“Farintosh,” said he. “Ah yes, I recall the case; it was

concerned with an opal tiara. I think it was before your time, Watson. I can

only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote the same care to your case as

I did to that of your friend. As to reward, my profession is its own reward;

but you are at liberty to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, at the time

which suits you best. And now I beg that you will lay before us everything that

may help us in forming an opinion upon the matter.”


“Alas!” replied our visitor, “the very horror of my situation

lies in the fact that my fears are so vague, and my suspicions depend so

entirely upon small points, which might seem trivial to another, that even he

to whom of all others I have a right to look for help and advice looks upon all

that I tell him about it as the fancies of a nervous woman. He does not say so,

but I can read it from his soothing answers and averted eyes. But I have heard,

Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human

heart. You may advise me how to walk amid the dangers which encompass

me.”


“I am all attention, madam.”


“My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is the

last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in England, the Roylotts of

Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey.”


Holmes nodded his head. “The name is familiar to me,” said he.


“The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the estates

extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and Hampshire in the

west. In the last century, however, four successive heirs were of a dissolute

and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a

gambler in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of

ground, and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a

heavy mortgage. The last squire dragged out his existence there, living the