The houses, for there were two, were situated in the midst of a garden plentifully wooded with pine trees and Siberian firs. The houses were separate, although close to each other; both of them were two-storeyed, the first, at which the horses pulled up, being built of wood painted red, the second, and farther one, of white bricks. “You have already been here two or three days?” I ventured to ask, as we drove through the garden gate. “Watson, you are incorrigible,” replied Holmes. “Had you observed the name of the station whence my message was despatched you would have known that I myself arrived this morning from the town of A----, which a glance at the map would have shown you is a twelve hours’ journey from O----. This is the first time I have the pleasure of enjoying the Prince’s hospitality, and when the Prince invited me he begged me, if possible, to persuade you to accompany me. I am glad you have come, for who knows but that I may need your assistance before long.” I could not help thinking that the reproach was in this case scarcely justified, since, being entirely ignorant of the Russian language, I could not be expected to decipher the name of a telegraph station, but I merely replied: “You have at present no immediate problem on hand?” “Watson,” said Holmes, as we reached the front door, “every fresh human being we meet is a possible problem.” We were met and warmly welcomed by the Prince, and after we had been shown to our rooms, which were in the further stone house, we were conducted to the drawing-room in the wooden house, where the Prince and his family awaited us. The Prince was a middle-aged man with silver-grey hair and mild grey eyes; he wore a grey undress military tunic, and Holmes remarked, as we washed our hands upstairs, that he supposed I had already noticed the Prince was a general adjutant of the Emperor’s suite; that he had served in Turkestan before he had been in the Far East; that he was at present suffering from a slight toothache; and that he had been on two big game expeditions in Africa. I confessed that all this had escaped me, and Holmes said that he hadn’t time to detail to me the links of the chain, but if I would glance at the Prince’s uniform, the spots on his forehead, the iodoform stain on his upper lip, and the antelope horns in the front hall, with their respective dates, perhaps all would be clear to me. The Prince’s family consisted of his wife, his eldest son, and his daughter. The Princess was a dark, thin, young-looking woman, with large grey eyes, and the son, Prince Alexander, a tall, dark young man of about twenty-three, dressed in an ordinary tweed shooting suit; the daughter, Princess Barbara, was a girl of nineteen, very fair, with blue eyes. The whole family talked English with the greatest fluency. As soon as the Prince had presented us to his family, he led us into the dining-room, where lunch awaited us.