The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (4 page)

"Excellent!"

"But we must not take it"

"Must not take it, madam?"

"I have had no time to tell you, but Lady Mayo herself now appeals to you for help. Only

this afternoon I persuaded her. Lady Mayo requests that we three take the 10:25, which is the

last train. She will meet us at Groxton station with the carriage." Miss Forsythe bit her lip.

"Lady Mayo, despite her kindness, is—imperious. We must not miss that last train!"

And yet we very nearly missed it. Having forgotten streets of frozen mud, and the crush

of vehicles under blue, sputtering arc-lamps, we arrived at Waterloo only just in time.

Presently, as the train emerged into open country, our dim-lit compartment took on a greater

quality of eeriness with each click of the wheels. Holmes sat silent, bending slightly forward. I

could see his hawk-like profile, under the fore and aft cap, clear-cut against the cold radiance

of a full moon. It was nearly half-past eleven when we alighted at a wayside station whose

village had long been lightless and asleep.

Nothing stirred there. No dog barked. Near the station stood an open landau, without a

clink of harness from the horses. Bolt upright sat the coachman, as motionless as the squat

elderly lady who sat in the back of the landau, watching us stonily as we approached.

Miss Forsythe eagerly began to speak, but the elderly lady, who was wrapped in grey furs

and had a good deal of nose, raised a hand to forestall her.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" she said, in a singularly deep and musical voice, "and this other

gentleman, I take it, is Dr. Watson. I am Lady Mayo."

She scrutinized us for a moment with a pair of singularly sharp and penetrating eyes.

"Pray enter the landau," she continued. "You will find quite a number of carriage-rugs.

Though I deplore the necessity of offering an open conveyance on so cold a night, my

coachman's fondness for fast driving," and she indicated the driver, who hunched up his

shoulders, "has contrived to break the axle of the closed carriage. To the Hall, Billings! Make

haste!"

The whip cracked. With an uneasy swing of the rear wheels, our landau was off at a smart

pace along a narrow road bordered with spiky hedgerows and skeleton trees.

"But I did not mind," said Lady Mayo. "Lackaday, Mr. Holmes! I am a very old woman.

My youth was a time of fast driving; ay, and of fast living too."

"Was it also a time of fast dying?" asked my friend. "Such a death, for instance, as

may overtake our young friend tonight?"

The hoof-beats rang on the icy road.

"I think, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said she quietly, "that you and I understand each other."

"I am sure of it, Lady Mayo. But you have not answered my question,"

"Have no fear, Mr. Holmes. He is safe now."

"You are certain?"

"I tell you, he is quite safe! The park at Groxton Low Hall is patrolled, and the house is

guarded. They cannot attack him."

Whether my own outburst was caused by the smart clip of the landau, the rushing wind past

our ears, or the maddening nature of the problem itself, to this day I cannot say.

"Forgive the bluntness of an old campaigner," cried I, "who has no answer for

anything. But at least take pity on the poor young lady beside you! Who is Mr. Charles

Hendon? Why does he smash clocks? For what reason should his life be in danger?"

"Tut, Watson," said Holmes, with a touch of tartness. "You yourself staggered me by

enumerating the points in which Mr. Charles Hendon, as you put it, is confoundedly un-

English."

"Well? And why does that assist us?"

"Because the so-called 'Charles Hendon' is assuredly not English."

"Not English?" said Celia Forsythe, stretching out her hand. "But he speaks English

perfectly!" The breath died in her throat. "Too perfectly!" she whispered.

"This young man," I exclaimed, "is not, then, of exalted station?"

"On the contrary, my dear fellow. Your shrewdness never fails. He is of very exalted station

indeed. Now name for me the one Imperial Court in Europe—ay, Watson, Imperial Court!—at

which the speaking of English has all but superseded its own native language."

"I cannot think. I don't know."

"Then endeavour to remember what you do know. Shortly before Miss Forsythe first called

upon us, I read aloud certain items from the daily press which at the time seemed tediously

unimportant. One item stated that the Nihilists, that dangerous band of anarchists who would

crush Imperial Russia to nothingness, were suspected of plotting against the life of the Grand

Duke Alexei at Odessa. The Grand Duke Alexei, you perceive. Now Lady Mayo's

nickname for 'Mr. Charles Hendon' was—"

"Alec!" cried I.

"It might have been the merest coincidence," observed Holmes, shrugging his shoulders.

"However, when we reflect upon recent history, we recall that in an earlier attempt on the life

of the late Tsar of all the Russias— who was blown to pieces in '81, by the explosion of a

dynamite bomb—the ticking of the bomb was drowned beneath the playing of a piano.

Dynamite bombs, Watson, are of two kinds. One, iron-sheathed and fairly light, may be

ignited on a short fuse and thrown. The other, also of iron, is exploded by means of a clockwork

mechanism whose loud ticking alone betrays its presence."

Crack
went the coachman's whip, and the hedgerows seemed to unreel as in a dream.

Holmes and I sat with our backs to the driver,
vis-à-vis
the moon-whitened faces of Lady Mayo

and Celia Forsythe.

"Holmes, all this is becoming as clear as crystal! That is why the young man cannot bear

the sight of a clock!"

"No, Watson. No! The sound of a clock!"

"The sound?"

"Precisely. When I attempted to tell you as much, your native impatience cut me short at the

first letter. On the two occasions when he destroyed a clock in public, bear in mind that in

neither case could he actually see the clock. In one instance, as Miss Forsythe informed us, it

was hidden inside a screen of greenery; in the other, it was behind a curtain. Hearing only that

significant ticking, he struck before he had time to take thought. His purpose, of course, was to

smash the clockwork and draw the fangs of what he believed to be a bomb."

"But surely," I protested, "those blows of a stick might well have ignited and exploded a

bomb?"

Again Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

"Had it been a real bomb, who can tell? Yet, against an iron casing, I think the matter

doubtful. In either event, we deal with a very courageous gentleman, haunted and hounded, who

rushed and struck blindly. It is not unnatural that the memory of his father's death and the

knowledge that the same organization was on his own trail should tend toward hasty action."

"And then?"

Yet Sherlock Holmes remained uneasy. I noticed that he glanced round more than once

at the lonely sweep of the grey rolling country-side.

"Well," said he, "having determined so much in my first interview with Miss Forsythe, it

seemed clear that the forged letter was bait to draw the Grand Duke to Odessa, urging on him

the pluck to face these implacable men. But, as I have told you, he must have suspected.

Therefore he would go—where?" .

"To England," said I. "Nay, more! To Groxton Low Hall, with the added inducement of

an attractive young lady whom I urge to leave off weeping and dry her tears."

Holmes looked exasperated.

"At least I could say," replied he, "that the balance of probability lay in that direction.

Surely it was obvious from the beginning that one in the position of Lady Mayo would

never have entered so casually into railway-carriage conversation with a young man unless

they had been, in Miss Forsythe's unwitting but illuminating phrase, 'old friends.' "

"I underestimated your powers, Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Lady Mayo, who had been patting

Celia's hand, spoke harshly. "Yes, I knew Alexei when he was a little boy in a sailor-suit

at St. Petersburg."

"Where your husband, I discovered, was First Secretary at the British Embassy. In

Odessa I learned another fact of great interest."

"Eh? What was that?"

"The name of the Nihilists' chief agent, a daring, mad, and fanatical spirit who has been

very close to the Grand Duke for some time."

"Impossible!"

"Yet true."

For a moment Lady Mayo sat looking at him, her countenance far less stony, while the

carriage bumped over a rut and veered.

"Attend to me, Mr. Holmes. My own dear Alec has already written to the police, in the

person of Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner."

"Thank you; I have seen the letter. I have also seen the Imperial Russian Arms on the

seal."

"Meanwhile," she continued, "I repeat that the park is patrolled, the house guarded—"

"Yet a fox may escape the hounds none the less."

"It is not only a question of guards! At this minute, Mr. Holmes, poor Alec sits in an

old, thick-walled room, with its door double-locked on the inside. The windows are so

closely barred that none could so much as stretch a hand inside. The chimney-piece is

ancient and hooded, yet with so narrow an aperture that no man could climb down; and a

fire burns there. How could an enemy attack him?"

"How?" muttered Holmes, biting his lip and tapping his fingers on his knee. "It is true

he may be safe for one night, since—"

Lady Mayo made a slight gesture of triumph.

"No precaution has been neglected," said she. "Even the roof is safeguarded. Alec's

manservant, Trepley, after delivering the letter in London with commendable quickness,

returned by an earlier train than yours, and borrowed a horse at the village. At this moment he

is on the roof of the Hall, faithfully guarding his master."

The effect of this speech was extraordinary. Sherlock Holmes leaped to his feet in the

carriage, his cape rising in grotesque black silhouette as he clutched at the box-rail for

balance.

"On the roof?" he echoed. "On the roof?"

Then he turned round, seizing the shoulders of the coachman.

"Whip up the horses!" he shouted. "For God's sake, whip up the horses! We have not a

second to lose!"

Crack! Crack! went the whip over the ears of the leader. The horses, snorting, settled

down to a gallop and plunged away. In the confusion, as we were all thrown together, rose Lady

Mayo's angry voice.

"Mr. Holmes, have you taken leave of your senses?"

"You shall see whether I have. Miss Forsythe! Did you ever actually hear the Grand

Duke address his man as Trepley?"

"I—no!" faltered Celia Forsythe, shocked to alertness. "As I informed you, Char—oh,

heaven help me!—the Grand Duke called him 'Trep.' I assumed—"

"Exactly! You assumed. But his true name is Trepoff. From your first description I knew

him to be a liar and a traitor."

The hedgerows flashed past; bit and harness jingled; we flew with the wind.

"You may recall," pursued Holmes, "the man's consummate hypocrisy when his master

smashed the first clock? It was a heavy look of embarrassment and shame, was it not? He

would have you think Mr. Charles Hendon insane. How came you to know of the other five

clocks, which were purely imaginary? Because Trepoff told you. To hide a clock or a live bomb

in a cupboard would really have been madness, if in fact the Grand Duke Alexei had ever done

so."

"But, Holmes," I protested. "Since Trepoff is his personal servant—"

"Faster, coachman! Faster! Yes, Watson!"

"Surely Trepoff must have had a hundred opportunities to kill his master, by knife or poison

perhaps, without this spectacular addition of a bomb?"

"This spectacular addition, as you call it, is the revolutionaries' stock-in-trade. They will

not act without it. Their victim must be blown up in one fiery crash of ruin, else the world may

not notice them or their power."

"But the letter to Sir Charles Warren?" cried Lady Mayo.

"Doubtless it was dropped down the nearest street drain. Ha! I think that must be Groxton

Low Hall just ahead."

The ensuing events of that night are somewhat confused in my mind. I recall a long, low-

built Jacobean house, of mellow red brick with mullioned windows and a flat roof, which

seemed to rush at us up a gravel drive. Carriage-rugs flew wide. Lady Mayo, thoroughly roused,

called sharp instructions to a group of nervous servants.

Then Holmes and I were hurrying after Miss Forsythe up a series of staircases, from a broad

and carpeted oak stairway in the hall to a set of narrow steps which were little more than a

ladder to the roof. At the foot of these, Holmes paused for a moment to lay his fingers on Miss

Forsythe's arm.

"You will stay here," he said quietly.

There was a metallic click as he put his hand into his pocket, and for the first time I knew

that Holmes was armed too.

"Come, Watson," said he.

I followed him up the narrow steps while he softly lifted the trap-door to the roof.

"Not a sound, on your life!" he whispered. "Fire if you catch sight of him."

"But how are we to find him?"

The cold air again blew in our faces. We crept cautiously forward across the flat roof. All