The Blue Carbuncle

I

I had visited my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, in order to wish him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack beside him on the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that the hat had been hung ready for examination.

“You are busy,” said I. “Perhaps I interrupt you.”

“Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one,”—he pointed at the old hat,—“but there is something interesting and informative in connection with it.”

I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his crackling fire, because a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice crystals. “I suppose,” I said, “that, though it looks homely, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it—that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the punishment of some crime.”

“No, no. No crime,” said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. “Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense crowd of people, every possible combination of events can take place, and many little problems will appear which may be striking and unusual without being criminal. We have already had experience of such cases.”

“So much so,” I remarked, “that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been free of any legal crime.”

“Exactly. You mean my attempt to get back Irene Adler’s papers, the unusual case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and the adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt that this small matter will be innocent too. You know Peterson, the commissionaire?”

“Yes.”

“This trophy belongs to him.”

“It is his hat.”

“No, no, he found it. Its owner is unknown. Please, look upon it not as a seedy hat but as an intellectual problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson’s fire. The facts are these: about four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small celebration and was walking down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tall man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row began between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of them knocked off the man’s hat, on which he raised his stick to protect himself and, swinging it over his head, broke the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished in the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also run away at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left alone on the field of battle. There remained also the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most excellent Christmas goose.”

“Which surely he restored to their owner?”

“My dear Watson, that is the problem. It is true that ‘For Mrs. Henry Baker’ was printed upon a small card which was tied to the bird’s left leg, and it is also true that the initials ‘H. B.’ are legible upon the lining of this hat, but as there are some thousands of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any one of them.”

“What, then, did Peterson do?”

“He brought to me both hat and goose on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems are interesting to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten as soon as possible. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner.”

“Did he not advertise?”

“No.”

“Then, who could it be?”

“We can only deduce.”

“From his hat?”

“Precisely.”

“But you are joking. What can you gather from this old hat?”

“Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this thing?”

I took the battered object in my hands and turned it over rather pitifully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker’s name; but, as Holmes had remarked, the initials “H. B.” were written upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. Apart from that, it was cracked, very dusty, and there were spots in several places, although he had tried to hide the discoloured places by concealing them with ink.

“I can see nothing,” said I, handing it back to my friend.

“On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. But you can not deduce from what you see. You are too uncertain in making your conclusions.”

“Then, please tell me what it is that you can deduce from this hat?”

He picked it up and gazed at it in the special introspective manner which was typical of him. “It is perhaps not so informative than it might have been,” he remarked, “and yet there are a few conclusions which are very clear, and a few others which are highly probable too. That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the look of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than before. It is a sign of a moral retrogression, which, when we take with the decline of his fortunes, seems to show some evil influence, probably drink, upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife stopped loving him.”

“My dear Holmes!”

“He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect,” he continued, ignoring my objection. “He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grey hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on in his house.”

“You are certainly joking, Holmes.”

“Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these results, you can not see how I have received them?”

“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I can’t follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?”

For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it.”

“The decline of his fortunes, then?”

“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge appeared at that time. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has certainly gone down in the world.”

“Well, that is clear enough. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?”

Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are never sold together with hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, as he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is an obvious proof of retrogression. On the other hand, he has tried to conceal some of these stains upon the felt with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.”

“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”

“The other points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grey, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. There are a large number of hair ends, cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be sticky, and there is a smell of lime-cream. This dust, you will see, is not the grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside prove that the owner perspired very freely, and that’s why he could hardly be in good form.”

“But his wife—you said that she had stopped loving him.”

“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with such a dusty hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife’s affection.”

“But he might be a bachelor.”

“No, he was bringing home the goose as a gift to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird’s leg.”

“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house?”

“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the man must often be brought into contact with burning tallow – walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a candle in the other. Are you satisfied?”

“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing; “but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done except for the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.”

Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the room with the face of a man who is dazed with astonishment.