“Sally, the keys.”
“Oh, sir, I ’aven’t got them, on my soul.”
“But you know where they are.”
“Oh, sir, I daren’t even think of that. God, no!”
His head hurt, hurt, hurt. The storm blew past, the short hours of the summer night dragged with it. In inner thought, beneath his saintly victim’s mask, he raged at the poor bedeviled girl who could not quite make up her mind.
Time was running out on that old man. “They mean to kill me, girl.” It was a statement bald and true.
Books and all else forgotten, she alternately huddled in the chair and paced the floor. “I don’t know that, sir. I do know wot they’ll do t’ me should I do aught to cross ’em. Lord!”
The little strength and wit that he had left were failing. Dawn was near, time running, running out. He heard the four-wheeler coming along the otherwise deserted street. He heard it long before Sally did, yet there was nothing more that he could do.
CHAPTER TWO
(This and succeeding alternate chapters are from a manuscript in the handwriting of the late John H. Watson, M.D.)
It is with emotions doubly strange that I at last take up my pen to write the story involving the creature I have elsewhere referred to as the Giant Rat of Sumatra-a story, I may add, that until quite recently I had thought likely would remain forever unrecorded.
My feelings are strange because, in the first place, this was surely the most bizarre case in all the long and illustrious career of my friend Sherlock Holmes. God knows the creature I have called the Rat was peculiar enough in itself; but the case also involved a truly monumental crime. And it was made unique by the glimpse it offered into an incredible world, whose existence I had never before suspected, a world of horror seemingly more than mortal, but coexisting with the staid, humdrum life of Victorian London. I must admit here in passing, that in this terrible year of 1916 in which I write, that apparently stable pre-war world is almost as difficult to believe in as the world which the adventure of the Rat discovered. That 19th-century London, and that Europe, have long since died upon the battlefields of France.
In the second place, besides the grotesque and terrible nature of the adventure itself, there is the strange fact that what I write is not, in this case, to be placed immediately before the public. It is even probable that both Holmes and I will have been for some years beyond the reach of all this world’s concerns, before these lines are allowed to see the light of day.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Watson…” Holmes mused, recently, as I was visiting him at his retirement home in Sussex. “Yes, I think you must write about the Rat, for the benefit of others who will come after us. But what you write must not be read this year, or probably for some years to come; and you must change the names of those involved, wherever prudence suggests such alteration.”
“As to altering names, Holmes, I have done as much in detailing some of your other cases. But if it is not to be published in the near future, then when? And who is to decide?”
“Well, there is one man, I believe, whom we can trust to see to it that the story is placed before the public when the time is ripe, and not before.”
“Holmes—” I began a protest.
“Yes, Watson, I know your views.” He looked at me severely for a moment. Then his gaze softened. “I shall handle the necessary arrangements. Believe me, old fellow, it will be for the best. Therefore you must go home and write.”
And so it is that I am now seated at my desk. When complete, this account will not be entrusted to my own depository of confidential papers, Cox’s bank at Charing Cross, where lie the unfleshed bones of many another remarkable tale. Rather, by Holmes’ own instructions, it must go with some few private papers of his own, into the deepest vaults of the Oxford Street branch of the Capital and Counties bank. There it is to remain for years or decades, for centuries if need be, until a most singular password shall be presented for its removal.
The adventure began for me upon a sunny morning in early June of 1897. London was in a bustle of preparation for the Jubilee, and thronged with important visitors from every quarter of the Empire. The early months of that year had been an extremely busy time for Holmes as well, so arduous in fact that in March he had been ordered to rest, and I had accompanied him to Cornwall, where occurred those remarkable events I have recorded elsewhere as the Adventure of the Devil’s Foot.
On this morning I found Holmes at breakfast, turning over in his hands a small blue envelope. “I have not mentioned this to you yet, have I, Watson?” he exclaimed by way of greeting. “If not, it is only because in the press of recent events I have not found time, either to discuss it or to give it the full attention it perhaps deserves.”
“An appeal from a lady, no doubt,” I commented, taking my chair.
“Really, Watson, you outdo yourself. Yes, the feminine handwriting of the address zwill admit of no other interpretation. It is in fact a rather distraught young American lady, a Miss Sarah Tarlton, and this is the third communication I have received from her. The first was a cable from New York, and the second a packet of letters and a note sent yesterday afternoon, just after she arrived in London. She is coming here in person in half an hour, and I will
