Read Online Sherlock Holmes In Montague Street Volume 2 by David Marcum - Free Book Online Page A

Crellan, shaking it in his face. “There is a will. I didn’t say we hadn’t found it yet, did I? There is a will, and here it is in spite of all your diabolical tricks, with your scoundrelly hypnotism and secret holes, and the rest of it! Get out of this place, sir, or I’ll have you thrown out of the window!”
    Mr. Mellis shrugged his shoulders with an appearance of perfect indifference. “If you’ve a will appointing you executor it’s all right, I suppose, although I shall take care to hold you responsible for any irregularities. As I don’t in the least understand your conduct, unless it is due to drink, I’ll leave you.” And with that he went.
    Mr. Crellan boiled with indignation for a minute, and then turning to Holmes, “I say, I hope it’s all right,” he said, “connecting him with all this queer business?”
    â€œWe shall soon see,” replied Holmes, “if you’ll come and look at the pivoted plank.”
    They went to the small staircase, and Holmes once again opened the recess. Within lay a blue foolscap envelope, which Holmes picked up. “See,” he said, “it is torn at the corner. He has been here and opened it. It’s a fresh envelope, and I left it for him this morning, with the corner gummed down a little so that he would have to tear it in opening. This is what was inside,” Holmes added, and laughed aloud as he drew forth a rather crumpled piece of white paper. “It was only a childish trick after all,” he concluded, “but I always liked a small practical joke on occasion.” He held out the crumpled paper, on which was inscribed in large capital letters the single word - “SOLD.”

The Case of the Missing Hand
    I think I have recorded in another place Holmes’s frequent aphorism that “there is nothing in this world that is at all possible that has not happened or is not happening in London.” But there are many strange happenings in this matter-of-fact country and in these matter-of-fact times that occur far enough from London. Fantastic crimes, savage revenges, mediæval superstitions, horrible cruelty, though less in sight, have been no more extinguished by the advent of the nineteenth century than have the ancient races who practiced them in the dark ages. Some of the races have become civilized, and some of the savageries are heard of no more. But there are survivals in both cases. I say these things having in my mind a particular case that came under the personal notice of both Holmes and myself - an affair that brought one up standing with a gasp and a doubt of one’s era.
    My good uncle, the Colonel, was not in the habit of gathering large house parties at his place at Ratherby, partly because the place was not a great one, and partly because the Colonel’s gout was. But there was an excellent bit of shooting for two or three guns, and even when he was unable to leave the house himself, my uncle was always pleased if some good friend were enjoying a good day’s sport in his territory. As to myself, the good old soul was in a perpetual state of offence because I visited him so seldom, though whenever my scant holidays fell in a convenient time of the year I was never insensible to the attractions of the Ratherby stubble. More than once had I sat by the old gentleman when his foot was exceptionally troublesome, amusing him with accounts of some of the doings of Sherlock Holmes, and more than once had my uncle expressed his desire to meet Holmes himself, and commissioned me with an invitation to be presented to Holmes at the first likely opportunity, for a joint excursion to Ratherby. At length I persuaded Holmes to take a fortnight’s rest, coincident with a little vacation of my own, and we got down to Ratherby within a few days past September the 1 st , and before a gun had been fired at the Colonel’s bit of shooting. The Colonel himself we found