A group of Sergeants in the Royal Artillery, photographed in Waterford, Ireland, in 1904. The distinctive cap helped the Holmes brothers to identify the regiment of the man outside the Diogenes Club, despite the fact he was in civilian clothes. “He wore his hat on one side, as is shown by the lighter skin of that side of his brow” explained Sherlock.
Part 1 of 2
THE two sat down together in the bow-window of the club. “To any one who wishes to study mankind this is the spot,” said Mycroft. “Look at the magnificent types! Look at these two men who are coming towards us, for example.”
“The billiard-marker and the other?”*
“Precisely. What do you make of the other?”
The two men had stopped opposite the window. Some chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only signs of billiards which I could see in one of them. The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat pushed back and several packages under his arm.
“An old soldier, I perceive,” said Sherlock.
“And very recently discharged,” remarked the brother.
“Served in India, I see.”
“And a non-commissioned officer.”
“Royal Artillery, I fancy,” said Sherlock.
“And a widower.”
“But with a child.”
“Children, my dear boy, children.”
“Come,” said I, laughing, “this is a little too much.”
An employee of a billiard room, who kept the score and refereed the game. We are left to wonder how the Holmes brother knew this man was a billiard-marker, and not a recent player.
Non-commissioned officers such as corporals, lance corporals, bombardiers and sergeants, are lower-ranking officers typically promoted from enlisted men. Commissioned officers are so called because their authority derives from a commission from the Monarch, following training at a military academy. Enlisted men can of course receive a commission, though in Sir Arthur’s day it was less common than it is now. The purchasing of commissions, familiar from the novels of Jane Austen, had been abolished under the Cardwell Reforms of 1871.
Précis
Sherlock Holmes took Dr Watson to see his brother, claiming that the hitherto unknown Mycroft was an even more observant detective that he was himself. Watson was doubtful, and when the two brothers demonstrated with an analysis of a widowed soldier seen through the windows of a London club, he began to think they were pulling his leg. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
“Baby at Play” (1876) by American artist Thomas Eakins. A child’s rattle was the clue Mycroft needed to deduce that there must be at least two children in the widower’s care, as one was old enough for picture-books.
“SURELY,” answered Holmes, “it is not hard to say that a man with that bearing, expression of authority, and sunbaked skin, is a soldier, is more than a private, and is not long from India.”
“That he has not left the service long is shown by his still wearing his ammunition boots,” observed Mycroft.
“He had not the cavalry stride, yet he wore his hat on one side, as is shown by the lighter skin of that side of his brow. His weight is against his being a sapper. He is in the artillery.”
“Then, of course, his complete mourning shows that he has lost some one very dear. The fact that he is doing his own shopping looks as though it were his wife. He has been buying things for children, you perceive. There is a rattle, which shows that one of them is very young. The fact that he has a picture-book under his arm shows that there is another child to be thought of.”
I began to understand what my friend meant when he said that his brother possessed even keener faculties than he did himself.
Précis
Watson’s scepticism vanished after Sherlock and his brother painstakingly explained how they had deduced so much about the widowed soldier from India; and the doctor not only gained a new respect for his friend Sherlock’s extraordinary powers, but began to credit his claim that Mycroft might possess them to a yet greater degree. (53 / 60 words)
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