0:00 V. The Five Orange Pips. When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years
0:26 eighty-two and ninety, I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features
0:32 that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however,
0:37 have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field
0:41 for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have
0:50 baffled his analytical skill, and would be as narratives beginning without an ending,
0:56 while others have been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded rather upon
1:01 conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to
1:05 him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in its details and so startling
1:11 in its results that I am tempted to give some account of it, in spite of the fact that there
1:16 are points in connection with it which have never been, and probably never will be, entirely cleared
1:21 up. The year 87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less
1:28 interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings, under this one twelve months,
1:34 I find an account of the adventure of the Peridol Chamber, of the amateur mendicant Society,
1:39 who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the
1:46 British barque Sophie Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Pattersons in the island
1:51 of Ufa, and, finally, of the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered,
1:57 Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man's watch, to prove that it had been wound up
2:02 two hours before, and that, therefore, the deceased had been wound up two hours before, and that therefore the deceased
2:05 had gone to bed within that time, a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing
2:10 up the case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present such singular
2:16 features as the strange train of circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.
2:23 It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had
2:27 set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed, and the rain had beaten against the
2:33 windows, so that even here, in the heart of great, handmade London, we were forced to raise our
2:38 minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of those great
2:43 elemental forces which shriek
2:45 at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage. As evening
2:51 drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child
2:57 in the chimney.
2:59 Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the fireplace, cross-indexing his records
3:03 of crime, while I at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell's, cross-indexing his records of crime, while I, at the other,
3:06 was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea-stories, until the howl of the gale from without seemed
3:12 to blend with the text, and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash
3:17 of the sea-waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a few days I was a dweller
3:22 once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.
3:29 "'Why?' said I, glancing up at my companion.
3:31 "'That was surely the bell.
3:32 "'Who could come up to-night?
3:34 "'Some friend of yours, perhaps?' "'Except yourself I have none,' he answered.
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