tunate young lady came of a wealthy Grecian
family, and that she had been on a visit to some friends in England.
While there she had met a young man named Harold Latimer, who had
acquired an ascendancy over he and had eventually persuaded her to fly
with him. Her friends, shocked at the event, had contented themselves
with informing her brother at Athens, and had then washed their hands
of the matter. The brother, on his arrival in England, had imprudently
placed himself in the power of Latimer and of his associate, whose name
was Wilson Kemp--a man of the foulest antecedents. These two, finding
that through his ignorance of the language he was helpless in their
hands, had kept him a prisoner, and had endeavored by cruelty and
starvation to make him sign away his own and his sister's property. They
had kept him in the house without the girl's knowledge, and the plaster
over the face had been for the purpose of making recognition difficult
in case she should ever catch a glimpse of him. Her feminine perception,
however, had instantly seen through the disguise when, on the occasion
of the interpreter's visit, she had seen him for the first time. The
poor girl, however, was herself a prisoner, for there was no one about
the house except the man who acted as coachman, and his wife, both of
whom were tools of the conspirators. Finding that their secret was out,
and that their prisoner was not to be coerced, the two villains with the
girl had fled away at a few hours' notice from the furnished house which
they had hired, having first, as they thought, taken vengeance both upon
the man who had defied and the one who had betrayed them.

Months afterwards a curious newspaper cutting reached us from
Buda-Pesth. It told how two Englishmen who had been traveling with a
woman had met with a tragic end. They had each been stabbed, it seems,
and the Hungarian police were of opinion that they had quarreled and had
inflicted mortal injuries upon each other. Holmes, however, is, I fancy,
of a different way of thinking, and holds to this day that, if one could
find the Grecian girl, one might learn how the wrongs of herself and her
brother came to be avenged.

Adventure X. The Naval Treaty

The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable
by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being
associated with Sherlock Holmes and of studying his methods. I find them
recorded in my notes under the head