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

the most

singular of them all. I managed to see him on a plausible

pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark, deepset, brooding eyes

that he was perfectly aware of my true business. He is a man of

fifty, strong, active, with iron-gray hair, great bunched black

eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of an emperor—a fierce,

masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his parchment face.

He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics, for he

is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord. His friend and

secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate

brown, wily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness of

speech. You see, Watson, we have come already upon two sets of

foreigners—one at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable—so our

gaps are beginning to close.

 

“These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of

the household; but there is one other person who for our

immediate purpose may be even more important. Henderson has two

children—girls of eleven and thirteen. Their governess is a

Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman of forty or thereabouts. There is

also one confidential manservant. This little group forms the

real family, for their travel about together, and Henderson is a

great traveller, always on the move. It is only within the last

weeks that he has returned, after a year’s absence, to High

Gable. I may add that he is enormously rich, and whatever his

whims may be he can very easily satisfy them. For the rest, his

house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the usual

overfed, underworked staff of a large English country house.

 

“So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my

own observation. There are no better instruments than discharged

servants with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I

call it luck, but it would not have come my way had I not been

looking out for it. As Baynes remarks, we all have our systems.

It was my system which enabled me to find John Warner, late

gardener of High Gable, sacked in a moment of temper by his

imperious employer. He in turn had friends among the indoor

servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their master. So

I had my key to the secrets of the establishment.

 

“Curious people, Watson! I don’t pretend to understand it all

yet, but very curious people anyway. It’s a double-winged house,

and the servants live on one side, the family on the other.

There’s no link between the two save for Henderson’s own servant,

who serves the family’s meals. Everything is carried to a

certain door, which forms the one connection. Governess and

children hardly go out at all, except into the garden. Henderson

never by any chance walks alone. His dark secretary is like his

shadow. The gossip among the servants is that their master is

terribly afraid of something. ‘Sold his soul to the devil in

exchange for money,’ says Warner, ‘and expects his creditor to

come up and claim his own.’ Where they came from, or who they

are, nobody has an idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson

has lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and

heavy compensation have kept him out of the courts.

 

“Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new

information. We may take it that the letter came out of this

strange household and was an invitation to Garcia to carry out

some attempt which had already been planned. Who wrote the note?

It was someone within the citadel, and it was a woman. Who then

but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our reasoning seems to point

that way. At any rate, we may take it asa hypothesis and see

what consequences it would entail. I may add that Miss Burnet’s

age and character make it certain that my first idea that there

might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.

 

“If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and

confederate of Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do

if she heard of his death? If he met it in some nefarious

enterprise her lips might be sealed. Still, in her heart, she

must retain bitterness and hatred against those who had killed

him and would presumably help so far as she could to have revenge

upon them. Could we see her, then and try to use her? That was

my first thought. But now we come to a sinister fact. Miss

Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night of the

murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she

alive? Has she perhaps met her end on the same night as the

friend whom she had summoned? Or is she merely a prisoner?

There is the point which we still have to decide.

 

“You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, Watson.

There is nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant. Our

whole scheme might seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate.

The woman’s disappearance counts for nothing, since in that

extraordinary household any member of it might be invisible for a

week. And yet she may at the present moment be in danger of her

life. All I can do is to watch the house and leave my agent,

Warner, on guard at the gates. We can’t let such a situation

continue. If the law can do nothing we must take the risk

ourselves.”

 

“What do you suggest?”

 

“I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an

outhouse. My suggestion is that you and I go to-night and see if

we can strike at the very heart of the mystery.”

 

It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect. The old

house with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable

inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact

that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all

combined to damp my ardour. But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of Holmes which made it impossible to shrink from

any adventure which he might recommend. One knew that thus, and

only thus, could a solution be found. I clasped his hand in

silence, and the die was cast.

 

But it was not destined that our investigation should have so

adventurous an ending. It was about five o’clock, and the

shadows of the March evening were beginning to fall, when an

excited rustic rushed into our room.

 

“They’ve gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The

lady broke away, and I’ve got her in a cab downstairs.”

 

“Excellent, Warner!” cried Holmes, springing to his feet.

“Watson, the gaps are closing rapidly.”

 

In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion.

She bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some

recent tragedy. Her head hung listlessly upon her breast, but as

she raised it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her

pupils were dark dots in the centre of the broad gray iris. She

was drugged with opium.

 

“I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes,” said

our emissary, the discharged gardener. “When the carriage came

out I followed it to the station. She was like one walking in

her sleep, but when they tried to get her into the train she came

to life and struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. She

fought her way out again. I took her part, got her into a cab,

and here we are. I shan’t forget the face at the carriage window

as I led her away. I’d have a short life if he had his way—the

black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil.”

 

We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of

cups of the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the

mists of the drug. Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the

situation rapidly explained to him.

 

“Why, sir, you’ve got me the very evidence I want,” said the

inspector warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. “I was on the

same scent as you from the first.”

 

“What! You were after Henderson?”

 

“Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High

Gable I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you

down below. It was just who would get his evidence first.”

 

“Then why did you arrest the mulatto?”

 

Baynes chuckled.

 

“I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was

suspected, and that he would lie low and make no move so long as

he thought he was in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to

make him believe that our eyes were off him. I knew he would be

likely to clear off then and give us a chance of getting at Miss

Burnet.”

 

Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector’s shoulder.

 

“You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and

intuition,” said he.

 

Baynes flushed with pleasure.

 

“I’ve had a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the

week. Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in

sight. But he must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet

broke away. However, your man picked her up, and it all ends

well. We can’t arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so

the sooner we get a statement the better.”

 

“Every minute she gets stronger,” said Holmes, glancing at the

governess. “But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?”

 

“Henderson,” the inspector answered, “is Don Murillo, once call

the Tiger of San Pedro.”

 

The Tiger of San Pedro! The whole history of the man came back

to me in a flash. He had made his name as the most lewd and

bloodthirsty tyrant that had ever governed any country with a

pretence to civilization. Strong, fearless, and energetic, he

had sufficient virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices

upon a cowering people for ten or twelve years. His name was a

terror through all Central America. At the end of that time

there was a universal rising against him. But he was as cunning

as he was cruel, and at the first whisper of coming trouble he

had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship which was

manned by devoted adherents. It was an empty palace which was

stormed by the insurgents next day. The dictator, his two

children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them.

>From that moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity

had been a frequent subject for comment in the European press.

 

“Yes, sir, Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro,” said Baynes.

“If you look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are

green and white, same as in the note, Mr. Holmes. Henderson he

called himself, but I traced him back, Paris and Rome and Madrid

to Barcelona, where his ship came in in ‘86. They’ve been

looking for him all the time for their revenge, but it is only

now that they have begun to find him out.”

 

“They discovered him a year ago,” said Miss Burnet, who had sat

up and was now intently following the conversation. “Once

already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit

shielded him. Now, again, it is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who

has fallen, while the monster goes safe. But another will come,

and yet another, until some day justice will be done; that is as

certain as the rise of tomorrow’s sun.” Her thin hands

clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her