The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

avenge.'

'Holmes!' I cried, horror-struck.

'It's no good,  Watson,'  he said, laying his fingers gently on Miss Ferrers' shoulder. 'It would be the basest treachery to this brave young lady to arouse hopes that I cannot share. It is better that we face the facts.'

'The facts!' I replied. 'Why, a man may have a foot in the grave and yet live.'

Holmes looked at me curiously for a moment.

'True, Watson,' he said thoughtfully. 'But we must waste no further time. Unless my memory belies me, there is a train to Hampshire within the hour. A few necessities in a bag should meet the case.'

I was hastily gathering my things together when Holmes came into my bedroom.

'It might be advisable to take your revolver,' he said softly.

'Then there is danger?'

'Deadly danger, Watson.' He smote his forehead with his hand. 'My God, what irony. She has come just a day too late.'

As we accompanied Miss Ferrers from the sitting-room, Holmes paused at the bookshelf to slip a slim calf- bound volume into the pocket of his Inverness cape and then, scribbling a telegram, he handed the form to Mrs. Hudson in the hallway. 'Kindly see that it is dispatched immedi­ately,' said he.

A four-wheeler carried us to Waterloo, where we were just in time to catch a Bournemouth train stopping at Lyndhurst Road Station.

It was a melancholy journey. Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his corner seat, his ear-flapped travelling-cap drawn over his eyes and his long, thin fingers tapping restlessly on the window-ledge. I tried to engage our companion in conversation and to convey a little of the sympathy that I felt for her in this time of anxiety, but though her replies were gracious and kindly it was obvi­ous that her mind was preoccupied with her own thoughts. I think that we were all glad when, some two hours later, we alighted at the little Hampshire station. As we reached the gates, a pleasant-faced woman hurried forward.

'Mr. Sherlock Holmes?' said she. 'Thank heavens that the Beaulieu Post Office delivered your telegram in time. Daphne, my dear!'

'Mrs. Nordham! But—but I don't understand.'

'Now, Miss Ferrers,' said Holmes soothingly. 'It would help us greatly if you will entrust yourself to your friend. Mrs. Nordham, I know that you will take good care of her. Come, Watson.'

We hailed a fly in the station yard and, in a few moments, we were free from the hamlet and bowling along a desolate road that stretched away straight as a ribbon, rising and dipping and rising again over lonely expanses of heath broken here and there by clumps of holly and bounded in every direction by the dark out-spurs of a great forest. After some miles, on mounting a long hill, we saw below us a sheet of water and the grey, hoary ruins of Beaulieu Abbey, then the road plunged into the forest and some ten minutes later we wheeled beneath an arch of crumbling masonry into an avenue lined by noble oak trees whose interlocked branches met overhead in a gloomy twilight. Holmes pointed forward. 'It is as I feared,' he said bitterly. 'We are too late.'

Riding in the same direction as ourselves but far ahead of us down the avenue, I caught a glimpse of a police-constable on a bicycle.

The drive opened out into a wooded park with a gaunt, battlemented mansion set amid the broken terraces and parterres of that saddest of all spectacles, an old-world garden run to wilderness and bathed in the red glow of the setting sun. At some little distance from the house, a group of men were gathered beside a stunted cedar tree and at a word from Holmes, our driver pulled up and we hurried towards them across the turf.

The group was composed of the policeman, a gentle­man with a small bag which I easily recognized and lastly a man in brown country tweeds with a pale, sunken face framed in mutton-chop whiskers. As we drew near, they turned towards us, and I could not repress an exclamation of horror at the spectacle that their movement disclosed to our eyes.

At the foot of the cedar tree lay the body of an elderly man. His arms were outstretched, the fingers gripping the grass and his beard thrust up at so grotesque an angle that his features were hidden from view. The bone gleamed in bis gaping throat while the ground about bis head was stained into one great crimson halo. The doctor stepped forward hurriedly.

'This is a shocking affair, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,' he cried nervously. 'My wife hastened to the station as soon as she received your wire. I trust that she was in time to meet Miss Ferrers?'

'Thank you, yes. Alas, that I could not myself have got here in time.'

'It seems that you expected the tragedy, sir,' observed the policeman suspiciously.

'I did, constable. Hence my presence.'

'Well, I'd like to know . . .' Holmes tapped him on the arm and, leading him to one side, spoke a few words. When they rejoined us, there was a trace of relief in the man's worried face. 'It shall be as you wish, sir,' he said, 'and you can rely on Mr. Tonston repeating his statement to you.'

The man in tweeds turned his sunken face and pale grey eyes in our direction. 'I don't see why I should,' he said tartly. 'You're the law, aren't you, Constable Kibble, and you've taken my statement already. I have nothing to add. You would be better employed in sending in your report of Mr. Ferrers' suicide.'

'Suicide?' interposed Holmes sharply.

'Aye, what else? He's been glooming for weeks past, as all the household can testify, and now he's cut his throat from ear to ear.'

'H'm.' Holmes dropped on his knees beside the body. 'And this is the weapon, of course. A horn-handled clasp-knife with a retractable blade. Italian, I perceive.'

'How do you know that?'

'It has the mark of a Milanese bladesmith. But what is this? Dear me, What a curious object.'

He rose to his feet and closely examined the thing which he had picked up from the grass. It was a short- barrelled rifle, cut off immediately behind the trigger by a hinged stock, so that the whole weapon folded into two parts. 'It was lying by his head,' observed the constable. 'Seems that he was expecting trouble and took it with him for protection.'

Holmes shook his head. 'It has not been loaded,' he said, 'for you will observe that the grease is undisturbed in the breech. But what have we here? Perhaps, Watson, you would lend me your pencil and handkerchief.'

'It's only the hole in the stock for the cleaning rod,' rapped Mr. Tonston.

'I am aware of that. Tut, this is most curious.'

'What then? You stuck the handkerchief wrapped round the pencil into the hole and now you've withdrawn it. There's nothing on the handkerchief, and yet you find it curious. What the devil did you expect?'

'Dust.'

'Dust?'

'Precisely. Something has been hidden in the hole and hence the fact that the walls are clean. Normally there is always dust in the stock-holes of guns. But I should be glad to hear a few facts from you, Mr. Tonston, as I understand that you were the first to raise the alarm. It will save time if I hear them from your own lips instead of reading through your statement.'

'Well, there's little enough to tell,' said he. 'An hour ago, I strolled out for a breath of air and caught sight of Mr. Ferrers standing under this tree. When I hailed him, he looked round and then, turning away, seemed to put his hand up to his throat. I saw him stagger and fall. When I ran up, he was lying as you see him now, with his throat gaping and the knife on the grass beside him. There was nothing I could do save send the manservant for Dr. Nordham and the constable. That's all.'

'Most illuminating. You were with Mr. Ferrers in Sicily, were you not?'

'I was.'

'Well, gentlemen, I shall detain you no longer if you wish to return to the house. Watson, perhaps you would care to remain with me. And you too, Constable.'

As the doctor and Tonston vanished through the par­terres, Holmes was galvanized into activity. For a while, he circled the grass about the dead man on his hands and knees, like some lean, eager foxhound casting for its scent. Once he stooped and peered at the ground very closely, then rising to his feet, he whipped his lens from his pocket and proceeded to a searching examination of the trunk of the cedar. Suddenly he stiffened and at his gesture the constable and I hastened to his side. Holmes pointed with his finger as he handed the glass to the police-officer. 'Examine the edge of that knot,' he said quietly. 'What do you see?'