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Transcriber’s note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). [Illustration:

  “I BURST WITH A SHRIEK INTO MY OWN LIFE.”

                                          [_Page 12._]


ROUND THE FIRE STORIES

by

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Author of
“The White Company,” etc., etc. With a Frontispiece by A. Castaigne






London
Smith, Elder & Co., 15, Waterloo Place
1908

(All rights reserved)

Printed by
William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
London and Beccles. ------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                PREFACE


[Illustration]

In a previous volume, “The Green Flag,” I have assembled a number of my
stories which deal with warfare or with sport. In the present collection
those have been brought together which are concerned with the grotesque
and with the terrible—such tales as might well be read “round the fire”
upon a winter’s night. This would be my ideal atmosphere for such
stories, if an author might choose his time and place as an artist does
the light and hanging of his picture. However, if they have the good
fortune to give pleasure to any one, at any time or place, their author
will be very satisfied. ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. WINDLESHAM,
   CROWBOROUGH. CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE

    I. THE LEATHER FUNNEL                                              1

   II. THE BEETLE HUNTER                                              18

  III. THE MAN WITH THE WATCHES                                       41

   IV. THE POT OF CAVIARE                                             65

    V. THE JAPANNED BOX                                               85

   VI. THE BLACK DOCTOR                                              103

  VII. PLAYING WITH FIRE                                             129

 VIII. THE JEW’S BREASTPLATE                                         149

   IX. THE LOST SPECIAL                                              177

    X. THE CLUB-FOOTED GROCER                                        202

   XI. THE SEALED ROOM                                               229

  XII. THE BRAZILIAN CAT                                             248

 XIII. THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL                                 276

  XIV. THE BROWN HAND                                                299

   XV. THE FIEND OF THE COOPERAGE                                    321

  XVI. JELLAND’S VOYAGE                                              340

 XVII. B. 24                                                         351


        “I BURST WITH A SHRIEK INTO MY OWN LIFE.”        _Frontispiece_. (_From a drawing by A. Castaigne._)

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                         ROUND THE FIRE STORIES


[Illustration]




                           THE LEATHER FUNNEL


My friend, Lionel Dacre, lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris. His house
was that small one, with the iron railings and grass plot in front of
it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from the Arc de Triomphe. I
fancy that it had been there long before the avenue was constructed, for
the grey tiles were stained with lichens, and the walls were mildewed
and discoloured with age. It looked a small house from the street, five
windows in front, if I remember right, but it deepened into a single
long chamber at the back. It was here that Dacre had that singular
library of occult literature, and the fantastic curiosities which served
as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends. A wealthy man
of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and
fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private
collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical works, many of them of
great rarity and value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the
monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the
unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization and of decorum. To
his English friends he never alluded to such matters, and took the tone
of the student and _virtuoso_; but a Frenchman whose tastes were of the
same nature has assured me that the worst excesses of the black mass
have been perpetrated in that large and lofty hall, which is lined with
the shelves of his books, and the cases of his museum. Dacre’s appearance was enough to show that his deep interest in these
psychic matters was intellectual rather than spiritual. There was no
trace of asceticism upon his heavy face, but there was much mental force
in his huge dome-like skull, which curved upward from amongst his
thinning locks, like a snow-peak above its fringe of fir trees. His
knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior
to his character. The small bright eyes, buried deeply in his fleshy
face, twinkled with intelligence and an unabated curiosity of life, but
they were the eyes of a sensualist and an egotist. Enough of the man,
for he is dead now, poor devil, dead at the very time that he had made
sure that he had at last discovered the elixir of life. It is not with
his complex character that I have to deal, but with the very strange and
inexplicable incident which had its rise in my visit to him in the early
spring of the year ’82. I had known Dacre in England, for my researches in the Assyrian Room of
the British Museum had been conducted at the time when he was
endeavouring to establish a mystic and esoteric meaning in the
Babylonian tablets, and this community of interests had brought us
together. Chance remarks had led to daily conversation, and that to
something verging upon friendship. I had promised him that on my next
visit to Paris I would call upon him. At the time when I was able to
fulfil my compact I was living in a cottage at Fontainebleau, and as the
evening trains were inconvenient, he asked me to spend the night in his
house. “I have only that one spare couch,” said he, pointing to a broad sofa in
his large salon; “I hope that you will manage to be comfortable there.”

It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but
there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself,
and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle
reek which comes from an ancient book.