The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (4 page)

"We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon the
evening of his death. We may put aside this idea of Baynes's that
Garcia's servants were concerned in the matter. The proof of this lies
in the fact that it was
he
who had arranged for the presence of Scott
Eccles, which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi.
It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and apparently a criminal
enterprise, in hand that night in the course of which he met his death.
I say 'criminal' because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires
to establish an alibi. Who, then, is most likely to have taken his
life? Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was
directed. So far it seems to me that we are on safe ground.

"We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household.
They were
all
confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off
when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the
Englishman's evidence, and all would be well. But the attempt was a
dangerous one, and if Garcia did
not
return by a certain hour it was
probable that his own life had been sacrificed. It had been arranged,
therefore, that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for
some prearranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a
position afterwards to renew their attempt. That would fully explain
the facts, would it not?"

The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me. I
wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me before.

"But why should one servant return?"

"We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious,
something which he could not bear to part with, had been left behind.
That would explain his persistence, would it not?"

"Well, what is the next step?"

"The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner. It
indicates a confederate at the other end. Now, where was the other
end? I have already shown you that it could only lie in some large
house, and that the number of large houses is limited. My first days in
this village were devoted to a series of walks in which in the
intervals of my botanical researches I made a reconnaissance of all the
large houses and an examination of the family history of the occupants.
One house, and only one, riveted my attention. It is the famous old
Jacobean grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott,
and less than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy. The other
mansions belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far aloof
from romance. But Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all accounts a
curious man to whom curious adventures might befall. I concentrated my
attention, therefore, upon him and his household.

"A singular set of people, Watson—the man himself the most singular of
them all. I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to
read in his dark, deepset, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of
my true business. He is a man of fifty, strong, active, with iron-gray
hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of
an emperor—a fierce, masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his
parchment face. He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the
tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord. His
friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate
brown, wily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness of speech.
You see, Watson, we have come already upon two sets of foreigners—one
at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable—so our gaps are beginning to
close.

"These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of the
household; but there is one other person who for our immediate purpose
may be even more important. Henderson has two children—girls of
eleven and thirteen. Their governess is a Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman
of forty or thereabouts. There is also one confidential manservant.
This little group forms the real family, for their travel about
together, and Henderson is a great traveller, always on the move. It
is only within the last weeks that he has returned, after a year's
absence, to High Gable. I may add that he is enormously rich, and
whatever his whims may be he can very easily satisfy them. For the
rest, his house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the
usual overfed, underworked staff of a large English country house.

"So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own
observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants
with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck,
but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it.
As Baynes remarks, we all have our systems. It was my system which
enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of High Gable, sacked in
a moment of temper by his imperious employer. He in turn had friends
among the indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their
master. So I had my key to the secrets of the establishment.

"Curious people, Watson! I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but
very curious people anyway. It's a double-winged house, and the
servants live on one side, the family on the other. There's no link
between the two save for Henderson's own servant, who serves the
family's meals. Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms
the one connection. Governess and children hardly go out at all,
except into the garden. Henderson never by any chance walks alone.
His dark secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the servants
is that their master is terribly afraid of something. 'Sold his soul
to the devil in exchange for money,' says Warner, 'and expects his
creditor to come up and claim his own.' Where they came from, or who
they are, nobody has an idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson
has lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy
compensation have kept him out of the courts.

"Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information.
We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and
was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already
been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel,
and it was a woman. Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our
reasoning seems to point that way. At any rate, we may take it as a
hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail. I may add that
Miss Burnet's age and character make it certain that my first idea that
there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.

"If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of
Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of his
death? If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be
sealed. Still, in her heart, she must retain bitterness and hatred
against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as
she could to have revenge upon them. Could we see her, then and try to
use her? That was my first thought. But now we come to a sinister
fact. Miss Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night
of the murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she
alive? Has she perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend
whom she had summoned? Or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point
which we still have to decide.

"You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, Watson. There is
nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant. Our whole scheme might
seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate. The woman's disappearance
counts for nothing, since in that extraordinary household any member of
it might be invisible for a week. And yet she may at the present
moment be in danger of her life. All I can do is to watch the house
and leave my agent, Warner, on guard at the gates. We can't let such a
situation continue. If the law can do nothing we must take the risk
ourselves."

"What do you suggest?"

"I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an
outhouse. My suggestion is that you and I go to-night and see if we
can strike at the very heart of the mystery."

It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect. The old house
with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants,
the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting
ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardour.
But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made
it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend.
One knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found. I
clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast.

But it was not destined that our investigation should have so
adventurous an ending. It was about five o'clock, and the shadows of
the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed
into our room.

"They've gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The lady
broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs."

"Excellent, Warner!" cried Holmes, springing to his feet. "Watson, the
gaps are closing rapidly."

In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She
bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent
tragedy. Her head hung listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised
it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her pupils were dark
dots in the centre of the broad gray iris. She was drugged with opium.

"I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes," said our
emissary, the discharged gardener. "When the carriage came out I
followed it to the station. She was like one walking in her sleep, but
when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and
struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. She fought her way out
again. I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are. I shan't
forget the face at the carriage window as I led her away. I'd have a
short life if he had his way—the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil."

We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of
the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug.
Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly explained
to him.

"Why, sir, you've got me the very evidence I want," said the inspector
warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. "I was on the same scent as you
from the first."

"What! You were after Henderson?"

"Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable
I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below. It
was just who would get his evidence first."

"Then why did you arrest the mulatto?"

Baynes chuckled.

"I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected,
and that he would lie low and make no move so long as he thought he was
in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our
eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to clear off then and
give us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet."

Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector's shoulder.

"You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and
intuition," said he.

Baynes flushed with pleasure.

"I've had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week.
Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight. But he
must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet broke away. However,
your man picked her up, and it all ends well. We can't arrest without
her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get a statement the
better."

"Every minute she gets stronger," said Holmes, glancing at the
governess. "But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?"

"Henderson," the inspector answered, "is Don Murillo, once call the
Tiger of San Pedro."

The Tiger of San Pedro! The whole history of the man came back to me
in a flash. He had made his name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty
tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to
civilization. Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient
virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering people
for ten or twelve years. His name was a terror through all Central
America. At the end of that time there was a universal rising against
him. But he was as cunning as he was cruel, and at the first whisper
of coming trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship
which was manned by devoted adherents. It was an empty palace which
was stormed by the insurgents next day. The dictator, his two
children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them. From that
moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity had been a
frequent subject for comment in the European press.

"Yes, sir, Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro," said Baynes. "If you
look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and
white, same as in the note, Mr. Holmes. Henderson he called himself,
but I traced him back, Paris and Rome and Madrid to Barcelona, where
his ship came in in '86. They've been looking for him all the time for
their revenge, but it is only now that they have begun to find him out."

"They discovered him a year ago," said Miss Burnet, who had sat up and
was now intently following the conversation. "Once already his life
has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him. Now, again, it
is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the monster goes
safe. But another will come, and yet another, until some day justice
will be done; that is as certain as the rise of to-morrow's sun." Her
thin hands clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her
hatred.

"But how come you into this matter, Miss Burnet?" asked Holmes. "How
can an English lady join in such a murderous affair?"

"I join in it because there is no other way in the world by which
justice can be gained. What does the law of England care for the
rivers of blood shed years ago in San Pedro, or for the shipload of
treasure which this man has stolen? To you they are like crimes
committed in some other planet. But
we
know. We have learned the
truth in sorrow and in suffering. To us there is no fiend in hell like
Juan Murillo, and no peace in life while his victims still cry for
vengeance."