His last bow Some later reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes
not yet determined. I have no doubt, however, that your researches will
soon clear the matter up.”
“_My_ researches!”
“Hence the health-giving expedition to Lausanne. You know that I cannot
possibly leave London while old Abrahams is in such mortal terror of
his life. Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not
leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes
an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes. Go, then, my dear
Watson, and if my humble counsel can ever be valued at so extravagant a
rate as two pence a word, it waits your disposal night and day at the
end of the Continental wire.”
Two days later found me at the Hôtel National at Lausanne, where I
received every courtesy at the hands of M. Moser, the well-known
manager. Lady Frances, as he informed me, had stayed there for several
weeks. She had been much liked by all who met her. Her age was not more
than forty. She was still handsome and bore every sign of having in her
youth been a very lovely woman. M. Moser knew nothing of any valuable
jewellery, but it had been remarked by the servants that the heavy
trunk in the lady’s bedroom was always scrupulously locked. Marie
Devine, the maid, was as popular as her mistress. She was actually
engaged to one of the head waiters in the hotel, and there was no
difficulty in getting her address. It was 11, Rue de Trajan,
Montpellier. All this I jotted down and felt that Holmes himself could
not have been more adroit in collecting his facts.
Only one corner still remained in the shadow. No light which I
possessed could clear up the cause for the lady’s sudden departure. She
was very happy at Lausanne. There was every reason to believe that she
intended to remain for the season in her luxurious rooms overlooking
the lake. And yet she had left at a single day’s notice, which involved
her in the useless payment of a week’s rent. Only Jules Vibart, the
lover of the maid, had any suggestion to offer. He connected the sudden
departure with the visit to the hotel a day or two before of a tall,
dark, bearded man. “_Un sauvage—un veritable sauvage!_” cried Jules
Vibart. The man had rooms somewhere in the town. He had been seen
talking earnestly to Madame on the promenade by the lake. Then he had
called. She had refused to see him. He was English, but of his name
there was no record. Madame had left the place immediately afterwards.
Jules Vibart, and, what was of more importance, Jules Vibart’s
sweetheart, thought that this call and the departure were cause and
effect. Only one thing Jules would not discuss. That was the reason why
Marie had left her mistress. Of that he could or would say nothing. If
I wished to know, I must go to Montpellier and ask her.
So ended the first chapter of my inquiry. The second was devoted to the
place which Lady Frances Carfax had sought when she left Lausanne.
Concerning this there had been some secrecy, which confirmed the idea
that she had gone with the intention of throwing someone off her track.
Otherwise why should not her luggage have been openly labelled for
Baden? Both she and it reached the Rhenish spa by some circuitous
route. This much I gathered from the manager of Cook’s local office. So
to Baden I went, after dispatching to Holmes an account of all my
proceedings and receiving in reply a telegram of half-humorous
commendation.
At Baden the track was not difficult to follow. Lady Frances had stayed
at the Englischer Hof for a fortnight. While there she had made the
acquaintance of a Dr. Shlessinger and his wife, a missionary from South
America. Like most lonely ladies, Lady Frances found her comfort and
occupation in religion. Dr. Shlessinger’s remarkable personality, his
whole hearted devotion, and the fact that he was recovering from a
disease contracted in the exercise of his apostolic duties affected her
deeply. She had helped Mrs. Shlessinger in the nursing of the
convalescent saint. He spent his day, as the manager described it to
me, upon a lounge-chair on the veranda, with an attendant lady upon
either side of him. He was preparing a map of the Holy Land, with
special reference to the kingdom of the Midianites, upon which he was
writing a monograph. Finally, having improved much in health, he and
his wife had returned to London, and Lady Frances had started thither
in their company. This was just three weeks before, and the manager had
heard nothing since. As to the maid, Marie, she had gone off some days
beforehand in floods of tears, after informing the other maids that she
was leaving service forever. Dr. Shlessinger had paid the bill of the
whole party before his departure.
“By the way,” said the landlord in conclusion, “you are not the only
friend of Lady Frances Carfax who is inquiring after her just now. Only
a week or so ago we had a man here upon the same errand.”
“Did he give a name?” I asked.
“None; but he was an Englishman, though of an unusual type.”
“A savage?” said I, linking my facts after the fashion of my
illustrious friend.
“Exactly. That describes him very well. He is a bulky, bearded,
sunburned fellow, who looks as if he would be more at home in a
farmers’ inn than in a fashionable hotel. A hard, fierce man, I should
think, and one whom I should be sorry to offend.”
Already the mystery began to define itself, as figures grow clearer
with the lifting of a fog. Here was this good and pious lady pursued
from place to place by a sinister and unrelenting figure. She feared
him, or she would not have fled from Lausanne. He had still followed.
Sooner or later he would overtake her. Had he already overtaken her?
Was _that_ the secret of her continued silence? Could the good people
who were her companions not screen her from his violence or his
blackmail? What horrible purpose, what deep design, lay behind this
long pursuit? There was the problem which I had to solve.
To Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly and surely I had got down to the
roots of the matter. In reply I had a telegram asking for a description
of Dr. Shlessinger’s left ear. Holmes’s ideas of humour are strange and
occasionally offensive, so I took no notice of his ill-timed
jest—indeed, I had already reached Montpellier in my pursuit of the
maid, Marie, before his message came.
I had no difficulty in finding the ex-servant and in learning all that
she could tell me. She was a devoted creature, who had only left her
mistress because she was sure that she was in good hands, and because
her own approaching marriage made a separation inevitable in any case.
Her mistress had, as she confessed with distress, shown some
irritability of temper towards her during their stay in Baden, and had
even questioned her once as if she had suspicions of her honesty, and
this had made the parting easier than it would otherwise have been.
Lady Frances had given her fifty pounds as a wedding-present. Like me,
Marie viewed with deep distrust the stranger who had driven her
mistress from Lausanne. With her own eyes she had seen him seize the
lady’s wrist with great violence on the public promenade by the lake.
He was a fierce and terrible man. She believed that it was out of dread
of him that Lady Frances had accepted the escort of the Shlessingers to
London. She had never spoken to Marie about it, but many little signs
had convinced the maid that her mistress lived in a state of continual
nervous apprehension. So far she had got in her narrative, when
suddenly she sprang from her chair and her face was convulsed with
surprise and fear. “See!” she cried. “The miscreant follows still!
There is the very man of whom I speak.”
Through the open sitting-room window I saw a huge, swarthy man with a
bristling black beard walking slowly down the centre of the street and
staring eagerly at the numbers of the houses. It was clear that, like
myself, he was on the track of the maid. Acting upon the impulse of the
moment, I rushed out and accosted him.
“You are an Englishman,” I said.
“What if I am?” he asked with a most villainous scowl.
“May I ask what your name is?”
“No, you may not,” said he with decision.
The situation was awkward, but the most direct way is often the best.
“Where is the Lady Frances Carfax?” I asked.
He stared at me with amazement.
“What have you done with her? Why have you pursued her? I insist upon
an answer!” said I.
The fellow gave a bellow of anger and sprang upon me like a tiger. I
have held my own in many a struggle, but the man had a grip of iron and
the fury of a fiend. His hand was on my throat and my senses were
nearly gone before an unshaven French _ouvrier_ in a blue blouse darted
out from a _cabaret_ opposite, with a cudgel in his hand, and struck my
assailant a sharp crack over the forearm, which made him leave go his
hold. He stood for an instant fuming with rage and uncertain whether he
should not renew his attack. Then, with a snarl of anger, he left me
and entered the cottage from which I had just come. I turned to thank
my preserver, who stood beside me in the roadway.
“Well, Watson,” said he, “a very pretty hash you have made of it! I
rather think you had better come back with me to London by the night
express.”
An hour afterwards, Sherlock Holmes, in his usual garb and style, was
seated in my private room at the hotel. His explanation of his sudden
and opportune appearance was simplicity itself, for, finding that he
could get away from London, he determined to head me off at the next
obvious point of my travels. In the disguise of a workingman he had sat
in the _cabaret_ waiting for my appearance.
“And a singularly consistent investigation you have made, my dear
Watson,” said he. “I cannot at the moment recall any possible blunder
which you have omitted. The total effect of your proceeding has been to
give the alarm everywhere and yet to discover nothing.”
“Perhaps you would have done no better,” I answered bitterly.
“There is no ‘perhaps’ about it. I _have_ done better. Here is the Hon.
Philip Green, who is a fellow-lodger with you in this hotel, and we may
find him the starting-point for a more successful investigation.”
A card had come up on a salver, and it was followed by the same bearded
ruffian who had attacked me in the street. He started when he saw me.
“What is this, Mr. Holmes?” he asked. “I had your note and I have come.
But what has this man to do with the matter?”
“This is my old friend and associate, Dr. Watson, who is helping us in
this affair.”
The stranger held out a huge, sunburned hand, with a few words of
apology.
“I hope I didn’t harm you. When you accused me of hurting her I lost my
grip of myself. Indeed, I’m not responsible in these days. My nerves
are like live wires. But this situation is beyond me. What I want to
know, in the first place, Mr. Holmes, is, how in the world you came to
hear of my existence at all.”
“I am in touch with Miss Dobney, Lady Frances’s governess.”
“Old Susan Dobney with the mob cap! I remember her well.”
“And she remembers you. It was in the days before—before you found it
better to go to South Africa.”
“Ah, I see you know my whole story. I need hide nothing from you. I
swear to you, Mr. Holmes, that there never was in this world a man who
loved a woman with a more wholehearted love than I had for Frances. I
was a wild youngster, I know—not worse than others of my class. But her
mind was pure as snow. She could not bear a shadow of coarseness. So,
when she came to hear of things that I had done, she would have no more
to say to me. And yet she loved me—that is the wonder of it!—loved me
well enough to remain single all her sainted days just for my sake
alone. When the years had passed and I had made my money at Barberton I
thought perhaps I could seek her out and soften her. I had heard that