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

sink he drew a zinc pail which contained a

quantity of blood. Then from the table he took a platter heaped

with small pieces of charred bone.

 

“Something has been killed and something has been burned. We

raked all these out of the fire. We had a doctor in this

morning. He says that they are not human.”

 

Holmes smiled and rubbed his hands.

 

“I must congratulate you, Inspector, on handling so distinctive

and instructive a case. Your powers, if I may say so without

offence, seem superior to your opportunities.”

 

Inspector Baynes’s small eyes twinkled with pleasure.

 

“You’re right, Mr. Holmes. We stagnate in the provinces. A case

of this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take

it. What do you make of these bones?”

 

“A lamb, I should say, or a kid.”

 

“And the white cock?”

 

“Curious, Mr. Baynes, very curious. I should say almost unique.”

 

“Yes, sir, there must have been some very strange people with

some very strange ways in this house. One of them is dead. Did

his companions follow him and kill him? If they did we should

have them, for every port is watched. But my own views are

different. Yes, sir, my own views are very different.”

 

“You have a theory then?”

 

“And I’ll work it myself, Mr. Holmes. It’s only due to my own

credit to do so. Your name is made, but I have still to make

mine. I should be glad to be able to say afterwards that I had

solved it without your help.”

 

Holmes laughed good-humoredly.

 

“Well, well, Inspector,” said he. “Do you follow your path and I

will follow mine. My results are always very much at your

service if you care to apply to me for them. I think that I have

seen all that I wish in this house, and that my time may be more

profitably employed elsewhere. Au revoir and good luck!”

 

I could tell by numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost

upon anyone but myself, that Holmes was on a hot scent. As

impassive as ever to the casual observer, there were none the

less a subdued eagerness and suggestion of tension in his

brightened eyes and brisker manner which assured me that the game

was afoot. After his habit he said nothing, and after mine I

asked no questions. Sufficient for me to share the sport and

lend my humble help to the capture without distracting that

intent brain with needless interruption. All would come round to

me in due time.

 

I waited, therefore—but to my ever-deepening disappointment I

waited in vain. Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step

forward. One morning he spent in town, and I learned from a

casual reference that he had visited the British Museum. Save

for this one excursion, he spent his days in long and often

solitary walks, or in chatting with a number of village gossips

whose acquaintance he had cultivated.

 

“I’m sure, Watson, a week in the country will be invaluable to

you,” he remarked. “It is very pleasant to see the first green

shoots upon the hedges and the catkins on the hazels once again.

With a spud, a tin box, and an elementary book on botany, there

are instructive days to be spent.” He prowled about with this

equipment himself, but it was a poor show of plants which he

would bring back of an evening.

 

Occasionally in our rambles we came across Inspector Baynes. His

fat, red face wreathed itself in smiles and his small eyes

glittered as he greeted my companion. He said little about the

case, but from that little we gathered that he also was not

dissatisfied at the course of events. I must admit, however,

that I was somewhat surprised when, some five days after the

crime, I opened my morning paper to find in large letters:

 

THE OXSHOTT MYSTERY

A SOLUTION

ARREST OF SUPPOSED ASSASSIN

 

Holmes sprang in his chair as if he had been stung when I read

the headlines.

 

“By Jove!” he cried. “You don’t mean that Baynes has got him?”

 

“Apparently,” said I as I read the following report:

 

“Great excitement was caused in Esher and the neighbouring

district when it was learned late last night that an arrest had

been effected in connection with the Oxshott murder. It will be

remembered that Mr. Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on

Oxshott Common, his body showing signs of extreme violence, and

that on the same night his servant and his cook fled, which

appeared to show their participation in the crime. It was

suggested, but never proved, that the deceased gentleman may have

had valuables in the house, and that their abstraction was the

motive of the crime. Every effort was made by Inspector Baynes,

who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding place of the

fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they had not

gone far but were lurking in some retreat which had been already

prepared. It was certain from the first, however, that they

would eventually be detected, as the cook, from the evidence of

one or two tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of him through

the window, was a man of most remarkable appearance—being a huge

and hideous mulatto, with yellowish features of a pronounced

negroid type. This man has been seen since the crime, for he was

detected and pursued by Constable Walters on the same evening,

when he had the audacity to revisit Wisteria Lodge. Inspector

Baynes, considering that such a visit must have some purpose in

view and was likely, therefore, to be repeated, abandoned the

house but left an ambuscade in the shrubbery. The man walked

into the trap and was captured last night after a struggle in

which Constable Downing was badly bitten by the savage. We

understand that when the prison is brought before the magistrates

a remand will be applied for by the police, and that great

developments are hoped from his capture.”

 

“Really we must see Baynes at once,” cried Holmes, picking up his

hat. “We will just catch him before he starts.” We hurried down

the village street and found, as we had expected, that the

inspector was just leaving his lodgings.

 

“You’ve seen the paper, Mr. Holmes?” he asked, holding one out to

us.

 

“Yes, Baynes, I’ve seen it. Pray don’t think it a liberty if I

give you a word of friendly warning.”

 

“Of warning, Mr. Holmes?”

 

“I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not

convinced that you are on the right lines. I don’t want you to

commit yourself too far unless you are sure.”

 

“You’re very kind, Mr. Holmes.”

 

“I assure you I speak for your good.”

 

It seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an

instant over one of Mr. Baynes’s tiny eyes.

 

“We agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes. That’s what I

am doing.”

 

“Oh, very good,” said Holmes. “Don’t blame me.”

 

“No, sir; I believe you mean well by me. But we all have our own

systems, Mr. Holmes. You have yours, and maybe I have mine.”

 

“Let us say no more about it.”

 

“You’re welcome always to my news. This fellow is a perfect

savage, as strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil. He

chewed Downing’s thumb nearly off before they could master him.

He hardly speaks a word of English, and we can get nothing out of

him but grunts.”

 

“And you think you have evidence that he murdered his late

master?”

 

“I didn’t say so, Mr. Holmes; I didn’t say so. We all have our

little ways. You try yours and I will try mine. That’s the

agreement.”

 

Holmes shrugged his shoulders as we walked away together. “I

can’t make the man out. He seems to be riding for a fall. Well,

as he says, we must each try our own way and see what comes of

it. But there’s something in Inspector Baynes which I can’t

quite understand.”

 

“Just sit down in that chair, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes when

we had returned to our apartment at the Bull. “I want to put you

in touch with the situation, as I may need your help to-night.

Let me show you the evolution of this case so far as I have been

able to follow it. Simple as it has been in its leading

features, it has none the less presented surprising difficulties

in the way of an arrest. There are gaps in that direction which

we have still to fill.

 

“We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon

the evening of his death. We may put aside this idea of Baynes’s

that Garcia’s servants were concerned in the matter. The proof

of this lies in the fact that it was HE who had arranged for the

presence of Scott Eccles, which could only have been done for the

purpose of an alibi. It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise,

and apparently a criminal enterprise, in hand that night in the

course of which he met his death. I say ‘criminal’ because only

a man with a criminal enterprise desires to establish an alibi.

Who, then, is most likely to have taken his life? Surely the

person against whom the criminal enterprise was directed. So far

it seems to me that we are on safe ground.

 

“We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia’s

household. They were ALL confederates in the same unknown crime.

If it came off when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would

be warded off by the Englishman’s evidence, and all would be

well. But the attempt was a dangerous one, and if Garcia did NOT

return by a certain hour it was probable that his own life had

been sacrificed. It had been arranged, therefore, that in such a

case his two subordinates were to make for some prearranged spot

where they could escape investigation and be in a position

afterwards to renew their attempt. That would fully explain the

facts, would it not?”

 

The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me.

I wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me

before.

 

“But why should one servant return?”

 

“We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something

precious, something which he could not bear to part with, had

been left behind. That would explain his persistence, would it

not?”

 

“Well, what is the next step?”

 

“The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner. It

indicates a confederate at the other end. Now, where was the

other end? I have already shown you that it could only lie in

some large house, and that the number of large houses is limited.

My first days in this village were devoted to a series of walks

in which in the intervals of my botanical researches I made a

reconnaissance of all the large houses and an examination of the

family history of the occupants. One house, and only one,

riveted my attention. It is the famous old Jacobean grange of

High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott, and less

than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy. The other

mansions belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far

aloof from romance. But Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all

accounts a curious man to whom curious adventures might befall.

I concentrated my attention, therefore, upon him and his

household.

 

“A singular set of people, Watson—the man himself