Detective and mystery stories; Holmes, Sherlock (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Private investigators -- England -- Fiction
“Well, if I were to tell you all the adventures that my little chum and
I went through, you would not thank me, for I would have you here until
the sun was shining. Here and there we drifted about the world,
something always turning up to keep us from London. All the time,
however, I never lost sight of my purpose. I would dream of Sholto at
night. A hundred times I have killed him in my sleep. At last, however,
some three or four years ago, we found ourselves in England. I had no
great difficulty in finding where Sholto lived, and I set to work to
discover whether he had realised the treasure, or if he still had it. I
made friends with someone who could help me,—I name no names, for I
don’t want to get any one else in a hole,—and I soon found that he
still had the jewels. Then I tried to get at him in many ways; but he
was pretty sly, and had always two prize-fighters, besides his sons and
his khitmutgar, on guard over him.
“One day, however, I got word that he was dying. I hurried at once to
the garden, mad that he should slip out of my clutches like that, and,
looking through the window, I saw him lying in his bed, with his sons
on each side of him. I’d have come through and taken my chance with the
three of them, only even as I looked at him his jaw dropped, and I knew
that he was gone. I got into his room that same night, though, and I
searched his papers to see if there was any record of where he had
hidden our jewels. There was not a line, however: so I came away,
bitter and savage as a man could be. Before I left I bethought me that
if I ever met my Sikh friends again it would be a satisfaction to know
that I had left some mark of our hatred; so I scrawled down the sign of
the four of us, as it had been on the chart, and I pinned it on his
bosom. It was too much that he should be taken to the grave without
some token from the men whom he had robbed and befooled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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