The Blue Carbuncle

On the second morning after Christmas, I called on my friend Sherlock Holmes and found him studying a battered old hat. It had been brought to him by Peterson, the commissionaire, who had witnessed a curious scene at four o'clock on Christmas morning. A tall man carrying a goose had been attacked by a gang of roughs. When Peterson rushed forward in his uniform, the man, clearly alarmed, had dropped both his hat and the bird and run off.

A card tied to the goose's leg read "For Mrs Henry Baker," and the initials H. B. were written inside the hat. Since a goose cannot be kept for long, Peterson had taken it home to be cooked. Holmes was explaining what the hat told him about its owner when the door flew open. Peterson stood there, holding out his palm. On it lay a brilliant blue stone, which his wife had found in the goose's crop.

Holmes whistled softly. It was, he said, the Countess of Morcar's famous blue carbuncle, which had been stolen from her room at the Hotel Cosmopolitan five days earlier. A plumber called John Horner, who had been working in her room, had already been arrested on the evidence of a hotel attendant named James Ryder.

Holmes placed an advertisement in the evening papers, and that night Henry Baker, a shabby but rather dignified man, came to collect his hat. He was so plainly innocent that Holmes did not trouble him further. Baker told us he had bought the bird through a goose club at the Alpha Inn.

At the Alpha, the landlord told us that his geese came from a salesman in Covent Garden named Breckinridge. Breckinridge, however, had been pestered about them all day and refused to say where they had come from. Holmes, who knew that a man who will not answer a question will happily win a bet, wagered him a sovereign that the birds had been raised in the country. The triumphant salesman fetched his ledger, which showed that they had been supplied by a Mrs Oakshott of 117 Brixton Road. Holmes paid up with a great show of irritation.

As we were leaving, a small, rat-faced man began asking Breckinridge about the very same geese, and within minutes Holmes had him admitting that he was James Ryder. By the fire in Baker Street, the whole story came out. Ryder had stolen the stone himself and let the blame fall on Horner. Terrified of being searched, he had gone to his sister, Mrs Oakshott, who fattened geese for the market and had promised him one for Christmas. There he had pushed the stone down the throat of a goose with a barred tail. Unfortunately, there had been two such geese, and he had carried away the wrong one. By the time he discovered his mistake, his sister had sold the rest to Breckinridge.

Ryder fell on his knees and begged for mercy. Holmes listened in silence, then flung open the door and told him to get out. Without Ryder's evidence, he explained, the case against Horner would collapse. Ryder was far too frightened ever to steal again, and prison would only make him a criminal for life. "Besides," he added, "it is the season of forgiveness."