boy never to let himself be put upon by any governess or female servant. Better drown them like kittens than let them grow to be cats, Quint had said, if the boy was to be believed.”
“And that was the worst that Miles said?” I asked.
“Unhappily not, Dr Watson. The boy gathered a coven about him. By closing his right fist, then extending the thumb and small finger, he taught those who swore allegiance to him how to exercise the curse of the evil eye. He confided to them how he had placed curses on those who crossed him and how these had been fulfilled. He always tailored this to misfortunes which had actually occurred, so that he was more easily believed.”
I was about to inquire where a child of his age could have picked up such poisonous nonsense, but the thought of Peter Quint provided an answer.
“A boy so young!” I said incredulously.
“Just so, doctor. Children may be capable of the worst imaginings and dishonesties.”
I followed his gaze as he spoke. Subconsciously he had led me to a bookshelf and a volume of
“He was believed by the junior boys?” Holmes asked.
“Not at first, I daresay. Yet it gave him an air—a reputation for malevolent power. To silence the doubters, he undertook to prove publicly the powers which his demon—Quint perhaps—had conferred upon him.”
Holmes sat back with his fingers folded together, missing no word nor nuance of the young master’s explanation.
“He performed his tricks, Mr Holmes. I cannot put it any other way. For instance, he claimed that he could see through walls. He could even see into the skulls of others and read their thoughts.”
“What was his proof?”
Our host thought for a moment.
“It varied. Several times, to my knowledge, he used a pair of dice. Two boys would go into another room— even into another building—and roll the dice. Miles could not possibly see the result. He told them to take the figure on the left hand die and double it. They must then add five to that answer and multiply the whole by five. Finally they must add the number on the right hand die. Once they gave him that total, even though they had been a dozen miles away, he would give them the precise numbers on the two dice, which he now saw in their minds. He was never wrong. He claimed that he could read their minds as plainly as they themselves. Some of the little boys grew afraid of him. A few began to believe in the things that he told them. Even the seniors grew wary of him.”
“A mathematical dodge with a pair of dice!” said Holmes scornfully. “He had learnt it somewhere—from an adult, of course. Who taught him, I wonder? Let me tell you, Mr Spencer-Smith, it is a trick based on multiplication by five. Once his dupes gave him the final total, all he needed to do was subtract from it the square of five. Twenty-five. That would invariably and infallibly give him the numbers on the two dice. So, for example, sixty-two would always equal six-plus-two, thirty-five would always give him three-plus-five. It never fails. It is no more magic nor witchcraft than a recipe for plum pudding! But surely he was not expelled—even for this?”
“No, Mr Holmes. His downfall was the Five Stones murder in the neighbourhood of his home, far away at Bly. I daresay you have heard of it? A mill-owner was driving a cart with a barrel of gold coins, believing that no one knew of his cargo. It was the quarter’s takings from several saw-mills which he was carrying to his safe. It was a good deal of money and he had been careful to tell no one of it, as he thought. Unfortunately for him, his route was known to the robber, even if the size of the cargo was not. He was attacked and clubbed to death while crossing the heathland near the prehistoric Five Standing Stones of Bly. Little remains of four stones, but the fifth is still upright. The perpetrators were never caught. For no good reason, it was locally believed that there were five robbers—as there were five stones at the scene of the crime. The fifth, supposed to be the actual murderer, was popularly nicknamed the Fifth Stone.”
“I have heard of the crime,” said Holmes tolerantly.
“But why was the child expelled from school?” I persisted.
“For what followed, Dr Watson. The master of Brunswick House, Mair Loftus, was not an amiable man. Ill- tempered, strict and pious, he kept his wife and son in fear of him. He was a rasping bully. To all criticism, he replied, ‘When I was a junior boy, I feared my master. Now, by God, these juniors shall fear me.’ He has since left us. Miles cordially loathed the man and, quite simply, set out to destroy him. For devilment, I suppose, this little boy swore to his friends that he knew a secret about this murder committed near his home. Mair Loftus, all the way down in the West Country, was an accomplice of the Fifth Stone. This housemaster was the receiver of the stolen gold. Little by little, Miles told his friends, the robber brought the gold coins all the way down to Somerset. Loftus changed them at his bank into negotiable notes and even into government bonds. Who would suspect a schoolmaster, especially one with a private income? Miles swore that he had this story from the Fifth Stone himself.”
Sherlock Holmes shook his head thoughtfully.
“Wait, Mr Holmes,” said Spencer-Smith abruptly. “Brunswick House is a red-brick residence, a home to thirty junior boys. Close to its rear door is a very large, quick-growing Monterey cypress. It should have been felled years ago but now its base is quite four feet across. Miles assured his friends that if they put their ears to the bark and listened very carefully, they might hear whispering. With the breezes from Exmoor and the Bristol Channel in the branches, it was not difficult for some children to convince themselves and their friends that they heard whispers. Perhaps they could not make out the words. But rumour runs like fire through a community of small boys. If two or three believed it, the rest were not to be left out.”
Holmes sat back, finger-tips tracing patterns on the padded leather arm of his chair.
“According to Miles Mordaunt,” Spencer-Smith continued, “the proceeds of the robbery had been worth a fortune. The Fifth Stone still visited Mair Loftus, to trade gold for bank-notes. In a hollow within the base of this giant pine—a small kiosk, as it were, with underground access—the two conspirators met to negotiate the disposal of the booty. The power of seeing into rooms and minds, which Miles had already demonstrated, enabled him to detect what was going on. It was a yarn straight out of a penny dreadful.”
“Pray continue,” said Holmes softly. “You have my complete attention.”
“Mair Loftus had always acted as if his duty was to keep the boys in awe of him. This child showed an extraordinary adult subtlety and intelligence. Because most of the boys shared his loathing of Loftus they were eager to believe that they also heard the whispering of words in the trunk of the old fir tree. After all, they had seen Miles Mordaunt’s occult powers demonstrated elsewhere.”
“And now they believed him in this case?” I asked.
“It was as if there was another personality within him, Dr Watson,” said Spencer-Smith sadly, “or perhaps one that had taken him over. To hear him speak, to watch his mannerisms, was to believe that an adult was imprisoned in the body of an underdeveloped child of ten.”
“And in due course these stories of Mr Loftus reached Dr Clarke?” Holmes inquired.
“They came to the chaplain first and thence to the headmaster. They were absurd!”
“His parents,” I said suddenly, “were they dead by this time?”
“The news had barely reached us. I understand they had both died during a single cholera epidemic in India. Because the news was received just as the decision to dismiss their son from school was taken, our action seemed the more heartless. Now here is another curiosity for you. The boy himself appeared quite unaffected by the loss of his parents. It was almost like a liberation, a confirmation that he had left childhood behind him.”
“It is a moral oddity perhaps,” I said, “but not unknown to medicine.”
“Not entirely an oddity, Dr Watson. Colonel Mordaunt’s regiment had been in India for most of the child’s life. Miles cannot have been close to his parents in any case, though our rules required him to write to them every week on Sunday afternoon. He can rarely have seen them. Perhaps he had come to resent their desertion of him, as it may have seemed to him.”
“What arrangements were made for him after their deaths?”
“Of course he was his father’s heir as lord of the manor of Bly, though he would not come into the property until he was twenty-one. The guardian of both the children and trustee of the estate was automatically his uncle.”
“And he was …” Holmes prompted him.
“Colonel Mordaunt’s only brother, Major James Mordaunt, an Army surgeon-major in his youth. I understand
