The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (19 page)

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.

Voilà 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."