecture would be a great tragedy. There is a discrepancy of six feet in the width of the building between the outside and the inside. One seldom encounters walls three feet thick so far past the medieval period."

"Indeed. I never noticed."

"I am always intrigued by how little attention we pay to familiar things, which are to us the most important. May we inspect your chamber?"

The earl led us up a narrow flight of stairs to a large room on the first floor, equipped with a huge old four-poster bed and a stone fireplace nearly large enough to walk into upright, with a bearskin stretched before it on the hearth. Above the mantel hung a huge old painting in a gilt frame of a medieval noblewoman languishing on the floor of a dungeon, with light streaming down upon her from a barred window high on the wall.

"An outside room," observed Holmes. "Do you not find it draughty?"

"No; the window was bricked in years ago."

"Convenient."

"How so, Mr. Holmes?"

"Darkness, of course. There is nothing less conducive to sleep than an unwanted shaft of light. Is that the corner in which you saw the apparitions? Yes, that is where they would be most visible to someone sitting up in bed. Where is Lady Chislehurst's chamber in relation to yours?"

"Just down the hall. Do you wish to see it?"

"That won't be necessary." He swung upon the earl, eyes bright as twin beacons. "Dr. Watson dabbles a bit in Jamesian architecture. Would Your Lordship object to conducting him upon a tour while I complete my inspection? I thought not. Thank you for your hospitality."

"Curious fellow, your Mr. Holmes," said Lord Chislehurst when we were in the gaslit hallway outside the room where Holmes could be heard rummaging about. "Is he always this unusual?"

"Usually."

"Do you know anything at all about Jamesian architecture?"

"Only that it is uncommon to find walls so thick, and I didn't know that until a few minutes ago."

He produced two cigars from the pocket of his dressing-gown and gave me one. "Curious fellow."

"He is the best detective in England."

We had smoked a third of our cigars when the door opened. Holmes appeared sanguine, as if he had spent the time stretched out upon the earl's bed. "There you are, Watson. Does Your Lordship have a spare bedroom?"

"I have several. Would you and the doctor like to share one, or would you prefer separate quarters?"

"With your permission, we shall share yours. I am suggesting that you sleep in the spare room."

"Whatever for?"

Holmes smiled and placed a finger to his lips. "As Dr. Watson has no doubt told you, my methods are my own and I seldom confide them. Pray do as I ask, and do not venture out under any circumstances. By morning I hope to have laid your ghosts to rest."

"See here, Holmes," said I when our host had left us alone in the room, "I have known you far too long to accept this nonsense about architecture as an adequate explanation for keeping secrets from me. What were you about while I was out upon that fool's errand?"

My friend had removed his boots and stripped to his shirtsleeves and was making himself comfortable upon the big four-poster. "Forgive me, dear fellow. You know full well my weakness for theatrics. In any case your own mind is too active for you to continue to assist me in these little problems if I fail to occupy it. I have come to depend upon my amanuensis. What was lightning before Franklin arrived with his kite and key? Merely a pretty display."

My disgruntlement was only partly relieved by this academic apology. "What do we do now?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Turn down the lamp, will you? There's a good fellow." Whereupon, in the dim orange glow of the lowered wick of the lamp upon the bedside table, he closed his eyes. Within moments his even breathing told me he was asleep.

I did not join him in the arms of Morpheus. Although nothing had been said, I knew from past experience that one of us must remain vigilant, and so I stayed awake in the room's one chair, feeling the reassuring solidity of my faithful service revolver in my pocket.

At length I heard the front door open and shut, and divined that Lady Chislehurst had returned from her visit. Presently, light footsteps climbed the stairs, paused briefly outside the room as if waiting for some sign of movement within, whilst I held my breath; then they continued down the hall, where the snick and then the thump of a door opening and closing told me that our client's wife had retired to her room. Then silence.

The night wore on. The room was chill without a fire, for which I was grateful, as it kept me alert. The shadows thrown by the nearly nonexistent light were monstrous, and in my imagination I peopled them with all sorts of mortal terrors.

I must have dozed, despite the cold, for I was suddenly aware of a pale light in a corner of the room where before there had been only darkness, and I had the impression it had been there for some little time. I started, and reached instantly for my revolver. However, a sudden sharp sibilant from the direction of the bed halted me. Holmes was sitting up, his attention centred on the light in the corner. His profile was predatory in its silver reflection.

As we watched, the light changed, assuming vaguely human shape. Now we were looking at a tall, gaunt figure seemingly wrapped in a cloak as black as the shadows that surrounded it. Its face was invisible in the depths of the cowl covering its head, but its skeletal wrist protruded from a loose sleeve, and as the image shimmered before us, its crooked, bony finger appeared to beckon.

My heart hammered in my breast. Clearly, this was the most frightening phantasm of the three that had been described to us: the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, with its cold, silent promise of a lonely grave for he who encountered it.

"Quick, Watson! The light!"

I hesitated but briefly, then reached over and turned up the lamp. Immediately the ghost vanished. I leapt to my feet, starting in that direction. Holmes, however, moved to the wall adjacent, which contained the huge fireplace. The grate was supported by an enormous pair of andirons of medieval manufacture, one of which he seized by its Iion's-head ornament and pulled towards himself. There was a pause, followed by a grating sound, as of a rusted gate opening upon hinges disused for decades. Then the entire back of the fireplace, which I had assumed to be constructed of solid stone, slid sideways, exposing a black hollow beyond.

"A passageway!" said I.

"I surmised as much from the beginning. You will remember I remarked upon the discrepancy between the inside and outside measurements of the building. Hand me the lamp, and keep your revolver handy. Remove your boots. We don't want them to know we're coming."

I did as directed. Holding the light aloft, Holmes stepped over the grate and into the blackness, with me close upon his heels.

The passage was narrow, dank, and musky smelling. Once inside, Holmes exclaimed softly and lifted the lamp higher. A great metal contraption equipped with a glass lens stood upon a ledge at shoulder height. I smelled hot wax.

"It looks like a lantern," I whispered.

"A magic lantern." Standing upon tiptoe, Holmes reached up with his free hand, groped at the contraption, and slid a pane of glass from behind the lens. He examined it briefly, then handed it to me. When I held it up against the light from the lamp, I recognized the image of our old friend the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come etched upon the glass.

"The image is projected through the lens when the candle is lit," Holmes explained. "When I examined the room earlier, I found a small hole in the painting above the mantel, just where the light streams through the window to fall upon the lady in the dungeon. That is where our ghost gained access to the room. When I found the mechanism that opens the fireplace, I knew my suspicions were correct. I daresay if we look, we shall find similar panes bearing the likenesses of the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present as they were described to us."

"But Past and Present spoke to the earl!"

"It might surprise you to learn what a ghastly effect the echoes in a narrow passage such as this will lend to the human voice. But come!

I was forced to hasten lest he outrun the light from the lamp. When I caught up with him several yards down that gloomy path, he was peering at a small bottle perched in a niche in the wall. Presently he removed it and held it out, asking me what I made of it.

"'Radixpedis diabolic' I read from the label." "Where have I heard that before?"

"Have you so soon forgotten the grim affair of the Tregennis murders, and the rather melodramatic title under which you published your account of them?"

I shuddered. " 'The Adventure of the Devil's Foot'! But the Devil's-foot root is a deadly poison!"

"It is also a hallucinogen in small doses. Small enough, let's say, to escape notice once it has been introduced to one's glass of sherry."

"Richard," I whispered. "Lord Chislehurst told us his clerk accompanied him to his tavern for a glass the night the ghosts first visited."

"I suspected him the moment the earl told us how Richard had taken him into his confidence about his financial situation. That, and the picture of Richard's wife in the counting-room, planted a suggestion in Lord Chislehurst's mind which under the influence of the root tincture came back to him in his dreams, convincing him that Christmas Present was allowing him a peep into his employee's private life."

"How do you explain the look Christmas Past gave him into his own childhood?"

"Christmas is a time of remembering, Watson. No doubt our client was reminded of his own impoverished origins, which sprang forth as a vision at the mere mention of the word past. Post-mesmeric suggestion is a fascinating scientific phenomenon. I should like to know how Richard came by his expertise. It would make an interesting subject for a monograph."

"One moment, Holmes! His Lordship was haunted the same way last night, yet he said he came straight home from work. His clerk had not the opportunity to administer the drug again."

"But Her Ladyship did. He said himself he had a cup of tea with her before retiring."

"You're certain they're in it together? Richard and Lady Chislehurst?"

His expression was grave. "It was she who insisted her husband prepare his will without delay. She is the beneficiary, but Richard is the Svengali in our little melodrama. 'What evil one may do compounds when they are two.' They already have our unfortunate client walking in his sleep—mark you his sopping slippers! Who is there to say, when he is found some night murdered in an alley, that he was not set upon by some anonymous ruffian while in the somnambulant state?"

"Good Lord! And in the season of love!"

Holmes hissed for silence. Motioning for me to follow, he crept along the inside wall, and I realised belatedly that he was measuring the distance. Presently he stepped away as far as the outside wall would permit, scrutinising the other from ceiling to floor. He seized a stony protuberance and, with a significant nod towards the revolver in my hand, pushed with all his might. Again there was a grating noise, and then a section of wall eight feet high and four feet wide swung outwards upon a hidden pivot. Light flooded the passage. Together we stepped through.

We were in a chamber slightly smaller than Lord Chislehurst's, with a cosy fireplace, a bed piled high with pillows and canopied in chintz and ivory lace, a vanity, and a huge oak cabinet quite as old as the house, before which stood a tall, handsome woman ten years our client's junior, fully dressed and coiffed in a manner both expensive and tasteful. She appeared composed, but upon her cheeks was a high colour.

"Lady Chislehurst, I presume?" Holmes enquired.

"That is my name, sir. Who are you, and what is the meaning of this invasion?"

"My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is Dr. Watson, and unless I am very much mistaken, the gentleman hiding in the cabinet is named Richard."

Her hand went to her throat. She took an involuntary step closer to the cabinet. "Sir! You are impertinent."

At that moment, the door to the cabinet opened and a slender young man stepped out, whom I recognised as Lord Chislehurst's clerk. He was dressed entirely in black from collar to heels. I raised my revolver.

"That won't be necessary, Doctor. I am unarmed." He spread his dark coattails, revealing the truth of his claim. I returned my weapon to my pocket, but kept my hand upon it warily.

"I fled from the passage when the fireplace opened," Richard explained. "Not knowing who might be in the hall and fearful of compromising Lady Chislehurst, I took refuge in the cabinet. I thought perhaps it was the earl, and that we had been found out."

"Then you admit you were conspiring to murder Lord Chislehurst?" Holmes's tone was stern.

The woman gasped and swayed. Richard put out his arm to steady her. His face was white. "Good heavens, no! However did you form that conclusion?"

"Come, come, young man. There is the business of the will, the paraphernalia in the passage between the walls, and your own admission just now that you feared you had been 'found out.' I suggest you hold your defence in reserve for the Assizes."

"Thank you, Richard. I am quite well now." The lady relinquished her grip upon the young man's arm. Her expression was resolute. "I have been after Timothy for years to draw up his will. I saw no reason that the fortune he has worked so hard to build should be dissipated in the courts. To whom he decided to leave it was his own affair, but I thought it would be nice if he named Richard as executor.

"I have known Richard for two years. I don't think my husband realises how valuable he is to the firm, nor how much of himself he has sacrificed to its operation. This I know from what I have seen. Richard does not advertise his worth."

"Please, Your Ladyship," protested the clerk.

She smiled at him sadly, dismissing his plea. "When you work closely with someone, as I have with Richard when the firm was shorthanded, you learn things his employer doesn't know. Richard's financial situation is serious. Aside from his responsibilities as a husband, he has pledged to repay the many debts left by his late father, and his mother is seriously ill.

"Richard is the first member of his family to seek a career in business," she continued. "His father was a mesmerist upon the stage, and his mother was a magician's assistant. When I learned that he had inherited some of their skills, a plan began to form."

The clerk interrupted. "The plan was mine. Lady Chislehurst went along purely out of the goodness of her heart."

"You needn't claim credit," said she. "I'm proud of the idea. My husband is a good man, Mr. Holmes, but his order of values is not always sound. When the firm suffered, he should have chosen an area to practise economy that would not affect his employees. When he told me there would be no Christmas gratuities this year, I knew from experience I could not change his mind through talk. I decided instead to work upon his conscience. I suppose you know the rest."

Holmes appeared unmoved. "Your plan was dangerous. Any number of tragedies might have befallen him as he wandered in his sleep."

"That was unexpected, and alarmed me greatly." Her expression was remorseful. "Richard and I decided not to use the drug again. If the mere image of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come did not bring about the desired conversion, that was that."

"I am shamed."

"Timothy!" Lady Chislehurst turned to face her husband, who was standing upon the threshold to the hallway. None of us had seen him open the door, with the possible exception of Holmes, whose red-Indian countenance betrayed no reaction.

"I am shamed," the earl said again. His heavy face was tragic.

"I'm sorry, Timothy. It was the only way."

"I am not shamed for you," he said, "but for myself. Were I not so caught up in commerce, I would have seen what effect my measures to preserve the firm was having upon the people who work there."

His wife stepped towards him just as he strode forwards. He took her in his arms. "I'm sorry, Beth. Can you ever forgive me?"

"There is one way," said she.

"Of course." He looked at his clerk. "Richard, I want you in early tomorrow."

The young man was dismayed. "Tomorrow is Christmas Day!"

"All the more reason to start early, so we can count out the holiday gratuities, yours first. If we work hard we should be able to deliver them all by midday. Then you and your wife will join us here for Christmas dinner."

"Bless you, sir!"

"Bless you, Beth!"

"God bless us everyone!" I exclaimed.

Four curious faces turned my way.

"Surely you are more familiar with those words than most," I told the Chislehursts. "I am quoting His young Lordship from 'A Christmas Carol,' which Her Ladyship must have studied closely."

"I haven't read it in years. My husband doesn't approve of the story. I thought about it, naturally, but my real inspiration came when I discovered the secret passage and the equipment inside."

Holmes said, "Do you mean to say the apparatus was there already?"

"The magic lantern is an old model," explained Richard; "an ancestor, as it were, of the ones employed by the magicians with whom my mother worked. I replaced the bottle of hallucinative with one my father used in his act. The original would have been useless. It had probably been there thirty-five years."

"That is precisely when Scrooge lived here," reflected the earl.

"Well, Watson, what do you make of our little yuletide adventure?"

The next morning was Christmas. After I had breakfasted and exchanged gifts and greetings with my wife, I paid a call upon Holmes in the old sitting-room, where I found him enjoying his morning pipe.

"I should say Bob Cratchit was fortunate there was no Sherlock Holmes in his day," said I.

"Crafty fellows, these clerks. However, they are no match for a Lady Chislehurst. I perceive that package you are carrying is intended for me, by the way. The shops are closed, Mrs. Hudson is away visiting, and you know no one else in this neighbourhood."

I handed him the bundle, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a cord. "It is useless to try to surprise you, Holmes. It is a first-edition copy of The Martyrdom of Man, which you once recommended to me. I came across it in a secondhand shop in Soho."

He appeared nonplussed, a rare event. "I am afraid, old fellow, that I have no gift to offer in return. The season has been busy, and as you know I allow little time for sentiment. It is disastrous to my work." It may have been my interpretation, but he sounded apologetic. I smiled.

"My dear Holmes. What greater gift could I receive than the one you have given me these past twenty years?"

He returned the smile. "Happy Christmas, Watson."

"Happy Christmas, Holmes."