Oh two two one b Baker Seats kebby.

The BBC presents The Noble Bachelor Ya Sir Arthur Kernan Doyle, adapted for radio by Michael Hardwick, with Cotton Hobbs as Sherlock Holmes and Norman Shelley as Doctor Watson.

It was a few weeks before my marriage in eighteen eighty seven, during the days when I was still sharing rooms with Sherlock Holmbs in Baker Street.

I had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn to rain with igh autumnal winds.

The Jesl bullet, which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign, throbbed with dull persistency.

With my body in one easy chair and my legs upon another, I had surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers, and when at last I had saturated myself at the news of the day, I tossed them all aside and laid listeners, speculating lazily upon the huge question monogram on the envelope upon the table which awaited my friend's return.

Well Holmes had a fashionable epistle, Oh this looks like one of those social submences which call upon a man either to be bored or to life.

Couple coming, they proved me something of interest after all.

Wow, not social, distinctive, professional and from a noble clients, one of the highest in England.

I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my client is a matter of less moment than of the interest of his case.

Of course, of course, it's just possible, however, that that also may not be wanting in this new investigation.

You've been reading the papers diligently, of mate, have you not?

Looks like it?

I have had nothing else to do.

Well, it's fortunate you will perhaps be able to post me up.

I read not the except criminal news in the agony column.

The letter has always instructed, But if you followed recent events so closely, you must have read about Lord since Simon and his wedding.

Oh here's the deepest interest.

And the letter which I held in my hand is from Lord since Simon.

This is what he says, My dear mister Sharllock Films.

Lord Backwater tells me that I may place implicit reliance upon your judgment and discretion.

I have determined therefore to call upon you and to consult you in reference to the day painful event which has occurred in connection with my wedding.

Mister Lestrade of Scotland Yard is acting already in the matter, but he assures me that he sees no objection to your co operation, and that he even thinks that it might be of some assistance.

I will call at four o'clock in the afternoon, and should you have any other engagement at that time, I hope you will postpone it, as this is a matter of paramount importance your late etcetera.

Dated from grosven dimensions and written with a quill pen.

Ah, the noble lord has had the misfortune to get a sneer of ink upon the outer side of his right little finger.

He said, four o'clock past three.

Now, then I have just time, with your assistance to get clear upon the subject.

Turn over those papers and arrange the extracts and their order of time.

The Buddhist party, miss, oh you are, and I have will take an account as to who our clients.

Is one, yes at all, Ah, Yes, here he is Robert Walsingham de Veres and Simon, second son of the Yugo Go Tomorrow born eighteen forty six.

That makes him forty one years of age mature for manage.

There was under Secretary for the Colonies and later administration m M yeah.

They inherit pantational blood by directors sent and qu down the distaste style.

It was as nothing very instructive in all this, I mustand to you Watson for something more solid.

I've had very difflute finding what you want.

In fact, for quite recent there was a paragraph from one of the society papers and headed there will soon be a call for protection in the manage market for the prison free trade principle appears to tell heavily against our home product.

One by one, the management of the noble houses of Great Britain is passing into the hands about their cousins from across the athletic lords.

And Simon, who has shown himself for over twenty years proof against the little God's arrows, now definitely announced his approaching marriage with Miss Etty Doran, the fascinating daughter of a Californian millionaire.

Miss Doran is an only child, and it is currently reported that her day will run to considerably over six figures.

Indeed, as it is an open secret that the Duke of bell Moral has been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years, and as lords Examon has no providence if the smallest liut of Birtimore.

It is obvious that the Californian heiress is not the only gainer by the alliance.

Everything more, Oh, yeah, and yes, there's a note here to say the marriage would be an absolutely quiet, honest sat George's hand of a square, and that the party would return to the furnished house at Lancster Gate, which has been taken by the Sloethius Doham.

Two days later Westminster zt Let's wins in the last October the ses there's a curt announcement that the wedding had taken place.

All those were all the notices that appeared before the disappearance of the bride, before the vanishing of the leader.

When did she vanish that at the wedding breakfast?

Indeed, oh, this is more interesting than it promised to be, quite dramatic.

In fact, yes, his structure is being a little out of the common, and they often vanished before the ceremony and occasionally during the honeymoon.

But I cannot call to mind anything quite so prompt as this.

Ah.

But there's a ring of the bell, and as the club makes it a few minutes after four, I have no doubt that this will prove to be our noble client.

No, don't dream of going, Watson.

I very much prefer having a witness, if only as a check to my own memory.

I wouldn't have missed this caseful word, good day, lords, and silent, Oh, pray take the basket chair.

This is my friend and colleague, doctor Watson.

I go up a little and we saw talk this matter over.

The most painful matter to me, because you can most readily imagine this homes I have been cut to the quick.

I understand you have already managed several delicate cases of this sort.

So do I presume that they were hardly from the same class of society.

No, I am descending.

I beg your pardon.

My last client of the thought was a king.

I have no idea at which king, the King of Scandinavia.

What has he lost his wife?

You can understand that I extend to the affairs of my other clients the same secrecy which I've promised to you in yours, of course, but it right, right, How do I beg your pardon as to my own case?

I am ready to give you any information which may assist you in forming an opinion.

Thank you.

I've already learned something of it from the public prints.

Nothing more.

I think I may arrive at my text most directly by questioning you.

Pray do so?

Now?

When did you first meet miss Hattie Ordan in San Francisco a year ago?

Did you become engaged?

Then?

No, but you were on a friendly footing.

I was amused by her society, and she could see that I was amused.

Her father is day rich.

He has said to be the richest man on the Pacific Slope.

And how did he make his money in mining?

He had nothing a few years ago, and his truck gold invested it and came up by leaps and bounds.

My wife was twenty before her father became a rich man.

During that time she ran free in a mining camp, so that her education has come from later rather than from the schoolmaster.

She is what we call in England, I leave a tomboy.

Quite she is impetuous volcanic.

I was about to say, on the other hand, I would not have given her the name which I had the honor to bear, had I not thought her to be at bottom a noble woman.

The young lady came to London then, and you were you, you Oda paints.

Yes, her father brought her over for this last season.

I met her several times.

We became engaged.

I have now married her.

She brought I understand a considerable diary, no more than as usual in my family.

And this, of course remains to you, since the marriage is the faka called tea.

I really have made no inquiries on the subject enough.

On the morning of the wedding.

Was she in good still?

It's never met her.

She was as bright as possible until after the semony.

And did you observe any change in that?

Then?

Well, then tell the truth I saw then the first times with her temper was a little sharp.

The incident was too trivial to relate.

You have no possible bearing on the case.

They let us have it for all that.

It's tish.

She dropped her bouquet as we went towards the vestry.

She was passing the thunk pure at the time, and it fell over into the pool.

There was a moment's delay, but the gentleman in the pool handed it up to her again.

It didn't appear to be the worse for the fall.

Yet when I spoke to her about it, she answered me abruptly in the carriage on our way home.

She seemed absurdly agitated over so priflic a call.

Indeed, you say there was a gentleman in the pew.

Some of the general public were a person, then, oh, yes, it's impossible to exclude them with a treaty open This gentleman was one of your wife's friends.

No, no, I called him a gentleman by critic him.

He was quite a common looking person.

I hardly noticed his appearance.

Really, I think we're wandering rather far from the point at generate ladies and Simon returned from the wedding in a less cheerful frame of mind than she had gone to it.

And what did she do on re entering her father's house.

I saw her in close conversation with her maid, Alice, a confidential servant, a little too much so.

She is an American.

She came from California with her.

It seemed to me that her listeners allowed her to take great liberties.

Instead of course, in America they look upon these things in a little way.

You did not overhear what they said, ladies, and simon something about jumping a claim she was accustomed to using slag of that kind.

No idea admit m American slag is that he expressed it sometimes.

And what did your wife do next?

She went into the breakfast room an arm no alone.

She was very independent in little matters like that.

Then after we had sat down for ten minutes or so, she rose, hurriedly, muttered some words of apology, and left the room.

She never came back.

Her maid says she went to her room, covered her bride's dress with a long outstair, put on a bonnet, and went out.

One of the footmen remembered seeing a lady Lee, but he refused to credit that he could have been his mistress.

He naturally believe she was inside.

Quite so afterwards, my wife is that who had been seen walking to Hyde Park with the woman who had caused the disturbance earlier on the disturbance.

Uh, Yes, after we had returned from the church, this woman apparently tried to follow us into the house.

She had to be objected by the butter of the football.

But why should she want to force a way to Holmes.

She claimed that she and I oh trove.

Her name is Flora Miller.

She used to be a dancers of the Inegro.

I have not treated her jealously, and she's no just cause to complain against people who know what women in armies told.

She wrote big, dreadful letters when she heard I was to be added.

In fact, the reason I had the marriage celebrated so quetly was because I feared there might be a scandal at the church.

Did your wife hear this?

The servant?

No, thank goodness, you didn't.

And yet she was seen walking with this deady woman art.

But yes, and mister Lestrade of Scotland Yard looks upon it as very serious.

It is course to plaua decoyed my wife out and made some terrible trap for her.

I understand that she's now in custody.

Well, it's a possible supposition, do you think so true?

I don't think Flora would hurt a fly.

I didn't say a probable one.

Still, jealousy is a strange pransformer character playday Lords and Simon, what is your own theory as to work to place?

Oh?

Really, I came to seek a fairy, not to propound one since you asked me, it has occurred to me that the excitement, the consciousness that she had made so immense a social stride may have caused some little nervous disturbance to my wife.

In short, that she had become suddenly deranged.

When I consider that she has turned her back.

And I will not say upon me, but upon so much that many have aspired to without reason, I can hardly explain it in any off.

Well, that is certainly a conceivable hypotheses.

And now, Lord, since Simon, I think I have nearly all my data.

Oh, may I ask whether you and your wife were seated at the breakfast table so that you could see out of the window.

We could see the other side of the road and the park.

Quite so, then, I do not think I need to take you any longer.

I will communicate with you, should you be fortunate enough to solve this problem.

Oh, I have solved it.

What was that?

I say?

I have solved it?

Where then is my wife?

That is a detail which I shall speedily supply.

I am afraid it will take wiser heads than yours and mine.

Good day to you, Good day, sir, it's very good Lord's And Simon to honor my head by putting it on a level with his own.

Well, I think I shall have a whiskey and turn down a cigar for all that crossest in food.

I have formed my conclusions.

Cestif the case before our counts nearly done.

Yeah, I have several similar cases.

Oh, as I remarked before, none of them are quite as pot My holy examination.

Has turned my conjecture to a certain day.

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, if I've heard all you without, however, the knowledge of pre existing cases, which tells me so well.

There was a parallel instance in Evideen some years back, and there was something under the musk the same lines at Unich the.

After the frank Opassion war is one of these cases.

Oh but hello here isn't this strange?

You will find an extra tumble on the sideboard under the cigars in the box to stay thank you?

Even doctor Watson, Well, what's up?

Then?

You look dissatisfied?

Feel satisfied?

This infernos and signed marriage case.

I can't make headlold tail of the business.

Really you surprised me?

Oh, do sit down?

You heard of a mixed affair?

It recluse seems to slip through my fingers.

I've been at work on it all day and they'll wet.

It seems to have made you and I've been dragging the serpent time.

It's its nable before looking for the body of Leggers and Simon, have you dragged the basement of the Trafalgar Square fountain?

What do you mean?

Because I've just as good a chance of finding this lady there as in the serping tonight.

I suppose you know all about it.

Well, I really just heard the facts, but my mind it's made up.

Indeed, then you think that the certain time plays no part in a manner.

I think it's very unlikely.

Perhaps you'll kin'dly explain how to if we've found these nearly I have him.

Here in my bag.

Yeah, there's a little nut for you in the Crackmas's arms.

Oh, indeed, see Watson a wedding dress, white setting shoes, and the bride's wreath and veil and the wedding ring.

You dragged these from the serpent time?

No, they were found the other bank by a park keeper.

They ever identified as her clothes.

It seemed to me that if the clothes were there, the body wouldn't be far off by.

The same brilliant reasoning, every man's body is to be found in the neighborhood of his wardrobe.

And pray, what did you hope to arrive at through this some evidence implicating Flaura Miller in the disappearance, and said, you'll find it difficult.

Well, you're indeed now, and I'm afraid mister hearns as.

You are not very practical with your deductions in your inference.

This place does implicate Miss Laura Miller.

And how in the dress is a pocket.

In the pocket is a cardcase.

In a card case is a note.

Little you will see me when all is ready, come at once.

F hm.

Now my theory all along has been the latest assimon was decoyed away by Flora Miller.

No doubt was convenerates her initials on this note.

It was no doubt slipped into the bride's hands the door and inlured her into their reach.

Very goodness, straight, you know you really are very fine.

Indeed, ah, this is indeed important.

You'll find it down extremely.

I congratulate you, warm me.

Then you're looking on the wrong side on the country.

This is the right side, the right side bad the note's written in pencil on the back.

Quiet and over here is what appears to be a fragment of a hotel bill.

It interests me deeply.

There was nothing in it.

I looked at it before.

I've seen nothing in that not it's most important all the same as to the note.

It's important also, or at least the initials are, so I can get lead you again time enough.

I don't believe in hard work.

I'm sitting by the flower spinning series.

We shall say, who gets to the bottom of this first good diamond?

Harm?

Just one into you in the state.

I will tell you the true solution of this matter.

Ladies, Saint Simon is a myth.

There is not, and there has never been any such person.

You're mad man, But there is something about the fellow says about outdoor work.

I think, what's I must leave you to your papers.

Well, well, Watson, they've laid the supper in my absence.

Passage that I didn't know what it was all about.

The confection of men said it all.

Uncle would got pedal phograph.

She's an exciting looking bottles said it had been paid for in order to this address.

Capital's laid for five Who seem to expect company.

Yes, I fancy we may have some company dropping in.

I'm surprised, Lord, since Simon has not already arrived.

Ah, I fancy I hear you step on the stairs now.

Oh so my message reached you then, Lords and time.

Yes, and I must confess the contents startled me beyond measure.

Have you good authology for what you say?

That that's possible?

What will the Duke say?

What he to think when he hears that one of the family has been subjected to such humiliation?

It's the purest accident.

You look on these things in a different way.

I can hardly see how the lady could have acted otherwise.

Her abrupt method of believe was undoubtedlitedly regretted.

But having no mother, she had no one to advise her at such a crisis.

It was a slight, Sir, a public flight.

You must make a laws for this poor placed in so unprecedented the position.

I will make no allowance.

I'm very angry.

Indeed, I have been simply used as there's the bell.

If I cannot persuade you to take a lenient view, Lords and Simon, I have brought an advocate here who may be more successful.

Probably, Please do Lords and Simon allow me to introduce you to mister and missus Francis Multon.

The lady, I think you have already met good Lord.

Hurry, angry Robert.

Oh well, I guess you have every cause to be.

Oh yeah, I know I treated you real bad.

I should have spoken to you before I went, But well, I was kind of rattled from the time I saw Frank here again.

I just don't know why I was the one or saying.

I only wonder I didn't fall down into a paint right.

There before the old Perhaps you would like my friend and me to leave the room while you explain this matter.

I may give an opinion.

We've had just a little too much secrecy over this matter already.

My part, I'd like all Europe and America to hear the right.

Then I'll tell our story right away.

Frank and I met in eighty one in mcquire's camp near the Rockies, where Paul was working a claim.

We were engaged, Frank and I, but one day Pau struck a rich pocket and made a pile while poor Frank here had a claim that came to nothing, and the richer PA grew the poor Frank got so last.

Paul wouldn't hear of our engagement lasting any longer, and he took me away to Fristoe.

Frank wouldn't throw in his hand, though, you bet Frank followed me and he saw me without Paw knowing.

He said he'd go back and he'd make his pile too, and he wouldn't come to claim me till he had as much as Paul.

So I promised I'd wait for him till the end of time, and not to marry anyone else as long as he lived.

So I said, why shouldn't we be married straight away?

Then then I'll feel sure of you, but I won't claim to be your husband that I come back.

Well, we talked it over see, and we just went to a clerguremen and did it right there.

Good loss.

Well, the next day I heard of Frank.

He was in Montana, and then in New Mexico, and then there was a newspaper story about how a miner's camp had been attacked by Apache.

Indians and there was Frank's name among the killed.

I was sick for months, but there was never another word of Frank after that, You see, I Alan, dear well, I felt all the time that no man on this earth could ever take Frank's place in my heart.

But I meant to make Robert just as good a wife as it was in.

Me to be.

Oh, you imagine what I felt.

First, as I came to the old horay, there was Frank standing looking at me out of the first purel.

I thought it was as ghost at first.

I looked again, and there he was still.

Oh, a kind of a question in his eyes.

Oh well, I didn't know if to stop the service and make a scene of the church.

What the clergyman was saying was just like a bee buzzing in my ears.

I scribbled her note.

Yeah, I'm on the way out again.

I saw the piece of paper in hand, and I knew it was for me.

So I passed the pew and I dropped my bouquet over, and he slipped the note into my hands when he gave it back.

You never does it for a moment that your first duty now was to hit Of course, Well.

I told my maid to say nothing, get a few things packed.

I've made up my mind to run away and explain afterwards.

Oh.

I hadn't been at the table ten minutes when I saw Frank out on the road and I slipped out and I followed him into the park.

Or some woman came up talking something about Lord Saint Simon, but I managed to get away from her.

I caught up to Frank.

We took a cab to his place in Gordon Square.

And oh, and that was my true wedding after all those years.

You see, i'd been in prisoner with those patches all the time.

When I got back to Frisco, I saw on a paper, but was on the wedding.

I just got to England in time.

Frank was also being open and telling what had happened.

Yeah, but I was so ashamed thinking of all those lords and ladies waiting at that table for me to come back.

So Frank took my wedding things and he dropped them anywhere in the park you thought they wouldn't be found.

We were off to Paris, France tomorrow.

Only only this gentleman, mister Holmes, came around.

Yes, well, Robert, you've heard it all.

I'm very sorry if I've given you any pain.

I hope you don't think very meanly of me.

Excuse me, but it isn't my custom to discuss my most intimate personal affairs in this public manner.

Oh, then you won't forgive me, You won't shake hands before I go?

Oh, certainly should'll give you any pleasure.

Ah, I had hoped that you would have joined us in a friendly supper.

I think that there you ask a little too much.

I may be forced to acquiesce in these recent developments.

I can hardly be expected to make many of them.

I think the with your permission, I will now wish you all a very good nut, and I trust that you at least will honor us that your company is from missus Milton.

It is always a joy to be to meet an American, mister Multin.

Why that's nice of you, mister Holmes.

Well Watson.

The case has been an interesting one.

It shows how simple the explanation may be of an affair which seems almost inexplicable at first sight.

You had no doctor from the first two fats, but obvious to me one was that the lady was quite willing to undergo the marriage ceremony.

The other was that she had repented of it within a few minutes of returning home.

But she could not have spoken to anyone when she was out, for she'd been in the company of the bridegroom.

Had she seen someone then If she had, it must have been someone from America.

Then who could this American be?

He might be a lover, he might be a husband.

Vincent Simon told us the man and the pew, and the change in her manner, and that transparent device of dropping her bookuet where it all became absolutely clear, especially in view of that illusion of hers too clane jumping, which in Miner's talk means taking possession of that which another person has a fire claimed to.

It was clear to me that she'd gone off for the man, and the chances were in favor of his being a husband.

How in the world did you find them?

Friendless?

Trade held information in his hands and didn't know the value of it.

The initials on the note were of the highest importance, of course, but it was more valuable still to know that within a week the man had settled his bill as one of the most select London hotels.

How did you deduce the select hmm?

By the select prices eight shillings for a bed and eightpence for a class's Shelly pointed to one of the most expensive hotels.

There were not many in London of rich charge of Bepray.

In the second one, I visited in Northumberland Avenue.

I learned by an inspection of the book that Francis H.

Moulton, and American gentleman, had left only the day before.

On looking over the entries against him, I came upon the very items I'd seen in the duplicate bill.

His letters were to be forwarded to two hundred and twenty six Gordon Square.

So that I traveled.

The loving couple were fortunately at home, and I ventured to give them some paternal advice.

I invited them to meet Lords and Simon here and to make that position a little clearer.

Were no very good results?

Is connorcherdly not very gracious?

Oh, my dear Watson, Perhaps you would not be very gracious either, if, after all the trouble of wooing and wedding, you find yourself deprived in an instant of wife and fortunate.

I think we made judge, Lords and Simon very immersively, and thank our stars that Vernetta likedly to find ourselves in the same position.

Now draw up your chair, oh.

In The Noble Bachelor by Sir Arthur Kernan Boyle, the part of Sherlock Holmes was played by Carton Hobbs, Doctor Watson by Norman Shelley, Lord Saint Simon by William Eagle, and Lestrade by Frederick Leaves.

The story was adapted to radio by Michael Hardwick and produced in London by Frederick Bradnam