His Last Bow - Arthur Conan Doyle (classic books for 12 year olds txt) 📗
- Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
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held at full arm’s length, he threw it among a bank of brambles.
“We must give the room a little time to clear. I take it,
Watson, that you have no longer a shadow of a doubt as to how
these tragedies were produced?”
“None whatever.”
“But the cause remains as obscure as before. Come into the
arbour here and let us discuss it together. That villainous
stuff seems still to linger round my throat. I think we must
admit that all the evidence points to this man, Mortimer
Tregennis, having been the criminal in the first tragedy, though
he was the victim in the second one. We must remember, in the
first place, that there is some story of a family quarrel,
followed by a reconciliation. How bitter that quarrel may have
been, or how hollow the reconciliation we cannot tell. When I
think of Mortimer Tregennis, with the foxy face and the small
shrewd, beady eyes behind the spectacles, he is not a man whom I
should judge to be of a particularly forgiving disposition.
Well, in the next place, you will remember that this idea of
someone moving in the garden, which took our attention for a
moment from the real cause of the tragedy, emanated from him. He
had a motive in misleading us. Finally, if he did not throw the
substance into the fire at the moment of leaving the room, who
did do so? The affair happened immediately after his departure.
Had anyone else come in, the family would certainly have risen
from the table. Besides, in peaceful Cornwall, visitors did not
arrive after ten o’clock at night. We may take it, then, that
all the evidence points to Mortimer Tregennis as the culprit.”
“Then his own death was suicide!”
“Well, Watson, it is on the face of it a not impossible
supposition. The man who had the guilt upon his soul of having
brought such a fate upon his own family might well be driven by
remorse to inflict it upon himself. There are, however, some
cogent reasons against it. Fortunately, there is one man in
England who knows all about it, and I have made arrangements by
which we shall hear the facts this afternoon from his own lips.
Ah! he is a little before his time. Perhaps you would kindly
step this way, Dr. Leon Sterndale. We have been conducing a
chemical experiment indoors which has left our little room hardly
fit for the reception of so distinguished a visitor.”
I had heard the click of the garden gate, and now the majestic
figure of the great African explorer appeared upon the path. He
turned in some surprise towards the rustic arbour in which we
sat.
“You sent for me, Mr. Holmes. I had your note about an hour ago,
and I have come, though I really do not know why I should obey
your summons.”
“Perhaps we can clear the point up before we separate,” said
Holmes. “Meanwhile, I am much obliged to you for your courteous
acquiescence. You will excuse this informal reception in the
open air, but my friend Watson and I have nearly furnished an
additional chapter to what the papers call the Cornish Horror,
and we prefer a clear atmosphere for the present. Perhaps, since
the matters which we have to discuss will affect you personally
in a very intimate fashion, it is as well that we should talk
where there can be no eavesdropping.”
The explorer took his cigar from his lips and gazed sternly at my
companion.
“I am at a loss to know, sir,” he said, “what you can have to
speak about which affects me personally in a very intimate
fashion.”
“The killing of Mortimer Tregennis,” said Holmes.
For a moment I wished that I were armed. Sterndale’s fierce face
turned to a dusky red, his eyes glared, and the knotted,
passionate veins started out in his forehead, while he sprang
forward with clenched hands towards my companion. Then he
stopped, and with a violent effort he resumed a cold, rigid
calmness, which was, perhaps, more suggestive of danger than his
hot-headed outburst.
“I have lived so long among savages and beyond the law,” said he,
“that I have got into the way of being a law to myself. You
would do well, Mr. Holmes, not to forget it, for I have no desire
to do you an injury.”
“Nor have I any desire to do you an injury, Dr. Sterndale.
Surely the clearest proof of it is that, knowing what I know, I
have sent for you and not for the police.”
Sterndale sat down with a gasp, overawed for, perhaps, the first
time in his adventurous life. There was a calm assurance of
power in Holmes’s manner which could not be withstood. Our
visitor stammered for a moment, his great hands opening and
shutting in his agitation.
“What do you mean?” he asked at last. “If this is bluff upon
your part, Mr. Holmes, you have chosen a bad man for your
experiment. Let us have no more beating about the bush. What DO
you mean?”
“I will tell you,” said Holmes, “and the reason why I tell you is
that I hope frankness may beget frankness. What my next step may
be will depend entirely upon the nature of your own defence.”
“My defence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My defence against what?”
“Against the charge of killing Mortimer Tregennis.”
Sterndale mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Upon my
word, you are getting on,” said he. “Do all your successes
depend upon this prodigious power of bluff?”
“The bluff,” said Holmes sternly, “is upon your side, Dr. Leon
Sterndale, and not upon mine. As a proof I will tell you some of
the facts upon which my conclusions are based. Of your return
from Plymouth, allowing much of your property to go on to Africa,
I will say nothing save that it first informed me that you were
one of the factors which had to be taken into account in
reconstructing this drama—”
“I came back—”
“I have heard your reasons and regard them as unconvincing and
inadequate. We will pass that. You came down here to ask me
whom I suspected. I refused to answer you. You then went to the
vicarage, waited outside it for some time, and finally returned
to your cottage.”
“How do you know that?”
“I followed you.”
“I saw no one.”
“That is what you may expect to see when I follow you. You spent
a restless night at your cottage, and you formed certain plans,
which in the early morning you proceeded to put into execution.
Leaving your door just as day was breaking, you filled your
pocket with some reddish gravel that was lying heaped beside your
gate.”
Sterndale gave a violent start and looked at Holmes in amazement.
“You then walked swiftly for the mile which separated you from
the vicarage. You were wearing, I may remark, the same pair of
ribbed tennis shoes which are at the present moment upon your
feet. At the vicarage you passed through the orchard and the
side hedge, coming out under the window of the lodger Tregennis.
It was now daylight, but the household was not yet stirring. You
drew some of the gravel from your pocket, and you threw it up at
the window above you.”
Sterndale sprang to his feet.
“I believe that you are the devil himself!” he cried.
Holmes smiled at the compliment. “It took two, or possibly
three, handfuls before the lodger came to the window. You
beckoned him to come down. He dressed hurriedly and descended to
his sitting-room. You entered by the window. There was an
interview—a short one—during which you walked up and down the
room. Then you passed out and closed the window, standing on the
lawn outside smoking a cigar and watching what occurred.
Finally, after the death of Tregennis, you withdrew as you had
come. Now, Dr. Sterndale, how do you justify such conduct, and
what were the motives for your actions? If you prevaricate or
trifle with me, I give you my assurance that the matter will pass
out of my hands forever.”
Our visitor’s face had turned ashen gray as he listened to the
words of his accuser. Now he sat for some time in thought with
his face sunk in his hands. Then with a sudden impulsive gesture
he plucked a photograph from his breast-pocket and threw it on
the rustic table before us.
“That is why I have done it,” said he.
It showed the bust and face of a very beautiful woman. Holmes
stooped over it.
“Brenda Tregennis,” said he.
“Yes, Brenda Tregennis,” repeated our visitor. “For years I have
loved her. For years she has loved me. There is the secret of
that Cornish seclusion which people have marvelled at. It has
brought me close to the one thing on earth that was dear to me.
I could not marry her, for I have a wife who has left me for
years and yet whom, by the deplorable laws of England, I could
not divorce. For years Brenda waited. For years I waited. And
this is what we have waited for.” A terrible sob shook his great
frame, and he clutched his throat under his brindled beard. Then
with an effort he mastered himself and spoke on:
“The vicar knew. He was in our confidence. He would tell you
that she was an angel upon earth. That was why he telegraphed to
me and I returned. What was my baggage or Africa to me when I
learned that such a fate had come upon my darling? There you
have the missing clue to my action, Mr. Holmes.”
“Proceed,” said my friend.
Dr. Sterndale drew from his pocket a paper packet and laid it
upon the table. On the outside was written “Radix pedis diaboli”
with a red poison label beneath it. He pushed it towards me. “I
understand that you are a doctor, sir. Have you ever heard of
this preparation?”
“Devil’s-foot root! No, I have never heard of it.”
“It is no reflection upon your professional knowledge,” said he,
“for I believe that, save for one sample in a laboratory at Buda,
there is no other specimen in Europe. It has not yet found its
way either into the pharmacopoeia or into the literature of
toxicology. The root is shaped like a foot, half human, half
goatlike; hence the fanciful name given by a botanical
missionary. It is used as an ordeal poison by the medicine-men
in certain districts of West Africa and is kept as a secret among
them. This particular specimen I obtained under very
extraordinary circumstances in the Ubangi country.” He opened
the paper as he spoke and disclosed a heap of reddish-brown,
snuff-like powder.
“Well, sir?” asked Holmes sternly.
“I am about to tell you, Mr. Holmes, all that actually occurred,
for you already know so much that it is clearly to my interest
that you should know all. I have already explained the
relationship in which I stood to the Tregennis family. For the
sake of the sister I was friendly with the brothers. There was a
family quarrel about money which estranged this man Mortimer, but
it was supposed to be made up, and I afterwards met him as I did
the others. He was a sly, subtle, scheming man, and several
things arose which gave me a suspicion of him, but I had no cause
for any positive quarrel.
“One day, only a couple of weeks ago, he came down to my cottage
and I showed him
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