The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-10-22
Doyle the Real
Sherlock Holmes

4
reading and excitement-loving world
What an ingenious imagination"
was the exclamation of the millions
who had followed the adventures of
the masterful sleuth
What fund of fancy, but how
thoroughly logical withal!" they cried.
Now sherlock Holmes is no long
! er creature built of the stuff that
dreams are made Of" He is no longer
merely the stage conception of his
| dramatic friend, William Gillette. He
! is a real, live man.
And his name is Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle. Thereby hangs a story that
| has stirred all England and sent it's
| echoes far across the distant seas.
| Even as his own hero worked many
| times in fiction just for the glory Of
| clearing mans name of dishonor and
| Fighting the wrongs of the oppressed.
| so Sir Arthur has labored in the in
| terests of justice, without reward save
the knowledge that his deed was good,
and he has triumphed in two particu-
| lars.
He has cleared man unjustly accus-
| ed-cleared him at least in the eyes
of the world, if not completely in the
| legal sense, and
He has gained, through his efforts,
| the right to be called the original Mr.
| Sherlock Holmes, of Baker street"
| Tardily enough. but none the less
emphatically, hard-headed British
justice has Endorsed his work. for
| within a few days the authorities with
! whom the author worked for years to
clear his much-wronged client, have
consented to arrest another man ac-
cused of the crime, and have admitted
that they blundered badly in the first
| instance. This is how it all came
about:
In the early part of 1908, all England
was startled by a series of fendish
crimes in the country. about Great
wyrley. district of Staffordshire. Cat
tie and horses belonging to farmers
and country gentlemen" living in
that picturesque part of the island,
were found by their owners shocking
ly manned. Horses, cows and sheep
were slashed with knives, or stabbed
and left lying in field or stable. Many
of the beasts were not fatally hurt, in
dicating that the 'slasher's" sole desire
was to infiict painful wounds on the
dumb brutes. He would visit one or
two farm houses in one locality on the
same evening, and the next time he
would be heard from many miles
away from the scene of the previous
outrage.
To many it seemed like the work OF
a lunatic, but the stolid. unimaginative
land owners decided that it was some
one trying to wreak vengeance for
fancied wrong. But SO silently and so
swiftly did the fiend work that the
local police could find no clue to his
identity.
Finally anonymous letters began to
arrive at houses in Great Wyrley-let-
tiers threatening fresh outrages, and
the cattle slashing was repeated
MANY of the land owners got these
letters and turned them over to the
police. but still the authorities could
find no clue.
Among the persons who received let
tiers at this time and turned them over
to the police, was George EdalJl, son
of a Church of England clergyman,
who was vicar of Great Wyrley. The
elder Edalji was a Parsee, who had
been educated in England, and had
become Christianized. 1he son was
studious youth, who had studied law
after a university course, and had OBJ
tanned admission to the bar.
Either because of racial prejudice
against him, or because the poilce IN
their feverish desire to run down the
criminal, grasped at any straw the
authorities determined to arrest George
Edalji. because they fancied they de-
tected a resemblance between MS
handwriting and that of the anony-
mons letter writer. They asserted
that he had MANNED his neighbors
"a tile because of fancied insults, ana
that he had written the anonymous
letters and had included hlmsen III
the list of those threatened to avert
suspicion.
In vain the young man protested ms
innocence. and in vain his father, the |
vicar. swore that his son was In ms
own home on the nights when the out
RACES were committed. Public sentl- |
ment was against Edalji; he was con-
victed and sentenced to seven years III |
prison.
Meanwhile there were many who ce-
lieved that Edalji was the victim Oh
a miscarriage of justice ana dhiohS
these was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: i
The more he thought of the peculiar
the more he felt con-
v;nced that Edalji was not the real
culprit. One day he made up ms
mind to go to wolverhampton, where
the Young man was imprisoned, ana
like his hero, Holmes. he acted on the
snur of the moment, hurried TO an
exnress. and was soon on the scene oil
action. ,.1.o,r,as
Bringing to bear the famous Holmes
system of deduction" Sir arthur
went to work on the case with an
that would have thrilled ms
,aro's Roswell. DIR. Watson. II
wasn't long before he had something
RI work on. and presently he knew tna'
Edalii eoud not have committed the
crimes with which he was charged'
- was a perfectly simple, yet appar-
emily conclusive point.
Al his first meeting with Edaii the
1a+4ar peered at him steadfastly as
though trying TO see through Ios'
ord when Sir Arthur EXTENDED MS
.,,ror man yrOped for a mo- |