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we take turns walking,’ said Holmes.
    We agreed to do so. It was decided that two would sit inside and two would go on foot and change over every three miles or so. Holmes and I were first to set off on foot. Having walked the agreed distance, the manager and the mine guard walked and we sat in the carriage.
    It was cool and Holmes and I had not tired. Not so Seltzoff. At first he strode along boldly. But just over a half mile on, he was perspiring and his face was red. The next half mile or so he desperately tried to appear as if his energy had not deserted him. But yet another half mile or so and he announced he couldn’t walk so much as he wasn’t used to it and, besides, his feet were hurting.
    â€˜Strange,’ said Holmes with a smile. ‘At work you were on your feet all day and you weren’t tired, and here you become tired.’
    â€˜Strange, indeed! I was thinking along those same lines myself,’ said the manager.
    The ironic look in his eyes had vanished and was replaced by a look of alarm.
    At this moment Holmes shouted at the coachman, ‘Halt!’ Seltzoff shuddered imperceptibly.
    Holmes placed his hands on Seltzoff’s shoulders and said frostily, ‘Well, Mr Manager, sir, you laughed at me in vain. Putting anything over Sherlock Holmes doesn’t come easily. Give me your coat.’
    â€˜But I’m cold,’ muttered the manager.
    â€˜In that case, force will have to be used,’ exclaimed Holmes and nodded at the mine guard.
    It took a moment to strip Seltzoff of his coat. Holmes took the coat by its collar and was just about to lift it with his outstretched hand.
    â€˜So you’ve got me then,’ Seltzoff growled angrily.
    â€˜I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What is going on?’
    â€˜Oh, it only came to me because he was getting tired,’ Holmesexplained, smiling. ‘The gold is in the heavy cloth of the coat. In its raw state, before it has been worked on to be hardened, gold is pliable and soft enough to be rubbed in its entirety into heavy material. It becomes a fine dust and, as such, it virtually dissolves into the cloth and vanishes. That is preceisely what this gentleman did. He rubbed the gold into the cloth and then all he would have to do to recover the gold is to burn off the cloth. But he wasn’t able to do it, and from this moment he is under arrest.’
    We set off again, this time with Seltzoff tied up, though to keep him warm, we gave him another coat to replace the one we had taken away.
    Forty-seven pounds of gold were recovered from it.

2
THE RAILROAD THIEVES
    P. Orlovetz
I
    The story of how the gold stolen from the Brothers’ Mine was found spread like wildfire throughout the whole of Siberia. Sherlock Holmes’s name was passed from mouth to mouth, while tales of his exploits were so exaggerated that he became some sort of mythical hero. Often, he had to listen to the most incredible stories about himself, with which we were entertained on trains by fellow passengers who did not know our surnames. Holmes was terribly amused and entertained by such stories.
    The following case occurred half a year after the withdrawal from Mukden, in north-east China, of troops who had participated in the Russo–Japanese War (1904–05). We were on our way to Harbin, also in north-east China, from where we intended to go to Vladivostok, Russia’s port on the Pacific Ocean, and then to return to European Russia via Khabarovsk, Blagoveschensk and Stretensk. This route would enable us tovisit all the principal cities of Siberia.
    On a grey September day our train stopped at Baikal station, named after the great Siberian lake on which it stood.
    The stopover was a long one, so we got off at the station to have lunch, to taste the famous Baikal salmon, extolled by Siberian exiles.
    We had eaten this fish and the ghastly soup that was on the menu, when a cavalry captain, and officer of gendarmes, sat down opposite