The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

We felt our way along the wall and reached the door just as it opened to disclose Miss Wilson. She was in her dressing-gown, her hair tumbled about her shoulders and, as her startled eyes peered at us across the light of the candle in her hand, the shadows danced and trembled on the wall behind her.

'What is it, Mr. Holmes?' she gasped.

'All will be well, if you carry out my instructions,' my friend replied quietly. 'Where is your uncle?'

'He is in his room.'

'Good. While Dr. Watson and I occupy your room, you will move into your late brother's bedchamber. If you value your life,' he added solemnly, 'you will not at­tempt to leave it.'

'You frighten me!' she whimpered.

'Rest assured that we will take care of you. And now two final questions before you retire. Has your uncle visited you this evening?'

'Yes. He brought Peperino and put him with the other birds in the cage in my room. He said that as it was my last night at home I should have the best entertainment that he had the power to give me.'

'Ha! Quite so. Your last night. Tell me, Miss Wilson, do you suffer at all from the same malady as your mother and brother?'

'A weak heart? I must confess it, yes.'

'Well, we will accompany you quietly upstairs where you will retire to the adjoining room. Come, Watson.'

Guided by the light of Janet Wilson's candle, we mounted silently to the floor above and thence into the bedchamber which Holmes had previously examined.

While we waited for our companion to collect her things from the adjoining room, Holmes strolled across and, lifting the edge of the cloths which now covered the two bird-cages, peered in at the tiny sleeping occupants.

'The evil of man is as inventive as it is immeasurable,' said he, and I noticed that his face was very stern.

On Miss Wilson's return, having seen that she was safely ensconced for the night, I followed Holmes into the room which she had lately occupied. It was a small chamber but comfortably furnished and lit by a heavy silver oil- lamp. Immediately above a tiled Dutch stove there hung a cage containing three canaries which, momentarily ceasing their song, cocked their little golden heads at our approach.

'I think, Watson, that it would be as well to relax for half an hour,' whispered Holmes as we sank into our chairs. 'So kindly put out the light.'

'But, my dear fellow, if there is any danger it would be an act of madness!' I protested.

'There is no danger in the darkness.'

'Would it not be better,' I said severely, 'that you were frank with me? You have made it obvious that the birds are being put to some evil purpose, but what is this danger that exists only in the lamplight?'

'I have my own ideas on that matter, Watson, but it is better that we should wait and see. I would draw your attention, however, to the hinged lid of the stoke-hole on the top of the stove.'

'It appears to be a perfectly normal fitting.'

'Just so. But is there not some significance in the fact that the stoke-hole of an iron stove should be fitted with a tin lid?'

'Great heavens, Holmes!' I cried, as the light of under­standing burst upon me. 'You mean that this man Wilson has used the inter-connecting pipes from the stove in the cellar to those in the bedrooms to disseminate some deadly poison to wipe out his own kith and kin and thus obtain the property. It is for that reason that he has a fireplace in his own bedroom. I see it all.'

'Well, you are not far wrong, Watson, though I fancy that Master Theobold is rather more subtle than you suppose. He possesses the two qualities vital to the suc­cessful murderer—ruthlessness and imagination. But now, douse the light like a good fellow and for a while let us relax. If my reading of the problem is correct, our nerves may be tested to their limit before we see tomorrow's dawn.'

I lay back in the darkness and drawing some comfort from the thought that ever since the affair with Colonel Sebastian Moran I had carried my revolver in my pocket, I sought in my mind for some explanation that would account for the warning contained in Holmes's words. But I must have been wearier than I had imagined. My thoughts grew more and more confused and finally I dozed off.

It was a touch upon my arm that awoke me. The lamp had been relit and my friend was bending over me, his long black shadow thrown upon the ceiling.

'Sorry to disturb you, Watson,' he whispered. 'But duty calls.'

'What do you wish me to do?'

'Sit still and listen. Peperino is singing.'

It was a vigil that I shall long remember. Holmes had tilted the lamp-shade, so that the light fell on the opposite wall broken by the window and the great tiled stove with its hanging bird-cage. The fog had thickened and the rays from the lamp, filtering through the window-glass, lost themselves in luminous clouds that swirled and boiled against the panes. My mind darkened by a premonition of evil, I would have found our surroundings melancholy enough without the eerie sound that was rising and falling from the canary cage. It was a kind of whistling beginning with a low, throaty warble and slowly ascending to a single chord that rang through the room like the note of a great wineglass, a sound so mesmeric in its repetition that almost imperceptibly the present seemed to melt away and my imagination to reach out beyond those fog­bound windows into the dark, lush depth of some exotic jungle. I had lost all count of time, and it was only the stillness following the sudden cessation of the bird's song that brought me back to reality. I glanced across the room and, in an instant, my heart gave one great throb and then seemed to stop beating altogether.

The lid of the stove was slowly rising.

My friends will agree that I am neither a nervous nor an impressionable man but I must confess that, as I sat there gripping the sides of my chair and glaring at the dreadful thing that was gradually clambering into view, my limbs momentarily refused their functions.

The lid had tilted back an inch or more and through the gap thus created a writhing mass of yellow, stick-like objects was clawing and scrabbling for a hold. And then, in a flash, it was out and standing motionless upon the surface of the stove.

Though I have always viewed with horror the bird-eating tarantulas of South America, they shrank into insignificance when compared with the loathsome creature that faced us now across that lamplit room. It was bigger in its spread than a large dinner-plate, with a hard, smooth, yellow body surrounded by legs that, rising high above it, conveyed a fearful impression that the thing was crouching for its spring. It was absolutely hairless save for tufts of stiff bristles around the leg-joints and, above the glint of its great poison mandibles, clusters of beady eyes shone in the light with a baleful red iri­descence.

'Don't move, Watson,' whispered Holmes, and there was a note of horror in his voice that I had never heard before.

The sound roused the creature for, in a single lightning bound, it sprang from the stove to the top of the birdcage and, reaching the wall, whizzed round the room and over the ceiling with a dreadful febrile swiftness that the eye could scarcely follow.

Holmes flung himself forward like a man possessed.

'Kill it! Smash it!' he yelled hoarsely, raining blow after blow with his golf-club at the blurred shape racing across the walls.

Dust from broken plaster choked the air and a table crashed over as I flung myself to the ground when the great spider cleared the room in a single leap and turned at bay. Holmes bounded across me, swinging his club. 'Keep where you are!' he shouted and even as his voice rang through the room, the thud . . . thud . . . thud of the blows was broken by a horrible squelching sound. For an instant, the creature hung there and then, slipping slowly down, it lay like a mess of smashed eggs with three thin, bony legs still twitching and plucking at the floor.

'Thank God that it missed you when it sprang!' I gasped, scrambling to my feet.

He made no reply and glancing up I caught a glimpse of his face reflected in a wall mirror. He looked pale and strained and there was a curious rigidity in his expression.

'I am afraid it's up to you, Watson,' he said quietly. 'It has a mate.'

I spun round to be greeted by a spectacle that I shall remember for the rest of my days. Sherlock Holmes was standing perfectly still within two feet of the stove and on top of it, reared up on its back legs, its loathsome