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

a hundred yards from them. At last I saw them

hire a boat and start for a row, for it was a very hot day, and

they thought, no doubt, that it would be cooler on the water.

 

“‘It was just as if they had been given into my hands. There was

a bit of a haze, and you could not see more than a few hundred

yards. I hired a boat for myself, and I pulled after them. I

could see the blur of their craft, but they were going nearly as

fast as I, and they must have been a long mile from the shore

before I caught them up. The haze was like a curtain all round

us, and there were we three in the middle of it. My God, shall I

ever forget their faces when they saw who was in the boat that

was closing in upon them? She screamed out. He swore like a

madman and jabbed at me with an oar, for he must have seen death

in my eyes. I got past it and got one in with my stick that

crushed his head like an egg. I would have spared her, perhaps,

for all my madness, but she threw her arms round him, crying out

to him, and calling him “Alec.” I struck again, and she lay

stretched beside him. I was like a wild beast then that had

tasted blood. If Sarah had been there, by the Lord, she should

have joined them. I pulled out my knife, and—well, there! I’ve

said enough. It gave me a kind of savage joy when I thought how

Sarah would feel when she had such signs as these of what her

meddling had brought about. Then I tied the bodies into the

boat, stove a plank, and stood by until they had sunk. I knew

very well that the owner would think that they had lost their

bearings in the haze, and had drifted off out to sea. I cleaned

myself up, got back to land, and joined my ship without a soul

having a suspicion of what had passed. That night I made up the

packet for Sarah Cushing, and next day I sent it from Belfast.

 

“‘There you have the whole truth of it. You can hang me, or do

what you like with me, but you cannot punish me as I have been

punished already. I cannot shut my eyes but I see those two

faces staring at me—staring at me as they stared when my boat

broke through the haze. I killed them quick, but they are

killing me slow; and if I have another night of it I shall be

either mad or dead before morning. You won’t put me alone into a

cell, sir? For pity’s sake don’t, and may you be treated in your

day of agony as you treat me now.’

 

“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he

laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of

misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else

our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what

end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which

human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”

 

The Adventure of the Red Circle

 

“Well, Mrs. Warren, I cannot see that you have any particular

cause for uneasiness, nor do I understand why I, whose time is of

some value, should interfere in the matter. I really have other

things to engage me.” So spoke Sherlock Holmes and turned back

to the great scrapbook in which he was arranging and indexing

some of his recent material.

 

But the landlady had the pertinacity and also the cunning of her

sex. She held her ground firmly.

 

“You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year,” she

said—“Mr. Fairdale Hobbs.”

 

“Ah, yes—a simple matter.”

 

“But he would never cease talking of it—your kindness, sir, and

the way in which you brought light into the darkness. I

remembered his words when I was in doubt and darkness myself. I

know you could if you only would.”

 

Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, and also, to do

him justice, upon the side of kindliness. The two forces made

him lay down his gum-brush with a sigh of resignation and push

back his chair.

 

“Well, well, Mrs. Warren, let us hear about it, then. You don’t

object to tobacco, I take it? Thank you, Watson—the matches!

You are uneasy, as I understand, because your new lodger remains

in his rooms and you cannot see him. Why, bless you, Mrs.

Warren, if I were your lodger you often would not see me for

weeks on end.”

 

“No doubt, sir; but this is different. It frightens me, Mr.

Holmes. I can’t sleep for fright. To hear his quick step moving

here and moving there from early morning to late at night, and

yet never to catch so much as a glimpse of him—it’s more than I

can stand. My husband is as nervous over it as I am, but he is

out at his work all day, while I get no rest from it. What is he

hiding for? What has he done? Except for the girl, I am all

alone in the house with him, and it’s more than my nerves can

stand.”

 

Holmes leaned forward and laid his long, thin fingers upon the

woman’s shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing

when he wished. The scared look faded from her eyes, and her

agitated features smoothed into their usual commonplace. She sat

down in the chair which he had indicated.

 

“If I take it up I must understand every detail,” said he. “Take

time to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential.

You say that the man came ten days ago and paid you for a

fortnight’s board and lodging?”

 

“He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week. There

is a small sitting-room and bedroom, and all complete, at the top

of the house.”

 

“Well?”

 

“He said, ‘I’ll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my

own terms.’ I’m a poor woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little,

and the money meant much to me. He took out a ten-pound note,

and he held it out to me then and there. ‘You can have the same

every fortnight for a long time to come if you keep the terms,’

he said. ‘If not, I’ll have no more to do with you.’

 

“What were the terms?”

 

“Well, sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house.

That was all right. Lodgers often have them. Also, that he was

to be left entirely to himself and never, upon any excuse, to be

disturbed.”

 

“Nothing wonderful in that, surely?”

 

“Not in reason, sir. But this is out of all reason. He has been

there for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl

has once set eyes upon him. We can hear that quick step of his

pacing up and down, up and down, night, morning, and noon; but

except on that first night he had never once gone out of the

house.”

 

“Oh, he went out the first night, did he?”

 

“Yes, sir, and returned very late—after we were all in bed. He

told me after he had taken the rooms that he would do so and

asked me not to bar the door. I heard him come up the stair

after midnight.”

 

“But his meals?”

 

“It was his particular direction that we should always, when he

rang, leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he

rings again when he has finished, and we take it down from the

same chair. If he wants anything else he prints it on a slip of

paper and leaves it.”

 

“Prints it?”

 

“Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more.

Here’s the one I brought to show you—soap. Here’s another—

match. This is one he left the first morning—daily gazette. I

leave that paper with his breakfast every morning.”

 

“Dear me, Watson,” said Homes, staring with great curiosity at

the slips of foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, “this

is certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can understand; but

why print? Printing is a clumsy process. Why not write? What

would it suggest, Watson?”

 

“That he desired to conceal his handwriting.”

 

“But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady should

have a word of his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then,

again, why such laconic messages?”

 

“I cannot imagine.”

 

“It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The words

are written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not

unusual pattern. You will observe that the paper is torn away at

the side here after the printing was done, so that the ‘s’ of

‘soap’ is partly gone. Suggestive, Watson, is it not?”

 

“Of caution?”

 

“Exactly. There was evidently some mark, some thumbprint,

something which might give a clue to the person’s identity. Now.

Mrs. Warren, you say that the man was of middle size, dark, and

bearded. What age would he be?”

 

“Youngish, sir—not over thirty.”

 

“Well, can you give me no further indications?”

 

“He spoke good English, sir, and yet I thought he was a foreigner

by his accent.”

 

“And he was well dressed?”

 

“Very smartly dressed, sir—quite the gentleman. Dark clothes—

nothing you would note.”

 

“He gave no name?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“And has had no letters or callers?”

 

“None.”

 

“But surely you or the girl enter his room of a morning?”

 

“No, sir; he looks after himself entirely.”

 

“Dear me! that is certainly remarkable. What about his luggage?”

 

“He had one big brown bag with him—nothing else.”

 

“Well, we don’t seem to have much material to help us. Do you

say nothing has come out of that room—absolutely nothing?”

 

The landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shook out

two burnt matches and a cigarette-end upon the table.

 

“They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because I

had heard that you can read great things out of small ones.”

 

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

 

“There is nothing here,” said he. “The matches have, of course,

been used to light cigarettes. That is obvious from the

shortness of the burnt end. Half the match is consumed in

lighting a pipe or cigar. But, dear me! this cigarette stub is

certainly remarkable. The gentleman was bearded and moustached,

you say?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“I don’t understand that. I should say that only a clean-shaven

man could have smoked this. Why, Watson, even your modest

moustache would have been singed.”

 

“A holder?” I suggested.

 

“No, no; the end is matted. I suppose there could not be two

people in your rooms, Mrs. Warren?”

 

“No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life

in one.”

 

“Well, I think we must wait for a little more material. After

all, you have nothing to complain of. You have received your

rent, and he is not a troublesome lodger, though he is certainly

an unusual one. He pays you well, and if he chooses to lie

concealed it is no direct business of yours. We have no excuse

for an intrusion upon his privacy until we have some reason to

think that there is a guilty reason for it. I’ve taken up the

matter, and I won’t lose sight of it. Report to me if