His last bow Some later reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes
have made arrangements by which we shall hear the facts this afternoon
from his own lips. Ah! he is a little before his time. Perhaps you
would kindly step this way, Dr. Leon Sterndale. We have been conducting
a chemical experiment indoors which has left our little room hardly fit
for the reception of so distinguished a visitor.”
I had heard the click of the garden gate, and now the majestic figure
of the great African explorer appeared upon the path. He turned in some
surprise towards the rustic arbour in which we sat.
“You sent for me, Mr. Holmes. I had your note about an hour ago, and I
have come, though I really do not know why I should obey your summons.”
“Perhaps we can clear the point up before we separate,” said Holmes.
“Meanwhile, I am much obliged to you for your courteous acquiescence.
You will excuse this informal reception in the open air, but my friend
Watson and I have nearly furnished an additional chapter to what the
papers call the Cornish Horror, and we prefer a clear atmosphere for
the present. Perhaps, since the matters which we have to discuss will
affect you personally in a very intimate fashion, it is as well that we
should talk where there can be no eavesdropping.”
The explorer took his cigar from his lips and gazed sternly at my
companion.
“I am at a loss to know, sir,” he said, “what you can have to speak
about which affects me personally in a very intimate fashion.”
“The killing of Mortimer Tregennis,” said Holmes.
For a moment I wished that I were armed. Sterndale’s fierce face turned
to a dusky red, his eyes glared, and the knotted, passionate veins
started out in his forehead, while he sprang forward with clenched
hands towards my companion. Then he stopped, and with a violent effort
he resumed a cold, rigid calmness, which was, perhaps, more suggestive
of danger than his hot-headed outburst.
“I have lived so long among savages and beyond the law,” said he, “that
I have got into the way of being a law to myself. You would do well,
Mr. Holmes, not to forget it, for I have no desire to do you an
injury.”
“Nor have I any desire to do you an injury, Dr. Sterndale. Surely the
clearest proof of it is that, knowing what I know, I have sent for you
and not for the police.”
Sterndale sat down with a gasp, overawed for, perhaps, the first time
in his adventurous life. There was a calm assurance of power in
Holmes’s manner which could not be withstood. Our visitor stammered for
a moment, his great hands opening and shutting in his agitation.
“What do you mean?” he asked at last. “If this is bluff upon your part,
Mr. Holmes, you have chosen a bad man for your experiment. Let us have
no more beating about the bush. What _do_ you mean?”
“I will tell you,” said Holmes, “and the reason why I tell you is that
I hope frankness may beget frankness. What my next step may be will
depend entirely upon the nature of your own defence.”
“My defence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My defence against what?”
“Against the charge of killing Mortimer Tregennis.”
Sterndale mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Upon my word, you
are getting on,” said he. “Do all your successes depend upon this
prodigious power of bluff?”
“The bluff,” said Holmes sternly, “is upon your side, Dr. Leon
Sterndale, and not upon mine. As a proof I will tell you some of the
facts upon which my conclusions are based. Of your return from
Plymouth, allowing much of your property to go on to Africa, I will say
nothing save that it first informed me that you were one of the factors
which had to be taken into account in reconstructing this drama—”
“I came back—”
“I have heard your reasons and regard them as unconvincing and
inadequate. We will pass that. You came down here to ask me whom I
suspected. I refused to answer you. You then went to the vicarage,
waited outside it for some time, and finally returned to your cottage.”
“How do you know that?”
“I followed you.”
“I saw no one.”
“That is what you may expect to see when I follow you. You spent a
restless night at your cottage, and you formed certain plans, which in
the early morning you proceeded to put into execution. Leaving your
door just as day was breaking, you filled your pocket with some reddish
gravel that was lying heaped beside your gate.”
Sterndale gave a violent start and looked at Holmes in amazement.
“You then walked swiftly for the mile which separated you from the
vicarage. You were wearing, I may remark, the same pair of ribbed
tennis shoes which are at the present moment upon your feet. At the
vicarage you passed through the orchard and the side hedge, coming out
under the window of the lodger Tregennis. It was now daylight, but the
household was not yet stirring. You drew some of the gravel from your
pocket, and you threw it up at the window above you.”
Sterndale sprang to his feet.
“I believe that you are the devil himself!” he cried.
Holmes smiled at the compliment. “It took two, or possibly three,
handfuls before the lodger came to the window. You beckoned him to come
down. He dressed hurriedly and descended to his sitting-room. You
entered by the window. There was an interview—a short one—during which
you walked up and down the room. Then you passed out and closed the
window, standing on the lawn outside smoking a cigar and watching what
occurred. Finally, after the death of Tregennis, you withdrew as you
had come. Now, Dr. Sterndale, how do you justify such conduct, and what
were the motives for your actions? If you prevaricate or trifle with
me, I give you my assurance that the matter will pass out of my hands
forever.”
Our visitor’s face had turned ashen grey as he listened to the words of
his accuser. Now he sat for some time in thought with his face sunk in
his hands. Then with a sudden impulsive gesture he plucked a photograph
from his breast-pocket and threw it on the rustic table before us.
“That is why I have done it,” said he.
It showed the bust and face of a very beautiful woman. Holmes stooped
over it.
“Brenda Tregennis,” said he.
“Yes, Brenda Tregennis,” repeated our visitor. “For years I have loved
her. For years she has loved me. There is the secret of that Cornish
seclusion which people have marvelled at. It has brought me close to
the one thing on earth that was dear to me. I could not marry her, for
I have a wife who has left me for years and yet whom, by the deplorable
laws of England, I could not divorce. For years Brenda waited. For
years I waited. And this is what we have waited for.” A terrible sob
shook his great frame, and he clutched his throat under his brindled
beard. Then with an effort he mastered himself and spoke on:
“The vicar knew. He was in our confidence. He would tell you that she
was an angel upon earth. That was why he telegraphed to me and I
returned. What was my baggage or Africa to me when I learned that such
a fate had come upon my darling? There you have the missing clue to my
action, Mr. Holmes.”
“Proceed,” said my friend.
Dr. Sterndale drew from his pocket a paper packet and laid it upon the
table. On the outside was written “_Radix pedis diaboli_” with a red
poison label beneath it. He pushed it towards me. “I understand that
you are a doctor, sir. Have you ever heard of this preparation?”
“Devil’s-foot root! No, I have never heard of it.”
“It is no reflection upon your professional knowledge,” said he, “for I
believe that, save for one sample in a laboratory at Buda, there is no
other specimen in Europe. It has not yet found its way either into the
pharmacopœia or into the literature of toxicology. The root is shaped
like a foot, half human, half goatlike; hence the fanciful name given
by a botanical missionary. It is used as an ordeal poison by the
medicine-men in certain districts of West Africa and is kept as a
secret among them. This particular specimen I obtained under very
extraordinary circumstances in the Ubangi country.” He opened the paper
as he spoke and disclosed a heap of reddish-brown, snuff-like powder.
“Well, sir?” asked Holmes sternly.
“I am about to tell you, Mr. Holmes, all that actually occurred, for
you already know so much that it is clearly to my interest that you
should know all. I have already explained the relationship in which I
stood to the Tregennis family. For the sake of the sister I was
friendly with the brothers. There was a family quarrel about money
which estranged this man Mortimer, but it was supposed to be made up,
and I afterwards met him as I did the others. He was a sly, subtle,
scheming man, and several things arose which gave me a suspicion of
him, but I had no cause for any positive quarrel.
“One day, only a couple of weeks ago, he came down to my cottage and I
showed him some of my African curiosities. Among other things I
exhibited this powder, and I told him of its strange properties, how it
stimulates those brain centres which control the emotion of fear, and
how either madness or death is the fate of the unhappy native who is
subjected to the ordeal by the priest of his tribe. I told him also how
powerless European science would be to detect it. How he took it I
cannot say, for I never left the room, but there is no doubt that it
was then, while I was opening cabinets and stooping to boxes, that he
managed to abstract some of the devil’s-foot root. I well remember how
he plied me with questions as to the amount and the time that was
needed for its effect, but I little dreamed that he could have a
personal reason for asking.
“I thought no more of the matter until the vicar’s telegram reached me
at Plymouth. This villain had thought that I would be at sea before the
news could reach me, and that I should be lost for years in Africa. But
I returned at once. Of course, I could not listen to the details
without feeling assured that my poison had been used. I came round to
see you on the chance that some other explanation had suggested itself
to you. But there could be none. I was convinced that Mortimer
Tregennis was the murderer; that for the sake of money, and with the
idea, perhaps, that if the other members of his family were all insane
he would be the sole guardian of their joint property, he had used the
devil’s-foot powder upon them, driven two of them out of their senses,
and killed his sister Brenda, the one human being whom I have ever
loved or who has ever loved me. There was his crime; what was to be his
punishment?
“Should I appeal to the law? Where were my proofs? I knew that the
facts were true, but could I help to make a jury of countrymen believe
so fantastic a story? I might or I might not. But I could not afford to
fail. My soul cried out for revenge. I have said to you once before,
Mr. Holmes, that I have spent much of my life outside the law, and that
I have come at last to be a law to myself. So it was even now. I
determined that the fate which he had given to others should be shared
by himself. Either that or I would do justice upon him with my own
hand. In all England there can be no man who sets less value upon his
own life than I do at the present moment.
“Now I have told you all. You have yourself supplied the rest. I did,
as you say, after a restless night, set off early from my cottage. I
foresaw the difficulty of arousing him, so I gathered some gravel from
the pile which you have mentioned, and I used it to throw up to his
window. He came down and admitted me through the window of the
sitting-room. I laid his offence before him. I told him that I had come
both as judge and executioner. The wretch sank into a chair, paralysed
at the sight of my revolver. I lit the lamp, put the powder above it,
and stood outside the window, ready to carry out my threat to shoot him
should he try to leave the room. In five minutes he died. My God! how