d ourselves as we turned round the corner from
the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a contrast to it as
the front of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main arteries
which convey the traffic of the city to the north and west. The roadway
was blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide
inward and outward, while the footpaths were black with the hurrying
swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult to realize, as we looked at the
line of fine shops and stately business premises, that they really
abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square which we
had just quitted.
"Let me see," said Holmes, standing at the corner, and glancing along
the line, "I should like just to remember the order of the houses here.
It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is
Mortimer's, the tobacconist; the little newspaper shop, the Coburg
branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and
McFarlane's carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the
other block. And now, doctor, we've done our work, so it's time we had
some play. A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land,
where all is sweetness, and delicacy, and harmony, and there are no
red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums."
My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very
capable performer, but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the
afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness,
gently waving his long thin fingers in time to the music, while his
gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of
Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted,
ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his
singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his
extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought,
the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which
occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from
extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never
so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in
his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then
it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that
his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition,
until those who were unacquainted with his me
|