His last bow Some later reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes
turned towards the window and twisted into the same distortion of
terror which had marked the features of his dead sister. His limbs were
convulsed and his fingers contorted as though he had died in a very
paroxysm of fear. He was fully clothed, though there were signs that
his dressing had been done in a hurry. We had already learned that his
bed had been slept in, and that the tragic end had come to him in the
early morning.
One realised the red-hot energy which underlay Holmes’s phlegmatic
exterior when one saw the sudden change which came over him from the
moment that he entered the fatal apartment. In an instant he was tense
and alert, his eyes shining, his face set, his limbs quivering with
eager activity. He was out on the lawn, in through the window, round
the room, and up into the bedroom, for all the world like a dashing
foxhound drawing a cover. In the bedroom he made a rapid cast around
and ended by throwing open the window, which appeared to give him some
fresh cause for excitement, for he leaned out of it with loud
ejaculations of interest and delight. Then he rushed down the stair,
out through the open window, threw himself upon his face on the lawn,
sprang up and into the room once more, all with the energy of the
hunter who is at the very heels of his quarry. The lamp, which was an
ordinary standard, he examined with minute care, making certain
measurements upon its bowl. He carefully scrutinised with his lens the
talc shield which covered the top of the chimney and scraped off some
ashes which adhered to its upper surface, putting some of them into an
envelope, which he placed in his pocketbook. Finally, just as the
doctor and the official police put in an appearance, he beckoned to the
vicar and we all three went out upon the lawn.
“I am glad to say that my investigation has not been entirely barren,”
he remarked. “I cannot remain to discuss the matter with the police,
but I should be exceedingly obliged, Mr. Roundhay, if you would give
the inspector my compliments and direct his attention to the bedroom
window and to the sitting-room lamp. Each is suggestive, and together
they are almost conclusive. If the police would desire further
information I shall be happy to see any of them at the cottage. And
now, Watson, I think that, perhaps, we shall be better employed
elsewhere.”
It may be that the police resented the intrusion of an amateur, or that
they imagined themselves to be upon some hopeful line of investigation;
but it is certain that we heard nothing from them for the next two
days. During this time Holmes spent some of his time smoking and
dreaming in the cottage; but a greater portion in country walks which
he undertook alone, returning after many hours without remark as to
where he had been. One experiment served to show me the line of his
investigation. He had bought a lamp which was the duplicate of the one
which had burned in the room of Mortimer Tregennis on the morning of
the tragedy. This he filled with the same oil as that used at the
vicarage, and he carefully timed the period which it would take to be
exhausted. Another experiment which he made was of a more unpleasant
nature, and one which I am not likely ever to forget.
“You will remember, Watson,” he remarked one afternoon, “that there is
a single common point of resemblance in the varying reports which have
reached us. This concerns the effect of the atmosphere of the room in
each case upon those who had first entered it. You will recollect that
Mortimer Tregennis, in describing the episode of his last visit to his
brother’s house, remarked that the doctor on entering the room fell
into a chair? You had forgotten? Well I can answer for it that it was
so. Now, you will remember also that Mrs. Porter, the housekeeper, told
us that she herself fainted upon entering the room and had afterwards
opened the window. In the second case—that of Mortimer Tregennis
himself—you cannot have forgotten the horrible stuffiness of the room
when we arrived, though the servant had thrown open the window. That
servant, I found upon inquiry, was so ill that she had gone to her bed.
You will admit, Watson, that these facts are very suggestive. In each
case there is evidence of a poisonous atmosphere. In each case, also,
there is combustion going on in the room—in the one case a fire, in the
other a lamp. The fire was needed, but the lamp was lit—as a comparison
of the oil consumed will show—long after it was broad daylight. Why?
Surely because there is some connection between three things—the
burning, the stuffy atmosphere, and, finally, the madness or death of
those unfortunate people. That is clear, is it not?”
“It would appear so.”
“At least we may accept it as a working hypothesis. We will suppose,
then, that something was burned in each case which produced an
atmosphere causing strange toxic effects. Very good. In the first
instance—that of the Tregennis family—this substance was placed in the
fire. Now the window was shut, but the fire would naturally carry fumes
to some extent up the chimney. Hence one would expect the effects of
the poison to be less than in the second case, where there was less
escape for the vapour. The result seems to indicate that it was so,
since in the first case only the woman, who had presumably the more
sensitive organism, was killed, the others exhibiting that temporary or
permanent lunacy which is evidently the first effect of the drug. In
the second case the result was complete. The facts, therefore, seem to
bear out the theory of a poison which worked by combustion.
“With this train of reasoning in my head I naturally looked about in
Mortimer Tregennis’s room to find some remains of this substance. The
obvious place to look was the talc shelf or smoke-guard of the lamp.
There, sure enough, I perceived a number of flaky ashes, and round the
edges a fringe of brownish powder, which had not yet been consumed.
Half of this I took, as you saw, and I placed it in an envelope.”
“Why half, Holmes?”
“It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the official
police force. I leave them all the evidence which I found. The poison
still remained upon the talc had they the wit to find it. Now, Watson,
we will light our lamp; we will, however, take the precaution to open
our window to avoid the premature decease of two deserving members of
society, and you will seat yourself near that open window in an
armchair unless, like a sensible man, you determine to have nothing to
do with the affair. Oh, you will see it out, will you? I thought I knew
my Watson. This chair I will place opposite yours, so that we may be
the same distance from the poison and face to face. The door we will
leave ajar. Each is now in a position to watch the other and to bring
the experiment to an end should the symptoms seem alarming. Is that all
clear? Well, then, I take our powder—or what remains of it—from the
envelope, and I lay it above the burning lamp. So! Now, Watson, let us
sit down and await developments.”
They were not long in coming. I had hardly settled in my chair before I
was conscious of a thick, musky odour, subtle and nauseous. At the very
first whiff of it my brain and my imagination were beyond all control.
A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that
in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled
senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous
and inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and swam
amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something
coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold,
whose very shadow would blast my soul. A freezing horror took
possession of me. I felt that my hair was rising, that my eyes were
protruding, that my mouth was opened, and my tongue like leather. The
turmoil within my brain was such that something must surely snap. I
tried to scream and was vaguely aware of some hoarse croak which was my
own voice, but distant and detached from myself. At the same moment, in
some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a
glimpse of Holmes’s face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror—the very
look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that vision
which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I dashed from my
chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the
door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the
grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious
sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror
which had girt us in. Slowly it rose from our souls like the mists from
a landscape until peace and reason had returned, and we were sitting
upon the grass, wiping our clammy foreheads, and looking with
apprehension at each other to mark the last traces of that terrific
experience which we had undergone.
“Upon my word, Watson!” said Holmes at last with an unsteady voice, “I
owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an unjustifiable
experiment even for one’s self, and doubly so for a friend. I am really
very sorry.”
“You know,” I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen so much
of Holmes’s heart before, “that it is my greatest joy and privilege to
help you.”
He relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein which was
his habitual attitude to those about him. “It would be superfluous to
drive us mad, my dear Watson,” said he. “A candid observer would
certainly declare that we were so already before we embarked upon so
wild an experiment. I confess that I never imagined that the effect
could be so sudden and so severe.” He dashed into the cottage, and,
reappearing with the burning lamp held at full arm’s length, he threw
it among a bank of brambles. “We must give the room a little time to
clear. I take it, Watson, that you have no longer a shadow of a doubt
as to how these tragedies were produced?”
“None whatever.”
“But the cause remains as obscure as before. Come into the arbour here
and let us discuss it together. That villainous stuff seems still to
linger round my throat. I think we must admit that all the evidence
points to this man, Mortimer Tregennis, having been the criminal in the
first tragedy, though he was the victim in the second one. We must
remember, in the first place, that there is some story of a family
quarrel, followed by a reconciliation. How bitter that quarrel may have
been, or how hollow the reconciliation we cannot tell. When I think of
Mortimer Tregennis, with the foxy face and the small shrewd, beady eyes
behind the spectacles, he is not a man whom I should judge to be of a
particularly forgiving disposition. Well, in the next place, you will
remember that this idea of someone moving in the garden, which took our
attention for a moment from the real cause of the tragedy, emanated
from him. He had a motive in misleading us. Finally, if he did not
throw the substance into the fire at the moment of leaving the room,
who did do so? The affair happened immediately after his departure. Had
anyone else come in, the family would certainly have risen from the
table. Besides, in peaceful Cornwall, visitors did not arrive after ten
o’clock at night. We may take it, then, that all the evidence points to
Mortimer Tregennis as the culprit.”
“Then his own death was suicide!”
“Well, Watson, it is on the face of it a not impossible supposition.
The man who had the guilt upon his soul of having brought such a fate
upon his own family might well be driven by remorse to inflict it upon
himself. There are, however, some cogent reasons against it.
Fortunately, there is one man in England who knows all about it, and I