Exploits of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  "My dear fellow," I expostulated, "can you read villainy in a map?"

  "Open country, Watson! Fields. Woods. The nearest railway station fully three miles from Groxton Low Hall!" Holmes groaned. "Miss Forsythe, Miss Forsythe, you have much to answer for!"

  The young lady fell back a step in amazement.

  "I have much to answer for?" she cried. "Can you credit me, sir, when I tell you that so much continued mystery has all but driven the wits from my head? Neither Charles nor Lady Mayo will speak a word."

  "Of explanation?"

  "Precisely!" She nodded her head towards the servant. "Charles has sent Trepley to London with a letter, to be delivered by hand, and I am not even suffered to know its contents."

  "Sorry, miss," observed the little man, gruffly but deferentially. "That's orders."

  For the first time I noted that Trepley, who was dressed more like a groom than a manservant, jealously pressed an envelope flat between his hands as though he feared someone might snatch it away. His pale eyes, framed in the mutton-chop whiskers, moved slowly round the room. Sherlock Holmes advanced towards him.

  "You will be good enough to show me that envelope, my man," he said.

  I have often remarked that a stupid person is the most doggedly loyal. Trepley's eyes were almost those of a fanatic.

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but I will not. I will do as I have been ordered, come what may!"

  "I tell you, man, this is no time to hesitate. I don't wish to read the letter. I wish merely to see the address on the front and the seal on the back. Quickly, now! It may mean your master's life!"

  Trepley hesitated and moistened his lips. Gingerly, still gripping one corner of the envelope, he held it out without releasing it. Holmes whistled.

  "Come!" said he. "It is addressed to no less a personage than Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. And the seal? Ah! Just as I thought. You are engaged to deliver this letter at once?"

  "Yes, Mr. Holmes."

  "Then off with you! But detain the four-wheeler, for the rest of us will want it presently."

  He did not speak until Trepley had clattered down the stairs. But the old feverishness was again upon him.

  "And now, Watson, you might just look up the trams in Bradshaw. Are you armed?"

  "My stick."

  "For once, I fear, it may prove inadequate." And he opened the left-hand drawer of the desk-table. "Oblige me by slipping this into your greatcoat pocket. A .320 Webley, with Eley's No. 2 cartridges—"

  As the light gleamed on the barrel of the revolver, Celia Forsythe uttered a cry and put one hand on the mantelpiece to steady herself.

  "Mr. Holmes!" she began, and then seemed to change her mind. "There are frequent trains to Groxton station, which, as you say, is three miles from the Hall. Indeed, there is one in twenty minutes."

  "Excellent!"

  "But we must not take it!"

  "Must not take it, madam?"

  "I have had no time to tell you, but Lady Mayo herself now appeals to you for help. Only this afternoon I persuaded her. Lady Mayo requests that we three take the 10:25, which is the last train. She will meet us at Groxton station with the carriage." Miss Forsythe bit her lip. "Lady Mayo, despite her kindness, is—imperious. We must not miss that last train!"

  And yet we very nearly missed it. Having forgotten streets of frozen mud, and the crush of vehicles under blue, sputtering arc lamps, we arrived at Waterloo only just in time.

  Presently, as the train emerged into open country, our dim-lit compartment took on a greater quality of eeriness with each click of the wheels. Holmes sat silent, bending slightly forward. I could see his hawk-like profile, under the fore and aft cap, clear-cut against the cold radiance of a full moon. It was nearly half-past eleven when we alighted at a wayside station whose village had long been lightless and asleep.

  Nothing stirred there. No dog barked. Near the station stood an open landau, without a clink of harness from the horses. Bolt upright sat the coachman, as motionless as the squat elderly lady who sat in the back of the landau, watching us stonily as we approached.

  Miss Forsythe eagerly began to speak, but the elderly lady, who was wrapped in gray furs and had a good deal of nose, raised a hand to forestall her.

  "Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" she said, in a singularly deep and musical voice, "and this other gentleman, I take it, is Dr. Watson. I am Lady Mayo."

  She scrutinized us for a moment with a pair of singularly sharp and penetrating eyes.

  "Pray enter the landau," she continued. "You will find quite a number of carriage rugs. Though I deplore the necessity of offering an open conveyance on so cold a night, my coachman's fondness for fast driving," and she indicated the driver, who hunched up his shoulders, "has contrived to break the axle of the closed carriage. To the Hall, Billings! Make haste!"

  The whip cracked. With an uneasy swing of the rear wheels, our landau was off at a smart pace along a narrow road bordered with spiky hedgerows and skeleton trees.

  "But I did not mind," said Lady Mayo. "Lackaday, Mr. Holmes! I am a very old woman. My youth was a time of fast driving; ay, and of fast living too."

  "Was it also a time of fast dying?" asked my friend. "Such a death, for instance, as may overtake our young friend tonight?"

  The hoof-beats rang on the icy road.

  "I think, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said she quietly, "that you and I understand each other."

  "I am sure of it, Lady Mayo. But you have not answered my question."

  "Have no fear, Mr. Holmes. He is safe now."

  "You are certain?"

  "I tell you, he is quite safe! The park at Groxton Low Hall is patrolled, and the house is guarded. They cannot attack him."

  Whether my own outburst was caused by the smart clip of the landau, the rushing wind past our ears, or the maddening nature of the problem itself, to this day I cannot say.

  "Forgive the bluntness of an old campaigner," cried I, "who has no answer for anything. But at least take pity on the poor young lady beside you! Who is Mr. Charles Hendon? Why does he smash clocks? For what reason should his life be in danger?"

  "Tut, Watson," said Holmes, with a touch of tartness. "You yourself staggered me by enumerating the points in which Mr. Charles Hendon, as you put it, is confoundedly un-English."

  "Well? And why does that assist us?"

  "Because the so-called 'Charles Hendon' is assuredly not English."

  "Not English?" said Celia Forsythe, stretching out her hand. "But he speaks English perfectly!" The breath died in her throat. "Too perfectly!" she whispered.

  "This young man," I exclaimed, "is not, then, of exalted station?"

  "On the contrary, my dear fellow. Your shrewdness never fails. He is of very exalted station indeed. Now name for me the one Imperial Court in Europe—ay, Watson, Imperial Court!—at which the speaking of English has all but superseded its own native language."

  "I cannot think. I don't know."

  "Then endeavor to remember what you do know. Shortly before Miss Forsythe first called upon us, I read aloud certain items from the daily press which at the time seemed tediously unimportant. One item stated that the Nihilists, that dangerous band of anarchists who would crush Imperial Russia to nothingness, were suspected of plotting against the life of the Grand Duke Alexei at Odessa. The Grand Duke Alexei, you perceive. Now Lady Mayo's nickname for 'Mr. Charles Hendon' was—"

  "Alec!" cried I.

  "It might have been the merest coincidence," observed Holmes, shrugging his shoulders. "However, when we reflect upon recent history, we recall that in an earlier attempt on the life of the late Tsar of all the Russias—who was blown to pieces in '81, by the explosion of a dynamite bomb—the ticking of the bomb was drowned beneath the playing of a piano. Dynamite bombs, Watson, are of two lands. One, iron-sheathed and fairly light, may be ignited on a short fuse and thrown. The other, also of iron, is exploded by means of a clockwork mechanism whose loud ticking alone betrays its presence." br />
  Crack went the coachman's whip, and the hedgerows seemed to unreel as in a dream. Holmes and I sat with our backs to the driver, vis-à-vis the moon-whitened faces of Lady Mayo and Celia Forsythe.

  "Holmes, all this is becoming as clear as crystal! That is why the young man cannot bear the sight of a clock!"

  "No, Watson. No! The sound of a clock!"

  "The sound?"

  "Precisely. When I attempted to tell you as much, your native impatience cut me short at the first letter. On the two occasions when he destroyed a clock in public, bear in mind that in neither case could he actually see the clock. In one instance, as Miss Forsythe informed us, it was hidden inside a screen of greenery; in the other, it was behind a curtain. Hearing only that significant ticking, he struck before he had time to take thought. His purpose, of course, was to smash the clockwork and draw the fangs of what he believed to be a bomb."

  "But surely," I protested, "those blows of a stick might well have ignited and exploded a bomb?"

  Again Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

  "Had it been a real bomb, who can tell? Yet, against an iron casing, I think the matter doubtful. In either event, we deal with a very courageous gentleman, haunted and hounded, who rushed and struck blindly. It is not unnatural that the memory of his father's death and the knowledge that the same organization was on his own trail should tend toward hasty action."

  "And then?"

  Yet Sherlock Holmes remained uneasy. I noticed that he glanced round more than once at the lonely sweep of the gray rolling countryside.

  "Well," said he, "having determined so much in my first interview with Miss Forsythe, it seemed clear that the forged letter was bait to draw the Grand Duke to Odessa, urging on him the pluck to face these implacable men. But, as I have told you, he must have suspected. Therefore he would go—where?"

  "To England," said I. "Nay, more! To Groxton Low Hall, with the added inducement of an attractive young lady whom I urge to leave off weeping and dry her tears."

  Holmes looked exasperated.

  "At least I could say," replied he, "that the balance of probability lay in that direction. Surely it was obvious from the beginning that one in the position of Lady Mayo would never have entered so casually into railway-carriage conversation with a young man unless they had been, in Miss Forsythe's unwitting but illuminating phrase, 'old friends.'"

  "I underestimated your powers, Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Lady Mayo, who had been patting Celia's hand, spoke harshly. "Yes, I knew Alexei when he was a little boy in a sailor-suit at St. Petersburg."

  "Where your husband, I discovered, was First Secretary at the British Embassy. In Odessa I learned another fact of great interest."

  "Eh? What was that?"

  "The name of the Nihilists' chief agent, a daring, mad, and fanatical spirit who has been very close to the Grand Duke for some time."

  "Impossible!"

  "Yet true."

  For a moment Lady Mayo sat looking at him, her countenance far less stony, while the carriage bumped over a rut and veered.

  "Attend to me, Mr. Holmes. My own dear Alec has already written to the police, in the person of Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner."

  "Thank you; I have seen the letter. I have also seen the Imperial Russian Arms on the seal."

  "Meanwhile," she continued, "I repeat that the park is patrolled, the house guarded—"

  "Yet a fox may escape the hounds none the less."

  "It is not only a question of guards! At this minute, Mr. Holmes, poor Alec sits in an old, thick-walled room, with its door double-locked on the inside. The windows are so closely barred that none could so much as stretch a hand inside. The chimneypiece is ancient and hooded, yet with so narrow an aperture that no man could climb down; and a fire burns there. How could an enemy attack him?"

  "How?" muttered Holmes, biting his lip and tapping his fingers on his knee. "It is true he may be safe for one night, since—"

  Lady Mayo made a slight gesture of triumph.

  "No precaution has been neglected," said she. "Even the roof is safeguarded. Alec's manservant, Trepley, after delivering the letter in London with commendable quickness, returned by an earlier train than yours, and borrowed a horse at the village. At this moment he is on the roof of the Hall, faithfully guarding his master."

  The effect of this speech was extraordinary. Sherlock Holmes leaped to his feet in the carriage, his cape rising in grotesque black silhouette as he clutched at the box-rail for balance.

  "On the roof?" he echoed. "On the roof?"

  Then he turned round, seizing the shoulders of the coachman.

  "Whip up the horses!" he shouted. "For God's sake, whip up the horses! We have not a second to lose!"

  Crack! Crack! went the whip over the ears of the leader. The horses, snorting, settled down to a gallop and plunged away. In the confusion, as we were all thrown together, rose Lady Mayo's angry voice.

  "Mr. Holmes, have you taken leave of your senses?"

  "You shall see whether I have. Miss Forsythe! Did you ever actually hear the Grand Duke address his man as Trepley?"

  "I—no!" faltered Celia Forsythe, shocked to alertness. "As I informed you, Char—oh, heaven help me!—the Grand Duke called him 'Trep.' I assumed—"

  "Exactly! You assumed. But his true name is Trepoff. From your first description I knew him to be a liar and a traitor."

  The hedgerows flashed past; bit and harness jingled; we flew with the wind.

  "You may recall," pursued Holmes, "the man's consummate hypocrisy when his master smashed the first clock? It was a heavy look of embarrassment and shame, was it not? He would have you think Mr. Charles Hendon insane. How came you to know of the other five clocks, which were purely imaginary? Because Trepoff told you. To hide a clock or a live bomb in a cupboard would really have been madness, if in fact the Grand Duke Alexei had ever done so."

  "But, Holmes," I protested. "Since Trepoff is his personal servant—"

  "Faster, coachman! Faster! Yes, Watson!"

  "Surely Trepoff must have had a hundred opportunities to kill his master, by knife or poison perhaps, without this spectacular addition of a bomb?"

  "This spectacular addition, as you call it, is the revolutionaries' stock-in-trade. They will not act without it. Their victim must be blown up in one fiery crash of ruin, else the world may not notice them or their power."

  "But the letter to Sir Charles Warren?" cried Lady Mayo.

  "Doubtless it was dropped down the nearest street drain. Ha! I think that must be Groxton Low Hall just ahead."

  The ensuing events of that night are somewhat confused in my mind. I recall a long, low-built Jacobean house, of mellow red brick with mullioned windows and a flat roof, which seemed to rush at us up a gravel drive. Carriage rugs flew wide. Lady Mayo, thoroughly roused, called sharp instructions to a group of nervous servants.

  Then Holmes and I were hurrying after Miss Forsythe up a series of staircases, from a broad and carpeted oak stairway in the hall to a set of narrow steps which were little more than a ladder to the roof. At the foot of these, Holmes paused for a moment to lay his fingers on Miss Forsythe's arm.

  "You will stay here," he said quietly.

  There was a metallic click as he put his hand into his pocket, and for the first time I knew that Holmes was armed too.

  "Come, Watson," said he.

  I followed him up the narrow steps while he softly lifted the trapdoor to the roof.

  "Not a sound, on your life!" he whispered. "Fire if you catch sight of him."

  "But how are we to find him?"

  The cold air again blew in our faces. We crept cautiously forward across the flat roof. All about us were chimneys, tall ghostly stacks and clusters of squat smoke-blackened pots, surrounding a great leaden cupola shining like silver under the moon. At the far end, where the roof-tree of an old gable rose against the sky, a dark shape seemed to crouch above a single moon-washed chimney.

  A sulfur match flared blue, th
en burned with a cedar yellow glow and, an instant later, came the hissing of an ignited fuse followed by a clattering sound in the chimney. Holmes ran forward, twisting and turning through the maze of stacks and parapets, toward the hunched figure now hastily clawing away.

  "Fire, Watson! Fire!"

  Our pistols rang out together. I saw Trepoff's pale face jerk round toward us, and then in the same instant the whole chimneystack rose straight up into the air in a solid pillar of white fire. The roof heaved beneath my feet, and I was dimly conscious of rolling over and over along the leads, while shards and splinters of broken brickwork whizzed overhead or clanged against the metal dome of the cupola.