The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

"No; must I tell the police a dozen times? I lost it from my creel. Mayhap at the river, or on my way home."

Gregson drew the sergeant to one side.

"I think there's little more we need," I heard him mutter. "His wife has given us the motive, and we have it from his own lips that he took the weapon. Sir Reginald Lavington," he said with authority, advancing upon the baronet, "I must ask you to accompany me to Maidstone Police Station. There you will be formally charged with—"

Holmes darted forward. "One moment, Gregson!" he cried. "You must really give us twenty-four hours to think this over. For your own sake I tell you that any good counsel would tear your case to pieces."

"I think not, Mr. Holmes; especially with her ladyship in the witness-box."

Sir Reginald started violently, while a livid pallor mottled the swarthiness of his features.

"I warn ye not to drag my wife into this! Whatever she's said, she can't testify against her husband!"

"We would not ask her to do so. It is sufficient that she repeat what she has already stated in the presence of police witnesses. However, Mr. Holmes," Gregson added, "in return for one or two small favours you've done us in the past, I see no harm in—well! in delaying matters for a few more hours. As for you, Sir Reginald, should you attempt to leave this house, you will be arrested at once. Well, Mr. Holmes, what now?"

My friend had dropped to his knees, and by the light of a candle was peering closely at the horrible splashes of blood and wine which dabbled the oaken floor.

"Perhaps you would have the goodness, Watson, to pull that bell-rope," he said, as he scrambled to his feet. "A word with the butler, who discovered the body, would not come amiss before we seek accommodation at the village inn. Let us adjourn to the hall."

I think that each of us was glad to leave that black, vaulted room with its terrible occupant, and to find ourselves once more before the log fire blazing on the hearth. Lady Lavington, pale but beautiful in a gown of bronze velvet with a collar of Brussels lace, rose from a chair.

For a moment her eyes seemed to search each one of us with a mute, intense questioning, and then she had swept to her husband's side.

"In God's name, Margaret, what have ye been saying?" he demanded, the veins swelling in his thick neck. "Ye'll have me at the rope's end yet!"

"Whatever the sacrifice, I swear you shall not suffer! Surely it is better that—" She whispered a few agitated words in his ear.

"Never! Never!" retorted her husband fiercely. "What? You here, Gillings? Have you too been condemning your master?"

None of us had heard the butler's approach, but now he stepped into the circle of fire-light, with a troubled ex­pression on his honest face.

"Heaven forbid, Sir Reginald!" Gillings replied warmly. "I told Sergeant Bassett only what I saw and heard. Colo­nel Daley called for a bottle of port. He was in the ban­queting-hall. He—he said he wished to drink a toast with you from the Luck of Lavington, to the victory of his horse in the Leopardstown races next week. Since there was port in the decanter on the buffet, I poured it into the great cup. I remember how the colonel laughed as he dismissed me."

"He laughed, you say?" said Sherlock Holmes quickly. "When did you actually see Sir Reginald with the colo­nel?"

"I did not actually see him, sir. But the colonel said—"

"And laughed when he said it," interposed Holmes. "Perhaps Lady Lavington would tell us whether Colonel Daley was a frequent guest under this roof?"

It seemed to me that some swift emotion glowed for an instant in those wonderful green eyes.

"For some years past, a frequent guest," she said. "But my husband was not even in the house this morning! Has he not told you so already?"

"Excuse me, my lady," doggedly interrupted Sergeant Bassett. "Sir Reginald says he was at the river, but he admits he can't prove it."

"Quite so," said Holmes. "Well, Watson, there is noth­ing more to be done here tonight."

We found comfortable accommodation at the Three Owls in the village of Lavington. Holmes was moody and preoccupied. When I attempted to question him, he cut me short with the statement that he had nothing fur­ther to add until he had visited Maidstone on the morrow. I must confess that I could not understand my friend's attitude. It was evident that Sir Reginald Lavington was a dangerous man, and that our visit appeared to have made him more so but when I pointed out to Holmes that his duty lay at Lavington Court rather than in the county town of Maidstone, he replied merely with the incongruous observation that the Lavingtons were a his­toric family.

I passed a restless morning. The wild weather kept me indoors over a week-old newspaper, and it was not until four o'clock in the afternoon that Holmes burst into our private sitting-room. His cape was dripping and rain-sodden, but his eyes glittered and his cheeks were flushed with some intense inner excitement.

"Good heavens!" I said. "You look as though you have found the answer to our problem."

Before my friend could reply, there came a knock and the door of our sitting-room had swung open. Holmes rose from the chair into which he had just relapsed.

"Ah, Lady Lavington," said he, "we are honoured by your visit."

Though her features were heavily veiled, there was no mistaking that tall, gracious figure now hesitating on our threshold.

"I received your note, Mr. Holmes," she replied in a low voice, "and I came at once." Sinking into the chair which I had wheeled forward, she raised her veil and let her head rest back among the cushions. "I came at once," she repeated wearily.

The fire-light threw her face into strong relief, and, as I studied her features, still beautiful despite the almost waxen pallor and restless brilliance of her eyes, I dis­cerned in them the shock of the event that had shattered the peace of her life and the privacy of her home. A sense of compassion prompted me to speak.

"You may have complete confidence in my friend Sherlock Holmes," I said gently. "This is indeed a pain­ful time for you, Lady Lavington, but rest assured that everything will turn out for the best."

She thanked me with a glance. But, when I rose to leave them together, she held up her hand.

"I would much prefer that you stayed, Dr. Watson," she begged. "Your presence gives me confidence. Why have you sent for me, Mr. Holmes?"

My friend, sitting back, had closed his eyes: "Shall we say that you are here in your husband's interests?" he murmured. "You will not object if I ask you to elucidate a few small points which are still obscure to me?"

Lady Lavington rose to her feet.

"Mr. Holmes, this is unworthy," she said coldly. "You are trying to trick me into condemning my own husband! He is innocent, I tell you!"

"So I believe. Nevertheless, I pray that you will com­pose yourself and answer my questions. I understand that this Buck Daley has been an intimate friend of Sir Reginald for some years past."

Lady Lavington stared at him, and then began to laugh. She laughed most heartily, but with a note in her mirth that jarred on me as a medical man.

"Friend?" she cried at last. "Why, he was unworthy to black my husband's boots!"

"I am relieved to hear you say so. And yet it is fair to suppose that both men moved in the same circles during the London seasons, and, perhaps unknown to you, might have shared interests in common—possibly of a sporting nature? When did your husband first in­troduce Colonel Daley to you?"

"You are pitiably wrong in all your suppositions! I knew Colonel Daley for years before my marriage. It was I who introduced him to my husband. Buck Daley was a creature of society: ambitious, worldly, merciless, and yet with all the charm of his kind. What interest could such as he share in common with a rough but honourable man whose world begins and ends with the boundaries of his own ancestral lands?"

"A woman's love," said Holmes quietly.

Lady Lavington's eyes dilated. Then, dropping the veil over her face, she rushed from the room.

For a long time Holmes smoked in silence, his brows drawn down and his gaze fixed thoughtfully upon the fire. I knew from the expression on his face that he had reached some final decision. Then he drew from his pocket a crumpled sheet of paper.

"A while ago, Watson, you asked whether I had found the answer to our problem. In one sense, my dear fellow, I have. Listen closely to the vital evidence I shall read to you. It is from the records in the Maidstone County Registry."

"I am all attention."

"This is a little transcription which I have put into comprehensible English. It was originally written in the year 1485, when the House of Lancaster triumphed at last over the House of York.

"And it came to pass that on the field of Bosworth Sir John Lavington did take prisoner two knights and a squire, and carried them with him to Lavington Court. For he would take no ransom from any who had raised banner for the House of York.

"That night, after Sir John had supped, each was brought to the table and offered the Choice. One knight, he who was a kinsman of Sir John, drank from the Life and departed without ransom. And one knight and the squire drank from the Death. It was a deed most un-Christian, for they were unconfessed, and thereafter men spake far and wide of the Luck of Lavington."

For a while we sat in silence after the reading of this extraordinary document, while the wind lashed the rain against the windows and boomed in the ancient chimney. "Holmes," I said at last, "I seem to sense something monstrous here. Yet what connection can there be be­tween the murder of a profligate gambler and the violence that followed on a battle four hundred years ago? Only the room has remained the same."

"This, Watson, is the second most important thing that I have discovered."

"And the first?"

"We shall find it at Lavington Court. A black baronet, Watson! Might it not also suggest blackmail?"

"You mean that Sir Reginald was being blackmailed?" My friend ignored the question.

"I have promised to meet Gregson at the house. Would you care to accompany me?"

"What is in your mind? I have seldom seen you so grave."

"It is already growing dark," said Sherlock Holmes. "The dagger that killed Colonel Daley must do no further harm."

It was a wild, blustering evening. As we walked through the dusk to the old manor-house, the air was filled with the creaking of tree-branches and I felt the cold touch of a blown leaf against my cheek. Lavington Court was as shadowy as the hollow in which it lay; but, as Gillings opened the door to us, a gleam of light showed in the direction of the banqueting-hall.

"Inspector Gregson has been asking for you, sir," said the butler, helping us off with our wraps.

We hurried towards the light. Gregson, with a look of deep agitation, was pacing up and down beside the table. He glanced at the now-empty chair beyond the great cup.

"Thank God you've come, Mr. Holmes!" he burst out. "Sir Reginald was telling the truth. I didn't believe it, but he is innocent! Bassett has dug up two farmers who met him walking from the river at ten-thirty yesterday morning. Why couldn't he have said he met them?"

There was a singular light in Holmes's eyes as he looked at Gregson.

"There are such men," he said.

"Did you know this all the time?"

"I did not know of the witnesses, no. But I hoped that you would find a witness, since for other reasons I was convinced of his innocence."

"Then we're back where we started!"

"Hardly that. Had you thought, Gregson, of recon­structing this crime after the French fashion?"

"How do you mean?"

Holmes moved to the end of the table, which still bore the marks of the recent tragedy. "Let us suppose that I am Colonel Daley—a tall man, standing here at the head of the table. I am about to drink with someone, who means to stab me. I pick up the cup like this, and with both hands I lift it to my mouth. So! Gregson, we will suppose that you are the murderer. Stab me in the throat!"

"What the devil do you mean?"

"Grasp an imaginary dagger in your right hand. That's it! Don't hesitate, man; stab me in the throat!"

Gregson, as though half-hypnotised, took a step for­ward with his hand raised, and stopped.

"But it can't be done, Mr. Holmes! Not like this, any­way!"

"Why not?"

"The direction of the colonel's wound was straight upwards through the throat. Nobody could strike upwards from underneath, across the breadth of the table. It's impossible!"

My friend, who had been standing with his head back and the heavy cup lifted to his lips by both handles, now straightened up and offered it to the Scotland Yard man. "Good!" said he. "Now, Gregson, imagine that you are Colonel Daley. I am the murderer. Take my place, and lift the Luck of Lavington."

"Very well. What next?"

"Do exactly what I did. But don't put the cup to your lips. That's it, Gregson; that's it! Mark well what I say: don't put it to your lips!"

The light flashed back from the great drinking-vessel as it tilted.

"No, man, no!" shouted Holmes suddenly. "Not an­other inch, if you value your life!"

Even as he spoke, there came a click and a metallic slither. A slim, sharp blade shot from the lower edge of the cup with the speed of a striking snake. Gregson sprang back with an oath, while the vessel, falling from his hands, crashed and jangled across the floor.

"My God!" I cried.

"My God!" echoed a voice which struck across my own. Sir Reginald Lavington, his dark features now livid, was standing behind us with one hand partly raised as though to ward off a blow. Then, with a groan, he buried his face in his hands. We stared at each other in horror-struck silence.

"If you hadn't warned me, the blade would have been through my throat," said Gregson in a shaking voice.

"Our ancestors had a neat way of eliminating their enemies," observed Holmes, lifting the heavy cup and once more examining it closely. "With such a toy in the house, it is a dangerous thing for a guest to drink in his host's absence."

"Then this was only an appalling accident!" I ex­claimed. "Daley was the innocent victim of a trap fash­ioned four centuries ago!"

"Observe the cunning of this mechanism, very much as I suspected yesterday afternoon—"

"Mr. Holmes," burst out the baronet, "I have never asked favour of any man in my life—"

"Perhaps it would be as well, Sir Reginald, if you left the explanation to me," interrupted Holmes quietly, his long, thin fingers moving over the chased surface of the cup. "The blade cannot strike unless the cup be lifted fully to the lips, when the full pressure of both hands is exerted on the handles. Then the handles themselves act as triggers for the spring-mechanism, to which the old blade is attached. You will perceive the minute slot just below the circlet of jewels and cleverly disguised by the carving."

There was awe in Gregson's face as he gazed down at the ancient vessel.

"Then you mean," he stated somberly, "that the person who drinks from the Luck of Lavington is a dead man?"

"By no means. I would draw your attention to the small silver owl-figures on the crest of the handles. If you look closely, you will see that the right-hand one turns on a pivot. I believe this to act in the same way as a safety-catch on a rifle. Unfortunately, these old mech­anisms are apt to become unreliable with the passage of the centuries."

Gregson whistled.

"It was an accident, right enough!" he stated. "Your reference to a mischance, Sir Reginald, has proved to be a lucky shot in the dark. I suspected it all the time. But one moment! Why didn't we see the blade when we first saw the cup?"

"Let us suppose, Gregson," replied Holmes, "that there is some form of recoil-spring."

"But surely, Holmes," I cried, "there could be no such—"

"As you were about to say, Watson, there was no such description of the cup as I had hoped to find in the Maidstone County Registry. However, it did yield me the interesting document I read you."

"Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you can give me the historic details later," said Gregson, turning to the baronet. "In regard to this affair, Sir Reginald, you can think yourself lucky that there are some sharp men hereabouts. Your possession of this dangerous relic might have caused a serious miscarriage of justice. Either you must have the mechanism removed, or entrust it to Scotland Yard."

Sir Reginald Lavington, who had been biting his lip as though to suppress some overmastering emotion, looked dazedly from Holmes to Gregson.

"Right willingly," he said at length. "But the Luck of Lavington has been in our family for over four hundred years. If it passes beyond this door, then I feel it should go to Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

Holmes's eyes met those of the baronet.

"I will accept it as a memento of a very gallant man," my friend replied gravely.

As Holmes and I made our way up the steep lane in the wind-swept darkness, we turned at the brow of the hill and looked down on the old manor-house with its lights dimly reflected in the moat.

"I do feel, Holmes," said I, somewhat nettled, "that you owe me an explanation. When I tried to point to you an error in your case, you indicated plainly that you wished me to speak no further."

"What error, Watson?"

"Your explanation of how the cup worked. By the release of a powerful spring from a trigger controlled by the handles, it would have been quite easy to make the blade strike. But to push it back again, unless this were done by hand so that the blade could be caught again in the mechanism—that, my dear fellow, is quite a different thing."

For a moment Holmes did not reply. He stood gaunt and lonely, his gaze fixed on the ancient tower of Lavington.

"Surely it was apparent from the first," said he, "that no living murderer could have stabbed Daley, and that something was wrong with the appearance of the crime as we saw it?"

"You deduced this from the direction of the wound?"

"That, yes. But there were other facts equally in­dicative."

"Your behaviour suggested as much at the time! Yet I cannot see what facts."

"The scratches on the table, Watson! And the wine spilled on both table and floor."

"Pray be good enough to explain."

"Colonel Daley's finger-nails," replied Holmes, "had clawed at the table-top in his death-throes, and all the wine had been spilled. You remarked that? Good! Taking as a working hypothesis the theory that he was killed by a blade in the cup, what must follow? The blade would strike. Then—?"

"Then the cup would fall, spilling the wine. I grant that."

"But is it reasonable that the cup, in falling, should land upright on the table—as we found it? This was overwhelmingly unlikely. Further evidence made it im­possible. I lifted the cup, if you recall, when I first ex­amined it. Underneath it, covered by it, you saw—?"

"Scratches!" I interrupted. "Scratches and spilled wine!"

"Precisely. Daley would die soon, but not instantly. If the cup fell from his hands, are we to assume that it hung suspended in the air, and afterwards descended over the scratches and the wine? No, Watson. There was, as you pointed out, no recoil-mechanism. With Daley dead, some living hand picked up the cup from the floor. Some living hand pushed back the blade into the cup, and set it up­right on the table."

A gust of rain blew out of the dreary sky, but my com­panion remained motionless.

"Holmes," said I, "according to the butler—"

"According to the butler? Yes?"

"Sir Reginald Lavington was drinking with the colonel. At least, Daley is reported to have said so."

"And, as he said so," commented Holmes, "gave so curious a laugh that Gillings could not forget it. Had the laugh an ulterior meaning, Watson? But I had better say no more, lest I make you an accessory after the fact like myself."

"You do me less than justice, Holmes, should I become accessory after the fact in a good cause!"

"In my judgement," said Sherlock Holmes, "one of the best of causes."

"Then you may rely on my silence."

"Be it so, Watson! Now consider the behaviour of Sir Reginald Lavington. For an innocent man, he acted very strangely."

"You mean that Sir Reginald—"

"Pray don't interrupt. Though he had witnesses that he had not been drinking with Daley, he would not produce them. He preferred to be arrested. Why should Daley, a man of such different character from his host, pay frequent visits to this house? What was Daley doing there? Interpret the meaning of Lavington's statement, 'I know his character now!' We saw the answers to these questions played out in deadly pantomime. To me it suggested the blackest of all crimes, blackmail."

"Sir Reginald," I exclaimed, "was guilty after all! He was a dangerous man, as I remarked—"

"A dangerous man, yes," agreed Holmes. "But you have seen his character. He might kill. But he would not kill and conceal."

"Conceal what?"

"Reflect again, Watson. Though we know that he was not drinking with Daley in the banqueting-hall, he might have returned from the river just in time to find Daley dead. That was when he thrust the blade back into the cup, and set it upright again. But guilt? No. His be­haviour, his willingness to be arrested, can be understood only if he had been shielding someone else."

I followed my friend's gaze, which had never moved from the direction of Lavington Court.

"Holmes," I cried, "then who set the diabolical mech­anism?"

"Think, Watson! Who was the only person who uttered that one word, 'jealousy'? Let us suppose a woman has erred before a marriage, but never after it. Let us sup­pose, moreover, that she believes her husband, a man of the old school, would not understand. She is at the mercy of that most vicious of all parasites, a society blackmailer. She is present when the blackmailer drinks a toast—by his own choice—from the Luck of Lavington. But, since she is obliged to slip away at the entrance of the butler, the blackmailer laughed and died. Say no more, Watson. Let the past sleep."

"As you wish. I am silent."

"It is a cardinal error, my dear fellow, to theorize without data. And yet, when we first entered Lavington Court yesterday evening, I had a glimpse of the truth."

"But what did you see?"

As we turned away towards our inn and the comfort­ing light of a fire, Sherlock Holmes nodded over his shoulder.

"I saw a pale, beautiful woman descend a staircase, as once I had seen her on the stage. Have you forgotten another ancient manor, and a hostess named Lady Mac­beth?"

----:----

Since . . . our visit to Devonshire, he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance . . . the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club . . . and the unfortunate Madame Mont­pensier.

FROM "THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES."

6

The Adventure of the Sealed Room

My wife had a slight cold, as my note-book records, when on that morning of April 12th, 1888, we were introduced in such dramatic fashion to one of the most singular problems in the annals of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

At this time, as I have elsewhere recorded, my medical practice was in the Paddington district. Being young and active, I was in the habit of arising betimes; and eight o'clock found me downstairs, distressing the maid by lighting the fire in the hall, when I was startled by a ring at the street-door.

A patient at this hour could have come on no trivial errand. And, when I had opened the door to the clear April sunlight, I was struck no less by the pallor and agitation than by the youth and beauty of the young lady who stood swaying on my humble threshold.

"Dr. Watson?" asked she, raising her veil.

"I am he, madam."

"Pray forgive this early intrusion. I have come to—I have come to—"

"Be good enough to step into the consulting-room," said I, leading the way with a vigorous step, and meanwhile studying the young lady closely. It is as well for a medical man to impress his patients by deducing their symptoms, and hence their ailments, before they have spoken at all.

"The weather is warm for this season of the year," I continued, when we reached the consulting-room, "yet there is always the possibility of a chill, unless the room be well sealed against draughts."

The effect of this remark was extraordinary. For a moment my visitor stared at me with the grey eyes widen­ing in her beautiful face.

"A sealed room!" she cried. "Oh, my God, a sealed room!"

Her cry became a shriek which ran through the house, and then she collapsed on the hearth-rug in a dead faint.

Horrified, I poured some water from a carafe, dashed brandy into the water, and, after lifting my patient gently into a chair, persuaded her to swallow it. Scarcely had I done so when the noise of that cry brought my wife downstairs and into the consulting-room.

"Good heavens, John, what in the world—?" And here she broke off. "Why, it's Cora Murray!"

"You know the young lady, then?"

"Know her! I should think I do! I knew Cora Murray in India. Her father and mine were friends for years; and I wrote to her when you and I were married."

"You wrote to India?"

"No, no; she lives in England now. Cora is the very closest friend of Eleanor Grand, who married that rather crotchety Colonel Warburton. Cora lives with Colonel and Mrs. Warburton at some address in Cambridge Terrace."

As my wife finished speaking, our visitor opened her eyes. My wife patted her hand.

"Gently, Cora," said she. "I was only telling my husband that you lived in Cambridge Terrace with Colonel and Mrs. Warburton."

"No longer!" cried Miss Murray wildly. "Colonel Warburton is dead, and his wife so horribly wounded that she may be dying at this moment! When I saw them lying there under that terrifying death-mask, I felt the evil thing itself had driven Colonel Warburton mad. He must have been mad! Why else should he have shot his wife and then himself in a locked room? And yet I cannot believe he would have done this dreadful action."

Grasping my wife's hand with both of hers, she looked up at me with pathetic appeal.

"Oh, Dr. Watson, I did so hope you would help! Is there nothing your friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes can do!"

You may well believe that my wife and I listened with amazement to this tale of domestic tragedy.

"But you tell me that Colonel Warburton is dead," I demurred gently.

"Yet the shadow remains on his name. Oh, is my errand so hopeless?"

"Nothing is ever hopeless, Cora," said my wife. "John, what shall you do?"

"Do?" cried I, glancing at my watch. "Why, a hansom-cab to Baker Street at once! We shall just catch Holmes before breakfast!"

As I had expected, Sherlock Holmes was moodily awaiting his breakfast, the room acrid with the tang of his first daily pipe, which was composed of left-over dottles from the day before. His Bohemian disposition saw noth­ing strange in Miss Murray's and my arrival at this early hour, though he was inclined to be querulous.

"The fact is, Holmes," said I, "that I was interrupted this morning—"

"Quite so, my dear fellow," said he, "as you were en­gaged in your usual practice of lighting the fire. Your left thumb proclaims as much." Then he caught sight of Miss Murray's grief-stricken countenance, and his harsh face softened.

"But I think," he added, "that you could both do with a little breakfast before we discuss the shock which this young lady so obviously has had."

And not a word would he permit us to speak until I had consumed some food, though Miss Murray could touch only a cup of coffee.

"H'm!" said Holmes, with a shade of disappointment on his face after our fair client had faltered out as much of her story as she had told me."This is indeed a griev­ous tragedy, madam. But I cannot see what service I can render you. A certain Colonel Warburton goes mad; he shoots first his wife and then himself. I presume there is no doubt of these facts?"

Miss Murray groaned.

"Unhappily, none," replied she. "Though at first we had hoped it might be the work of a burglar."

"You hoped it might be the work of a burglar?"

I was much annoyed by the acidity of Holmes's tone, though I could not help divining its cause. Ever since, in the previous month, he had been outwitted and beaten by Mrs. Godfrey Norton, nйe Irene Adler, his attitude towards the whole female sex had become more bitter than ever.

"Really, Holmes," I protested with some asperity, "Miss Murray meant only that the work of a burglar-murderer would have saved Colonel Warburton's name from the stigma of suicide. I hope you will not hold her responsible for an unfortunate choice of words."

"An unfortunate choice of words, Watson, has hanged a murderer ere this. Well, well, we shall not distress the young lady! But is it possible, madam, for you to be ex­plicit?"

To my surprise, a smile of singular wistfulness as well as strength illuminated the pale face of our visitor.

"My father, Mr. Holmes, was Captain Murray of the Sepoy Mutiny. You will see whether I can be explicit."

"Come, this is distinctly better!—Well?"

"Colonel Warburton and his wife," said she, "lived at number Nine Cambridge Terrace. You will have seen many such prosperous, solid houses in the Hyde Park district. On either side of the front door, behind a small strip of rock-garden, there is a room with two French windows. Colonel Warburton and my dear Eleanor were alone in the room to the left of the front door, called the curio room. The time was just after dinner last night. The door of that room was locked on the inside. Each of the French windows was double-bolted on the inside though the curtains remained undrawn. No other person was there or hidden there; nor was there any other access to the room. A pistol lay at the colonel's right hand. There had been no tampering with any bolt or fastening; the room was locked like a fortress. These things, Mr. Holmes, you may accept as facts."

And, as I am now able to testify, Miss Murray spoke the literal truth.

"Yes, distinctly this is more satisfactory!" said Holmes, rubbing his long, thin fingers together. "Was it Colonel Warburton's habit to bolt the door upon himself and his wife—in the curio room, you said?—each evening after dinner?"

A sudden perplexity showed in our visitor's face,

"Good heavens, no!" she answered. "I never thought of it."

"Still, I fear it cannot affect the issue. On the contrary, it strengthens the indications of madness."

Cora Murray's grey eyes were steady now.

"No one, Mr. Holmes, is better aware of it than I. If it had been Colonel Warburton's wish to destroy Eleanor and himself—well, can I deny he would have bolted the door?"

"If I may say so, madam," remarked Sherlock Holmes, "you are a young lady of uncommon good sense. Apart from his Indian curios, would you say that the colonel was a man of conventional habits?"

"Eminently so. And yet..."

"You would speak of feminine intuition?"

"Sir, what are your own boasted judgements but mascu­line intuition?"

"They are logic, madam! However, pray forgive my irascible temper of a morning."

Miss Murray bowed her head graciously.

"The household was roused by the two shots," she continued after a moment. "When we looked through the window, and saw those two crumpled figures lying on the floor and the light of the shaded lamps striking a cold blue glitter from the lapis-lazuli eyes of that horrible death-mask, I was seized with superstitious dread."

Holmes was lounging back in his arm-chair, his old mouse-coloured dressing-gown drawn about his shoulders, in a bored and discontented fashion.

"My dear Watson," said he, "you will find the cigars in the coal-scuttle. Be good enough to pass me the box: that is, if Miss Murray has no objection to the smoke of a cigar?"

"The daughter of an Anglo-Indian, Mr. Holmes," said our fair visitor, "would scarcely object to that." She hesitated, biting her lip.

"Indeed, when Major Earnshaw and Captain Lasher and I burst into that locked room, my most distinct memory is the smell of Colonel Warburton's cigar."

This casual remark was followed by a moment of in­tense silence. Sherlock Holmes had sprung to his feet, the cigar-box in his hand, and was staring down at Miss Murray.

"I would not distress you, madam, but are you quite sure of what you say?"

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes," retorted the lady, "I am not in the habit of meaningless speech. I remember even the incongruous thought flashing through my mind that in­cense would have been more suitable than cigar-smoke in a room glimmering with brasswork and wooden idols and rose-coloured lamps."

For a moment Holmes stood motionless before the fire. "It is possible that there may be a hundred and forty-first sort," he observed thoughtfully. "At the same time, Miss Murray, I should like to hear a little more of what happened. For example, you mentioned a Major Earn­shaw and a Captain Lasher. Were these gentlemen also guests at the house?"

"Major Earnshaw has been a guest for some time, yes. But Captain Lasher"—was it my fancy, or did a blush tinge Cora Murray's face at the mention of the captain's name?—"Captain Lasher merely paid a brief call. He is Colonel Warburton's nephew, his only relative, in fact, and is—is much younger than Major Earnshaw."

"But your account of last night, madam?"

Cora Murray paused for a time as though marshalling her thoughts, and then began to speak in a low but intense voice.

"Eleanor Warburton was my best friend in India. She is an exceptionally beautiful woman, and I am not being unkind when I say we were all surprised when she con­sented to become the wife of Colonel Warburton. He was a soldier of distinguished reputation and strong character; but not, I should judge, an easy man with whom to share one's domestic life. He was inclined to be fussy and short-tempered, especially about his large collection of Indian antiquities.

"Please understand that I liked George well enough, else I should not be here now. And, though their life was not without its quarrels—in fact, there was a quarrel last night—there was nothing, I swear, to account for this present horror!

"When they left India, I accompanied them to the house in Cambridge Terrace. There we lived almost as though we were at a hill-station in India, even to the white-clad figure of Chundra Lal, George's native butler, in a house full of strange gods and perhaps strange in­fluences too.

"Last night, after dinner, Eleanor demanded to speak with her husband. They retired to the curio room, while Major Earnshaw and I were sitting in a little study called the den."

"One moment," interposed Sherlock Holmes, who had made a note on his shirt-cuff. "A while ago you stated that the house had two rooms facing the front garden, one of these being Colonel Warburton's curio room. Was the other front room this den?"

"No; the other front room is the dining-room. The den lies behind it, and the two do not communicate. Major Earnshaw was holding forth rather wearisomely when Jack hurried in. Jack... ."

"A welcome arrival?" interposed Holmes. "I take it you refer to Captain Lasher?"

Our visitor raised her frank, clear eyes.

"A very welcome arrival," she smiled. Then her face clouded. "He told us that on his way through the hall, he had heard the sounds of a quarrel between his uncle and Eleanor. Poor Jack, how annoyed he was. 'Here I've come all the way from Kensington to see the old man,' he cried, 'and now I daren't interrupt them. What keeps them quarrelling all the time?'

"I protested that he was doing them an injustice.

" 'Well, I hate rows,' he replied, 'and I do feel, if only for uncle's sake, that Eleanor might make more effort to get on with the family.'

" 'She is devoted to your uncle,' I said, 'and, as for yourself, it is only that she feels as we all do that you live your life too recklessly.'

"When Major Earnshaw suggested three-handed whist, at twopence a point, I'm afraid Jack wasn't very courte­ous. If he must be reckless, he said, he preferred to drink a glass of port in the dining-room. So Major Earnshaw and I settled down to a game of bezique."

"Did either you or Major Earnshaw leave the room after that?"

"Yes! As a matter of fact, the major did say something about fetching his snuff-box from upstairs." Under other circumstances I felt Cora Murray might have laughed. "He rushed out, fumbling in all his pockets, and swear­ing he couldn't settle to cards without his snuff.

"I sat there, Mr. Holmes, with the cards in my hand and as I waited in that silent room it seemed as though all the nameless fears of the night gathered slowly round me. I remembered the glitter in Eleanor's eyes at dinner. I remembered the brown face of Chundra Lal, the native butler, who has seemed to gloat ever since the death-mask was brought into the house. At that precise moment, Mr. Holmes, I heard the two revolver shots."

In her agitation, Cora Murray had risen to her feet.

"Oh, please don't think I was mistaken! Don't think I was misled by some other noise, or that these were not the shots which killed George and . . ."

Drawing a deep breath, she sat down again.

"For a moment, I was absolutely petrified. Then I ran out into the hall and almost collided with Major Earn­shaw. He was muttering some incoherent reply to my questions when Jack Lasher came out of the dining-room with the decanter of port in his hand. 'You'd better stay back, Cora,' Jack said to me; 'there may be a burglar about.'

"The two men ran across to the door of the curio room.

" 'Locked, curse it,' I remember Major Earnshaw cry­ing out. 'Lend a hand, my lad, and we'll have this door down.'

" 'Look here, sir,' said Jack; 'you'd want siege-artillery against a door like that. Hold hard while I dash round and try the French windows.' As a result, all of us ran outside . . ."

"All of you?"

"Major Earnshaw, Jack Lasher, Chundra Lal, and my­self. One glimpse through the nearest window showed us George and Eleanor Warburton lying face upwards against the red Brussels carpet. Blood was still flowing from a wound in Eleanor's breast."

"And then?"

"You may recall my saying that the front garden is a rock-garden?"

"I made a mental note of it."

"A rock-garden with gravel soil. Calling out to the others to guard the doors and make certain no burglar escaped, Jack picked up a huge stone and smashed a window. But there was no burglar, Mr. Holmes. A single glance had shown me that both French windows were still double-bolted on the inside. Immediately afterwards, before anyone had gone near the door, I went to it and found the door locked on the inside. You see, I think I knew there could be no burglar."

"You knew it?"

"It was George's fear for his collection," Miss Murray answered simply. "Even the fireplace in that room is bricked up. Chundra Lal looked inscrutably at the hard blue eyes of the death-mask on the wall, and Major Earnshaw's foot kicked the revolver lying near George's hand. 'Bad business, this,' said Major Earnshaw; 'we'd better send for a doctor.' That, I think, is all of my story."

For a time after she had finished speaking Holmes still stood motionless before the fire, his hand toying with the knife whose blade transfixed his unanswered correspon­dence to the middle of the wooden mantelshelf.

"H'm!" said he. "And the position now?"

"Poor Eleanor lies badly wounded in a nursing home in Bayswater. She may not even recover. George's body has been removed to the mortuary. Even when I left Cambridge Terrace this morning, with some wild hope of enlisting your aid through Dr. Watson, the police had arrived in the person of an Inspector MacDonald. But what can he do?"

"What, indeed?" echoed Holmes. But his deep-set eyes gleamed, and he lifted the knife and brought it down like a weapon against the envelopes. "Still—Inspector Mac! That is much better. I could not have endured Lestrade or Gregson this morning. If the young lady will forgive me while I don coat and hat, we shall just go round to Cambridge Terrace."

"Holmes," cried I in protest, "it would be monstrous to encourage false hopes in Miss Murray!"

My friend looked at me in his coldly imperious fashion.

"My dear Watson, I neither encourage hope nor do I discourage it. I examine evidence. Voilа tout."

Yet I noticed that he slipped his lens into his pocket; and he was moodily thoughtful, biting at his lip, as a four-wheeler carried us through the streets.

Cambridge Terrace, on that sunny April morning, stretched silent and deserted. Behind the stone wall, and the narrow strip of rock-garden, lay the stone house with its white window-facings and green-painted front door. It gave me something of a shock to see, near the windows towards the left of the entrance, the white-dressed figure and turban of a native butler. Chundra Lal stood there as motionless as one of his own idols, looking at us; then he melted into the house through one of the French windows.

Sherlock Holmes, it was clear, had been similarly affected. I saw his shoulders stiffen under the frock-coat as he watched the retreating figure of the Indian servant. Though the window immediately to the left of the front door was intact, a gap in the rock-garden showed where a large stone had been prised out; and the other window, further to the left, had been smashed to bits. It was through this opening that the native butler, on silent feet, had moved inside.

Holmes whistled, but he did not speak until Cora Murray had left us.

"Tell me, Watson," said he. "You saw nothing strange or inconsistent in the narrative of Miss Murray?"

"Strange, horrible, yes!" I confessed. "But inconsistent? Surely not!"

"Yet you yourself have been the first to protest about it."

"My dear fellow, I have uttered not one word of protest this morning!"

"Not this morning, perhaps," said Sherlock Holmes. "Ah, Inspector Mac! We are met upon the occasion of another problem."

In the shattered window, stepping carefully over fallen shards of glass, appeared a freckled-faced, sandy-haired young man with the dogged stamp of the police-officer.

"Great Scott, Mr. Holmes, you don't call this a prob­lem?" exclaimed Inspector MacDonald, raising his eyebrows. "Unless the question is why Colonel Warburton went mad?"

"Well, well!" said Holmes good-naturedly. "I presume you will allow us to enter?"

"Aye, and welcome!" retorted the young Scot.

We found ourselves in a lofty, narrow room which, though furnished with comfortable chairs, conveyed the impression of a barbaric museum. Mounted on an ebony cabinet facing the windows stood an extraordinary object: the effigy of a human face, brown and gilded, with two great eyes of some hard and glittering blue stone.

"Pretty little thing, isn't it?" grunted young MacDonald. "That's the death-mask that seems to affect 'em like a hieland spell. Major Earnshaw and Captain Lasher are in the den now, talking their heads off."

To my surprise Holmes scarcely glanced at the hideous object.

"I take it, Inspector Mac," said he, as he wandered about the room peering into the glass cases and display cabinets, "you have already questioned all the inmates of this house?"

"Mon, I've done nothing else!" groaned Inspector MacDonald. "But what can they tell me? This room was locked up. The only man who committed a crime, in shooting himself and his wife, is dead. So far as the police are concerned, the case is closed. What now, Mr. Holmes?"

My friend had stooped suddenly.

"Hullo, what's this?" he cried, examining a small object which he had picked up off the floor.

"Merely the stub of Colonel Warburton's cigar which, as you see, burnt a hole in the carpet," replied MacDonald.

"Ah. Quite so."

Even as he spoke the door burst open and there en­tered a portly, elderly man whom I presumed to be Major Earnshaw. Behind him, accompanied by Cora Murray, her hand on his arm, came a tall young man with a bronzed, high-nosed face and a guardsman's moustache.

"I understand, sir, that you are Mr. Sherlock Holmes," began Major Earnshaw stiffly. "I must say at once that I cannot perceive the reason why Miss Murray should have called you into this private tragedy."

"Others might perceive the reason," replied Holmes quietly. "Did your uncle always smoke the same brand of cigar, Captain Lasher?"

"Yes, sir," replied the young man with a puzzled glance at Holmes. "There is the box on the side-table."

We all watched Sherlock Holmes in silence as he went across and picked up the box of cigars. For a moment, he peered at the contents and then, lifting the box to his nose, he sniffed deeply.

"Dutch," he said. "Miss Murray, you are quite right in your affirmation! Colonel Warburton was not mad."

Major Earnshaw uttered a loud snort, while the young­er man, with better manners than his senior, attempted to hide his amusement by smoothing his moustache.

"Deuce knows we are all very relieved to have your assurance, Mr. Holmes," said he. "Doubtless you deduce it from the colonel's taste in cigars."

"Partly," my friend answered gravely. "Dr. Watson can inform you that I have given some attention to the study of tobacco and that I have even ventured to embody my views in a small monograph listing 140 separate varieties of tobacco ash. Colonel Warburton's taste in cigars mere­ly confirms the other evidence. Well, MacDonald?"

A frown had settled on the Scotland Yard man's face and his small, light-blue eyes peered at Holmes suspiciously from beneath his sandy eyebrows.

"Evidence? What are ye driving at, mon!" he cried suddenly. "Why, it's as plain as a pikestaff. The colonel and his wife are both shot in a room that is locked, bolted and barred from the inside. Do you deny it?"

"No."

"Then, let us stick to the facts, Mr. Holmes."

My friend had strolled across to the ebony cabinet and with his hands behind his back was now engaged in contemplating the hideous painted face that stared above his head.

"By all means," he replied. "What is your theory to account for the locked door, Inspector Mac?"

"That the colonel himself locked it for privacy."

"Quite so. A most suggestive circumstance."

"It is suggestive merely of the madness that drove Colonel Warburton to his dreadful deed," answered MacDonald.

"Come, Mr. Holmes," interposed young Lasher. "We all know your reputation for serving justice through your own clever methods and naturally we are as keen as mustard to clear poor uncle's name. But, devil take it, there is no way round the evidence and whether we like it or not we are forced to agree with the Inspector here that Colonel Warburton was the victim of his own in­sanity."

Holmes raised one long, thin hand.

"Colonel Warburton was the victim of a singularly cold-blooded murder," he stated quietly.

His words were followed by a tense silence as we all stared at each other.

"By God, sir, whom are you accusing?" roared Major Earnshaw. "I'll have you know that there are slander laws in this country."

"Well, well," said Holmes good-humoredly. "I will take you into my confidence, Major, by telling you that my case rests largely on all those broken portions of glass from the French window which, you will perceive, I have gathered up into the fireplace. When I return tomorrow morning to piece them together, I trust that I will then be able to prove my case to your satisfaction. By the way, Inspector Mac, I take it that you eat oysters?"

MacDonald's face reddened.

"Mr. Holmes, I have had aye a liking and a respect for ye," he said sharply. "But there are times when it is neither douce nor seemly in a man to—what the deil have oysters to do with it?"

"Merely that to eat them you would presumably take the oyster fork nearest to hand. To the trained observer, surely there would be something significant if you reached instead for the fork beside your neighbor's plate. I give you the thought for what it is worth."

For a long moment MacDonald stared intently at my friend.

"Aye, Mr. Holmes," he said at length. "Verra interest­ing. I should be glad of your suggestions."

"I would advise that you have the broken window boarded up," replied Holmes. "Apart from that, let noth­ing be touched until we all meet again tomorrow morning. Come, Watson, I see that it is already past one o'clock. A dish of calamare alia siciliana at Pelligrini's would not come amiss."

During the afternoon, I was busy upon my belated medical round and it was not until the early evening that I found myself once more in Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson opened the door to me and I had paused on the stairs to answer her enquiry whether I would be staying for dinner when a loud report rang through the house. Mrs. Hudson clutched at the banister.

"There, sir, he's at it again," she wailed. "Them dratted pistols. And not six months since he blew the points off the mantelpiece! In the interests of justice, Mr. Holmes said. Oh, Dr. Watson, sir, if you don't get up there quick, like as not it will be that expensive gasogene that will have gone this time."

Throwing the worthy woman a word of comfort, I raced up the stairs and threw open the door of our old sitting-room just as a second report rang out. Through a cloud of pungent black powder-smoke, I caught a glimpse of Sherlock Holmes. He was lounging back in his arm-chair, clad in a dressing-gown, with a cigar between his lips and a smoking revolver poised in his right hand.

"Ah, Watson," he said languidly.

"Good heavens, Holmes, this is really intolerable," I cried. "The place smells like a rifle range. If you care nothing for the damage, I beg of you to consider the effect on Mrs. Hudson's nerves and those of your clients." I threw wide the windows and was relieved to observe that the noisy stream of passing hansoms and carriages had apparently concealed the sound of the shots. "The atmosphere is most unhealthy," I added severely.

Holmes stretched up an arm and placed the revolver on the mantelpiece.

"Really Watson, I don't know what I would do without you," he remarked. "As I have had occasion to observe before, you have a certain genius for supplying the element of a touchstone to the higher workings of the trained mind."

"A touchstone that has, to my knowledge, broken the law three times in order to be of assistance to you," I replied a trifle bitterly.

"My dear fellow," said he, and there was that in his voice that banished all resentment and mollified my ruffled feelings.

"It is some time since I saw you smoking a cigar," I pronounced, as I threw myself into my old chair.

"It is a matter of mood, Watson. In this instance, I took the liberty of purloining one from the stock of the late Colonel Warburton." He broke off to glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. "H'm. We have an hour to spare," he concluded. "So let us exchange the problems of Man's manifold wickedness for the expression of that higher power that exists even in the worst of us. Watson, the Stradivarius. It is in the corner behind you."

It was nearly eight o'clock and I had just lit the gas when there came a knock on the door and Inspector MacDonald, his long, angular figure wrapped in a plaid over-coat, bustled into the room.

"I got your message, Mr. Holmes," he cried, "and everything has been carried out in accordance with your suggestions. There'll be a constable in the front garden at midnight. Don't worry about the French window; we can get in without rousing the house."

Holmes rubbed his thin fingers together.

"Excellent, excellent! You have a gift for promptly carrying out---eh—suggestions that will take you far," he said warmly. "Mrs. Hudson will serve us supper here and afterwards a pipe or two may help to fill in the time. I consider that it might be fatal to my plans should we take up our positions before midnight. Now, Mr. Mac, draw up your chair and try this shag. Watson can tell you that it has marked characteristics of its own."

The evening passed pleasantly enough. Sherlock Holmes, who was in his most genial mood, lent an atten­tive ear to the Scotland Yard man's account of a gang of French coiners whose operations were actually threat­ening the stability of the louis d'or, and thereafter pro­ceeded to bemuse the Scotsman with a highly ingenious theory as to the effects of runic lore upon the develop­ment of the highland clans. It was the striking of mid­night which brought us back at last to the grim realities of the night.

Holmes crossed to his desk and, in the pool of light cast by the green-shaded reading lamp, I caught the grave expression on his face as he opened a drawer and took out a life-preserver.

"Slip this into your pocket, Watson," said he. "I fancy that our man may be inclined to violence. Now, Mr. Mac, as Mrs. Hudson has probably been in bed an hour since, if you are ready we will step downstairs and hail the first hansom."

It was a clear starlit night, and a short drive through a network of small streets carried us across Edgeware Road. At a word from Holmes, the cabby pulled up at a corner and as we alighted I saw the long expanse of Cambridge Terrace stretching away before us in an empty desolation of lamplight and shadow. We hurried down the street and turned through the gate leading to our destination.

MacDonald nodded towards the planks which now blocked the shattered window.

"They're loose on one side," he whispered. "But move carefully."

There was a slight creaking and, an instant later, we had squeezed our way past the boards to find ourselves in the utter darkness of Colonel Warburton's curio room.

Holmes had produced a dark lantern from the pocket of his Inverness and following its faint beam we groped our way along the wall until we came to an alcove con­taining a couch.

"This will do," whispered my friend. "We might have found a worse roost and it is near enough to the fireplace for our purposes."

The night was singularly quiet and, as it turned out, our vigil a dreary one. Once, some belated revellers went by in a hansom, the sound of their singing and the clip-clop of the horse's hoofs gradually dying away towards Hyde Park and, an hour or so later, there came to us the deep rumbling gallop of a fire-engine tearing furiously along Edgeware Road with a clamour of bells and the sharp pistol-shot cracking of the driver's whip. Otherwise, the silence was unbroken save for the ticking of a grand­father clock at the other end of the room.

The atmosphere, which was heavy with the aromatic mustiness of an Oriental museum, began to weigh me down with an increasing lethargy until I had to concen­trate all my faculties to keep myself from falling asleep.

I have referred to the utter darkness, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the conditions I became aware of a pale reflection of light from some distant street-lamp steal­ing through the unboarded French window and I was idly following its path when my gaze fell upon something that brought a chill to my senses. A face, faint and nebulous yet dreadful as the figment of a nightmare, was glaring down at me from the far end of that dim radiance. I must have started involuntarily, for I felt Holmes lean toward me.

"The mask," he whispered. "Our own trophy is likely to be less impressive but rather more dangerous."

Leaning back in my seat I tried to relax, but the sight of that grisly relic had turned my thoughts into a new field of conjecture. The sinister white-clad figure of Chundra Lal, Colonel Warburton's Indian servant, arose in my mind's eye and I attempted to recall the exact words used by Miss Murray in describing the effect of the death-mask upon the man. Perhaps even more than Holmes, I knew enough about India to realize that religious fanat­icism and a sense of sacrilege would not only justify any crime but inspire in the devotee a cunning of execution which might well baffle the preconceptions of our Western minds, however experienced in the ways of our fellow-men.

I was considering whether I should open the subject to my companions when my attention was arrested by the low creak of a door-hinge. There was not a moment to lose in warning Holmes that somebody was entering the room. But when I stretched out my hand it was only to find that my friend was no longer beside me.

There followed a period of complete stillness and then a stooping figure, its footsteps muffled by the carpet, whisked across the faint ray of light from the French window and vanished into the shadows immediately in front of me. I had a fleeting impression of a high-collared cape and the dull glitter of some long, thin object grasped in a half-raised hand. An instant later, there came a gleam of light in the fireplace, as though the shutter of a dark lantern had been slid back, and then a gentle tapping and tinkling.

I was rising to my feet when a smothered yell rang through the room followed instantly by the sounds of a furious struggle.

"Watson! Watson!"

With a thrill of horror I recognized Holmes's voice in that half-choked cry, and plunging forward through the darkness, I hurled myself upon a writhing mass that loomed suddenly before me.

A grip like steel closed round my throat and as I raised my arm to force back the head of my dimly seen assailant he buried his teeth in my forearm like some savage hound. The man possessed the strength of a madman and it was not until MacDonald, having lit a gas-jet, sprang to our assistance that we succeeded in mastering his struggles. Holmes, his face strained and bloodless, leaned back against the wall, his hand clasping his shoulder where he had been hit with a heavy brass poker that now lay in the fireplace amid the splintered shards of window-glass which he had placed there on our previous visit.

"There's your man, MacDonald!" he gasped. "You can arrest him for the murder of Colonel Warburton and for the attempted murder of his wife."

MacDonald flung back our assailant's cape and for a moment I stared in silence before an exclamation of amazement broke from my lips. For, in that first glance, I had failed to recognize in those lowering features and vicious, baleful eyes the bronzed, handsome countenance of Captain Jack Lasher.

The first streaks of dawn were glimmering through the window when my friend and I found ourselves back in Baker Street.

I poured out two stiff brandy-and-sodas and handed one to Holmes. As he leaned back in his chair, the gaslight beside the mantelpiece threw his keen aquiline features into bold relief and I was glad to observe that a little colour was stealing into his face.

"Really, Watson, I owe you an apology," said he. "Captain Jack was a dangerous man. How is your arm where he savaged you?"

"A little painful," I admitted. "But nothing that iodine and a bandage cannot repair. I am far more concerned about your shoulder, my dear fellow, for he gave you an ugly blow with that poker. You must allow me to look at it."

"Later, later, Watson. I assure you that it is nothing worse than a bruise," he replied, with a touch of impatience. "Well, I can confess now that there were mo­ments tonight when I had the gravest doubts that our man would walk into the trap."

"Trap?"

"A baited trap, Watson, and had he not swallowed my dainty morsel it would have gone hard with us to bring Captain Lasher to book. I gambled on the fact that a murderer's fears will sometimes override his intelligence. And so it turned out."

"Frankly, I do not understand even now how you un­ravelled this case."

Holmes leant back in his chair and put his finger tips together.

"My dear fellow, there was no great difficulty in the problem. The facts were obvious enough but the delicacy of the matter lay in the need that the murderer himself should confirm them by some overt act. Circumstantial evidence is the bane of the trained reasoner."

"I have observed nothing."

"You observed everything but failed to reason. In the course of Miss Murray's narrative, she mentioned that the door of the curio room was locked and yet the window-curtains were not drawn, not drawn, mark you, Watson, in a ground-floor room overlooking the public street. A most unusual proceeding. You may recall that I interrupted Miss Murray to enquire as to Colonel Warburton's conventional habits.

"The circumstances suggested to my mind the pos­sibility that Colonel Warburton might have been expecting a visitor and that the nature of that visit was such that either he or the caller preferred that it should occur privately by the French windows rather than the front door. This elderly soldier was recently married to a young and beautiful wife and I therefore discarded the idea of a vulgar assignation. If I was right in my theory, then the visitor must be a man whose private interview with Colonel Warburton would be resented by some other member of the household and hence the obvious step of joining the colonel via the French windows."

"But they were locked," I objected.

"Naturally. Miss Murray stated that Mrs. Warburton accompanied her husband to the curio room immediately after dinner and apparently a quarrel arose between them. It occurred to me that, if the colonel was expecting a visitor, then what more natural than he would leave the curtains undrawn so that his caller should observe that he was not alone. At first, of course, these were all mere con­jectures that could possibly fit the facts."

"And the identity of this mysterious visitor?"

"Again, a conjecture, Watson. We knew that Mrs. Warburton disapproved of Captain Lasher, her husband's nephew. I give you these vagaries as they first occurred to me during the earlier part of Miss Murray's narrative. I could not have moved in the matter, had not the latter part of her story contained the one singular fact that changed the slightest of suspicions into the absolute cer­tainty that we were in the presence of a cold-blooded and calculated murder."

"I must say that I cannot recall..."

"Yet you yourself underlined it, Watson, when you used the term 'intolerable.' "

"Great heavens, Holmes," I burst out. "Then, it was Miss Murray's remark about the smell of the colonel's cigar..."

"In a room in which two shots had just been fired! It would have reeked of black powder. I knew, then, that no shots had been fired within the curio room."

"But the reports were heard by the household."

"The shots were fired from outside through the closed windows. The murderer was an excellent marksman and therefore conceivably a military man. Here, at last, was something to work upon and, later on, I received confirmation from your own lips, Watson, when having lit one of the colonel's cigars I waited until I heard you below and then fired two shots from the same calibre revolver as that which killed Warburton."

"In any case, there should have been powder burns," I said thoughtfully.

"Not necessarily. The powder from a cartridge is a tricky element and the absence of burns proved nothing. The smell of the cigar was of far greater importance. I must add, however, that useful though your confirmation was, my visit to the house had already elucidated the whole case in my mind."

"You were startled at the appearance of the Indian servant," I rejoined, somewhat nettled at the trace of self-satisfaction which I discerned in his manner.

"No Watson, I was startled at the broken window through which he retreated."

"But Miss Murray had told us that Captain Lasher broke the window in order to enter the room."

"It is an unfortunate fact, Watson, that a woman will invariably omit from her narrative that exact precision of detail which is as essential to the trained observer as bricks and mortar to a builder. If you will recall, she stated that Captain Lasher ran out of the house, looked through the French window and then, picking up a stone from the rock-garden, smashed the glass and entered."

"Quite so."

"The reason that I started when I saw the Indian was because the man was retreating through the wreckage of the far French window, while that nearer to the front door remained unbroken. As we hurried forward to the house, I observed the gap in the rockery immediately under the first window where Lasher had picked up the stone. Why, then, should he run on to the second window and smash it, unless it was that the glass bore its own story? Hence my broad hint to MacDonald of the oyster and the nearest fork. The groundwork of my case was complete when I sniffed the contents of Colonel Warburton's cigar box. They were Dutch, among the weakest in aroma of all cigars."

"All this is now quite clear to me," I said. "But in telling the whole household of your plans to piece together the glass of the broken window it seems to me that you were risking the very evidence on which your case was based."

Holmes reached for the Persian slipper and began to fill his pipe with black shag.

"My dear Watson, it would have been virtually impos­sible for me to reconstruct those shattered panes to the degree that would prove the existence of two small bullet holes. No, it was a question of bluff, my dear fellow, a gambler's throw. Should somebody make an attempt to destroy still further those shards from the window, then that person was the murderer of Colonel Warburton. I showed my hand deliberately. The rest is known to you. Our man came, armed with a poker, having let himself in with the duplicate latch-key which we discovered in his cape pocket. I think there is nothing to add."

"But the reason, Holmes," I cried.

"We have not far to look, Watson. We are told that, until Colonel Warburton's marriage, Lasher was his only relative and therefore, we may assume, his heir. Mrs. Warburton, according to Miss Murray's statement, disapproved of the younger man on the grounds of his ex­travagant living. It is obvious from this that the wife's influence must represent a very real danger to the interests of Captain Jack.

"On the night in question, our man came openly to the house and, having spoken with Miss Murray and Major Earnshaw, retired ostensibly to drink a port in the dining-room. In fact, however, he merely passed through the dining-room window, which opens on the front garden, walked to the French windows of the curio room and there shot Colonel Warburton and his wife through the glass.

"It would require no more than a few seconds to rush back by the way that he had come, seize a decanter from the sideboard and hurry out into the hall. But he cut it fine, for you will recall that he appeared a moment or two after the others. To complete the illusion of Colonel Warburton's madness, it merely remained for him to eliminate the bullet holes by smashing the window and, on entering, drop the revolver by the hand of his victim."

"And if Mrs. Warburton had not been there and he had been able to keep his rendezvous with his uncle, what then?" I asked.

"Ah, Watson, there we can only guess. But the fact that he came armed presupposes the worst. I have no doubt that when he comes to trial it will be found that Lasher was pressed for money and, as we have ample reason to know, he is a young man who would not shrink from taking his own measures to remove any obstacles that stood in the way of his needs. Well, my dear fellow, it is high time that you were on your way home. Pray, convey my apologies to your wife for any small inter­ruption I may have caused in the tranquillity of your menage."

"But your shoulder, Holmes," I expostulated. "I must apply some liniment before you retire for a few hours' rest."

"Tut, Watson," my friend replied. "You should have learned by now that the mind is the master of the body. I have a small problem on hand concerning a solution of potash and so if you would have the goodness to hand me that pipette—"

----:----

There were only two [cases] which I was the means of introducing to his notice, that of Mr. Hatherley's thumb and that of Colonel Warbur­ton's madness.

FROM "THE ENGINEER'S THUMB"

7

The Adventure of Foulkes Rath

"This is a most curious affair," I said, dropping The Times on the floor. "Indeed, I am surprised that the family have not already consulted you."

My friend Sherlock Holmes turned away from the win­dow and threw himself into his arm-chair.

"I take it that you refer to the murder at Foulkes Rath," he said languidly. "If so, this might interest you, Watson. It arrived before breakfast."

He had drawn a buff-colored form from the pocket of his dressing-gown and now passed it across to me. The telegram, which bore the postmark of Forest Row, Sussex, ran as follows: "Having regard to Addleton affairs, pro­pose to call on you at 10:15 precisely. Vincent."

Picking up The Times again, I ran my eye quickly down the column. "There is no mention of anybody named Vincent," I said.

"A fact of no importance whatever," replied Holmes impatiently. "Let us assume, from the phraseology of the telegram, that he is a lawyer of the old school employed by the Addleton family. As I observe, Watson, that we have a few minutes in hand, pray refresh my memory by running over the salient points from the account in this morning's paper, while omitting all irrelevant observa­tions from their correspondent."

Holmes, having filled his clay pipe with shag from the Persian slipper, leaned back in his chair and contemplated the ceiling through a cloud of pungent blue smoke.

"The tragedy occurred at Foulkes Rath," I began, "an ancient Sussex manor-house near Forest Row on Ashdown Forest. The curious name of the house is derived from the circumstance that there is an old burial ground—"

"Keep to the facts, Watson."

"The property was owned by Colonel Matthias Ad­dleton," I continued rather stiffly. "Squire Addleton, as he was known, was the local Justice of the Peace and the richest landowner in the district. The household at Foulkes Rath consisted of the squire, his nephew Percy Longton, the butler Morstead and four indoor servants. In addition, there is an outside staff consisting of the lodge-keeper, a groom and several gamekeepers who occupy cottages on the boundaries of the estate. Last night, Squire Addleton and his nephew dined at their usual hour of eight o'clock and after dinner the squire sent for his horse and was absent for about an hour. On his return, shortly before ten, he took a glass of port with his nephew in the hall. The two men appear to have been quarrelling, for the butler has stated that, on entering with the port, he remarked that the squire was flushed and brusque in his manner."

"And the nephew, Longton I think you said his name was?" Holmes interrupted.

"According to the butler, he did not see Longton's face as the young man walked to the window and stood there looking out into the night while the butler was in the room. On retiring, however, the butler caught the sounds of their voices in a furious altercation. Shortly after midnight, the household was roused by a loud cry apparently from the hall and, on rushing down in their night-clothes, they were horrified to discover Squire Addleton lying senseless in a pool of blood with his head split open. Standing beside the body of the dying man was Mr. Percy Longton, clad in a dressing-gown and grasping in his hand a blood-stained axe, a mediaeval executioner's axe, Holmes, which had been torn down from a trophy of arms above the fireplace. Longton was so dazed with horror that he could scarcely assist in lifting the injured man's head and staunching the loss of blood. However, even as Morstead bent over him, the squire raising himself on his elbows gasped out in a dreadful whisper, 'It—was— Long—tom! It—was—Long—!' and sank back dead in the butler's arms. The local police were summoned and, on the evidence of the quarrel between the two men, the discovery of the nephew standing over the body and finally the accusing words of the dying man himself, Mr. Percy Longton has been arrested for the murder of Squire Addleton. I see that there is a note in the late-news column that the accused man, who has never ceased to protest his innocence, has been removed to Lewes. These would appear to be the principal facts, Holmes."

For a while my friend smoked in silence.

"What explanation did Longton offer for the quarrel?" he asked at length.

"It is stated here that he voluntarily informed the police that he and his uncle came to high words on the subject of the latter's sale of Chudford Farm which Longton con­sidered a further and unnecessary reduction of the estate."

"Further?"

"It appears that Squire Addleton has sold other hold­ings over the last two years," I replied, throwing the paper on the couch. "I must say, Holmes, that I have seldom read a case in which the culprit is more clearly defined."

"Ugly, Watson, very ugly," my friend agreed. "Indeed, presuming the facts to be as stated, I cannot conceive why this Mr. Vincent should propose to waste my time. But here, unless I am much mistaken, is our man upon the staircase."

There came a knock on the door and Mrs. Hudson ushered in our visitor.

Mr. Vincent was a small, elderly man with a long, pale, mournful face framed in a pair of side-whiskers. For a moment, he stood hesitating while he peered at us short­sightedly through his pince-nez which were attached by a black ribbon to the lapel of his rather dingy frock-coat. "This is too bad, Mr. Holmes!" he cried shrilly. "I assumed that my telegram would ensure privacy, sir, absolute privacy. My client's affairs—"

"This is my colleague Dr. Watson," interposed Sherlock Holmes, waving our visitor to the chair which I had drawn forward. "I assure you that his presence may be invalu­able."

Mr. Vincent bobbed his head towards me and, deposit­ing his hat and stick on the floor, sank into the cushions.

"Pray believe that I meant you no offence, Dr. Watson," he squeaked. "But this is a terrible morning, a terrible morning I say, for those who cherish goodwill for the Addletons of Foulkes Rath."

"Quite so," said Holmes. "I trust, however, that your early-morning walk to the station did something to restore your nerves. I find that exercise is in itself a seda­tive."

Our visitor started in his seat. "Really, sir," he cried, "I fail to see how you—"

"Tut, tut;" Holmes interrupted impatiently. "A man who has driven to the station does not appear with a splash of fresh clay on his left gaiter and a similar smear across the ferrule of his stick. You walked through a rough country lane and, as the weather is dry, I should judge that your path took in a ford or water-crossing."

"Your reasoning is perfectly correct, sir," replied Mr. Vincent, with a most suspicious glance at Holmes over the top of his pince-nez. "My horse is at grass and not even a hack available at that hour in the village. I walked as you say, caught the milk train to London and here I am to enlist, nay, Mr. Holmes, to demand, your services for my unfortunate young client, Mr. Percy Longton."

Holmes lay back with closed eyes and his chin resting on his finger-tips. "I fear that there is nothing that I can do in the matter," he announced. "Dr. Watson has al­ready put before me the principal facts, and they would appear to be quite damning. Who is in charge of the case?"

"I understand that the local police, in view of the gravity of the crime, appealed to Scotland Yard, who dispatched an Inspector Lestrade—dear me, Mr. Holmes, I fear that you have a painful twinge of rheumatics—an Inspector Lestrade to take charge. I should explain, perhaps," went on our visitor, "that I am the senior partner of Vincent, Peabody and Vincent, the legal practitioners of Forest Row to whom the Addletons have entrusted their interests for the past hundred years and more."

Leaning forward, Holmes picked up the paper and, tapping the place sharply with his finger, handed it with­out a word to the lawyer.

"The account is accurate enough," said the little man sadly, after running his eye down the column, "though it omits to state that the front door was unlocked despite the fact that the squire told Morstead the butler that he would lock it himself."

Holmes raised his eyebrows. "Unlocked, you say? H'm. Well, the probable explanation is that Squire Addleton forgot the matter in his quarrel with his nephew. However, there are one or two points which are not yet clear to me."

"Well, sir?"

"I take it that the murdered man was in his night-clothes?"

"No, he was fully dressed. Mr. Longton was in his night-clothes."

"I understand that after dinner the squire left the house for an hour or so. Was it his custom to take nocturnal rides?"

Mr. Vincent ceased to stroke his whiskers and shot a keen glance at Holmes. "Now that you mention it, such was not his custom," he shrilled. "But he returned safely and I cannot see—"

"Quite so," interposed Holmes. "Would you say that the squire was a wealthy man? Pray be precise in your reply."

"Matthias Addleton was a very wealthy man. He was, of course, the younger son and emigrated to Australia some forty years ago, that is to say in 1854. He returned in the seventies having amassed a large fortune in the Australian gold-fields and, his elder brother having died, he inherited the family property of Foulkes Rath. Alas, I cannot pretend that he was liked in the neighborhood, for he was a man of morose disposition and as unpopular with his neighbors as he was feared by our local ne'er-do-wells in his capacity as Justice of the Peace. A hard, bitter, brooding man."

"Was Mr. Percy Longton on good terms with his uncle?"

The lawyer hesitated. "I am afraid not," he said at length. "Mr. Percy, who was the son of the squire's late sister, has lived at Foulkes Rath since his childhood and, on the property passing to his uncle, he remained and managed the estate. He is, of course, the heir under an entailment which covers the house and a part of the land and, on more than one occasion, he has expressed deep resentment at his uncle's sales of certain farms and hold­ings which led, I fear, to bad blood between them. It was most unfortunate that his wife was absent last night, of all nights."

"His wife?"

"Yes, there is a Mrs. Longton, a charming, gracious young woman. She was staying with friends for the night at East Grinstead and is due back this morning." Mr. Vincent paused. "Poor little Mary," he ended quietly. "What a home-coming! The squire dead and her husband charged with murder."

"One final question," said Holmes. "What explanation does your client offer to account for the events of last night?"

"His story is a simple one, Mr. Holmes. He states that at dinner the squire informed him of his intention to sell Chudford Farm and when he remonstrated on the need­lessness of the sale and the damage that it would do to the estate, his uncle turned on him roundly and high words ensued. Later, his uncle called for his horse and rode from the house without a word of explanation. Upon his return, the squire ordered a bottle of port and, as the quarrel threatened to grow from bad to worse, Mr. Percy bade his uncle good-night and retired to his room. However, his mind was too agitated for sleep and twice, ac­cording to his statement, he sat up in bed under the impression that he had caught the distant sound of his uncle's voice from the great hall."

"Why, then, did he not go to investigate?" interposed Holmes sharply.

"I put that very question to him. He replied that his uncle had been drinking heavily and therefore he assumed that he was raving to himself in the hall. The butler Morstead confirmed that this had occurred not infrequently in the past."

"Pray continue."

"The clock over the stables had just chimed midnight and he was drifting at last into slumber when in an instant he was brought back to full consciousness by a dreadful yell that rang through the great silent house. Springing out of bed, he pulled on his dressing-gown and, seizing a candle, ran downstairs to the hall, only to recoil before the terrible sight that met his eyes.

"The hearth and fireplace were spattered with blood, and sprawling in a great crimson pool, his arms raised above his head and his teeth grinning through his beard, lay Squire Addleton. Mr. Percy rushed forward and was bending over his uncle when his eyes fell upon an object that turned him sick and faint. Beside the body of the squire and horribly dappled with the blood of its victim lay an executioner's axe! He recognized it vaguely as forming a part of a trophy of arms that hung above the chimney-piece and without thinking what he was doing he had stooped and picked up the thing when Morstead accompanied by the terrified maidservants burst into the room. Such is the explanation of my unhappy client."

"Dear me," said Holmes.

For a long moment, the lawyer and I sat in silence, our eyes fixed upon my friend. His head had fallen back against the chair top, his eyes were closed and only a thin, quick spiral of smoke rising from his clay pipe hinted at the activity of the mind behind that impassive aquiline mask. A moment later, he had sprung to his feet.

"A breath of Ashdown air will certainly do you no harm, Watson," he said briskly. "Mr. Vincent, my friend and I are very much at your disposal."

It was mid-afternoon when we alighted from the train at the wayside station of Forest Row. Mr. Vincent had telegraphed our reservations at the Green Man, an old-weald-stone inn which appeared to be the only building of any consequence in the little hamlet. The air was permeated with the scent of the woodlands clothing the low, rounded Sussex hills that hemmed us in on every side, and as I contemplated that green smiling landscape it seemed to me that the tragedy of Foulkes Rath took on a grimmer, darker shade through the very serenity of the pastoral surroundings amid which it had been enacted. Though it was evident that the worthy lawyer shared my feelings, Sherlock Holmes was completely absorbed in his own thoughts, and took no part in our conversation save for a remark that the station-master was unhappily married and had recently changed the position of his shaving-mirror.

Hiring a fly at the inn, we set out on the three-mile journey that lay between the village and the manor-house, and as our road wound its way up the wooded slopes of Pippinford Hill, we caught occasional glimpses of a sombre, heather-covered ridge where the edge of the great Ashdown moors loomed against the sky-line.

We had topped the hill and I was absorbed in the wonderful view of the moorland rolling away and away to the faint blue distances of the Sussex Downs when Mr. Vincent touched my arm and pointed ahead.

"Foulkes Rath," he said.

On a crest of the moor stood a gaunt, rambling house of grey stone flanked by a line of stables. A series of fields running from the very walls of the ancient mansion merged into a wilderness of yellow gorse and heather ending in a deep wooded valley from whence arose a pencil of smoke and the high distant droning of a steam-saw.

"The Ashdown Timber Mills," volunteered Mr. Vin­cent. "Those woods lie beyond the boundary of the estate and there is not another neighbour within three miles. But here we are, Mr. Holmes, and a sorry welcome it is to the manor-house of Foulkes Rath."

At the sound of our wheels upon the drive an elderly manservant had appeared at the beetle-browed Tudor doorway and now, on catching sight of our companion, he hurried forward with an exclamation of relief.

"Thank God you've come, sir," he cried. "Mrs. Longton—"

"She has returned?" interposed Mr. Vincent. "Poor lady, I will go to her at once."

"Sergeant Clare is here, sir, and—er—a person from the London police."

"Very well, Morstead."

"One moment," said Holmes. "Has your master's body been moved?"

"He has been laid in the gun-room, sir."

"I trust that nothing else has been disturbed?" Holmes demanded sharply.

The man's eyes turned slowly towards the dark arch of the doorway. "No, sir," he muttered. "It's all as it was!"

A small vestibule in which Morstead relieved us of our hats and sticks led us into the inner hall. It was a great stone-built chamber with a groined roof and a line of nar­row pointed windows emblazoned with stained-glass shields through which the sunlight, now waning towards evening, mottled the oaken floor with vivid patches of vert, gules and azure. A short, thin man who was busy writing at a desk glanced up at our entrance and sprang to his feet with a flush of indignation upon his sharp-featured countenance.

"How's this, Mr. Holmes," he cried. "There's no scope here for the exercise of your talents."

"I have no doubt that you are right, Lestrade," replied my friend carelessly. "Nevertheless, there have been occasions when—"

"—when luck has favoured the theorist, eh, Mr. Holmes? Ah, Dr. Watson. And might I enquire who this is, if the question may be forgiven in a police-officer?"

"This is Mr. Vincent, who is legal advisor to the Addleton family," I replied. "It was he who requested the services of Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

"Oh, he did, did he!" snapped Inspector Lestrade, with a baleful glance at the little lawyer. "Well, it's too late now for any of Mr. Holmes's fine theories. We have our man. Good day, gentlemen."

"Just a moment, Lestrade," said Holmes sternly. "You've made mistakes in the past, and it is not impos­sible that you may make them in the future. In this case, if you have the right man, and I must confess that up to now I believe that you have, then you have nothing to lose in my confirmation. On the other hand—"

"Ah, it's always 'on the other hand.' However—" Lestrade added grudgingly, "I do not see that you can do any harm. If you want to waste your own time, Mr. Holmes, that's your business. Yes, Dr. Watson, it's a nasty sight, isn't it?"

I had followed Sherlock Holmes to the fireplace at the far end of the room only to recoil before the spectacle that met my eyes. Across the oak floor stretched a great black stain of partly congealed blood while the hearth and fireplace and even the nearby wainscotting were hideously dappled with gouts and splashes of crimson.

Mr. Vincent, white to the lips, turned away and col­lapsed into a chair.

"Stand back, Watson," Holmes enjoined abruptly. "I take it, Lestrade, that there were no footprints on—" he gestured towards that dreadful floor.

"Just one, Mr. Holmes," replied Lestrade with a bitter smile, "and it fitted Mr. Percy Longton's bedroom-slipper."

"Ah, it would seem that you are learning. By the way, what of the accused man's dressing-gown?"

"Well, what of it?"

"The walls, Lestrade, the walls! Surely the blood-spattered front of Longton's robe goes far towards completing your case."

"Now that you mention it, the sleeves were blood-soaked."

"Tut, that is natural enough, considering that he helped to raise the dying man's head. There is little to be gained from the sleeves. You have the dressing-gown there?"

The Scotland Yard man rummaged in a Gladstone bag and drew out a grey woollen robe.

"This is it."

"H'm. Stains on the sleeves and hem. Not even a mark on the front. Curious but, alas, inconclusive. And this is the weapon?"

Lestrade had drawn from his bag a most fearsome object. It was a short-hafted axe made entirely of steel with a broad crescent-edge blade and a narrow neck.

"This is certainly a very ancient specimen," said Holmes, examining the blade through his lens. "Incidentally, where was the wound inflicted?"

"The whole top of Squire Addleton's skull was cleft like a rotten apple," answered Lestrade. "Indeed, it was a miracle that he regained consciousness even for a mo­ment. An unfortunate miracle for Mr. Longton," he added.

"He named him, I understand."

"Well, he gasped out something about 'Longtom,' which was near enough to the mark for a dying man."

"Quite so. But whom have we here? No, madam, not a step nearer, I beg! This fireplace is no sight for a woman."

A slim, graceful girl, clad in the deepest mourning, had rushed into the room. Her dark eyes shone with almost fevered brilliance in the whiteness of her face and her hands were clasped before her in an agony of distress.

"Save him!" she cried wildly. "He is innocent, I swear it! Oh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, save my husband!"

I do not think that any of us, even Lestrade, remained unmoved.

"I will do whatever lies in my power, madam," said Holmes gently. "Now tell me about your husband."

"He is the kindest of men."

"Quite so. But I mean physically. For instance, would you say that he was taller than Squire Addleton?"

Mrs. Longton looked at Holmes in amazement. "Good heavens, no," she cried. "Why, the squire was over six feet tall."

"Ah. Now, Mr. Vincent, perhaps you can inform me when it was that Squire Addleton first began to sell por­tions of the estate?"

"The first sale occurred two years past, the second some six months ago," replied the lawyer hurriedly. "And now, Mr. Holmes, unless you require my presence, I propose to take Mrs. Longton back to the drawing-room."

My friend bowed. "We need not worry Mrs. Longton any further," said he. "But I would be glad of a word with the butler."

While we waited, Holmes strolled to the window and, with his hands behind his back and his chin sunk upon his breast, stared out over the empty landscape. Lestrade, who had returned to his desk, chewed the end of his pen and watched him curiously.

"Ah, Morstead," said Holmes, as the butler entered. "Doubtless you are anxious to do everything possible to assist Mr. Longton, and I wish you to understand that we are here with the same purpose."

The man looked nervously from Lestrade to Holmes.

"Come, now," my friend continued. "I am sure that you can help us. For instance, perhaps you can recall whether the squire received any letters by yesterday's post."

"There was a letter, sir, yes."

"Ah! Can you tell me more?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. It bore the local postmark and seemed a very ordinary cheap envelope such as they use hereabouts. But I was surprised—" the man hesitated for a moment.

"Yes, something surprised you. Something, perhaps, in the squire's manner?" asked Holmes quietly.

"Yes, sir, that's it. As soon as I gave it to him, he opened it and as he read there came a look in his face that made me glad to get out of the room. When I re­turned later, the squire had gone out and there were bits of burnt paper smouldering in the grate."

Holmes rubbed his hands together. "Your assistance is invaluable, Morstead," said he. "Now, think carefully. Six months ago, as you probably know, your master sold some land. You cannot, of course, recall a similar letter at about that time?"

"No, sir."

"Naturally not. Thank you, Morstead, I think that is all."

Something in his voice made me glance at Holmes and I was amazed at the change in him. His eyes gleamed with excitement and a touch of colour showed in his cheeks.

"Sit down, Watson," he cried. "Over there on the trestle." Then, whipping his lens from his pocket, he commenced his examination.

I watched him enthralled. The blood-stains, the fire­place, the mantelpiece, the very floor itself were subjected to a careful and methodical scrutiny as Holmes crawled about on his hands and knees, his long, thin nose within a few inches of the parquet and the lens in his hands catching an occasional sparkle from the light of the dying sun.

A Persian rug lay in the centre of the room and, on reaching the edge of this, I saw him stiffen suddenly.

"You should have observed this, Lestrade," he said softly. "There are faint traces of a foot-mark here."

"What of it, Mr. Holmes?" grinned Lestrade, with a wink at me. "Plenty of people have passed over that rug."

"But it has not rained for days. The boot which made this mark was slightly moist, and I need not tell you that there is something in this room which would easily ac­count for that. Hullo, what have we here?"

Holmes had scraped something from the mat and was closely examining it through his lens. Lestrade and I joined him.

"Well, what is it?"

Without a word, Holmes passed him the lens and held out his hand.

"Dust," announced Lestrade, peering through the glass.

"Pine-wood dust," replied Holmes quietly. "The fine grain is unmistakable. You will note that I scraped it from the traces of the boot-mark."

"Really, Holmes," I cried. "I cannot see—"

My friend looked at me with a gleaming eye. "Come, Watson," said he, "we will stretch our legs as far as the stables."

In the cobbled yard, we came on a groom drawing water from a pump. I have remarked before that Holmes possessed a gift for putting the working classes at their ease and, after exchanging a few words, the man lost so much of his Sussex reserve that when my friend threw out the suggestion that it might be difficult to name which of the horses had been used by his master on the previous night, the information was instantly forthcoming.

"It was Ranger, sir," volunteered the groom. "Here in this stall. You'd like to see her hoofs? Well, why not. There you are, and you can scrape away with your knife to your heart's content and not a stone will you find."

Holmes, after closely examining a fragment of earth which he had taken from the horse's hoof, placed it carefully in an envelope and, pressing a half-sovereign into the groom's hand, strode out of the yard.

"Well, Watson, it only remains for us to collect our hats and sticks before returning to our inn," he announced briskly. "Ah, Lestrade," he continued, as the Scotland Yard man appeared in the front door. "I would draw your attention to the fireplace chair."

"But there is no fireplace chair."

"That is why I draw your attention to it. Come, Wat­son, there is nothing further to be learned here tonight."

The evening passed pleasantly enough, though I was somewhat irritated with Holmes who, while refusing to answer any of my questions on the grounds that they could be better answered on the morrow, encouraged our landlord to converse on local topics which could hold no interest whatever for strangers like ourselves.

When I awoke the next morning I was surprised to learn that my friend had breakfasted and gone out some two hours earlier. I was concluding my own breakfast when he strolled in, looking invigorated for his exercise in the open air.

"Where have you been?" I enquired.

"Following the example of the early bird, Watson," he chuckled. "If you have finished, then let us drive to Foulkes Rath and pick up Lestrade. There are times when he has his definite uses."

Half an hour later saw us once more at the old man­sion. Lestrade, who greeted us rather surlily, stared at my companion in amazement.

"But why a walk on the moors, Mr. Holmes?" he snapped. "What bee has got into your bonnet this time?"

Holmes's face was very stern, as he turned away. "Very well," said he. "I had hoped to give you the undivided credit of capturing the murderer of Squire Addleton."

Lestrade caught my companion by the arm. "Man, are you serious?" he demanded. "But the evidence! Every single fact points clearly to—"

Sherlock Holmes raised his stick and pointed silently down the long slope of fields and heather to the distant wooded valley.

"There," he said quietly.

It was a walk that I will long remember. I am sure that Lestrade had no more idea than I had of what lay before us as we followed Holmes's tall, spare figure across the meadows and down the rough sheep track that led into the desolation of the moor. It was a mile or more before we reached the beginning of the valley and plunged down into the welcome shade of the pine woods through which the whirring of the steam-saw vibrated like the hum of some monstrous insect. The air grew redolent with the tang of burning wood and a few minutes later we found ourselves among the buildings and timber stacks of the Ashdown Timber Mills.

Holmes led the way without hesitation to a hut marked "Manager" and knocked sharply. There was a moment of waiting, and then the door was flung open.

I have seldom seen a more formidable figure than the man who stood upon the threshold. He was a giant in stature, with a breadth of shoulders that blocked the doorway and a matted tangle of red beard that hung down over his chest like the mane of a lion. "What do you want here?" he growled.

"I presume that I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Thomas Greerly?" asked Holmes politely.

The man remained silent while he bit off a cud of chewing-tobacco, his eyes roving over us in a cold, slow stare.

"What if you have?" he said at length.

"Long Tom to your friends, I think," said Holmes quietly. "Well, Mr. Thomas Greerly, it is no thanks to you that an innocent man is not called upon to pay the penalty for your own misdeeds."

For a moment the giant stood as though turned to stone and then, with the roar of a wild beast, he hurled himself on Holmes. I managed to sieze him round the waist and Holmes's hands were buried deep in that bristling tangle of beard, but it would have gone hard with us had not Lestrade clapped a pistol to the man's head. At the touch of the cold steel against his temples, he ceased to struggle and a moment later Holmes had snapped a pair of handcuffs upon his great knotted wrists.

From the glare in his eyes I thought that Greerly was about to attack us again, but suddenly he gave a rueful laugh and turned his bearded face towards my friend.

"I don't know who you are, mister," he said, "but it's a fair catch. So, if you'll tell me how you did it, I'll answer all your questions."

Lestrade stepped forward. "I must warn you—" he began, with the magnanimous fair play of British justice.

But our prisoner waved his words aside.

"Aye, I killed him," he growled. "I killed Bully Addleton and now that it has come I reckon that I'll swing with an easy heart. Is that plain enough for you? Well, come inside."

He led the way into the little office and threw himself into his chair while the rest of us accommodated ourselves as best we might.

"How did you find me, mister?" he demanded careless­ly, raising his manacled hands to bite off a fresh cud of tobacco.

"Fortunately for an innocent man, I discerned certain traces of your presence," said Holmes in his sternest manner. "I admit that I believed Mr. Percy Longton to be guilty when first I was asked to look into the matter nor did I perceive any reason to alter my views when I reached the scene of the crime. It was not long, however, before I found myself faced with certain details which, though insignificant enough in themselves, threw a new and curious light on the whole affair. The frightful blow that killed Squire Addleton had spattered blood over the fireplace and even a part of the wall. Why, then, were there no stains down the front of the dressing-gown worn by the man who struck that blow? Here was something inconclusive and yet troublesome.

"Next, I observed that there was no chair in the vicinity of the fireplace where the murdered man had fallen. He had, therefore, been struck down when standing, not sitting, and yet as the blow cleft the top of his skull it had been delivered from the same level, if not from above. When I learned from Mrs. Longton that the squire was over six feet tall, I was left with no doubt whatever that a serious miscarriage of justice had been committed. But, if not Longton, then who was the real murderer?

"My enquiries brought to light that a letter had reached the squire that morning, that apparently he had burned it, and thereafter quarrelled with his nephew by propos­ing the sale of a farm. Squire Addleton was a wealthy man. Why, then, these periodic sales which had first commenced two years previously? The man was being heavily blackmailed."

"A lie, by God!" interrupted Greerly fiercely. "He was paying back what didn't belong to him, and that's the truth."

"On examining the room," my friend continued. "I found the faint traces of a boot-mark to which I drew your attention, Lestrade, and as the weather was dry I knew, of course, that the mark had been made after the crime. The man's boot was moist because he had stepped in the blood. My lens disclosed traces of some fine powder adhering to this boot-mark and on closer examination I recognized this powder to be pine sawdust. When I found, pressed into the dried earth in the hoofs of the squire's horse, a quantity of similar sawdust, I was able to form a fairly clear picture of the events which had occurred on the night of the crime.

"The squire, who had been subjected to the vehement protests of his nephew over the proposed sale of some valuable land, instantly mounted his horse after dinner and rode off into the darkness. Obviously, he intended to speak, perhaps appeal, to someone, and about mid­night that someone comes. He is a man of lofty stature and of a strength sufficiently formidable to cleave a human skull in a single blow, and the soles of his boots are engrained with pine-dust. There is a quarrel between the two men, perhaps a refusal to pay, a threat and, in an instant, the taller man has torn a weapon from the wall and, burying it in his opponent's skull, rushes out into the night.

"Where, I asked myself, might one expect to find the ground impregnated with wood-dust? Surely in a saw­mill; and there down in the valley below the manor-house lay the Ashdown Timber Mills.

"It had occurred to me already that the clue to this terrible event might lie in the squire's earlier life, and therefore, following my usual practice, I spent an instruc­tive evening gossiping with our landlord in course of which I elicited by an idle question that two years ago an Australian had been given the post of Manager at the Ashdown Timber Mills on the personal recommenda­tion of Squire Addleton. When you came out of this hut early this morning, Greerly, to give your orders for the day's work, I was behind that timber shack. I saw you, and my case was complete."

The Australian, who had listened to Holmes's account with the closest attention, leaned back in Ms chair with a bitter smile.

"It's my bad luck they ever sent for you, mister," he said brazenly. "But I'm not the man to break a bargain, and so here's the little that you still need to know.

"It all began in the early seventies at the time of the great gold strike near Kalgoorlie. I had a younger brother who went into partnership with an Englishman whom we knew as Bully Addleton and, sure enough, they struck it rich. At that time the tracks to the goldfields were none too safe, for there were bushrangers at work. Well, only a week after my brother and Addleton hit the vein, the gold-stage to Kalgoorlie was held up and the guard and driver shot dead.

"On the false accusation of Bully Addleton and some trumped-up evidence, my unfortunate brother was seized and tried for the crime. The law was quick to act in those days and they hung him that night to the Bushranger's Tree. Addleton was left with the mine.

"I was away up the Blue Mountains, timber cutting, and two full years passed before I heard the truth of the matter from a digger who had it from a dying cook-boy who had been bribed to silence.

"Addleton had made his pile and gone back to the Old Country, and I hadn't the money to follow him. From that day I wandered from job to job, always saving and planning how to find my brother's murderer, aye mur­derer, may the devil roast him!

"It was nigh twenty years before I came alongside him and that one moment repaid all my waiting.

" 'Morning, Bully,' said I.

"His face went the colour of putty and the pipe dropped out of his mouth.

" 'Long Tom Greerly!' he gasped, and I thought the man was going to faint.

"Well, we had a talk and I made him get me this job. Then I began to bleed him bit by bit. No blackmail, mister, but restitution of a dead man's goods. Two days ago, I wrote to him again and that night he rode down here, cursing and swearing that I was driving him to ruin. I told him I'd give him until midnight to make his choice, pay or tell, and I'd call for his answer.

"He was waiting for me in the hall, mad with drink and fury, and swearing that I could go to the police or the devil for all he cared. Did I think that the word of a dirty Australian timber-jack would be accepted against that of the Lord of the Manor and Justice of the Peace? He was mad to have ever paid me a penny-piece.

" 'I'll serve you as thoroughly as I served your worth­less brother!' he yelled. It was that which did it. Some­thing seemed to snap in my brain and, tearing down the nearest weapon from the wall, I buried it in his snarling, grinning head.

"For a moment I stood looking down at him. 'From me and Jim,' I whispered. Then I turned and ran into the night. That's my story, mister, and now I'd take it kindly if we can go before my men get back."

Lestrade and his prisoner had reached the door when Holmes's voice halted them.

"I only wish to know," he said, "whether you are aware of the weapon with which you killed Squire Addleton?"

"I told you it was the nearest thing on the wall, some old axe or club."

"It was an executioner's axe," said Holmes drily. The Australian made no reply, but as he followed Lestrade to the door it seemed to me that a singular smile lit up his rough, bearded face.

My friend and I walked back slowly through the woods and up the moor where Lestrade and the prisoner had already vanished in the direction of Foulkes Rath. Sher­lock Holmes was moody and thoughtful and it was apparent to me that the reaction that generally followed the conclusion of a case was already upon him.

"It is curious," I observed, "that a man's hatred and ferocity should remain unabated after twenty years."

"My dear Watson," replied Holmes, "I would remind you of the old Sicilian adage that vengeance is the only dish that is best when eaten cold. But surely," he con­tinued, shading his eyes with his hand, "the lady hurrying down our path is Mrs. Longton. Though I trust that I am not lacking in chivalry, nevertheless I am in no mood for the effusions of feminine gratitude and therefore, with your permission, we will take this by-path behind the gorse bushes. If we step out, we should be in time for the afternoon train to town.

"Corata is singing tonight at Covent Garden and, braced by our short holiday in the invigorating atmosphere of Ashdown Forest, I think that you will agree with me, Watson, that we could desire no more pleasant home­coming than an hour or two spent amid the magic of Manon Lescaut followed by a cold supper at our rooms in Baker Street."

----:----

Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy.

FROM "THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ"

8

The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby

On glancing through my notes, I find it recorded that the night of November 10th saw the first heavy blizzard of the winter of 1886. The day had been dark and cold with a bitter, searching wind that moaned against the windows and, as the early dusk deepened into night, the street-lamps glimmering through the gloom of Baker Street disclosed the first flurries of snow and sleet swirling along the empty, glistening pavements.

Scarcely three weeks had passed since my friend Sher­lock Holmes and I had returned from Dartmoor on the conclusion of that singular case, the details of which I have recorded elsewhere under the name of The Hound of the Baskervilles and, though several enquiries had been brought to my friend's notice since that time, none was of a nature to appeal to his love of the bizarre or to challenge that unique combination of logic and deduction which depended for its inspiration upon the intricacies of the problem which lay before it.

A merry fire was crackling in the grate and as I leaned back in my chair and let my eyes wander about the untidy cosiness of our sitting-room, I had to admit that the wildness of the night and the rattle of the sleet upon the window-panes served merely to increase my own sense of contentment. On the far side of the fire-place, Sherlock Holmes was curled up in his arm-chair, languidly turning over the pages of a black index-book marked "B" in which he had just completed certain entries under "Bask­erville" and giving vent to occasional chuckles and ejaculations as his eyes wandered over the names and notes covering every page of the volume. I had flung down The Lancet with some idea of encouraging my friend to touch upon one or two of the names which were strange to me when, beneath the sobbing of the wind, my ears caught the faint sound of the door-bell.

"You have a visitor," I said.

"Surely a client, Watson," Holmes replied, laying aside his book. "And on urgent business," he added, with a glance at the rattling window-panes. "These inclement nights are invariably the herald of—" His words were interrupted by a rush of feet on the staircase, the door was burst open, and our visitor stumbled into the room.

He was a short, stout man, wrapped up in a dripping mackintosh cape and wearing a bowler hat tied under his chin by a woollen muffler. Holmes had tilted the lamp­shade, so that the light shone towards the door and, for a moment, the man remained motionless, staring at us across the room while the moisture from his sodden gar­ment dripped in dark stains upon the carpet. He would have been a comical figure, with his tubbiness and his fat face framed in its encircling muffler, were it not for the impression of helpless misery in the man's brown eyes and in the shaking hands with which he plucked at the absurd bow beneath his chin.

"Take off your coat and come to the fire," said Holmes kindly.

"I must indeed apologize, gentlemen, for my untoward intrusion," he began. "But I fear that circumstances have arisen which threaten—threaten—"

"Quick, Watson!"

But I was too late. There was a thud and a groan and there lay our visitor senseless upon the carpet.

Seizing some brandy from the sideboard, I ran to force it between his lips while Holmes, who had loosened the man's muffler, craned over my shoulder.

"What do you make of him, Watson?" he asked.

"He has had a severe shock," I replied. "From his appearance, he seems a comfortable, respectable person of the grocer class, and doubtless we will find out more ' about him when he has recovered."

"Tut, I think that we might venture a little further," my friend said thoughtfully. "When the butler from some wealthy household rushes on the spur of the moment through a snow-storm in order to fall senseless on my humble carpet, I am tempted to visualize some affair of greater moment than a broken till."

"My dear Holmes!"

"I would stake a guinea that there is a livery beneath that overcoat. Ah, did I not say so!"

"Even so, I do not see how you surmised it nor the wealthy household."

Holmes picked up the limp hands. "You will observe that the pads of both thumbs are darkened, Watson. In a man of sedentary type, I know of only one occupation that will account for this equality of discolouration. The man polishes silver with his thumbs."

"Surely, Holmes, a leather would be more usual," I protested.

"On ordinary silver, yes. Very fine silver is finished, however, with the thumbs, and hence my conjecture of a well-to-do household. As for his sudden departure, the man has rushed into the night in patent-leather pumps despite that it has been snowing since six o'clock. There, now, you are feeling better," he added kindly, as our visitor opened his eyes. "Dr. Watson and I will help you into this chair and after you have rested awhile doubtless you will tell us your troubles."

The man clapped his hands to his head.

"Rested awhile!" he cried wildly. "My God, sir, they must be after me already!"

"Who must be after you?"

"The police, Sir John, all of them! The Abbas Ruby has been stolen!" The words rose almost to a shriek. My friend leaned forward and placed his long, thin fingers on the other's wrist. On previous occasions I have noted Holmes's almost magnetic power for asserting a sense of peace and comfort over the minds of those in distress.

It was so in this case, and the wild, panic-stricken gleam faded slowly in the man's eyes.

"Come, now, give me the facts," Sherlock Holmes enjoined after a moment.

"My name is Andrew Joliffe," began our visitor more calmly, "and for the past two years I have been employed as butler to Sir John and Lady Doverton at Manchester Square."

"Sir John Doverton, the horticulturist?"

"Yes, sir. Indeed, there's them that say that his flowers, and especially his famous red camellias, mean more to Sir John than even the Abbas Ruby and all his other family treasures. I take it you know about the ruby, sir?"

"I know of its existence. But tell me in your own words."

"Well, it makes one frightened just to look at it. Like a big drop of blood it is, with a touch of devil's fire smouldering in its heart. In two years I had seen it only once, for Sir John keeps it in the safe in his bedroom, locked up like some deadly poisonous creature that shouldn't even know the light of day. Tonight, however, I saw it for the second time. It was just after dinner, when one of our guests, Captain Masterman, suggested to Sir John that he should show them the Abbas Ruby—"

"Their names," interposed Holmes languidly.

"Names, sir? Ah, you mean the guests. Well, there were Captain Masterman, who is her ladyship's brother, Lord and Lady Brackminster, Mrs. Dunbar, the Rt. Hon. William Radford, our Member of Parliament, and Mrs. Fitzsimmons-Leming."

Holmes scribbled a word on his cuff. "Pray continue," said he.

"I was serving coffee in the library when the captain made his suggestion and all the ladies began to clamour to see the gem. 'I would prefer to show you the red camellias in the conservatory,' says Sir John. 'The speci­men that my wife is wearing in her gown is surely more beautiful than anything to be found in a jewel-box, as you can judge for yourselves.'

" 'Then, let us judge for ourselves!' smiled Mr. Dunbar, and Sir John went upstairs and brought down the jewel-case. As he opened it on the table and they all crowded round, her ladyship told me to light the lamps in the conservatory as they would be coming shortly to see the red camellias. But there were no red camellias."

"I fail to understand."

"They'd gone, sir! Gone, every single one of them," cried our visitor hoarsely. "When I entered the conservatory, I just stood there holding the lamp above my head and wondering if I was stark mad. There was the famous shrub, all right, but of the dozen great blossoms which I had admired on it this very afternoon there remained not so much as a petal."

Sherlock Holmes stretched out a long arm for his pipe.

"Dear, dear," said he. "This is most gratifying. But pray continue your interesting narrative."

"I ran back to the library to tell them. 'But it is im­possible!' cried her ladyship. 'I saw the flowers myself when I plucked one for my dress just before dinner.' 'The man's been at the port!' said Sir John, and then, thrusting the jewel-case into the table drawer, he rushed for the conservatory with all the rest of them at his heels. But the camellias had gone."

"One moment," interrupted Holmes. "When were they seen last?"

"I saw them at four and as her ladyship picked one shortly before dinner, they were there about eight o'clock. But the flowers are of no matter, Mr. Holmes. It's the ruby!"

"Ah!"

Our visitor leaned forward in his chair.

"The library was empty for only a few minutes," he continued almost in a whisper. "But when Sir John, fair demented over the mystery of his flowers, returned and opened the drawer, the Abbas Ruby, together with its jewel-case, had vanished as completely as the red camellias."

For a moment we sat in silence broken only by the tinkle of burning embers falling in the grate.

"Joliffe," mused Holmes dreamily. "Andrew Joliffe. The Catterton diamond robbery, was it not?"

The man buried his face in his hands.

"I'm glad you know, sir," he muttered at last. "But as God is my judge I've kept straight since I came out three years ago. Captain Masterman was very good to me and got me this job with his brother-in-law, and from that day to this I've never let him down. I've been content to keep my wages, hoping that eventually I might save enough to buy my own cigar shop."

"Go on with your story."

"Well, sir, I was in the hall, having sent the stableboy for the police, when I caught Captain Masterman's voice through the half-opened door of the library. 'Damn it, John, I wanted to give a lame dog a chance,' said he, 'but I blame myself now that I did not tell you his past history. He must have slipped in here while everyone was in the conservatory and—' I waited for no more, sir, but telling Rogers, the footman, that if anybody wanted me then they would find me with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I ran here through the snow, believing from all I've heard that you will not think it beneath you to save from injustice one who has already paid his debt to so­ciety. You are my only hope, sir, and—My God, I knew it!"

The door had flown open and a tall, fair-haired man, wrapped to the ears in a snow-powdered cape, strode into the room.

"Ah, Gregson, we were expecting you."

"No doubt, Mr. Holmes," replied Inspector Gregson drily. "Well, this is our man, and so we'll be getting along."

Our wretched client leaped to his feet. "But I'm inno­cent! I never touched it!" he wailed.

The police-agent smiled sourly and, drawing from his pocket a flat box, he shook it under his prisoner's nose.

"God save us, it's the jewel-case!" gasped Joliffe.

"There, he admits it! Where was it found, you say? It was found where you put it, my man, under your mattress."

Joliffe's face had turned the colour of ashes. "But I never touched it," he repeated dully.

"One moment, Gregson," interposed Holmes. "Am I to understand that you have the Abbas Ruby?"

"No," he replied, "the case was empty. But it cannot be far, and Sir John is offering a reward of five thousand pounds."

"May I see the case? Thank you. Dear me, what a sorry sight. The lock unbroken but the hinges smashed. Flesh-coloured velvet. But surely—"

Whipping out his lens, Holmes laid the jewel-case beneath the reading lamp and examined it closely. "Most interesting," he said at length. "By the way, Joliffe, was the ruby mounted?"

"It was set in a carved gold locket and chain. But, oh, Mr. Holmes—"

"Rest assured I will do my best for you. Well, Gregson, we will detain you no longer."

The Scotland Yard man snapped a pair of handcuffs on our unhappy visitor and a moment later the door had closed behind them.

For a while, Holmes smoked thoughtfully. He had pulled up his chair to the blaze and, with his chin cupped in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees, he stared broodingly into the fire while the ruddy light waxed and waned on his keen finely drawn features.

"Have you ever heard of the Nonpareil Club, Watson?" he asked suddenly.

"The name is unfamiliar to me," I confessed.

"It is the most exclusive gambling club in London," he continued. "The Members' List, which is privately printed, reads like Debrett with a spicing of the Almanach de Gotha. I have had my eye upon it for sometime past."

"Good heavens, Holmes, why?"

"Where there is wealth follows crime, Watson. It is the one fixed principle that has governed man's wickedness through all his history."

"But what has this club to do with the Abbas Ruby?" I asked.

"Perhaps, nothing. Or again, everything. Kindly hand me down the Biographical Index marked 'M' from the shelf above the pipe-rack. Dear me, it is remarkable that one letter of the alphabet can embrace so many notorious names. You would find it profitable to study this list, Watson. But here is our man, I think. Mappins; Marston, the poisoner; Masterman. Captain the Honourable Bruce Mastennan, born 1856, educated at—h'm! ha!—suspected of implication in the Hilliers Dearbon inheritance forgery; secretary of Nonpareil Club; member of—quite so." My friend flung the book on the couch. "Well, Watson, are you game for a nocturnal excursion?"

"By all means, Holmes. But where?"

"We will be guided by circumstances."

The wind had fallen and as we emerged into the white, silent streets, the distant chimes of Big Ben struck the hour of ten. Though we were well muffled, it was so bitterly cold that I welcomed the need of our brisk walk to Marylebone Road before we could hail a hansom.

"It will do no harm to call at Manchester Square," remarked Holmes, as we tucked the rug about us and jingled away through the snow-covered streets. A short drive brought us to our destination, and as we alighted before the portico of an imposing Georgian house, Holmes pointed to the ground.

"The guests have gone already," said he, "for you will observe that these wheel-marks were made after the snow ceased to fall."

The footman who had opened the door to us took our cards, and a moment later we were ushered across the hall into a handsome library where a tall, thin man with greying hair and a most melancholy countenance was warming his coat-tails before a blazing fire. As we en­tered, a woman, who was reclining on a chaise lounge, rose to her feet and turned to look at us.

Though the leading artist of our day has immortalized Lady Doverton, I venture to think that no portrait will ever do full justice to this imperious and beautiful woman as we saw her then, in a gown of white satin with a single scarlet flower flaming at her bodice and the golden glow of the candles shining on her pale, perfectly chiselled face and drawing sparkles of fire from the diamonds that crowned her rich auburn hair. Her companion advanced on us eagerly.

"Really, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, this is most gratifying!" he cried. "That you should face the inclemency of the night in order to fasten upon the perpetrator of this out­rage speaks highly for your public spirit, sir! Most highly!"

Holmes bowed. "The Abbas Ruby is a famous stone, Sir John."

"Ah, the ruby. Yes, yes, of course," replied Sir John Doverton. "Most lamentable. Fortunately, there are buds. Your knowledge of flowers will tell you—" He broke off as his wife laid her fingers on his arm.

"As the matter is already in the hands of the police," she said haughtily, "I do not understand why we should be honoured by this visit from Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

"I shall take up very little of your time, Lady Doverton," replied my friend. "A few minutes in your conservatory should suffice."

"With what object, sir? What possible connection can there be between my husband's conservatory and the missing jewel?"

"It is that I wish to determine."

Lady Doverton smiled coldly. "In the meantime, the police will have arrested the thief."

"I think not."

"Absurd! The man who fled was a convicted jewel-robber. It is obvious."

"Perhaps too obvious, madam! Does it not strike you as somewhat singular that an ex-convict, though aware that his record was known already to your brother, should steal a famous stone from his own employer and then conveniently condemn himself by secreting the jewel-box under his mattress, where even Scotland Yard could be relied upon to search?"

Lady Doverton put a hand to her bosom. "I had not considered the matter in that light," she said.

"Naturally. But, dear me, what a beautiful blossom! I take it that this is the red camellia which you plucked this afternoon?"

"This evening, sir, just before dinner."

"Spes ultima gentis!" observed Sir John gloomily. "At least, until the next crop."

"Just so. It would interest me to see your conservatory."

We followed our guide along a short passage which, opening from the library, terminated in the glass door of a hothouse. While the famous horticulturist and I waited at the entrance, Holmes commenced a slow tour through the warm, stifling darkness, the lighted candle which he bore in his hand appearing and disappearing like some great glow-worm amid the weird shapes of cacti and curious tropical shrubs. Holding the light close to the camellia bush, he spent some time peering through his lens.

"The victims of a vandal's knife," groaned Sir John.

"No, they were snipped with a small pair of curved nail-scissors," Holmes remarked. "You will observe that there is no shredding on the stalks such as a knife would cause, and furthermore, the small cut on this leaf shows that the scissor-points overreached the stem of the flower. Well, I think that there is nothing more to be learned here."

We were retracing our steps when Holmes paused at a small window in the passage and, opening the catch, struck a match and craned over the sill.

"It overlooks a path used by the tradesmen," volun­teered Sir John.

I leaned over my friend's shoulder. Below, the snow lay in a long, smooth drift from the house wall to the edge of a narrow pathway. Holmes said nothing but, as he turned away, I noticed that there was something of surprise, almost of chagrin, in his expression.

Lady Doverton was awaiting us in the library.

"I fear that your reputation is overrated, Mr. Holmes," she said, with a gleam of amusement in her fine blue eyes. "I expected you to return with all the missing flowers and perhaps even the Abbas Ruby itself!"

"At least, I have every hope of returning you the latter, madam," said Holmes coldly.

"A dangerous boast, Mr. Holmes."

"Others will tell you that boasting is not among my habits. And now, as Dr. Watson and I are already some­what overdue at the Nonpareil Club—dear me, Lady Doverton, I fear that you have broken your fan—it only remains for me to express our regret for this intrusion and to wish you a very good night."

We had driven as far as Oxford Street when Holmes, who had sat in complete silence with his chin upon his breast, suddenly sprang to his feet, pushed up the trap and shouted an order to our driver.

"What a fool!" he cried, clapping a hand to his fore­head, as our hansom turned in its tracks. "What mental abberation!"

"What then?"

"Watson, if I ever show signs of self-satisfaction, kindly whisper the word 'camellias' in my ear."

A few minutes later, we had alighted again before the portico of Sir John Doverton's mansion. "There is no need to disturb the household," muttered Holmes. "I imagine that this is the gate into the tradesmen's entrance."

My friend led the way swiftly along the path skirting the wall of the house until we found ourselves under a window which I recognized as the one opening from the passage. Then, throwing himself on his knees he commenced carefully to scoop away the snow with his bare hands. After a few moments, he straightened himself and I saw that he had cleared a large dark patch.

"Let us risk a match, Watson," he chuckled.

I lit one and there, on the black earth exposed by Holmes's burrowings in the snow-drift, lay a little reddish-brown heap of frozen flowers.

"The camellias!" I exclaimed. "My dear fellow, what does this mean?"

My friend's face was very stern as he rose to his feet.

"Villainy, Watson!" said he. "Clever, calculated vil­lainy."

He picked up one of the dead flowers and stood for a while silently contemplating the dark, withered petals in the palm of his hand.

"It is as well for Andrew Joliffe that he reached Baker Street before Gregson reached him," he observed thoughtfully.

"Shall I raise the house?" I asked.

"Ever the man of action, Watson," he replied, with a dry chuckle. "No, my dear fellow, I think that we would be better employed in making our way quietly back to our hansom and then on to the purlieus of St. James's."

In the events of the evening, I had lost all sense of time, and it came as something of a shock when, as we wheeled from Piccadilly into St. James's Street and stopped before the door of an elegant, well-lighted house, I saw from the clock above Palace Yard that it was not far short of midnight.

"When its neighbours of clubland go to bed the Non­pareil Club comes into its own," remarked Holmes, ring­ing the bell. He scribbled a note on his calling-card and, handing it to the manservant at the door, he led the way into the hall.

As we followed the servant up a marble staircase to the floor above, I caught a glimpse of lofty and luxurious rooms in which small groups of men, clad in evening dress, were sitting about and reading papers or gathered round rosewood card-tables.

Our guide knocked at a door and a moment later we found ourselves in a small, comfortably furnished room hung with sporting prints and smelling strongly of cigar smoke. A tall, soldierly-looking man with a close-cropped moustache and thick auburn hair, who was lounging in a chair before the fireplace, made no attempt to rise at our entrance but, whirling Holmes's card between his fingers, surveyed us coldly through a pair of blue eyes that reminded me forcibly of Lady Doverton.

"You choose strange times to call, gentlemen," he said, with a trace of hostility in his voice. "It's cursed late."

"And getting later," my friend observed. "No, Captain Masterman, a chair is unnecessary. I prefer to stand."

"Stand, then. What do you want?"

"The Abbas Ruby," said Sherlock Holmes quietly.

I started and gripped my stick. There was a moment of silence while Masterman stared up at Holmes from the depth of his chair. Then throwing back his head, he laughed heartily.

"My dear sir, you must really excuse me!" he cried at length, his handsome face all a-grin. "But your demand is a little excessive. The Nonpareil Club does not number absconding servants among its members. You must seek elsewhere for Joliffe."

"I have already spoken with Joliffe."

"Ah, I see," he sneered. "Then you represent the inter­ests of the butler?"

"No, I represent the interests of justice," replied Holmes sternly.

"Dear me, how very imposing. Well, Mr. Holmes, your demand was so worded that it is lucky for you that I have no witnesses or it would go hard with you in a court of law. A cool five thousand guineas' worth of slander, I should say. You'll find the door behind you."

Holmes strolled across to the fireplace and, drawing his watch from his pocket, compared it with the clock on the mantelpiece.

"It is now five minutes after midnight," he remarked. "You have until nine o'clock in the morning to return the jewel to me at Baker Street."

Masterman bounded from his chair.

"Now look here, damn you—" he snarled.

"It won't do, Captain Masterman, really it won't do. However, that you may realize that I am not bluffing, I will run over a few points for your edification. You knew Joliffe's past record and you got him the post with Sir John as a possible sinecure for the future."

"Prove it, you cursed busybody!"

"Later you needed money," continued Holmes imper­turbably, "a great deal of money, to judge from the value of the Abbas Ruby. I have no doubt that an examination of your card losses would give us the figure. Thereupon you contrived, I regret to add with your sister's help, a scheme that was as cunning in its conception as it was merciless in its execution.

"From Lady Doverton you obtained precise details of the jewel-case containing the stone, and you caused a duplicate of this case to be constructed. The difficulty was to know when Sir John would withdraw the ruby from the safe, which he did but rarely. The coming dinner ­party at which you were to be one of the guests suggested a very simple solution. Relying on the wholehearted sup­port of the ladies, you would ask your brother-in-law to bring down the jewel. But how to ensure that he and the others would leave the room while the jewel was there? I fear that, here, we come upon the subtle traces of the feminine mind. There could be no surer way than to play upon Sir John's pride in his famous red camellias. It worked out exactly as you foresaw.

"When Joliffe returned with the news that the bush had been stripped, Sir John instantly thrust the jewel-case into the nearest receptacle and, followed by his guests, rushed to the conservatory. You slipped back, pocketed the case and, on the robbery being discovered, volunteered the perfectly true information that his wretched butler was a convicted jewel-thief. However, though cleverly planned and boldly executed, you made two cardinal errors.

"The first was that the duplicate jewel-case, which had been rather amateurishly smashed and then planted un­der the mattress of Joliffe's bed, probably some hours in advance, was lined in a pale velvet. My lens disclosed that this delicate surface contained not the slightest trace of rubbing such as invariably occurs from the mounting of a pendant jewel.

"The second error was fatal. Your sister stated that she had plucked the blossom in her gown immediately prior to dinner and, such being the case, the flowers must have been there at eight o'clock. I asked myself what I should do if I wished to dispose of a dozen blossoms as swiftly as possible. The answer was the nearest window, In this instance, the one in the passage.

"But the snow which lay in a deep drift below disclosed no traces whatever. This, I confess, caused me some perplexity until, as Dr. Watson can testify, the obvious solu­tion dawned on me. I rushed back and proceeding very carefully to remove the snow-drift under the window, I came upon the remains of the missing camellias lying on the frozen earth. As they were too light to sink through the snow, they must have been flung there before the snow-fall commenced at six o'clock. Lady Doverton's story was therefore a fabrication and, in those withered flowers, lay the answer to the whole problem."

During my friend's exposition, I had watched the angry flush on Captain Masterman's face fade into an ugly pallor and now, as Holmes ceased, he crossed swift­ly to a desk in the corner, an ominous glint in his eyes.

"I wouldn't," said Holmes pleasantly.

Masterman paused with his hand on the drawer.

"What are you going to do?" he rasped.

"Providing that the Abbas Ruby is returned to me before nine o'clock, I shall make no public exposure and doubtless Sir John Doverton will forbear further en­quiries at my request. I am protecting his wife's name. Were it otherwise, you would feel the full weight of my hand upon you, Captain Masterman, for when I consider your inveiglement of your sister and your foul plot to ensnare an innocent man, I am hard put to it to recall a more blackguardly villain."

"But the scandal, curse you!" cried Masterman. "What of the scandal in the Nonpareil Club? I'm over my ears in card debts and if I give up the ruby—" he paused and shot us a swift furtive glance. "Look here, Holmes, what about a sporting proposition—?"

My friend turned towards the door.

"You have until nine o'clock," he said coldly. "Come, Watson."

The snow had begun to fall again as we waited in St. James's Street while the porter whistled for a cab.

"My dear fellow, I'm afraid that you must be very tired," Holmes remarked.

"On the contrary, I am always invigorated by your company," I answered.

"Well, you have deserved a few hours' rest. Our ad­ventures are over for tonight"

But my friend spoke too soon. A belated hansom carried us to Baker Street, and I was in the act of opening the front door with my latch-key when our attention was arrested by the lamps of a carriage approaching swiftly from the direction of Marlebone Road. The vehicle, a closed four-wheeler, came to a halt a few yards down the street and, an instant later, the muffled figure of a woman hurried towards us. Though her features were hidden under a heavy veil, there was something vaguely familiar in her tall, graceful form and the queenly poise of her head as she stood face to face with us on the snow-covered pavement.

"I wish to speak with you, Mr. Holmes," she cried imperiously.

My friend raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps you would go ahead, Watson, and light the gas," he said quietly.

In the years of my association with the cases of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have seen many beautiful women cross our threshold. But I cannot recall one whose beauty surpassed that of the woman who now, with a deep rustle of skirts, entered our modest sitting-room.

She had thrown back her veil and the gas-light illum­ined with a pale radiance her perfect face and the bril­liance of her long-lashed blue eyes which met and chal­lenged Holmes's stern and uncompromising glance.

"I had not expected this late visit, Lady Doverton," he said austerely.

"I thought that you were omniscient, Mr. Holmes," she replied, with a faint mockery ringing in her voice. "But, perhaps you know nothing about women."

"I fail to see—"

"Must I remind you of your boast? The loss of the Abbas Ruby is a disaster, and I could not rest in my anxiety to know whether or not you have fulfilled your promise. Come, sir, admit that you have failed."

"On the contrary, I have succeeded."

Our visitor rose from her chair, her eyes glittering.

"This is an ill jest, Mr. Holmes," she cried haughtily.

I have remarked elsewhere that, despite his profound distrust of the opposite sex, it was my friend's nature to be chivalrous to women. But now, for the first time, as he faced Lady Doverton, I saw his face harden ominously in the presence of a woman.

"The hour is a trifle late for tiresome pretences, mad­am," said he. "I have visited the Nonpareil Club and taken some pains to explain to your brother both the manner in which he acquired the Abbas Ruby and the part which you—"

"My God!"

"—which you, I say, played in the matter. I beg that you will spare me my delusion that you played that part unwillingly."

For an instant the beautiful, imperious creature faced Holmes in the circle of lamplight, then, with a low moan­ing cry, she fell on her knees, her hands clutching at his coat. Holmes stooped and raised her swiftly.

"Kneel to your husband, Lady Doverton, and not to me," he said quietly. "Indeed, you have much to answer for."

"I swear to you—"

"Hush, I know all. Not a word shall pass my lips."

"You mean that you will not tell him?" she gasped.

"I see nothing to be gained thereby. Joliffe will be released in the morning, of course, and the affair of the Abbas Ruby brought to a close."

"God reward you for your mercy," she whispered brokenly. "I will do my best to make amends. But my unfortunate brother—his losses at cards—"

"Ah, yes, Captain Masterman. I do not think, Lady Doverton, that you have cause to worry too deeply over that gentleman. Captain Masterman's bankruptcy and the resultant scandal in the Nonpareil Club may have the result of starting him upon a more honourable path than that which he has pursued up to now. Indeed, once the scandal has become a thing of the past, Sir John might be persuaded to arrange a commission for him in some overseas military service. From what I have seen of that young man's enterprise and address, I have no doubt that he would do very well on the North-West frontier of India."

Evidently, I was more fatigued than I had supposed by the events of the night, and I did not awake until nearly ten o'clock. When I entered our sitting-room, I found that Sherlock Holmes had already finished his breakfast and was lounging in front of the fire in his old red dressing-gown, his feet stretched out to the blaze and the air rancid with the smoke of his after-breakfast pipe composed of the previous day's dottles. I rang for Mrs. Hudson and ordered a pot of coffee and some rashers and eggs.

"I'm glad that you're in time, Watson," he said, shoot­ing an amused glance at me from beneath his drooping lids.

"Mrs. Hudson's capability to produce breakfast at any hour is not least among her virtues," I replied.

"Quite so. But I was not referring to your breakfast. I am expecting Sir John Doverton."

"In that case, Holmes, as it is a delicate affair, it would be better perhaps that I leave you alone."

Holmes waved me back to my seat. "My dear fellow, I shall be glad of your presence. And here, I think, is our visitor a few minutes before his time."

There came a knock on the door and the tall, stooping figure of the well-known horticulturist entered the room. "You have news for me, Mr. Holmes!" he cried im­petuously. "Speak out, sir, speak out! I am all attention."

"Yes, I have news for you," Holmes replied with a slight smile.

Sir John darted forward. "Then the camellias—" he began.

"Well, well. Perhaps we would be wise to forget the red camellias. I noticed a goodly crop of buds on the bush."

"I thank God that is true," said our visitor devoutly, "and I am glad to perceive, Mr. Holmes, that you place a higher value on the ascetic rarities of Nature than on the intrinsic treasures of man's handiwork. Nevertheless, there still remains the dreadful loss of the Abbas Ruby. Have you any hope of recovering the jewel?"

"There is every hope. But, before we discuss the matter any further, I beg that you will join me in a glass of port." Sir John raised his eyebrows. "At this hour, Mr. Holmes?" he exclaimed. "Really, sir, I hardly think—"

"Come now," smiled Sherlock Holmes, filling three glasses at the sideboard and handing one to our visitor. "It is a chill morning and I can heartily recommend the rarity of this vintage."

With a slight frown of disapproval, Sir John Doverton lifted the glass to his lips. There was a moment of silence broken by a sudden startled cry. Our visitor, his face as white as the piece of linen which he had put to his mouth, stared wildly from Holmes to the flaming, flashing crystal which had fallen from his lips into his handkerchief. "The Abbas Ruby!" he gasped.

Sherlock Holmes broke into a hearty laugh and clapped his hands together.

"Really you must forgive me!" he cried. "My friend Dr. Watson will tell you that I can never resist these somewhat dramatic touches. It is perhaps the Vernet blood in my veins."

Sir John Doverton gazed thunder-struck at the great jewel, smouldering and winking against its background of white linen.

"Good heavens, I can scarcely credit my own eyes," he said in a shaking voice. "But how on earth did you re­cover it?"

"Ah, there I must crave your indulgence. Suffice to say that your butler, Joliffe, who was a sorely wronged man, was released this morning and that the jewel is now re­turned safely to its rightful owner," replied Holmes kind­ly. "Here is the locket and chain from which I took the liberty of removing the stone in order that I might play my little trick upon you by concealing the ruby in your port wine. I beg that you will press the matter no further."

"It shall be as you wish, Mr. Holmes," said Sir John earnestly. "Indeed I have cause to place every confidence in your judgement. But what can I do to express—"

"Well, I am far from a rich man and I shall leave it to you whether or not I have deserved your five thousand pounds reward."

"Many times over," cried John Doverton, drawing a cheque-book from his pocket "Furthermore, I shall send you a cutting from my red camellias."

Holmes bowed gravely.

"I shall place it in the special charge of Watson," he said. "By the way, Sir John, I will be glad if you would make out two separate cheques. One for Ј2500 in favour of Sherlock Holmes, and the other for a similar amount in favour of Andrew Joliffe. I fear that from this time forward you might find your former butler a trifle nervous in his domestic duties, and this sum of money should be ample to set him up in the cigar business, thus fulfilling the secret ambition of his life. Thank you, my dear sir. And now I think that for once we might really break our morning habits and, by partaking a glass of port, modestly celebrate the successful conclusion of the case of the Abbas Ruby."

----:----

Since . . . our visit to Devonshire, he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost im­portance . . . the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club ... and the unfortunate Madame Montpensier.

FROM "THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES."

9

The Adventure of the Dark Angels

"I am afraid, Watson, that the Nordic temperament offers little scope for the student of crime. It tends towards an altogether deplorable banality," remarked Holmes, as we turned from Oxford Street towards the less crowded pave­ments of Baker Street. It was a clear, crisp morning in May of 1901 and the uniforms of the lean, bronzed men who were flocking the streets on leave from the South African war struck a note of welcome gaiety against the sombre dresses of the women who were still in mourning for the death of the late Queen.

"I can remind you, Holmes, of a dozen instances among your own cases that disprove your assertion," I replied, noting with some satisfaction that our morning walk had brought a touch of colour to my friend's sallow cheeks.

"For instance?" he asked.

"Well, Dr. Grimesby Roylott of infamous memory. The use of a tame snake for the purpose of murder cannot be lightly dismissed as a banality."

"My dear fellow, your example proves my contention. From some fifty cases, we recall Dr. Roylott, 'Holy' Peters and one or two others merely for the reason that they employed an imaginative approach to crime which was startlingly at variance with the normal practice. Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to think that, just as Cuvier could reconstruct the complete animal from one bone, so the logical reasoner could tell from a nation's cooking the prevailing characteristics of the nation's criminals."

"I can observe no parallel," I laughed.

"Think it over, Watson. There, incidentally," he con­tinued, gesturing with his stick towards a chocolate-coloured omnibus which, with a grinding of brakes and a merry jingle from the horses' harness, had drawn up on the opposite side, "you have a good example. It is one of the French omnibuses. Look at the driver, Watson, all fire and nerves and concentrated emotion as he argues with the petty officer on long leave from a naval shore station. It is the difference between the subtle and the positive, French sauce and English gravy. How could two such men approach crime from the same angle?"

"Be that as it may," I replied, "I fail to see how you can tell that the man in the check coat is a petty officer on long leave."

"Tut, Watson, when a man wearing a Crimea ribbon on his waistcoat, and therefore too old for active service, is shod in comparatively new naval boots, it is surely obvious that he has been recalled from retirement. His air of authority is above that of the ordinary sailor and yet his complexion is no more bronzed or wind-roughened than that of the bus-driver. The man is a naval petty officer attached to a shore station or training camp."

"And the long leave?"

"He is in civilian clothes and yet has not been dis­charged, for you will observe that he is filling his pipe from a plug of regulation naval twist which is unobtainable at tobacconists. But here we are at 221-B and in time, I trust, to catch the visitor who has called during our absence."

I surveyed the blank door of the house. "Really, Holmes!" I protested. "You go a little too far."

"Very seldom, Watson. The wheels of most public carriages are repainted at this time of the year and if you will bother to glance at the kerb you will perceive a long green mark where a wheel has scraped the edge and which was not there when we departed an hour ago. The cab was kept waiting for sometime, for the driver has twice knocked out the dottle from his pipe. We can but hope that the fare decided to await our return after dismissing the vehicle."

As we mounted the stairs, Mrs. Hudson appeared from the lower regions.

"There's been a visitor here nigh on an hour, Mr. Holmes," she stated. "She is waiting in your sitting-room, and that tired she looked, the poor pretty creature, that I took the liberty of bringing her a nice strong cup of tea."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. You did very well."

My friend glanced at me and smiled but there was a gleam in his deep-set eyes. "The game's afoot, Watson," he said quietly.

Upon our entering the sitting-room, our visitor rose to meet us. She was a fair-haired young lady, still in her early twenties, slim and dainty, with a delicate complex­ion and large blue eyes that contained a hint of violet in their depths. She was plainly but neatly dressed in a fawn-coloured travelling-costume with a hat of the same colour relieved by a small mauve feather. I noted these details almost unconsciously for, as a medical man, my attention was arrested at once by the dark shadows lurk­ing beneath her eyes and the quiver of her lips that betrayed an intensity of nervous tension perilously near the breaking-point.

With an apology for his absence, Holmes ushered her to a chair before the fireplace, and then sinking into his own surveyed her searchingly from beneath his heavy lids.

"I perceive that you are deeply troubled," he said kindly. "Rest assured that Dr. Watson and I are here to serve you, Miss..."

"My name is Daphne Ferrers," supplied our visitor. Then, leaning forward suddenly in her chair, she stared up into Holmes's face with a singular intentness. "Would you say that the heralds of death are dark angels?" she whispered.

Holmes shot me a swift glance.

"You have no objection to my pipe, I trust, Miss Ferrers," said he, stretching out an arm towards the mantelpiece. "Now, young lady, we have all to meet a Dark Angel eventually, but that is hardly an adequate reason for consulting two middle-aged gentlemen in Baker Street. You would do far better to tell me your story from the beginning."

"How foolish you must think me," cried Miss Fer­rers, the pallor of her cheeks giving place to a faint but becoming blush. "And yet, when you have heard my story, when you have heard the very facts that are driving me slowly mad with fear, you may only laugh at me."

"Rest assured that I shall not."

Our visitor paused for a moment as though marshal­ling her thoughts, and then plunged forthwith into her strange narrative.

"You must know, then, that I am the daughter and only child of Josua Ferrers of Abbotstanding in Hampshire," she began. "My father's cousin is Sir Robert Nor­burton of Shoscombe Old Place, with whom you were acquainted some years ago, and it was on his recommen­dation that I have rushed to you at the climax of my troubles."

Holmes, who had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, took his pipe from his mouth.

"Why, then, did you not come to me last night when you arrived in town instead of waiting until this morning?" he interposed.

Miss Ferrers started visibly.

"It was only when I dined with Sir Robert last night that he advised me to see you. But I do not understand, Mr. Holmes, how could you know ..."

"Tut, young lady, it is simple enough. The right cuff and elbow of your jacket bear slight but unmistakable traces of sooty dust inseparable from a window-seat in a railway carriage. Your shoes, on the other hand, are perfectly cleaned and burnished to that high degree of polish that is characteristic of a good hotel."

"Do you not think, Holmes," I interrupted, "that we should listen without further ado to Miss Ferrers' story. Speaking as a medical man, it is high time that her troubles were lifted from her shoulders."

Our fair visitor thanked me prettily with a glance from her blue eyes.

"As you should know by now, Watson, I have my methods," said Holmes with some asperity. "However, Miss Ferrers, we are all attention. Pray continue."

"I should explain," she went on "that the earlier part of my father's life was spent in Sicily where he had inherited large interests in vineyards and olive groves. Following my mother's death, he seemed to tire of the country and, having amassed a considerable fortune, my father sold his interests and retired to England. For more than a year, we moved from county to county in search of a house that should suit my father's somewhat peculiar requirements before deciding at length on Abbotstanding near Beaulieu in the New Forest."

"One moment, Miss Ferrers. Pray enumerate these peculiar requirements."

"My father is of a singularly retiring disposition, Mr. Holmes. Above all else, he insisted on a sparsely popu­lated locality, and an estate that should lie at some miles' distance from the nearest railway station. In Abbotstanding, an almost ruinous castellated mansion of great antiquity and once the hunting-lodge of the Abbots of Beaulieu, he found what he sought and, certain necessary repairs having been effected, we settled finally into our home. That, Mr. Holmes, was five years ago, and from that day to this we have lived under the shadow of a nameless, shapeless dread."

"If nameless and shapeless, then how were you aware of its existence?"

"Through the circumstances governing our lives. My father would permit no social contact with our few neighbours and even our household needs were supplied not from the nearest village but by carrier's van from Lynd­hurst. The staff consists of the butler McKinney, a surly, morose man whom my father hired in Glasgow, and his wife and her sister who share the domestic work between them."

"And the outside staff?"

"There are none. The grounds were permitted to be­come a wilderness and the place is already overrun with vermin of all descriptions."

"I see nothing alarming in these circumstances, Miss Ferrers," remarked Holmes. "Indeed, if I lived in the country, I should probably create around me very similar conditions to discourage unprofitable intercourse with my neighbours. The household consists, then, of yourself and your father and the three servants?"

"The household, yes. But there is a cottage on the estate occupied by Mr. James Tonston who for many years managed our Sicilian vineyards before accompanying my father on his return to England. He acts as bailiff."

Holmes raised his eyebrows. "Indeed," said he. "An estate that is allowed to grow into a wilderness, no tenants and a bailiff. Surely a somewhat curious anomaly?"

"It is a nominal appointment only, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Tonston enjoys my father's confidence and occupies his position at Abbotstanding in recognition of the earlier years spent in his service in Sicily."

"Ah, quite so."

"My father himself seldom leaves the house and on the few occasions when he does he never goes beyond the confines of his own park walls. Where there is love and understanding and mutual interest, such a life might be tolerable. But, alas, such is not the case at Abbotstand­ing. My father's character, though God-fearing, is not of a type to encourage affection and, as time went on, his disposition, always severe and retiring, deepened into periods of gloomy, savage brooding when he would lock himself into his study for days on end. As you can imagine, Mr. Holmes, there was little of interest and less of happiness for a young woman isolated from friends of her own age, deprived of all social contacts and fore­doomed to spend the best years of her life in the desolate magnificence of a half-ruinous mediaeval hunting-lodge. Our existence was one of absolute monotony and then, some five months ago, occurred an incident which, in­significant enough in itself, formed the first of that singu­lar chain of events which have brought me to lay my problems before you.

"I was returning from an early-morning walk in the park and on entering the avenue leading from the lodge-gates to the house, I observed that there was something nailed to the bole of an oak tree. On closer examination I discovered the object to be an ordinary coloured print of the type used for illustrating Christmas carols or cheap books on religious art. But the theme of the picture was unusual, even arresting.

"It consisted of a night sky broken by a barren hilltop on the brow of which, in two separate groups of six and three, stood nine winged angels. As I stared at the picture, I was puzzled to explain the note of incongruity that jarred through my senses until, in an instant, I perceived the reason. It was the first time that I had beheld angels portrayed not in radiance but in robes of funeral darkness. Across the lower part of the print were scrawled the words 'six and three.' "

As our visitor paused, I glanced across at Sherlock Holmes. His brows were drawn down and his eyes closed, but I could tell from the quick spirals of smoke rising from his pipe that his interest had been deeply stirred.

"My first reaction," she went on, "was that it was a curious way for the carrier-man from Lyndhurst to deliver some new-fangled calendar and so, plucking it down, I took it in with me, and was on my way upstairs to my room when I met my father on the landing.

" 'This was on a tree in the avenue,' I said. 'I think McKinney should tell the Lyndhurst carrier to deliver at the tradesmen's entrance instead of pinning things in odd places. I prefer angels in white, don't you, Papa?"

"The words were hardly out of my mouth before he had snatched the print from me. For a moment, he stood speechless, glaring down at the piece of paper in his shaking hands while the colour ebbed from his face, leaving it drawn and livid.

" 'What is it, Papa?' I cried, clutching him by the arm. " 'The Dark Angels,' he whispered. Then, with a ges­ture of horror, he shook off my hand and rushing into his study, locked and bolted the door behind him.

"From that day on, my father never left the house. His time was spent in reading and writing in his study or in long conferences with James Tonston whose gloomy and severe character is somewhat akin to his own. I saw him seldom save at meal-times and it would have been un­bearable for me were it not for the fact that I had the friendship of one noble-hearted woman, Mrs. Nordham, the wife of the Beaulieu doctor, who perceiving the deso­lation of my life persisted in calling to see me two or three times a week despite my father's open hostility to what he considered an unwarranted intrusion.

"It was some weeks later, on February 11th, to be precise, that our manservant came to me just after break­fast with a most curious expression on his face.

" 'It's not the Lyndhurst carrier this time,' he an­nounced sourly, 'and I don't like it, miss.'

" 'What is the matter, McKinney?'

" 'Ask the front door,' said he, and went away mum­bling and stroking his beard.

"I hastened to the entrance and there, nailed to the front door, was a similar print to that which I had found on the oak tree in the avenue. And yet it was not exactly similar, for this time the angels were only six in number and the figure '6' was marked on the bottom of the page. I tore it down and was gazing at it with an inexplicable chill in my heart when a hand reached out and took it from my fingers. Turning round I found Mr. Tonston standing behind me. 'It is not for you, Miss Ferrers,' he said gravely, 'and for that you can thank your Maker.'

" 'But what does it mean?' I cried wildly. 'If there is danger to my father, then why does he not summon the police?'

" 'Because we do not need the police,' he replied. 'Be­lieve me, your father and I are quite capable of dealing with the situation, my dear young lady.' And, turning on his heel, he vanished into the house. He must have taken the picture to my father, for he kept to his room for a week afterwards."

"One moment," interrupted Holmes. "Can you recall the exact date when you found the picture on the oak tree?"

"It was December 29th."

"And the second appeared on the front door on February 11th, you say. Thank you, Miss Ferrers. Pray pro­ceed with your interesting narrative."

"One evening, it would be about a fortnight later," continued our client, "my father and I were sitting together at the dinner-table. It was a wild, tempestuous night with driving squalls of rain and a wind that sobbed and howled like a lost soul down the great yawning chimney-pieces of the ancient mansion. The meal was over and my father was moodily drinking his port by the light of the heavy candle-branches that illumined the dining-table when, raising his eyes to mine, he was seized with some reflection of the utter horror that was at that very instant freezing the blood in my veins. Immediately in front of me, and behind him, there was a window, the curtains of which were not fully drawn, leaving a space of rain-splashed glass that threw back a dim glow from the candlelight.

"Peering through this glass was a man's face.

"The lower part of his features was covered with his hand, but beneath the rim of a shapeless hat a pair of eyes, grinning and baleful, glared into my own.

"My father must have realized instinctively that the danger lay behind him for, seizing a heavy candelabrum from the table, in one movement he turned and flung it at the window.

"There was an appalling crash of glass, and I caught a glimpse of the curtains streaming like great crimson bat-wings in the wind that howled through the shattered casement. The flame of the remaining candles blew flat and dim, and then I must have fainted. When I came to myself, I was lying on my bed. The next day, my father made no reference to the incident and the window was repaired by a man from the village. And now, Mr. Holmes, my story draws to its close.

"On March 25th, exactly six weeks and three days ago, when my father and I took our places for breakfast, there upon the table lay the print of the demon angels, six and three. But this time there was no number scrawled across the lower portion."

"And your father?" asked Holmes very seriously.

"My father has resigned himself with the calm of a man who waits upon an inescapable destiny. For the first time for many years, he looked at me gently. 'It has come,' said he, 'and it is well.'

"I threw myself on my knees beside him, imploring him to call in the police, to put an end to this mystery that threw its chill shadow over our desolate lives. 'The shadow is nearly lifted, my child,' he replied.

"Then, after a moment's hesitation, he laid his hand upon my head.

" 'If anybody, any stranger, should communicate with you,' said he, 'say only that your father kept you always in ignorance of his affairs and that he bade you state that the name of the maker is in the butt of the gun. Remember those words and forget all else, if you value that happier, better life that will shortly commence for you,' With that he rose and left the room.

"Since that time, I have seen little of him and, at last, taking my courage in both hands, I wrote to Sir Robert that I was in deep trouble and wished to meet him. Then, inventing an excuse, I slipped away yesterday and came up to London where Sir Robert, having heard a little of the story from my lips, advised me to lay my problem frankly before you."

I have never seen my friend more grave. His brows were drawn down over his eyes and he shook his head despondently.

"It is kindest in the long run that I should be frank with you," he said at last. "You must plan a new life for yourself, preferably in London where you will quickly make new friends of your own age."

"But my father?"

Holmes rose to his feet.

"Dr. Watson and I will accompany you at once to Hampshire. If I cannot prevent, at least I may be able to avenge."

"Holmes!" I cried, horror-struck.

"It's no good, Watson," he said, laying his fingers gently on Miss Ferrers' shoulder. "It would be the basest treachery to this brave young lady to arouse hopes that I cannot share. It is better that we face the facts."

"The facts!" I replied. "Why, a man may have a foot in the grave and yet live."

Holmes looked at me curiously for a moment.

"True, Watson," he said thoughtfully. "But we must waste no further time. Unless my memory belies me, there is a train to Hampshire within the hour. A few necessities in a bag should meet the case."

I was hastily gathering my things together when Holmes came into my bedroom.

"It might be advisable to take your revolver," he said softly.

"Then there is danger?"

"Deadly danger, Watson." He smote his forehead with his hand. "My God, what irony. She has come just a day too late."

As we accompanied Miss Ferrers from the sitting-room, Holmes paused at the bookshelf to slip a slim calf-bound volume into the pocket of his Inverness cape and then, scribbling a telegram, he handed the form to Mrs. Hudson in the hallway. "Kindly see that it is dispatched immedi­ately," said he.

A four-wheeler carried us to Waterloo, where we were just in time to catch a Bournemouth train stopping at Lyndhurst Road Station.

It was a melancholy journey. Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his corner seat, his ear-flapped travelling-cap drawn over his eyes and his long, thin fingers tapping restlessly on the window-ledge. I tried to engage our companion in conversation and to convey a little of the sympathy that I felt for her in this time of anxiety, but though her replies were gracious and kindly it was obvi­ous that her mind was preoccupied with her own thoughts. I think that we were all glad when, some two hours later, we alighted at the little Hampshire station. As we reached the gates, a pleasant-faced woman hurried forward.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" said she. "Thank heavens that the Beaulieu Post Office delivered your telegram in time. Daphne, my dear!"

"Mrs. Nordham! But—but I don't understand."

"Now, Miss Ferrers," said Holmes soothingly. "It would help us greatly if you will entrust yourself to your friend. Mrs. Nordham, I know that you will take good care of her. Come, Watson."

We hailed a fly in the station yard and, in a few moments, we were free from the hamlet and bowling along a desolate road that stretched away straight as a ribbon, rising and dipping and rising again over lonely expanses of heath broken here and there by clumps of holly and bounded in every direction by the dark out-spurs of a great forest. After some miles, on mounting a long hill, we saw below us a sheet of water and the grey, hoary ruins of Beaulieu Abbey, then the road plunged into the forest and some ten minutes later we wheeled beneath an arch of crumbling masonry into an avenue lined by noble oak trees whose interlocked branches met overhead in a gloomy twilight. Holmes pointed forward. "It is as I feared," he said bitterly. "We are too late."

Riding in the same direction as ourselves but far ahead of us down the avenue, I caught a glimpse of a police-constable on a bicycle.

The drive opened out into a wooded park with a gaunt, battlemented mansion set amid the broken terraces and parterres of that saddest of all spectacles, an old-world garden run to wilderness and bathed in the red glow of the setting sun. At some little distance from the house, a group of men were gathered beside a stunted cedar tree and at a word from Holmes, our driver pulled up and we hurried towards them across the turf.

The group was composed of the policeman, a gentle­man with a small bag which I easily recognized and lastly a man in brown country tweeds with a pale, sunken face framed in mutton-chop whiskers. As we drew near, they turned towards us, and I could not repress an exclamation of horror at the spectacle that their movement disclosed to our eyes.

At the foot of the cedar tree lay the body of an elderly man. His arms were outstretched, the fingers gripping the grass and his beard thrust up at so grotesque an angle that his features were hidden from view. The bone gleamed in bis gaping throat while the ground about bis head was stained into one great crimson halo. The doctor stepped forward hurriedly.

"This is a shocking affair, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," he cried nervously. "My wife hastened to the station as soon as she received your wire. I trust that she was in time to meet Miss Ferrers?"

"Thank you, yes. Alas, that I could not myself have got here in time."

"It seems that you expected the tragedy, sir," observed the policeman suspiciously.

"I did, constable. Hence my presence."

"Well, I'd like to know . . ." Holmes tapped him on the arm and, leading him to one side, spoke a few words. When they rejoined us, there was a trace of relief in the man's worried face. "It shall be as you wish, sir," he said, "and you can rely on Mr. Tonston repeating his statement to you."

The man in tweeds turned his sunken face and pale grey eyes in our direction. "I don't see why I should," he said tartly. "You're the law, aren't you, Constable Kibble, and you've taken my statement already. I have nothing to add. You would be better employed in sending in your report of Mr. Ferrers' suicide."

"Suicide?" interposed Holmes sharply.

"Aye, what else? He's been glooming for weeks past, as all the household can testify, and now he's cut his throat from ear to ear."

"H'm." Holmes dropped on his knees beside the body. "And this is the weapon, of course. A horn-handled clasp-knife with a retractable blade. Italian, I perceive."

"How do you know that?"

"It has the mark of a Milanese bladesmith. But what is this? Dear me, What a curious object."

He rose to his feet and closely examined the thing which he had picked up from the grass. It was a short-barrelled rifle, cut off immediately behind the trigger by a hinged stock, so that the whole weapon folded into two parts. "It was lying by his head," observed the constable. "Seems that he was expecting trouble and took it with him for protection."

Holmes shook his head. "It has not been loaded," he said, "for you will observe that the grease is undisturbed in the breech. But what have we here? Perhaps, Watson, you would lend me your pencil and handkerchief."

"It's only the hole in the stock for the cleaning rod," rapped Mr. Tonston.

"I am aware of that. Tut, this is most curious."

"What then? You stuck the handkerchief wrapped round the pencil into the hole and now you've withdrawn it. There's nothing on the handkerchief, and yet you find it curious. What the devil did you expect?"

"Dust."

"Dust?"

"Precisely. Something has been hidden in the hole and hence the fact that the walls are clean. Normally there is always dust in the stock-holes of guns. But I should be glad to hear a few facts from you, Mr. Tonston, as I understand that you were the first to raise the alarm. It will save time if I hear them from your own lips instead of reading through your statement."

"Well, there's little enough to tell," said he. "An hour ago, I strolled out for a breath of air and caught sight of Mr. Ferrers standing under this tree. When I hailed him, he looked round and then, turning away, seemed to put his hand up to his throat. I saw him stagger and fall. When I ran up, he was lying as you see him now, with his throat gaping and the knife on the grass beside him. There was nothing I could do save send the manservant for Dr. Nordham and the constable. That's all."

"Most illuminating. You were with Mr. Ferrers in Sicily, were you not?"

"I was."

"Well, gentlemen, I shall detain you no longer if you wish to return to the house. Watson, perhaps you would care to remain with me. And you too, Constable."

As the doctor and Tonston vanished through the par­terres, Holmes was galvanized into activity. For a while, he circled the grass about the dead man on his hands and knees, like some lean, eager foxhound casting for its scent. Once he stooped and peered at the ground very closely, then rising to his feet, he whipped his lens from his pocket and proceeded to a searching examination of the trunk of the cedar. Suddenly he stiffened and at his gesture the constable and I hastened to his side. Holmes pointed with his finger as he handed the glass to the police-officer. "Examine the edge of that knot," he said quietly. "What do you see?"

"Looks to me like a hair, sir," replied Constable Kibble, gazing through the lens. "No, it's not a hair. It's a brown thread."

"Quite so. Perhaps you would kindly remove it and place it in this envelope. Now Watson, give me a hand up." Holmes scrambled into the fork of the tree and, sup­porting himself by the branches, peered about him, "Ha, what have we here!" he chuckled. "A fresh scrape on the trunk, traces of mud in the fork and another small thread from some coarse brownish material clinging to the bark where a man might lean his back. Quite a treasure-trove. I am about to jump down and I want you both to watch the exact place where I land. So!" He stepped to one side. "Now, what do you see?"

"Two small indentations."

"Precisely. The marks of my heels. Look wider."

"By Jingo!" cried the constable. "There are four, not two! They are identical."

"Save that the others are not quite so deep."

"The man was lighter!" I ejaculated.

"Bravo, Watson. Well, I think that we have seen all that we need."

The officer fixed Holmes with his earnest eyes. "Look here, sir," he said. "I'm clean out of my depth. What's all this mean?"

"Probably your sergeant's stripes, Constable Kibble. And now, let us join the others."

When we reached the house, the police-officer showed us into a long, sparsely furnished room with a groined roof. Doctor Nordham, who was writing at a table in the window, looked up at our entrance. "Well, Mr. Holmes?"

"You are preparing your report, I perceive," my friend remarked. "May I suggest that you pay particular regard that you do not convey a false impression?"

Dr. Nordham gazed stonily at Holmes. "I fail to under­stand you," said he. "Can you not be more explicit?"

"Very well. What are your views on the death of Mr. Josua Ferrers of Abbotstanding?"

"Tut, sir, there is no question of views. We have both visual and medical evidence that Josua Ferrers committed suicide by cutting his own throat."

"A remarkable man, this Mr. Ferres," Holmes ob­served, "who, not content with committing suicide by cutting his jugular vein, must continue to sever the rest of his neck with an ordinary clasp-knife until, in the words of Mr. Tonston here, he had cut his throat literally from ear to ear. I have always felt that, were I to commit murder, I should avoid errors of that kind."

My friend's words were followed by a moment of tense silence. Then Dr. Nordham rose abruptly to his feet, while Tonston, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms folded, lifted his eyes to Holmes's face.

"Murder is an ugly word, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," he said quietly.

"And an ugly deed. Though not, perhaps, to the Mala Vita."

"What nonsense is this!"

"Tut, I was relying upon your knowledge of Sicily to fill in any small details that I may have overlooked. However, as you dismiss as nonsense the name of this terrible secret society, it will doubtless interest you to learn a few of the facts."

"Have a care, Mr. Holmes."

"To you, Dr. Nordham, and to Constable Kibble, there will appear to be gaps in my brief account." My friend continued. "But as these can be filled in later, I will address myself to you, Watson, as you were present dur­ing Miss Ferrers narrative.

"It was obvious from the first that her father was hiding from some peril of so relentless a nature that even in the depth of this deserted country-side he went in fear of his life. As the man had come from Sicily, an island notorious for the power and vindictiveness of its secret societies, the most likely explanation was that either he had offended some such organization or as a member he had trans­gressed some vital rule. As he made no attempt to invoke the police, I inclined to the latter supposition and this became a certainty with the first appearance of the Dark Angels. You will recall that they were nine in number, Watson, and that the print, inscribed with the words 'six and three,' was nailed to a tree in the avenue on Decem­ber 29th.

"The next visitation took place on February 11th, ex­actly six weeks and three days from December 29th, but this time the angels, six in number, were nailed to the front door.

"On March 24th came the third and last appearance, exactly six weeks after the second. The dreaded herald of death, again nine in number, but now without inscrip­tion, lay on the very platter of the master of Abbotstanding.

"As I listened to Miss Ferrers' voice and calculated the dates rapidly in mind, I was dismayed by the discovery that the final nine of the Dark Angels, assuming them to represent the same period of time as the first, brought the date to May 7th. Today!

"I knew then that I was too late. But, if I could not save her father, I might avenge him and, with that object, I attacked the problem from a different angle.

"The face at the window was typical, of course, of perhaps the most barbarous trait in the vengeance of secret societies, the desire to strike horror not only into the victim himself but into his family. But the man had been careful to cover his features with his hands, despite the fact that he was looking not at Josua Ferrers but at his daughter, thereby suggesting to my mind that he feared recognition by Miss Ferrers as much as by her father.

"Next, it seemed to me that the cold, deadly approach of the fatal prints from tree to door, from door to breakfast-table, inferred an intimate knowledge of Josua Ferrers' circumscribed habits, possibly an unchallenged right to enter the house and thereby place the card on the table without the necessity for forced windows and smashed locks.

"From the first, certain features in Miss Ferrers' singu­lar narrative stirred some vague chord in my memory, but it was not until your remark, Watson, about a foot in the open grave that a flood of light burst suddenly into my consciousness."

As Sherlock Holmes paused for a moment to draw something from his cape pocket, I glanced at the others. Though the old room was rapidly deepening into dusk, a sullen red light from the last rays of the sun glimmering through the window illumined the absorbed expres­sions of Dr. Nordham and the constable. Tonston stood in the shadows, his arms still folded across his chest and his pale, glittering eyes fixed immovably upon Holmes.

"It was to certain passages in this book, a fore-runner of Heckenthorn's Secret Societies, that my memory was recalled by. Dr. Watson's words." My friend continued. "Here is what the author has to say on a certain secret society which was first introduced into Sicily some three centuries ago. 'This formidable organization,' he writes, aptly named the Mala Vita, communicates with its members through a variety of signs including Angels, Demons and the Winged Lion. The candidate for mem­bership, if successful in his trials of initiation which frequently include that of murder, takes oath of fealty with one foot in an open grave. Punishment for infraction of the society's rules is relentless and, where death is the price, three separate warnings are given of the approach­ing doom, the second following six weeks and three days after the first, and the third six weeks after the second. Following the final warning, a further period of six weeks and three days are allowed to pass before the blow falls. Any member failing to carry out the punitive orders of the society becomes himself liable to the same punishment.' There follows a list of rules of the Mala Vita, together with the penalties for breaking them.

"That Josua Ferrers was a member of this dread society there can now be little doubt," Holmes added solemnly, as he closed the book. "What was his offense, we shall probably never know, and yet one may hazard a pretty shrewd guess. Article 16 is surely among the Mala Vita's most singular rules, for it states simply that the penalty for any member who discovers the identity of the Grand Master is death. I would remind you, Watson, that Ferrers laid emphatic instructions on his daughter that her answer to all enquiries must be that she knew nothing of his affairs, adding only that the name of the maker was in the butt of the gun. Not a gun, mark you, but the gun, which clearly indicated that the person re­ceiving the message might be expected to recognize some specific weapon to which the words must refer. It is suffi­cient to add that the gun found beside the body of Josua Ferrers is unique to the members of the Sicilian secret societies.

"When he went to the assignation Ferrers carried the gun with him, not as a weapon but as a peace-offering valuable only for what it contained rolled up in the butt. Bearing in mind what we now know, I am in no doubt that it was a paper or document that named the Grand Master of the Mala Vita and which by some unhappy chance had fallen into his hands during his Sicilian membership. To destroy it was useless. He had seen the name and he was doomed. But, though his own life was already for­feited, he was playing for the life of his daughter. Ferrers can have had no idea of the actual identity of the assassin who had been selected for the work beyond the fact that the unknown must of necessity be a fellow-member.

"Concealed in the fork of the tree above the pre­arranged meeting place, the murderer lay in wait as a leopard waits for a sheep and, when his victim halted be­neath him, he drew his knife and, leaping to the ground, seized him from behind and cut his throat. When he had searched Ferrers' body for the paper and eventually found it in the butt of the gun, his loathsome task was completed. He forgot, however, that in doing it he had left his heel-marks on the turf and two threads from his brown tweed coat on the rough bark of the tree."

As Sherlock Holmes ceased speaking, the silence of death fell on that darkening room. Then, stretching out one long, thin arm, he pointed silently at the shadowy figure of James Tonston.

"There stands the murderer of Josua Ferrers," he said in a quiet voice.

Tonston stepped forward, a smile upon his pale face.

"You are wrong," he said steadily. "The executioner of Josua Ferrers."

For a moment, he stood before us meeting our horrified stares with the serenity of one whose duty has been meritoriously fulfilled. Then, with a rattle of handcuffs, the constable leapt upon his man.

Tonston made no attempt to struggle, and with his hands manacled before him, he was accompanying his captor to the door when my friend's voice brought them to a halt.

"What have you done with it?" he demanded.

The prisoner looked at him silently.

"I ask," continued Holmes, "because if you have not destroyed it then it is best that I destroy it myself, and that unread."

"Rest assured that the paper is already destroyed," said James Tonston, "and that the Mala Vita preserves the secrets of the Mala Vita. In parting, take this word of warning to heart. It is that you know too much. Though your life may be an honoured one, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, it is most unlikely to be a long one." Then, with a cold smile in his grey eyes, he passed from the room.

It was an hour later and a full moon was rising when my friend and I, after parting from Dr. Nordham, turned our backs upon Abbotstanding, now gaunt and black against the night sky, and set out on foot towards Beaulieu village, where we planned to stay at the inn and take the morning train back to town.

I shall long remember that wonderful five miles' walk along a road all dappled with white fire and deepest shadow where the great trees met above our heads and the forest deer peered at us from the clumps of glistening bracken. Holmes walked with his chin upon his breast and it was not until we were descending the hill above the village that he broke his silence. It was little enough that he said then but for some reason his words have remained in my mind.

"You know me sufficiently well, Watson, to acquit me of all false sentiment," said he, "when I confess that there is an urge upon me tonight to walk for a while in the ruined cloisters of Beaulieu Abbey. It was the abode of men who lived and died at peace with themselves and with each other. We have seen much evil in our time, not least of which is the misuse of noble qualities such as loyalty, courage and determination for purposes that are in themselves ignoble. But the older I grow the more forcibly is it borne in upon me that just as these hills, and moonlit woods have outlived the ruins that now lie before us, so too must our virtues which are sprung from God survive our vices which, like the Dark Angels, spring from man. Surely. Watson, this is the ultimate promise."

----:----

I am retained in this case of the Ferrers

FROM "THE PRIORY SCHOOL"

10

The Adventure of the Two Women

I see from my note-book that it was late in September, 1886, shortly before my departure to Dartmoor with Sir Henry Baskerville, that my attention was first drawn to that curious affair, since termed "The Blackmailing Case," which threatened to involve one of the most revered names in England. Even at this late date, Sherlock Holmes has urged me to spare no pains to conceal the real iden­tity of the personage concerned and, in my recital of the events, I shall certainly do my best to observe his wishes in this matter. Indeed, I am as sensitive as he is to the fact that, owing to the many cases in which we have been concerned over the years, we have been of necessity the depositaries of many strange confidences and secrets which, should they become known to the world, could only arouse scandal and amazement. Our honour is therefore deeply involved and I shall make very sure that no inadvertent word of mine shall point the finger of accusation at any one of those men and women, in high life or in low, who have poured out their troubles to us in our modest Baker Street chambers.

I recall that it was on a late September morning when I was first introduced to the adventure which forms the subject of this narrative. It was a grey, depressing day with a hint of early fog in the air and, having been summoned to a patient in Seaton Place, I was walking back to our lodgings when I became aware of a small street urchin slinking along at my heels. As he drew level I recognized the lad as one of the Baker Street irregulars, as Holmes termed the group of grubby little boys whom he employed on odd occasions to act as his eyes and ears amid the purlieus of the London streets.

"Hullo, Billy," I said.

The lad returned no sign of recognition.

"Got a match, Guv'nor?" he demanded, exhibiting a frayed cigarette-end. I gave him a box and, on handing it back to me, he raised his eyes for an instant to my face. "For God's sake, Doctor," he whispered swiftly, "tell Mr. Holmes to watch out for Footman Boyce." Then, with a surly nod, he slouched on his way.

I was not displeased to be the bearer of this cryptic message to my friend, for it had been apparent to me for some days past from his alternating moods of energy and absorption and his deplorable consumption of tobacco that Holmes was engaged upon a case. Contrary to his usual practice, however, he had not invited me to share his confidences, and I must confess that my sudden pre­cipitation into the affair, irrespective of Holmes's wishes, caused me no small satisfaction.

On entering our sitting-room, I found him lounging in his arm-chair before the fireplace, still clad in his purple dressing-gown, his grey, heavy-lidded eyes staring thoughtfully at the ceiling through a haze of tobacco smoke while one long, thin arm, dangling a letter between its finger-tips, hung down the side of his chair. An envelope, embossed, I noticed, with a coronet, lay on the floor.

"Ah, Watson," he said petulantly. "You are back earlier than I expected."

"Perhaps it is as well for you, Holmes," I replied, a trifle nettled at his tone, and proceeded to give the message with which I had been entrusted. Holmes raised his eyebrows.

"This is most curious," said he. "What can Footman Boyce have to do with the matter?"

"As I know nothing about it, I am hardly in a position to answer your question," I remarked.

"Upon my soul, a distinct touch, Watson!" he replied, with a dry chuckle. "If I have not taken you already into my confidence, my dear fellow, it was not for any lack of faith in you. The affair is, however, of a most delicate nature and I preferred to feel my way a little before in­viting your invaluable assistance."

"There is no need for you to explain further," I began warmly.

"Tut, Watson, I have reached a complete impasse. Possibly, it may prove one of those instances where an active mind may overreach, while a merely reflective one, functioning largely on the obvious—" he lapsed into a brooding silence for a moment, then springing to his feet, he strode over to the window.

"I am faced with one of the most dangerous cases of blackmail in all my experience," he cried. "I take it that you are familiar with the name of the Duke of Carring­ford?"

"You mean the late Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs?"

"Precisely."

"But he died some three years ago," I observed.

"Doubtless it will surprise you to learn, Watson, that I am aware of that fact," replied Holmes testily. "But to continue. A few days past I received a note from the duchess, his widow, couched in such urgent terms that I was constrained to comply with her request to call upon her at her house in Portland Place. I found her a woman of more than ordinary intelligence and what you would term beauty, but overwhelmed by the fearsome blow which, striking literally overnight, now threatens her with the complete social and financial destruction of herself and her daughter. And the irony of the situation is the more terrible because her destruction comes from no fault of her own."

"One moment," I interposed, picking up a newspaper from the couch. "There is a reference to the duchess in today's Telegraph, announcing the engagement of her daughter, Lady Mary Gladsdale, to Sir James Fortesque, the cabinet minister."

"Quite so. There lies the beautifully tempered point in this sword of Damocles." Holmes drew two sheets of paper, pinned together, from the pocket of his dressing-gown and tossed them across to me. "What do you make of those, Watson?" he said.

"One is a copy of a marriage certificate between Henry Corwyn Gladsdale, bachelor, and Franзoise Pelletan, spinster, dated June 12th, 1848 and issued at Valence in France," I observed, glancing through the documents. "The other would appear to be the entry of the same marriage in the Valence church registry. Who was this Henry Gladsdale?"

"He became Duke of Carringford upon the death of his uncle in 1854," said Holmes grimly, "and five years later took to wife the Lady Constance Ellington, at present Duchess of Carringford."

"Then he was a widower."

To my surprise, Holmes drove his fist violently into the palm of his hand. "There is the diabolical cruelty of it, Watson," he cried. "We do not know! Indeed, the duchess is now told for the first time of this secret mar­riage made in her husband's youth when he was staying on the Continent. She is informed that his first wife is alive and ready if necessary to come forward, that her own marriage is bigamous, her position spurious, and the status of her child illegitimate."