white-haired man, had just come down from Mrs. Hilton
Cubitt's room, and he reported that her injuries were
serious, but not necessarily fatal. The bullet had passed
through the front of her brain, and it would probably be
some time before she could regain consciousness. On the
question of whether she had been shot or had shot herself
he would not venture to express any decided opinion.
Certainly the bullet had been discharged at very close
quarters. There was only the one pistol found in the room,
two barrels of which had been emptied. Mr. Hilton Cubitt
had been shot through the heart. It was equally
conceivable that he had shot her and then himself, or that
she had been the criminal, for the revolver lay upon the
floor midway between them.
"Has he been moved?" asked Holmes.
"We have moved nothing except the lady. We could not leave
her lying wounded upon the floor."
"How long have you been here, doctor?"
"Since four o'clock."
"Anyone else?"
"Yes, the constable here."
"And you have touched nothing?"
"Nothing."
"You have acted with great discretion. Who sent for you?"
"The housemaid, Saunders."
"Was it she who gave the alarm?"
"She and Mrs. King, the cook."
"Where are they now?"
"In the kitchen, I believe."
"Then I think we had better hear their story at once."
The old hall, oak-panelled and high-windowed, had been
turned into a court of investigation. Holmes sat in a
great, old-fashioned chair, his inexorable eyes gleaming
out of his haggard face. I could read in them a set
purpose to devote his life to this quest until the client
whom he had failed to save should at last be avenged. The
trim Inspector Martin, the old, grey-headed country doctor,
myself, and a stolid village policeman made up the rest of
that strange company.
The two women told their story clearly enough. They had
been aroused from their sleep by the sound of an explosion,
which had been followed a minute later by a second one.
They slept in adjoining rooms, and Mrs. King had rushed in
to Saunders. Together they had descended the stairs. The
door of the study was open and a candle was burning upon
the table. Their master lay upon his face in the centre of
the room. He was quite dead. Near the window his wife was
crouching, her head leaning against the wall. She was
horribly wounded, and the side of her face was red with
blood. She breathed heavily, but was incapable of saying
anything. The passage, as well as the room, was full of
smoke and the smell of powder. The window was certainly
shut and fastened upon the inside. Both women were
positive upon the point. They had at once sent for the
doctor and for the constable. Then, with the aid of the
groom and the stable-boy, they had conveyed their injured
mistress to her room. Both she and her husband had
occupied the bed. She was clad in her dress -- he in his
dressing-gown, over his night clothes. Nothing had been
moved in the study. So far as they knew there had never
been any quarrel between husband and wife. They had always
looked upon them as a very united couple.
These were the main points of the servants' evidence. In
answer to Inspector Martin they were clear that every door
was fastened upon the inside, and that no one could have
escaped from the house. In answer to Holmes they both
remembered that they were conscious of the smell of powder
from the moment that they ran out of their rooms upon the
top floor. "I commend that fact very carefully to your
attention," said Holmes to his professional colleague.
"And now I think that we are in a position to undertake a
thorough examination of the room."
The study proved to be a small chamber, lined on three
sides with books, and with a writing-table facing an
ordinary window, which looked out upon the garden. Our
first attention was given to the body of the unfortunate
squire, whose huge frame lay stretched across the room.
His disordered dress showed that he had been hastily
aroused from sleep. The bullet had been fired at him from
the front, and had remained in his body after penetrating
the heart. His death had certainly been instantaneous and
painless. There was no powder-marking either upon his
dressing-gown or on his hands. According to the country
surgeon the lady had stains upon her face, but none upon
her hand.
"The absence of the latter means nothing, though its
presence may mean everything," said Holmes. "Unless the
powder from a badly-fitting cartridge happens to spurt
backwards, one may fire many shots without leaving a sign.
I would suggest that Mr. Cubitt's body may now be removed.
I suppose, doctor, you have not recovered the bullet which
wounded the lady?"
"A serious operation will be necessary before that can be
done. But there are still four cartridges in the revolver.
Two have been fired and two wounds inflicted, so that each
bullet can be accounted for."
"So it would seem," said Holmes. "Perhaps you can account
also for the bullet which has so obviously struck the edge
of the window?"
He had turned suddenly, and his long, thin finger was
pointing to a hole which had been drilled right through the
lower window-sash about an inch above the bottom.
"By George!" cried the inspector. "How ever did you see
that?"
"Because I looked for it."
"Wonderful!" said the country doctor. "You are certainly
right, sir. Then a third shot has been fired, and
therefore a third person must have been present. But who
could that have been and how could he have got away?"
"That is the problem which we are now about to solve," said
Sherlock Holmes. "You remember, Inspector Martin, when the
servants said that on leaving their room they were at once
conscious of a smell of powder I remarked that the point
was an extremely important one?"
"Yes, sir; but I confess I did not quite follow you."
"It suggested that at the time of the firing the window as
well as the door of the room had been open. Otherwise the
fumes of powder could not have been blown so rapidly
through the house. A draught in the room was necessary for
that. Both door and window were only open for a very short
time, however."
"How do you prove that?"
"Because the candle has not guttered."
"Capital!" cried the inspector. "Capital!"
"Feeling sure that the window had been open at the time of
the tragedy I conceived that there might have been a third
person in the affair, who stood outside this opening and
fired through it. Any shot directed at this person might
hit the sash.
I looked, and there, sure enough, was the
bullet mark!"
"But how came the window to be shut and fastened?"
"The woman's first instinct would be to shut and fasten the
window. But, halloa! what is this?"
It was a lady's hand-bag which stood upon the study table --
a trim little hand-bag of crocodile-skin and silver.
Holmes opened it and turned the contents out. There were
twenty fifty-pound notes of the Bank of England, held
together by an india-rubber band -- nothing else.
"This must be preserved, for it will figure in the trial,"
said Holmes, as he handed the bag with its contents to the
inspector. "It is now necessary that we should try to
throw some light upon this third bullet, which has clearly,
from the splintering of the wood, been fired from inside
the room. I should like to see Mrs. King, the cook, again.
You said, Mrs. King, that you were awakened by a _loud_
explosion. When you said that, did you mean that it seemed
to you to be louder than the second one?"
"Well, sir, it wakened me from my sleep, and so it is hard
to judge. But it did seem very loud."
"You don't think that it might have been two shots fired
almost at the same instant?"
"I am sure I couldn't say, sir."
"I believe that it was undoubtedly so. I rather think,
Inspector Martin, that we have now exhausted all that this
room can teach us. If you will kindly step round with me,
we shall see what fresh evidence the garden has to offer."
A flower-bed extended up to the study window, and we all
broke into an exclamation as we approached it. The flowers
were trampled down, and the soft soil was imprinted all
over with footmarks. Large, masculine feet they were, with
peculiarly long, sharp toes. Holmes hunted about among the
grass and leaves like a retriever after a wounded bird.
Then, with a cry of satisfaction, he bent forward and
picked up a little brazen cylinder.
"I thought so," said he; "the revolver had an ejector, and
here is the third cartridge. I really think, Inspector
Martin, that our case is almost complete."
The country inspector's face had shown his intense
amazement at the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes's
investigation. At first he had shown some disposition to
assert his own position; but now he was overcome with
admiration and ready to follow without question wherever
Holmes led.
"Whom do you suspect?" he asked.
"I'll go into that later. There are several points in this
problem which I have not been able to explain to you yet.
Now that I have got so far I had best proceed on my own
lines, and then clear the whole matter up once and for
all."
"Just as you wish, Mr. Holmes, so long as we get our man."
"I have no desire to make mysteries, but it is impossible
at the moment of action to enter into long and complex
explanations. I have the threads of this affair all in my
hand. Even if this lady should never recover consciousness
we can still reconstruct the events of last night and
ensure that justice be done. First of all I wish to know
whether there is any inn in this neighbourhood known as
'Elrige's'?"
The servants were cross-questioned, but none of them had
heard of such a place. The stable-boy threw a light upon
the matter by remembering that a farmer of that name lived
some miles off in the direction of East Ruston.
"Is it a lonely farm?"
"Very lonely, sir."
"Perhaps they have not heard yet of all that happened here
during the night?"
"Maybe not, sir."
Holmes thought for a little and then a curious smile played
over his face.
"Saddle a horse, my lad," said he. "I shall wish you to
take a note to Elrige's Farm."
He took from his pocket the various slips of the dancing
men. With these in front of him he worked for some time at
the study-table. Finally he handed a note to the boy, with
directions to put it into the hands of the person to whom
it was addressed, and especially to answer no questions of
any sort which might be put to him. I saw the outside of
the note, addressed in straggling, irregular characters,
very unlike Holmes's usual precise hand. It was consigned
to Mr. Abe Slaney, Elrige's Farm, East Ruston, Norfolk.
"I think, inspector," Holmes remarked, "that you would do
well to telegraph for an escort, as, if my calculations
prove to be correct, you may have a particularly dangerous
prisoner to convey to the county gaol. The boy who takes
this note could no doubt forward your telegram. If there
is an afternoon train to town, Watson, I think we should do
well to take it, as I have a chemical analysis of some
interest to finish, and this investigation draws rapidly to
a close."
When the youth had been dispatched with the note, Sherlock
Holmes gave his instructions to the servants. If any
visitor were to call asking for Mrs. Hilton Cubitt no
information should be given as to her condition, but he was
to be shown at once into the drawing-room. He impressed
these points upon them with the utmost earnestness.
Finally he led the way into the drawing-room with the
remark that the business was now out of our hands, and that
we must while away the time as best we might until we could
see what was in store for us. The doctor had departed to
his patients, and only the inspector and myself remained.
"I think that I can help you to pass an hour in an
interesting and profitable manner," said Holmes, drawing
his chair up to the table and spreading out in front of him
the various papers upon which were recorded the antics of
the dancing men. "As to you, friend Watson, I owe you
every atonement for having allowed your natural curiosity
to remain so long unsatisfied. To you, inspector, the
whole incident may appeal as a remarkable professional
study. I must tell you first of all the interesting
circumstances connected with the previous consultations
which Mr. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in Baker Street."
He then shortly recapitulated the facts which have already
been recorded. "I have here in front of me these singular
productions, at which one might smile had they not proved
themselves to be the fore-runners of so terrible a tragedy.
I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and
am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the
subject, in which I analyze one hundred and sixty separate
ciphers; but I confess that this is entirely new to me.
The object of those who invented the system has apparently
been to conceal that these characters convey a message, and
to give the idea that they are the mere random sketches of
children.
"Having once recognised, however, that
the symbols stood
for letters, and having applied the rules which guide us in
all forms of secret writings, the solution was easy enough.
The first message submitted to me was so short that it was
impossible for me to do more than to say with some
confidence that the symbol
{GRAPHIC}
stood for E. As you are aware, E is the most common letter
in the English alphabet, and it predominates to so marked
an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect to
find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first
message four were the same, so it was reasonable to set
this down as E. It is true that in some cases the figure
was bearing a flag and in some cases not, but it was
probable from the way in which the flags were distributed
that they were used to break the sentence up into words. I
accepted this as a hypothesis, and noted that E was
represented by
{GRAPHIC}
"But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The
order of the English letters after E is by no means well
marked, and any preponderance which may be shown in an
average of a printed sheet may be reversed in a single
short sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R,
D, and L are the numerical order in which letters occur;
but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each other,
and it would be an endless task to try each combination
until a meaning was arrived at. I, therefore, waited for
fresh material. In my second interview with Mr. Hilton
Cubitt he was able to give me two other short sentences and
one message, which appeared -- since there was no flag --
to be a single word. Here are the symbols. Now, in the
single word I have already got the two E's coming second
and fourth in a word of five letters. It might be 'sever,'
or 'lever,' or 'never.' There can be no question that the
latter as a reply to an appeal is far the most probable,
and the circumstances pointed to its being a reply written
by the lady. Accepting it as correct, we are now able to
say that the symbols
{GRAPHIC}
stand respectively for N, V, and R.
"Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy
thought put me in possession of several other letters. It
occurred to me that if these appeals came, as I expected,
from someone who had been intimate with the lady in her
early life, a combination which contained two E's with
three letters between might very well stand for the name
'ELSIE.' On examination I found that such a combination
formed the termination of the message which was three times
repeated. It was certainly some appeal to 'Elsie.' In
this way I had got my L, S, and I. But what appeal could
it be? There were only four letters in the word which
preceded 'Elsie,' and it ended in E. Surely the word must
be 'COME.' I tried all other four letters ending in E, but
could find none to fit the case. So now I was in
possession of C, O, and M, and I was in a position to
attack the first message once more, dividing it into words
and putting dots for each symbol which was still unknown.
So treated it worked out in this fashion:--
.M .ERE ..E SL.NE.
"Now the first letter _can_ only be A, which is a most
useful discovery, since it occurs no fewer than three times
in this short sentence, and the H is also apparent in the
second word. Now it becomes:--
AM HERE A.E SLANE.
Or, filling in the obvious vacancies in the name:--
AM HERE ABE SLANEY.
I had so many letters now that I could proceed with
considerable confidence to the second message, which worked
out in this fashion:--
A. ELRI.ES.
Here I could only make sense by putting T and G for the
missing letters, and supposing that the name was that of
some house or inn at which the writer was staying."
Inspector Martin and I had listened with the utmost
interest to the full and clear account of how my friend had