April 30, 1898: Violet Smith was kidnapped. [SOLI]
Holmes threw the reins into my lap and sprang down from the cart.
You’re the man we want to see. Where is Miss Violet Smith?” he said, in his quick, clear way.“That’s what I am asking you. You’re in her dogcart. You ought to know where she is.”
“We met the dogcart on the road. There was no one in it. We drove back to help the young lady.”
“Good Lord! Good Lord! What shall I do?” cried the stranger, in an ecstasy of despair. “They’ve got her, that hellhound Woodley and the blackguard parson. Come, man, come, if you really are her friend. Stand by me and we’ll save her, if I have to leave my carcass in Charlington Wood.”
April 30 1898: Bob Carruthers shot Jack Woodley. [SOLI]
His revolver cracked, and I saw the blood spurt from the front of Woodley’s waistcoat. He spun round with a scream and fell upon his back, his hideous red face turning suddenly to a dreadful mottled pallor. The old man, still clad in his surplice, burst into such a string of foul oaths as I have never heard, and pulled out a revolver of his own, but before he could raise it he was looking down the barrel of Holmes’s weapon.
Date information provided by the volume A Day-by-Day Chronology of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, according to Zeisler and Christ, compiled and edited by William S Dorn.