A moment later he was in the room. Mr. John Garrideb,Counsellor at Law, was a short, powerful man with the round,fresh, clean-shaven face characteristic of so many American menof affairs. The general effect was chubby and rather childlike, sothat one received the impression of quite a young man with abroad set smile upon his face. His eyes, however, were arresting.
Seldom in any human head have I seen a pair which bespokea more intense inward life, so bright were they, so alert, soresponsive to every change of thought. His accent was American,but was not accompanied by any eccentricity of speech.
“Mr. Holmes?” he asked, glancing from one to the other. “Ah,yes! Your pictures are not unlike you, sir, if I may say so. I believeyou have had a letter from my namesake, Mr. Nathan Garrideb,have you not?”
“Pray sit down,” said Sherlock Holmes. “We shall, I fancy, have agood deal to discuss.” He took up his sheets of foolscap. “You are,of course, the Mr. John Garrideb mentioned in this document.
But surely you have been in England some time?”
“Why do you say that, Mr. Holmes?” I seemed to read suddensuspicion in those expressive eyes.
“Your whole outfit is English.”
Mr. Garrideb forced a laugh. “I’ve read of your tricks, Mr.
Holmes, but I never thought I would be the subject of them.
Where do you read that?”
“The shoulder cut of your coat, the toes of your boots—couldanyone doubt it?”
“Well, well, I had no idea I was so obvious a Britisher. Butbusiness brought me over here some time ago, and so, as you say,my outfit is nearly all London. However, I guess your time is ofvalue, and we did not meet to talk about the cut of my socks.
What about getting down to that paper you hold in your hand?”
Holmes had in some way ruffled our visitor, whose chubby facehad assumed a far less amiable expression.
1314 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“Patience! Patience, Mr. Garrideb!” said my friend in a soothingvoice. “Dr. Watson would tell you that these little digressions ofmine sometimes prove in the end to have some bearing on thematter. But why did Mr. Nathan Garrideb not come with you?”
“Why did he ever drag you into it at all?” asked our visitor withsudden outflame of anger. “What in thunder had you to do withit? Here was a bit of professional business between two gentlemen,and one of them must needs call in a detective! I saw him thismorning, and he told me this fool-trick he had played me, andthat’s why I am here. But I feel bad about it, all the same.”
“There was no reflection upon you, Mr. Garrideb. It wassimply zeal upon his part to gain your end—an end which is, Iunderstand, equally vital for both of you. He knew that I hadmeans of getting information, and, therefore, it was very naturalthat he should apply to me.”
Our visitor’s angry face gradually cleared.
“Well, that puts it different,” said he. “When I went to see himthis morning and he told me he had sent to a detective, I justasked for your address and came right away. I don’t want policebutting into a private matter. But if you are content just to help usfind the man, there can be no harm in that.”
“Well, that is just how it stands,” said Holmes. “And now, sir,since you are here, we had best have a clear account from yourown lips. My friend here knows nothing of the details.”
Mr. Garrideb surveyed me with not too friendly a gaze.
“Need he know?” he asked.
“We usually work together.”
“Well, there’s no reason it should be kept a secret. I’ll give youthe facts as short as I can make them. If you came from Kansaswould not need to explain to you who Alexander HamiltonGarrideb was. He made his money in real estate, and afterwardsin the wheat pit at Chicago, but he spent it in buying up as muchland as would make one of your counties, lying along the ArkansasRiver, west of Fort Dodge. It’s grazing-land and lumber-land andarable-land and mineralized-land, and just every sort of land thatbrings dollars to the man that owns it.
“He had no kith nor kin—or, if he had, I never heard of it. Buthe took a kind of pride in the queerness of his name. That waswhat brought us together. I was in the law at Topeka, and one dayhad a visit from the old man, and he was tickled to death to meetanother man with his own name. It was his pet fad, and he wasdead set to find out if there were any more Garridebs in the world.
Find me another!’ said he. I told him I was a busy man and couldnot spend my life hiking round the world in search of Garridebs.
None the less,’ said he, ‘that is just what you will do if things panThe Case Book of Sherlock Holmes 1315
out as I planned them.’ I thought he was joking, but there was apowerful lot of meaning in the words, as I was soon to discover.
“For he died within a year of saying them, and he left a willbehind him. It was the queerest will that has ever been filed inthe State of Kansas. His property was divided into three parts andI was to have one on condition that I found two Garridebs whowould share the remainder. It’s five million dollars for each if it is acent, but we can’t lay a finger on it until we all three stand in a row.
“It was so big a chance that I just let my legal practice slide andI set forth looking for Garridebs. There is not one in the UnitedStates. I went through it, sir, with a fine-toothed comb and never aGarrideb could I catch. Then I tried the old country. Sure enoughthere was the name in the London telephone directory. I wentafter him two days ago and explained the whole matter to him.
But he is a lone man, like myself, with some women relations, butno men. It says three adult men in the will. So you see we still havea vacancy, and if you can help to fill it we will be very ready to payyour charges.”
“Well, Watson,” said Holmes with a smile, “I said it was ratherwhimsical, did I not? I should have thought, sir, that your obviousway was to advertise in the agony columns of the papers.”
“I have done that, Mr. Holmes. No replies.”
“Dear me! Well, it is certainly a most curious little problem.