Chapter I: WAS just thirty-seven when my Uncle Philip died. A week before

that event he sent for me; and here let me say that I had never set
eyes on him. He hated my mother, but I do not know why. She told me
long before his last illness that I need expect nothing from my
father’s brother. He was an inventor, an able and ingenious
mechanical engineer, and had made much money by his improvement in
turbine-wheels. He was a bachelor; lived alone, cooked his own
meals, and collected precious stones, especially rubies and pearls.
From the time he made his first money he had this mania. As he grew
richer, the desire to possess rare and costly gems became stronger.
When he bought a new stone, he carried it in his pocket for a month
and now and then took it out and looked at it. Then it was added to
the collection in his safe at the trust company.

At the time he sent for me I was a clerk, and poor enough.
Remembering my mother’s words, his message gave me, his sole
relative, no new hopes; but I thought it best to go.

When I sat down by his bedside, he began, with a malicious grin:

“I suppose you think me queer. I will explain.” What he said was
certainly queer enough. “I have been living on an annuity into which
I put my fortune. In other words, I have been, as to money,
concentric half of my life to enable me to be as eccentric as I
pleased the rest of it. Now I repent of my wickedness to you all,
and desire to live in the memory of at least one of my family. You
think I am poor and have only my annuity. You will be profitably
surprised. I have never parted with my precious stones; they will be
yours. You are my sole heir. I shall carry with me to the other
world the satisfaction of making one man happy.

“No doubt you have always had expectations, and I desire that you
should continue to expect. My jewels are in my safe. There is
nothing else left.”

When I thanked him he grinned all over his lean face, and said:

“You will have to pay for my funeral.”

I must say that I never looked forward to any expenditure with more
pleasure than to what it would cost me to put him away in the earth.
As I rose to go, he said:

“The rubies are valuable. They are in my safe at the trust company.
Before you unlock the box, be very careful to read a letter which
lies on top of it; and be sure not to shake the box.” I thought this
odd. “Don’t come back. It won’t hasten things.”

He died that day week, and was handsomely buried. The day after, his
will was found, leaving me his heir. I opened his safe and found in
it nothing but an iron box, evidently of his own making, for he was
a skilled workman and very ingenious. The box was heavy and strong,
about ten inches long, eight inches wide and ten inches high. On it
lay a letter to me. It ran thus:

“DEAR TOM: This box contains a large number of very fine
pigeon-blood rubies and a fair lot of diamonds; one is
blue—a beauty. There are hundreds of pearls—one the famous
green pearl and a necklace of blue pearls, for which any
woman would sell her soul—or her affections.” I thought of
Susan. “I wish you to continue to have expectations and
continuously to remember your dear uncle. I would have left
these stones to some charity, but I hate the poor as much as
I hate your mother’s son,—yes, rather more.

“The box contains an interesting mechanism, which will act
with certainty as you unlock it, and explode ten ounces of
my improved, supersensitive dynamite—no, to be accurate,
there are only nine and a half ounces. Doubt me, and open
it, and you will be blown to atoms. Believe me, and you will
continue to nourish expectations which will never be
fulfilled. As a considerate man, I counsel extreme care in
handling the box. Don’t forget your affectionate

“UNCLE.”

I stood appalled, the key in my hand. Was it true? Was it a lie? I
had spent all my savings on the funeral, and was poorer than ever.

Remembering the old man’s oddity, his malice, his cleverness in
mechanic arts, and the patent explosive which had helped to make him
rich, I began to feel how very likely it was that he had told the
truth in this cruel letter.

I carried the iron box away to my lodgings, set it down with care in
a closet, laid the key on it, and locked the closet.

Then I sat down, as yet hopeful, and began to exert my ingenuity
upon ways of opening the box without being killed. There must be a
way.

After a week of vain thinking I bethought me, one day, that it would
be easy to explode the box by unlocking it at a safe distance, and I
arranged a plan with wires, which seemed as if it would answer. But
when I reflected on what would happen when the dynamite scattered
the rubies, I knew that I should be none the richer. For hours at a
time I sat looking at that box and handling the key.

At last I hung the key on my watch-guard; but then it occurred to me
that it might be lost or stolen. Dreading this, I hid it, fearful
that some one might use it to open the box. This state of doubt and
fear lasted for weeks, until I became nervous and began to dread
that some accident might happen to that box. A burglar might come
and boldly carry it away and force it open and find it was a wicked
fraud of my uncle’s. Even the rumble and vibration caused by the
heavy vans in the street became at last a terror.

Worst of all, my salary was reduced, and I saw that marriage was out
of the question.

In my despair I consulted Professor Clinch about my dilemma, and as
to some safe way of getting at the rubies. He said that, if my uncle
had not lied, there was none that would not ruin the stones,
especially the pearls, but that it was a silly tale and altogether
incredible. I offered him the biggest ruby if he wished to test his
opinion. He did not desire to do so.

Dr. Schaff, my uncle’s doctor, believed the old man’s letter, and
added a caution, which was entirely useless, for by this time I was
afraid to be in the room with that terrible box.

At last the doctor kindly warned me that I was in danger of losing
my mind with too much thought about my rubies. In fact, I did
nothing else but contrive wild plans to get at them safely. I spent
all my spare hours at one of the great libraries reading about
dynamite. Indeed, I talked of it until the library attendants,
believing me a lunatic or a dynamite fiend, declined to humor me,
and spoke to the police. I suspect that for a while I was “shadowed”
as a suspicious, and possibly criminal, character. I gave up the
libraries, and, becoming more and more fearful, set my precious box
on a down pillow, for fear of its being shaken; for at this time
even the absurd possibility of its being disturbed by an earthquake
troubled me. I tried to calculate the amount of shake needful to
explode my box.

The old doctor, when I saw him again, begged me to give up all
thought of the matter, and, as I felt how completely I was the slave
of one despotic idea, I tried to take the good advice thus given me.

Unhappily, I found, soon after, between the leaves of my uncle’s
Bible, a numbered list of the stones with their cost and much
beside. It was dated two years before my uncle’s death. Many of the
stones were well known, and their enormous value amazed me.

Several of the rubies were described with care, and curious
histories of them were given in detail. One was said to be the
famous “Sunset ruby,” which had belonged to the Empress-Queen Maria
Theresa. One was called the “Blood ruby,” not, as was explained,
because of the color, but on account of the murders it had
occasioned. Now, as I read, it seemed again to threaten death.

The pearls were described with care as an unequalled collection.
Concerning two of them my uncle had written what I might call
biographies,—for, indeed, they seemed to have done much evil and
some good. One, a black pearl, was mentioned in an old bill of sale
as—She—which seemed queer to me.

It was maddening. Here, guarded by a vision of sudden death, was
wealth “beyond the dreams of avarice.” I am not a clever or
ingenious man; I know little beyond how to keep a ledger, and so I
was, and am, no doubt, absurd about many of my notions as to how to
solve this riddle.

At one time I thought of finding a man who would take the risk of
unlocking the box, but what right had I to subject any one else to
the trial I dared not face? I could easily drop the box from a
height somewhere, and if it did not explode could then safely unlock
it; but if it did blow up when it fell, good-by to my rubies.
_Mine_, indeed! I was rich, and I was not. I grew thin and morbid,
and so miserable that, being a good Catholic, I at last carried my
troubles to my father confessor. He thought it simply a cruel jest
of my uncle’s, but was not so eager for another world as to be
willing to open my box. He, too, counselled me to cease thinking
about it. Good heavens! I dreamed about it. Not to think about it
was impossible. Neither my own thought nor science nor religion had
been able to assist me.

Two years have gone by, and I am one of the richest men in the city,
and have no more money than will keep me alive.

Susan said I was half cracked like Uncle Philip, and broke off her
engagement. In my despair I have advertised in the “Journal of
Science,” and have had absurd schemes sent me by the dozen. At last,
as I talked too much about it, the thing became so well known that
when I put the horror in a safe, in bank, I was promptly desired to
withdraw it. I was in constant fear of burglars, and my landlady
gave me notice to leave, because no one would stay in the house with
that box. I am now advised to print my story and await advice from
the ingenuity of the American mind.

I have moved into the suburbs and hidden the box and changed my name
and my occupation. This I did to escape the curiosity of the
reporters. I ought to say that when the government officials came to
hear of my inheritance, they very reasonably desired to collect the
succession tax on my uncle’s estate.

I was delighted to assist them. I told the collector my story, and
showed him Uncle Philip’s letter. Then I offered him the key, and
asked for time to get half a mile away. That man said he would think
it over and come back later.

This is all I have to say. I have made a will and left my rubies and
pearls to the Society for the Prevention of Human Vivisection. If
any man thinks this account a joke or an invention, let him coldly
imagine the situation:

Given an iron box, known to contain wealth, said to contain
dynamite, arranged to explode when the key is used to unlock it—what
would any sane man do? What would he advise?

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THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE[8]
By A. CONAN DOYLE

Footnote 8:

By permission of Harper & Brothers.