After only the smallest hesitation, the old man selected the cap that the informer had brought with him.
When Lestrade and I were out in the hall again, he turned in my direction, looking positively gleeful. “And now I had really better visit the hostel, where the trail is going to be hottest. Dr. Watson, I think you can tell Mr. Sherlock Holmes that this is one case in which his theories are not going to be needed, and the plain evidence in the hands of the police is quite sufficient.”
I murmured some reply, that was perhaps no more courteous than it had to be. A minute later I had rejoined my two companions, and shortly after that the three of us were on our way back to Baker Street, Miss Tarlton having at last been persuaded that the search for John Scott was giving no sign as yet of bearing fruit.
She stubbornly insisted, however, on coming on to Baker Street to see if Sherlock Holmes were yet at home. “Then I promise. Dr. Watson, that we will cease to bother you—oh, but you have been a great help and comfort to me tonight.”
I found my annoyance melting.
As the cab drew up before our rooms, I could see that they were dark. Miss Tarlton had just admitted, with some reluctance, that it was time to call an end to the day’s adventures, and I had just got down from the cab and turned to bid the two young people goodnight, when from behind me sounded a soft shuffling of naked feet upon the pavement. I turned to confront the shabby figure of young Murray.
The boy’s eyes were excitedly alight. “Dr. Watson, sir? Will Mr. Holmes be back soon?”
“I cannot say.”
“Well, sir, when ’imself is not available, I’m to give to you, privately, any important news I should discover.”
Murray’s dancing eyes made it superfluous to ask whether he had at present any news he considered of importance. After a moment’s thought I signed to the people in the cab to wait, and drew the lad aside. As soon as I had heard his information, I led him back to where the others waited. “Tell these people,” I ordered, “what you have just told me.”
“Well sir—ma’m—two hours ago I was at Barley’s—that’s in Soho, a public house, and famous for their sporting entertainments. It seemed to me a likely place to find out who’s been buyin’ rats, for they has thousands in their show—and there was a man there just answered the description of this Dr. Scott that Mr. Holmes is lookin’ for. And I heard Barley ’imself say to this man, ‘Doctor.’ ”
Miss Tarlton emitted a little gasp, compounded of equal parts of fear and joy. I wished with all my heart that Holmes were present, but he was not. Peter Moore and I looked at each other, in prompt and silent agreement that we had better go at once to Barley’s. And I suppose we both knew from the beginning that there would be no hope of persuading Miss Tarlton to stay away.
CHAPTER NINE
When I sank gratefully into slumber in my snug earthen den, it was with the expectation of sleeping the earth’s rotation fully around. In this estimate I was not far wrong; nothing short of an attempt to stake me through the torso could have roused me much sooner. When the first crack of consciousness broke into my dreamless oblivion, I could feel that the bulk of the planet had turned between me and the sun, and a clock somewhere nearby was striking ten. I awoke hungry, but otherwise greatly refreshed in mind and body. Even the pain in the back of my head had dwindled to the point of being scarcely noticeable.
Some six feet underground lay my comparatively new box. It was half-filled, of course, with hospitable homeland soil, and wedged between the remnants of two old wooden coffins, whose peaceful tenants were far past objecting to their restless new neighbor, although his installation had nudged them into postures far from dignified. Not that my clandestine digging had wrought havoc any worse than that of the breathing gravediggers in their sunlit routine. Fortune for once had smiled on me indeed, in that my den lay undisturbed. Below my six-years-planted box, round it on every side, and now above it too, the soil was thick with jumbled old bones, churned up by the sextons in their ceaseless search for space in which to plant the recent dead. In a long rush hour that goes on and on, the London cemeteries were—for all I know still are— more crowded than the streets above, a circumstance that the silent majority of the population are in no condition to protest.
Like smoke I rose to the dank air from my small borrowed plot. In the shadow of a half-fallen shed nearby, a brace of large rats tarried unwisely to observe my assumption, above ground, of the form of man. When I had called them to me, they provided all the material nourishment* I really needed at the moment. Yet I found I had the appetite for more; and with this goal in mind, I began to walk from the churchyard, down one of the darker byways of Mile End.
My normal hunting methods bear little resemblance to those of breathing men; the great control I am able to exercise over the lower orders of life obviates the need to stalk, or to kill from a distance. On this occasion I had not gone far before there
