Артур Дойл - Приключения Шерлока Холмса / The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (сборник)

“Precisely so. Head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Please step into the cab, and I will soon be able to tell you everything which you would wish to know.”

The little man stood glancing from one to the other of us with half-frightened, half-hopeful eyes, as one who is not sure whether he is on the edge of a windfall or of a catastrophe. Then he stepped into the cab, and in half an hour we were back in the sitting-room at Baker Street. Nothing had been said during our drive, but the high, thin breathing of our new companion, and the claspings and unclaspings of his hands, revealed the nervous tension within him.

1. Comment on the way Holmes leads the investigation and draws the information he needs from different people. How does his tactics reveal itself in the conversation?

“Indeed? I know some of them. Which was it?”

“Sold out of geese, I see.”

“If you won’t tell us the bet is off, that is all. But I’m always ready to back my opinion on a matter of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the bird I ate is country bred.”

“Excuse me, I know everything of it.”

Here are some expressions that may prove useful:

to justify one’s curiosity

to show one is aware of smth

to gain smb by paying him a compliment

to bring up the topic occasionally

2. Find some more examples of Holmes working with different types of people. How does his approach change?

3. Study the construction in italics. Note the meaning of inability to keep from doing something.

“You will excuse me,” said Holmes politely, “but I could not help overhearing the questions which you put to the salesman just now. I think that I could be useful to you.”

4. Translate the following sentences from Russian into English using the phrase from the exercise 3. NB! Some of them don’t fall into the pattern above. Which sentences are these?

1) На последних страницах книги она не могла удержаться от слез.

2) Это же твой День рождения! Я не мог не прийти.

3) Глядя на Парфенон, невозможно не восхититься его безупречной гармоничностью.

4) Я не мог сдержать смех при виде разъяренного лица директора.

5) Нельзя не отметить логичность доводов автора, однако, читая статью, невозможно отделаться от ощущения узости его подхода к проблеме.

6) Такое давление на искусство со стороны власти не может не вызывать протест.

7) Сегодня первый теплый день весны, и я просто не мог не купить мороженое!

5. There are different descriptions of people’s reactions revealed in behavior, gesture or appearance. Find out what emotions are expressed by a certain reaction. Give as many suggestions as you can.

6. Look at the map of London given below. Using the information from the chapter, describe the route our heroes followed during their adventure.

Interesting facts about Great Britain

Covent Garden is a historic marketplace which occupies a large area in the London City center. During the Middle Ages the territory belonged to Westminster Abbey. There were gardens and also an area where the markets and got its name – at first it sounded as “Convent Garden”, in which convent means monastery .

Henry VIII took for himself the land which belonged to Westminster Abbey, including the convent garden, and his son granted it as a gift to John Russel, Earl of Bedford. His family owned the land from 1552 to 1918. There emerged new buildings, piazza and the church of St. Paul’s. Gradually it began to be associated with an overcrowded place where poverty and crime throve. For example, Covent Garden impressed Charles Dickens who exclaimed: “ Good Heaven! What wild visions of prodigies of wickedness, want, and beggary, arose in my mind out of that place!”

7. What is peculiar about other places mentioned in the chapter? Choose one of them and prepare a report on it.

“Here we are!” said Holmes cheerly as we entered the room. “The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold, Mr. Ryder. Please take the basket-chair. I will just put on my slippers before we settle this little matter of yours. Now, then! You want to know what became of those geese?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Or rather, I believe, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine in which you were interested – white, with a black bar across the tail.”

Ryder quivered with emotion. “Oh, sir,” he cried, “can you tell me where it went to?”

“It came here.”

“Here?”

“Yes, and it turned out to be a most remarkable bird. I don’t wonder that you should be interested in it. It laid an egg after it was dead – the brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. I have it here in my museum.”

Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the fireplace with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strongbox and held up the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold brilliant, many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood staring at it with a tense face, uncertain whether to claim or to disown it.

“The game’s up, Ryder,” said Holmes quietly. “Hold up, man, or you’ll be into the fire! Give him an arm back into his chair, Watson. He’s not got blood enough [71]to go in for crime with impunity. Give him a drop of brandy. So! Now he looks a little more human. What a shrimp it is, to be sure!”

For a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy brought a shade of color into his cheeks, and he sat staring with frightened eyes at his accuser.

“I have almost every link in my hands, and all the proofs which I could possibly need, so there is little which you need to tell me. Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the Countess of Morcar’s?”

“It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it,” said he in a crackling voice.

“I see – her ladyship’s [72]waiting-maid. Well, the temptation of sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has been for better men before you; but you were not very scrupulous in the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the making of a very pretty villain in you [73]. You knew that this man Horner, the plumber, had been concerned in some such matter before, and that suspicion would rest the more readily upon him. What did you do, then? You made some small job in my lady’s room – you and your confederate Cusack – and you managed that he should be sent for. Then, when he had left, you opened the jewel-case, raised the alarm, and this unfortunate man was arrested. You then—”

Ryder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my companion’s knees. “For God’s sake [74], have mercy!” he cried. “Think of my father! of my mother! It would break their hearts. I never went wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I’ll swear it on a Bible. Oh, don’t bring it into court! For Christ’s sake, don’t!”

“Get back into your chair!” said Holmes strictly. “It is very well to cringe and crawl now, but you haven’t thought of this poor Horner in the court for a crime of which he knew nothing.”

“I will fly, Mr. Holmes. I will leave the country, sir. Then the charge against him will stop.”

“Hum! We will talk about that. And now let us hear the truth about what happened next. How came the stone into the goose, and how came the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, because there lies your only hope of safety.”

Ryder passed his tongue over his dry lips. “I will tell you it just as it happened, sir,” said he. “When Horner had been arrested, it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment the police might not take it into their heads to search me and my room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be safe. I went out, as if on some commission, and I went to my sister’s house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective; and, though it was a cold night, the sweat was pouring down my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me what was the matter, and why I was so pale; but I told her that I had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went into the back yard and smoked a pipe and wondered what it would be best to do.

“I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad [75], and has just been serving his time [76]in Pentonville. One day he had met me, and fell into talk about the ways of thieves, and how they could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be true to me, for I knew one or two things about him; so I decided to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money. But how to get to him in safety? I thought of the agonies I had gone through on the way from the hotel. I might at any moment be caught and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and looking at the geese which were walking about round my feet, and suddenly an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the best detective that ever lived.

“My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she was always as good as her word [77]. I would take my goose now, and in it I would carry my stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in the yard, and behind this I drove one of the birds – a fine big one, white, with a barred tail. I caught it, and prying its bill open, I pushed the stone down its throat as far as my finger could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature flapped and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the matter. As I turned to speak to her the goose freed and lost himself among the others.

“ ‘What were you doing with that bird, Jem?’ says she.

“ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you said you’d give me one for Christmas, and I was feeling which was the fattest.’

“ ‘Oh,’ says she, ‘we’ve set yours aside for you – Jem’s bird, we call it. It’s the big white one over there. There’s twenty-six of them, which makes one for you, and one for us, and two dozen for the market.’

“ ‘Thank you, Maggie,’ says I; ‘but if it is all the same to you, I’d rather have that one I was handling just now.’