The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (20 page)

"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