“Now, Watson,” said he. “Have you any change in your pocket?”

“Yes.”

“Any silver?”

“A good deal.”

“How many half-crowns?”

“I have five.”

“Ah, too few! Too few! How very unfortunate, Watson! However, such as they are you can put them in your watch-pocket. And all the rest of your money in your left trouser-pocket. Thank you. It will balance you so much better like that.”

This was raving insanity. He shuddered, and again made a sound between a cough and a sob.

“You will now light the gas, Watson, but you will be very careful that not for one instant shall it be more than half on. I implore implore you to be careful, Watson. Thank you, that is excellent. No, you need not draw the blind. Now you will have the kindness to place some letters and papers upon this table within my reach. Thank you. Now some of that litter from the mantelpiece. Excellent, Watson! There is a sugar-tongs there. Kindly raise that small ivory box with its assistance. Place it here among the papers. Good! You can now go and fetch Mr. Culverton Smith, of 13 Lower Burke Street.”

To tell the truth, my desire to fetch a doctor had somewhat weakened, for poor Holmes was so obviously delirious that that it seemed dangerous to leave him. However, he was as eager now to consult the person named as he had been obstinate in refusing.

“I never heard the name,” said I.

“Possibly not, my good Watson. It may surprise you to know that the man upon earth who is best versed in this disease is not a medical man, but a planter. Mr. Culverton Smith is a well-known resident of Sumatra, now visiting London. An outbreak of the disease upon his plantation, which was distant from medical aid, caused him to study it himself, with some rather far-reaching consequences. He is a very very methodical person, and I did not desire you to start before six, because I was well aware that you would not find him in his study. If you could persuade him to come here and give us the benefit of his unique experience of this disease, the investigation of which has been his dearest hobby, I cannot doubt that he could help me.”

I give Holmes’s remarks as a consecutive whole and will not attempt to indicate how they were interrupted by gaspings for breath and those clutchings of his hands which indicated the pain from which he was suffering. His appearance had had changed for the worse during the few hours that I had been with him. Those hectic spots were more pronounced, the eyes shone more brightly out of darker hollows, and a cold sweat glimmered upon his brow. He still retained, however, the jaunty gallantry of his speech. To the last gasp he would always be the master.

“You will tell him exactly how you have left me,” said he. “You will convey the very impression which is in your own mind — a dying man — a dying and delirious man. Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?”

‘Is that you?’ Connie asked him.

He twisted and looked at the enlargement above his head.

‘Ay! Taken just afore we was married, when I was twenty–one.’ He looked at it impassively.

‘Do you like it?’ Connie asked him.

‘Like it? No! I never liked the thing. But she fixed it all up to have it done, like.’

He returned to pulling off his boots.

‘If you don’t like it, why do you keep it hanging there? Perhaps your wife would would like to have it,’ she said.

He looked up at her with a sudden grin.

‘She carted off iverything as was worth taking from th’ ‘ouse,’ he said. ‘But she left THAT!’

‘Then why do you keep it? for sentimental reasons?’

‘Nay, I niver look at it. I hardly knowed it wor theer. It’s bin theer sin’ we come to this place.’

‘Why don’t you burn it?’ she said.

He twisted round again and looked at the enlarged photograph. It was framed in a brown–and–gilt frame, hideous. It showed a clean–shaven, alert, very young–looking man in a rather high collar, and a somewhat plump, bold young woman with hair fluffed out and crimped, and wearing a dark satin blouse.

‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it?’ he said.

He had pulled off his boots, and put on a pair of slippers. He stood up on the chair, and lifted down the photograph. It left a big pale place on the greenish wall–paper.

‘No use dusting it now,’ he said, setting the thing against the wall.

He went to the scullery, and returned with hammer and pincers. Sitting where he had sat before, he started to tear off the back–paper from the big frame, and to pull out the sprigs that held the backboard in position, working with the immediate quiet absorption that was characteristic of him.

He soon had the nails out: then he pulled out the backboards, then the enlargement itself, in its solid white mount. He looked at the photograph with amusement.

‘Shows me for what I was, a young curate, and her for what she was, a bully,’ he said. ‘The prig and the bully!’

‘Let me look!’ said Connie.

He did look indeed very clean–shaven and very clean altogether, one of the clean young men of twenty years ago. But even in the photograph his eyes were alert and dauntless. And the woman was not altogether a bully, though her jowl was heavy. There was a touch of appeal in her.

‘One never should keep these things,’ said Connie. ‘That one shouldn’t! One should never have them made!’

He broke the cardboard photograph and mount over his knee, and when it was small enough, put it on the fire.

‘It’ll spoil the fire though,’ he said.

The glass and the backboard he carefully took upstairs.

The frame he knocked asunder with a few blows of the hammer, making the stucco fly. Then he took the pieces into the scullery.

‘We’ll burn that tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There’s too much plaster–moulding on it.’