His Last Bow - Arthur Conan Doyle (classic books for 12 year olds txt) 📗

His Last Bow

 

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

1917

 

Contents

 

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge

 

The Adventure of the Cardboard Box

 

The Adventure of the Red Circle

 

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

 

The Adventure of the Dying Detective

 

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

 

The Adventure of the Devils Foot

 

His Last Bow

 

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge

 

1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles

 

I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy

day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had

received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had

scribbled a reply. He made no remark, but the matter remained in

his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a

thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional

glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a

mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

 

“I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,”

said he. “How do you define the word ‘grotesque’?”

 

“Strange—remarkable,” I suggested.

 

He shook his head at my definition.

 

“There is surely something more than that,” said he; “some

underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you

cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you

have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognize how

often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal. Think of

that little affair of the red-headed men. That was grotesque

enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at

robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the

five orange pips, which let straight to a murderous conspiracy.

The word puts me on the alert.”

 

“Have you it there?” I asked.

 

He read the telegram aloud.

 

“Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I

consult you?

 

“Scott Eccles,

“Post Office, Charing Cross.”

 

“Man or woman?” I asked.

 

“Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid

telegram. She would have come.”

 

“Will you see him?”

 

“My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked

up Colonel Carruthers. My mind is like a racing engine, tearing

itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for

which it was built. Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile;

audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the

criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look

into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here,

unless I am mistaken, is our client.”

 

A measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a

stout, tall, gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was

ushered into the room. His life history was written in his heavy

features and pompous manner. From his spats to his gold-rimmed

spectacles he was a Conservative, a churchman, a good citizen,

orthodox and conventional to the last degree. But some amazing

experience had disturbed his native composure and left its traces

in his bristling hair, his flushed, angry cheeks, and his

flurried, excited manner. He plunged instantly into his business.

 

“I have had a most singular and unpleasant experience, Mr.

Holmes,” said he. “Never in my life have I been placed in such a

situation. It is most improper—most outrageous. I must insist

upon some explanation.” He swelled and puffed in his anger.

 

“Pray sit down, Mr. Scott Eccles,” said Holmes in a soothing

voice. “May I ask, in the first place, why you came to me at

all?”

 

“Well, sir, it did not appear to be a matter which concerned the

police, and yet, when you have heard the facts, you must admit

that I could not leave it where it was. Private detectives are a

class with whom I have absolutely no sympathy, but none the less,

having heard your name—”

 

“Quite so. But, in the second place, why did you not come at

once?”

 

Holmes glanced at his watch.

 

“It is a quarter-past two,” he said. “Your telegram was

dispatched about one. But no one can glance at your toilet and

attire without seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment

of your waking.”

 

Our client smoothed down his unbrushed hair and felt his unshaven

chin.

 

“You are right, Mr. Holmes. I never gave a thought to my toilet.

I was only too glad to get out of such a house. But I have been

running round making inquiries before I came to you. I went to

the house agents, you know, and they said that Mr. Garcia’s rent

was paid up all right and that everything was in order at

Wisteria Lodge.”

 

“Come, come, sir,” said Holmes, laughing. “You are like my

friend, Dr. Watson, who has a bad habit of telling his stories

wrong end foremost. Please arrange your thoughts and let me

know, in their due sequence, exactly what those events are which

have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt, with dress boots and

waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of advice and assistance.”

 

Our client looked down with a rueful face at his own

unconventional appearance.

 

“I’m sure it must look very bad, Mr. Holmes, and I am not aware

that in my whole life such a thing has ever happened before. But

will tell you the whole queer business, and when I have done so

you will admit, I am sure, that there has been enough to excuse

me.”

 

But his narrative was nipped in the bud. There was a bustle

outside, and Mrs. Hudson opened the door to usher in two robust

and official-looking individuals, one of whom was well known to

us as Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard, an energetic, gallant,

and, within his limitations, a capable officer. He shook hands

with Holmes and introduced his comrade as Inspector Baynes, of

the Surrey Constabulary.

 

“We are hunting together, Mr. Holmes, and our trail lay in this

direction.” He turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor. “Are

you Mr. John Scott Eccles, of Popham House, Lee?”

 

“I am.”

 

“We have been following you about all the morning.”

 

“You traced him through the telegram, no doubt,” said Holmes.

 

“Exactly, Mr. Holmes. We picked up the scent at Charing Cross

Post-Office and came on here.”

 

“But why do you follow me? What do you want?”

 

“We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which

let up to the death last night of Mr. Aloysius Garcia, of

Wisteria Lodge, near Esher.”

 

Our client had sat up with staring eyes and every tinge of colour

struck from his astonished face.

 

“Dead? Did you say he was dead?”

 

“Yes, sir, he is dead.”

 

“But how? An accident?”

 

“Murder, if ever there was one upon earth.”

 

“Good God! This is awful! You don’t mean—you don’t mean that I

am suspected?”

 

“A letter of yours was found in the dead man’s pocket, and we

know by it that you had planned to pass last night at his house.”

 

“So I did.”

 

“Oh, you did, did you?”

 

Out came the official notebook.

 

“Wait a bit, Gregson,” said Sherlock Holmes. “All you desire is

a plain statement, is it not?”

 

“And it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eccles that it may be used

against him.”

 

“Mr. Eccles was going to tell us about it when you entered the

room. I think, Watson, a brandy and soda would do him no harm.

Now, sir, I suggest that you take no notice of this addition to

your audience, and that you proceed with your narrative exactly

as you would have done had you never been interrupted.”

 

Our visitor had gulped off the brandy and the colour had returned

to his face. With a dubious glance at the inspector’s notebook,

he plunged at once into his extraordinary statement.

 

“I am a bachelor,” said he, “and being of a sociable turn I

cultivate a large number of friends. Among these are the family

of a retired brewer called Melville, living at Abermarle Mansion,

Kensington. It was at his table that I met some weeks ago a

young fellow named Garcia. He was, I understood, of Spanish

descent and connected in some way with the embassy. He spoke

perfect English, was pleasing in his manners, and as good-looking

a man as ever I saw in my life.

 

“In some way we struck up quite a friendship, this young fellow

and I. He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and

within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee. One

thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting me out to

spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge, between Esher and

Oxshott. Yesterday evening I went to Esher to fulfil this

engagement.

 

“He had described his household to me before I went there. He

lived with a faithful servant, a countryman of his own, who

looked after all his needs. This fellow could speak English and

did his housekeeping for him. Then there was a wonderful cook,

he said, a half-breed whom he had picked up in his travels, who

could serve an excellent dinner. I remember that he remarked

what a queer household it was to find in the heart of Surrey, and

that I agreed with him, though it has proved a good deal queerer

than I thought.

 

“I drove to the place—about two miles on the south side of

Esher. The house was a fair-sized one, standing back from the

road, with a curving drive which was banked with high evergreen

shrubs. It was an old, tumbledown building in a crazy state of

disrepair. When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in

front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as

to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly. He

opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great

show of cordiality. I was handed over to the manservant, a

melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his

hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner

was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be

entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he

talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him.

He continually drummed his fingers on the table, gnawed his

nails, and gave other signs of nervous impatience. The dinner

itself was neither well served nor well cooked, and the gloomy

presence of the taciturn servant did not help to enliven us. I

can assure you that many times in the course of the evening I

wished that I could invent some excuse which would take me back

to Lee.

 

“One thing comes back to my memory which may have a bearing upon

the business that you two gentlemen are investigating. I thought

nothing of it at the time. Near the end of dinner a note was

handed in by the servant. I noticed that after my host had read

it he seemed even more distrait and strange than before. He gave

up all pretence