The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF

my own father, whom I believe to be of gentle birth, and to earn a fortune so that someday we may live together in peace and happiness. Please wait for me, my darling, no matter how long it might take.
Your loving,
James
    “The note produced in me a sense of panic despite its protestations of love. I leapt out of bed and ran all the way down the lonely path to James’s house. He was already gone. The house contained only his mother, besotted after an all-night drinking bout. I tried to get her to talk, but it was hopeless. James, and all sign of him was gone. I felt the despair and sense of sickening loss that only those who know the total destruction of their hopes can experience. I returned wearily to the house. That was thirteen years ago. I was not to see James Hamilton again until only a few months ago.”
    Holmes paused briefly in his narration. “You may understand,” he said, “and perhaps share even now, my dear Watson, the feelings of compassion and sympathy that filled me as this beautiful woman spoke of her life.”
    At this point, he said, she began to lose her composure. It was cold now, for even in Calcutta the temperature can go down in the dead of night in winter. Holmes had only some native arak, raksi as they call it, to offer her. She thanked him and took the merest sip, but the sting on her tongue apparently helped her to continue.
    “I have told you of the frailty of a young woman, Mr. Holmes,” she said wearily.
    “I make no judgements on honest human weakness, Madam. We are indeed all weak. But the actions caused by human weakness have inevitable consequences, often evil ones. And in these lie my peculiar interests.”
    “What has transpired heretofore has had no irremediable consequences, but I am afraid of what may follow. It is to avoid any further harm that I have come to you.”
    As she continued, Holmes wondered what evil genius could have spun the web in which she had become entangled.
    After James left, she said, she lived as if in a trance. She and her father hardly spoke to each other. Her mother and sister comforted her, in vain most of the time, and to their detriment very often, as she was subject to violent storms of tears and anger that left her exhausted. After about a year, she slowly began to mend. By now James’s face had receded from before her to the extent that she could go out and lead an almost normal life. The days were bearable, but the nights still often unendurable in their pain and loneliness. She finished school and then received an offer to become the governess of the children of Mr. Edward Staunton, St. David’s, Pembrokeshire, in Wales. She was glad to leave home and to have what turned out to be a most welcome change.
    The Stauntons were a happy couple, with two delightful daughters, aged seven and nine. She and the Stauntons loved and trusted each other instantly. Edward Staunton and his wife were the kindest people she had ever met, and their household was filled with light and good cheer.
    “I had worked for them for about three years when events again began to transpire which have brought me here tonight. It was Christmas, some ten years ago now, that Mr. Staunton invited a friend to stay for the holidays. He was an older man, a widower by the name of Humphrey Maxwell, a barrister at law, then living in London. He was a tall, strongly built man in his sixties, but rather unpleasantly gruff in his manner at times. I remember not liking him at first, for there was something in his face that brought forth in me the greatest anxiety, a look perhaps like someone I could no longer place. He was never anything but most respectful towards me, Mr. Holmes, and before he left he became attentive, even kind towards me.”
    After the holidays, when he had gone, Mr. Staunton informed her that Mr. Maxwell had a handsome son, a recent graduate, who would be spending a week in the spring with the family. He said also that Mr. Maxwell had become quite taken with her and