The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

us George and Eleanor Warburton lying face upwards against the red Brussels carpet. Blood was still flowing from a wound in Eleanor's breast.'

'And then?'

'You may recall my saying that the front garden is a rock-garden?'

'I made a mental note of it.'

'A rock-garden with gravel soil. Calling out to the others to guard the doors and make certain no burglar escaped, Jack picked up a huge stone and smashed a window. But there was no burglar, Mr. Holmes. A single glance had shown me that both French windows were still double-bolted on the inside. Immediately afterwards, before anyone had gone near the door, I went to it and found the door locked on the inside. You see, I think I knew there could be no burglar.'

'You knew it?'

'It was George's fear for his collection,' Miss Murray answered simply. 'Even the fireplace in that room is bricked up. Chundra Lal looked inscrutably at the hard blue eyes of the death-mask on the wall, and Major Earnshaw's foot kicked the revolver lying near George's hand. 'Bad business, this,' said Major Earnshaw; 'we'd better send for a doctor.' That, I think, is all of my story.'

For a time after she had finished speaking Holmes still stood motionless before the fire, his hand toying with the knife whose blade transfixed his unanswered correspon­dence to the middle of the wooden mantelshelf.

'H'm!' said he. 'And the position now?'

'Poor Eleanor lies badly wounded in a nursing home in Bayswater. She may not even recover. George's body has been removed to the mortuary. Even when I left Cambridge Terrace this morning, with some wild hope of enlisting your aid through Dr. Watson, the police had arrived in the person of an Inspector MacDonald. But what can he do?'

'What, indeed?' echoed Holmes. But his deep-set eyes gleamed, and he lifted the knife and brought it down like a weapon against the envelopes. 'Still—Inspector Mac! That is much better. I could not have endured Lestrade or Gregson this morning. If the young lady will forgive me while I don coat and hat, we shall just go round to Cambridge Terrace.'

'Holmes,' cried I in protest, 'it would be monstrous to encourage false hopes in Miss Murray!'

My friend looked at me in his coldly imperious fashion.

'My dear Watson, I neither encourage hope nor do I discourage it. I examine evidence. Voilа tout.'

Yet I noticed that he slipped his lens into his pocket; and he was moodily thoughtful, biting at his lip, as a four-wheeler carried us through the streets.

Cambridge Terrace, on that sunny April morning, stretched silent and deserted. Behind the stone wall, and the narrow strip of rock-garden, lay the stone house with its white window-facings and green-painted front door. It gave me something of a shock to see, near the windows towards the left of the entrance, the white-dressed figure and turban of a native butler. Chundra Lal stood there as motionless as one of his own idols, looking at us; then he melted into the house through one of the French windows.

Sherlock Holmes, it was clear, had been similarly affected. I saw his shoulders stiffen under the frock-coat as he watched the retreating figure of the Indian servant. Though the window immediately to the left of the front door was intact, a gap in the rock-garden showed where a large stone had been prised out; and the other window, further to the left, had been smashed to bits. It was through this opening that the native butler, on silent feet, had moved inside.

Holmes whistled, but he did not speak until Cora Murray had left us.

'Tell me, Watson,' said he. 'You saw nothing strange or inconsistent in the narrative of Miss Murray?'

'Strange, horrible, yes!' I confessed. 'But inconsistent? Surely not!'

'Yet you yourself have been the first to protest about it.'

'My dear fellow, I have uttered not one word of protest this morning!'

'Not this morning, perhaps,' said Sherlock Holmes. 'Ah, Inspector Mac! We are met upon the occasion of another problem.'

In the shattered window, stepping carefully over fallen shards of glass, appeared a freckled-faced, sandy- haired young man with the dogged stamp of the police-officer.

'Great Scott, Mr. Holmes, you don't call this a prob­lem?' exclaimed Inspector MacDonald, raising his eyebrows. 'Unless the question is why Colonel Warburton went mad?'

'Well, well!' said Holmes good-naturedly. 'I presume you will allow us to enter?'

'Aye, and welcome!' retorted the young Scot.

We found ourselves in a lofty, narrow room which, though furnished with comfortable chairs, conveyed the impression of a barbaric museum. Mounted on an ebony cabinet facing the windows stood an extraordinary object: the effigy of a human face, brown and gilded, with two great eyes of some hard and glittering blue stone.

'Pretty little thing, isn't it?' grunted young MacDonald. 'That's the death-mask that seems to affect 'em like a hieland spell. Major Earnshaw and Captain Lasher are in the den now, talking their heads off.'

To my surprise Holmes scarcely glanced at the hideous object.

'I take it, Inspector Mac,' said he, as he wandered about the room peering into the glass cases and display cabinets, 'you have already questioned all the inmates of this house?'

'Mon, I've done nothing else!' groaned Inspector MacDonald. 'But what can they tell me? This room was locked up. The only man who committed a crime, in shooting himself and his wife, is dead. So far as the police are concerned, the case is closed. What now, Mr. Holmes?'

My friend had stooped suddenly.

'Hullo, what's this?' he cried, examining a small object which he had picked up off the floor.

'Merely the stub of Colonel Warburton's cigar which, as you see, burnt a hole in the carpet,' replied MacDonald.

'Ah. Quite so.'

Even as he spoke the door burst open and there en­tered a portly, elderly man whom I presumed to be Major Earnshaw. Behind him, accompanied by Cora Murray, her hand on his arm, came a tall young man with a bronzed, high-nosed face and a guardsman's moustache.

'I understand, sir, that you are Mr. Sherlock Holmes,' began Major Earnshaw stiffly. 'I must say at once that I cannot perceive the reason why Miss Murray should have called you into this private tragedy.'

'Others might perceive the reason,' replied Holmes quietly. 'Did your uncle always smoke the same brand of cigar, Captain Lasher?'

'Yes, sir,' replied the young man with a puzzled glance at Holmes. 'There is the box on the side-table.'

We all watched Sherlock Holmes in silence as he went across and picked up the box of cigars. For a moment, he peered at the contents and then, lifting the box to his nose, he sniffed deeply.

'Dutch,' he said. 'Miss Murray, you are quite right in your affirmation! Colonel Warburton was not mad.'

Major Earnshaw uttered a loud snort, while the young­er man, with better manners than his senior, attempted to hide his amusement by smoothing his moustache.

'Deuce knows we are all very relieved to have your assurance, Mr. Holmes,' said he. 'Doubtless you deduce it from the colonel's taste in cigars.'

'Partly,' my friend answered gravely. 'Dr. Watson can inform you that I have given some attention to the study of tobacco and that I have even ventured to embody my views in a small monograph listing 140 separate varieties of tobacco ash. Colonel Warburton's taste in cigars mere­ly confirms the other evidence. Well, MacDonald?'

A frown had settled on the Scotland Yard man's face and his small, light-blue eyes peered at Holmes suspiciously from beneath his sandy eyebrows.

'Evidence? What are ye driving at, mon!' he cried suddenly. 'Why, it's as plain as a pikestaff. The colonel and his wife are both shot in a room that is locked, bolted and barred from the inside. Do you deny it?'

'No.'

'Then, let us stick to the facts, Mr. Holmes.'

My friend had strolled across to the ebony cabinet and with his hands behind his back was now engaged in contemplating the hideous painted face that stared above his head.

'By all means,' he replied. 'What is your theory to account for the locked door, Inspector Mac?'

'That the colonel himself locked it for privacy.'