The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

coloured omnibus which, with a grinding of brakes and a merry jingle from the horses' harness, had drawn up on the opposite side, 'you have a good example. It is one of the French omnibuses. Look at the driver, Watson, all fire and nerves and concentrated emotion as he argues with the petty officer on long leave from a naval shore station. It is the difference between the subtle and the positive, French sauce and English gravy. How could two such men approach crime from the same angle?'

'Be that as it may,' I replied, 'I fail to see how you can tell that the man in the check coat is a petty officer on long leave.'

'Tut, Watson, when a man wearing a Crimea ribbon on his waistcoat, and therefore too old for active service, is shod in comparatively new naval boots, it is surely obvious that he has been recalled from retirement. His air of authority is above that of the ordinary sailor and yet his complexion is no more bronzed or wind-roughened than that of the bus-driver. The man is a naval petty officer attached to a shore station or training camp.'

'And the long leave?'

'He is in civilian clothes and yet has not been dis­charged, for you will observe that he is filling his pipe from a plug of regulation naval twist which is unobtainable at tobacconists. But here we are at 221-B and in time, I trust, to catch the visitor who has called during our absence.'

I surveyed the blank door of the house. 'Really, Holmes!' I protested. 'You go a little too far.'

'Very seldom, Watson. The wheels of most public carriages are repainted at this time of the year and if you will bother to glance at the kerb you will perceive a long green mark where a wheel has scraped the edge and which was not there when we departed an hour ago. The cab was kept waiting for sometime, for the driver has twice knocked out the dottle from his pipe. We can but hope that the fare decided to await our return after dismissing the vehicle.'

As we mounted the stairs, Mrs. Hudson appeared from the lower regions.

'There's been a visitor here nigh on an hour, Mr. Holmes,' she stated. 'She is waiting in your sitting-room, and that tired she looked, the poor pretty creature, that I took the liberty of bringing her a nice strong cup of tea.'

'Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. You did very well.'

My friend glanced at me and smiled but there was a gleam in his deep-set eyes. 'The game's afoot, Watson,' he said quietly.

Upon our entering the sitting-room, our visitor rose to meet us. She was a fair-haired young lady, still in her early twenties, slim and dainty, with a delicate complex­ion and large blue eyes that contained a hint of violet in their depths. She was plainly but neatly dressed in a fawn-coloured travelling-costume with a hat of the same colour relieved by a small mauve feather. I noted these details almost unconsciously for, as a medical man, my attention was arrested at once by the dark shadows lurk­ing beneath her eyes and the quiver of her lips that betrayed an intensity of nervous tension perilously near the breaking-point.

With an apology for his absence, Holmes ushered her to a chair before the fireplace, and then sinking into his own surveyed her searchingly from beneath his heavy lids.

'I perceive that you are deeply troubled,' he said kindly. 'Rest assured that Dr. Watson and I are here to serve you, Miss...'

'My name is Daphne Ferrers,' supplied our visitor. Then, leaning forward suddenly in her chair, she stared up into Holmes's face with a singular intentness. 'Would you say that the heralds of death are dark angels?' she whispered.

Holmes shot me a swift glance.

'You have no objection to my pipe, I trust, Miss Ferrers,' said he, stretching out an arm towards the mantelpiece. 'Now, young lady, we have all to meet a Dark Angel eventually, but that is hardly an adequate reason for consulting two middle-aged gentlemen in Baker Street. You would do far better to tell me your story from the beginning.'

'How foolish you must think me,' cried Miss Fer­rers, the pallor of her cheeks giving place to a faint but becoming blush. 'And yet, when you have heard my story, when you have heard the very facts that are driving me slowly mad with fear, you may only laugh at me.'

'Rest assured that I shall not.'

Our visitor paused for a moment as though marshal­ling her thoughts, and then plunged forthwith into her strange narrative.

'You must know, then, that I am the daughter and only child of Josua Ferrers of Abbotstanding in Hampshire,' she began. 'My father's cousin is Sir Robert Nor­burton of Shoscombe Old Place, with whom you were acquainted some years ago, and it was on his recommen­dation that I have rushed to you at the climax of my troubles.'

Holmes, who had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, took his pipe from his mouth.

'Why, then, did you not come to me last night when you arrived in town instead of waiting until this morning?' he interposed.

Miss Ferrers started visibly.

'It was only when I dined with Sir Robert last night that he advised me to see you. But I do not understand, Mr. Holmes, how could you know ...'

'Tut, young lady, it is simple enough. The right cuff and elbow of your jacket bear slight but unmistakable traces of sooty dust inseparable from a window-seat in a railway carriage. Your shoes, on the other hand, are perfectly cleaned and burnished to that high degree of polish that is characteristic of a good hotel.'

'Do you not think, Holmes,' I interrupted, 'that we should listen without further ado to Miss Ferrers' story. Speaking as a medical man, it is high time that her troubles were lifted from her shoulders.'

Our fair visitor thanked me prettily with a glance from her blue eyes.

'As you should know by now, Watson, I have my methods,' said Holmes with some asperity. 'However, Miss Ferrers, we are all attention. Pray continue.'

'I should explain,' she went on 'that the earlier part of my father's life was spent in Sicily where he had inherited large interests in vineyards and olive groves. Following my mother's death, he seemed to tire of the country and, having amassed a considerable fortune, my father sold his interests and retired to England. For more than a year, we moved from county to county in search of a house that should suit my father's somewhat peculiar requirements before deciding at length on Abbotstanding near Beaulieu in the New Forest.'

'One moment, Miss Ferrers. Pray enumerate these peculiar requirements.'

'My father is of a singularly retiring disposition, Mr. Holmes. Above all else, he insisted on a sparsely popu­ lated locality, and an estate that should lie at some miles' distance from the nearest railway station. In Abbotstanding, an almost ruinous castellated mansion of great antiquity and once the hunting-lodge of the Abbots of Beaulieu, he found what he sought and, certain necessary repairs having been effected, we settled finally into our home. That, Mr. Holmes, was five years ago, and from that day to this we have lived under the shadow of a nameless, shapeless dread.'

'If nameless and shapeless, then how were you aware of its existence?'

'Through the circumstances governing our lives. My father would permit no social contact with our few neighbours and even our household needs were supplied not from the nearest village but by carrier's van from Lynd­hurst. The staff consists of the butler McKinney, a surly, morose man whom my father hired in Glasgow, and his wife and her sister who share the domestic work between them.'

'And the outside staff?'

'There are none. The grounds were permitted to be­come a wilderness and the place is already overrun with vermin of all descriptions.'

'I see nothing alarming in these circumstances, Miss Ferrers,' remarked Holmes. 'Indeed, if I lived in the country, I should probably create around me very similar conditions to discourage unprofitable intercourse with my neighbours. The household consists, then, of yourself and your father and the three servants?'

'The household, yes. But there is a cottage on the estate occupied by Mr. James Tonston who for many years managed our Sicilian vineyards before accompanying my father on his return to England. He acts as bailiff.'

Holmes raised his eyebrows. 'Indeed,' said he. 'An estate that is allowed to grow into a wilderness, no tenants and a bailiff. Surely a somewhat curious anomaly?'

'It is a nominal appointment only, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Tonston enjoys my father's confidence and occupies his position at Abbotstanding in recognition of the earlier years spent in his service in Sicily.'