The Return of Sherlock Holmes
“By George!” cried the inspector. “How ever did you see that?”
“Because I looked for it.”
“Wonderful!” said the country doctor. “You are certainly right,
sir. Then a third shot has been fired, and therefore a third
person must have been present. But who could that have been, and
how could he have got away?”
“That is the problem which we are now about to solve,” said
Sherlock Holmes. “You remember, Inspector Martin, when the
servants said that on leaving their room they were at once
conscious of a smell of powder, I remarked that the point was an
extremely important one?”
“Yes, sir; but I confess I did not quite follow you.”
“It suggested that at the time of the firing, the window as well
as the door of the room had been open. Otherwise the fumes of
powder could not have been blown so rapidly through the house. A
draught in the room was necessary for that. Both door and window
were only open for a very short time, however.”
“How do you prove that?”
“Because the candle was not guttered.”
“Capital!” cried the inspector. “Capital!”
“Feeling sure that the window had been open at the time of the
tragedy, I conceived that there might have been a third person in
the affair, who stood outside this opening and fired through it.
Any shot directed at this person might hit the sash. I looked,
and there, sure enough, was the bullet mark!”
“But how came the window to be shut and fastened?”
“The woman’s first instinct would be to shut and fasten the
window. But, halloa! What is this?”
It was a lady’s hand-bag which stood upon the study table—a trim
little hand-bag of crocodile-skin and silver. Holmes opened it and
turned the contents out. There were twenty fifty-pound notes of
the Bank of England, held together by an india-rubber
band—nothing else.
“This must be preserved, for it will figure in the trial,” said
Holmes, as he handed the bag with its contents to the inspector.
“It is now necessary that we should try to throw some light upon
this third bullet, which has clearly, from the splintering of the
wood, been fired from inside the room. I should like to see Mrs.
King, the cook, again. You said, Mrs. King, that you were
awakened by a _loud_ explosion. When you said that, did you mean
that it seemed to you to be louder than the second one?”
“Well, sir, it wakened me from my sleep, so it is hard to judge.
But it did seem very loud.”
“You don’t think that it might have been two shots fired almost
at the same instant?”
“I am sure I couldn’t say, sir.”
“I believe that it was undoubtedly so. I rather think, Inspector
Martin, that we have now exhausted all that this room can teach
us. If you will kindly step round with me, we shall see what
fresh evidence the garden has to offer.”
A flower-bed extended up to the study window, and we all broke
into an exclamation as we approached it. The flowers were
trampled down, and the soft soil was imprinted all over with
footmarks. Large, masculine feet they were, with peculiarly long,
sharp toes. Holmes hunted about among the grass and leaves like a
retriever after a wounded bird. Then, with a cry of satisfaction,
he bent forward and picked up a little brazen cylinder.
“I thought so,” said he, “the revolver had an ejector, and here
is the third cartridge. I really think, Inspector Martin, that
our case is almost complete.”
The country inspector’s face had shown his intense amazement at
the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes’s investigation. At
first he had shown some disposition to assert his own position,
but now he was overcome with admiration, and ready to follow
without question wherever Holmes led.
“Whom do you suspect?” he asked.
“I’ll go into that later. There are several points in this
problem which I have not been able to explain to you yet. Now
that I have got so far, I had best proceed on my own lines, and
then clear the whole matter up once and for all.”
“Just as you wish, Mr. Holmes, so long as we get our man.”
“I have no desire to make mysteries, but it is impossible at the
moment of action to enter into long and complex explanations. I
have the threads of this affair all in my hand. Even if this lady
should never recover consciousness, we can still reconstruct the
events of last night and insure that justice be done. First of
all, I wish to know whether there is any inn in this
neighbourhood known as ‘Elrige’s’?”
The servants were cross-questioned, but none of them had heard of
such a place. The stable-boy threw a light upon the matter by
remembering that a farmer of that name lived some miles off, in
the direction of East Ruston.
“Is it a lonely farm?”
“Very lonely, sir.”
“Perhaps they have not heard yet of all that happened here during
the night?”
“Maybe not, sir.”
Holmes thought for a little, and then a curious smile played over
his face.
“Saddle a horse, my lad,” said he. “I shall wish you to take a
note to Elrige’s Farm.”
He took from his pocket the various slips of the dancing men.
With these in front of him, he worked for some time at the
study-table. Finally he handed a note to the boy, with directions
to put it into the hands of the person to whom it was addressed,
and especially to answer no questions of any sort which might be
put to him. I saw the outside of the note, addressed in
straggling, irregular characters, very unlike Holmes’s usual
precise hand. It was consigned to Mr. Abe Slaney, Elriges Farm,
East Ruston, Norfolk.
“I think, Inspector,” Holmes remarked, “that you would do well to
telegraph for an escort, as, if my calculations prove to be
correct, you may have a particularly dangerous prisoner to convey
to the county jail. The boy who takes this note could no doubt
forward your telegram. If there is an afternoon train to town,
Watson, I think we should do well to take it, as I have a
chemical analysis of some interest to finish, and this
investigation draws rapidly to a close.”
When the youth had been dispatched with the note, Sherlock Holmes
gave his instructions to the servants. If any visitor were to
call asking for Mrs. Hilton Cubitt, no information should be
given as to her condition, but he was to be shown at once into
the drawing-room. He impressed these points upon them with the
utmost earnestness. Finally he led the way into the drawing-room,
with the remark that the business was now out of our hands, and
that we must while away the time as best we might until we could
see what was in store for us. The doctor had departed to his
patients, and only the inspector and myself remained.
“I think that I can help you to pass an hour in an interesting
and profitable manner,” said Holmes, drawing his chair up to the
table, and spreading out in front of him the various papers upon
which were recorded the antics of the dancing men. “As to you,
friend Watson, I owe you every atonement for having allowed your
natural curiosity to remain so long unsatisfied. To you,
Inspector, the whole incident may appeal as a remarkable
professional study. I must tell you, first of all, the
interesting circumstances connected with the previous
consultations which Mr. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in Baker
Street.” He then shortly recapitulated the facts which have
already been recorded. “I have here in front of me these singular
productions, at which one might smile, had they not proved
themselves to be the forerunners of so terrible a tragedy. I am
fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and am myself
the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I
analyze one hundred and sixty separate ciphers, but I confess
that this is entirely new to me. The object of those who invented
the system has apparently been to conceal that these characters
convey a message, and to give the idea that they are the mere
random sketches of children.
“Having once recognized, however, that the symbols stood for
letters, and having applied the rules which guide us in all forms
of secret writings, the solution was easy enough. The first
message submitted to me was so short that it was impossible for
me to do more than to say, with some confidence, that the symbol
XXX stood for E. As you are aware, E is the most common letter in
the English alphabet, and it predominates to so marked an extent
that even in a short sentence one would expect to find it most
often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message, four were the
same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is true that
in some cases the figure was bearing a flag, and in some cases
not, but it was probable, from the way in which the flags were
distributed, that they were used to break the sentence up into
words. I accepted this as a hypothesis, and noted that E was
represented by
E
“But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of
the English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any
preponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed sheet
may be reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly, T,
A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in which
letters occur, but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each
other, and it would be an endless task to try each combination
until a meaning was arrived at. I therefore waited for fresh
material. In my second interview with Mr. Hilton Cubitt he was
able to give me two other short sentences and one message, which
appeared—since there was no flag—to be a single word. Here are
the symbols. Now, in the single word I have already got the two
E’s coming second and fourth in a word of five letters. It might
be ‘sever,’ or ‘lever,’ or ‘never.’ There can be no question that
the latter as a reply to an appeal is far the most probable, and
the circumstances pointed to its being a reply written by the
lady. Accepting it as correct, we are now able to say that the
symbols stand respectively for N, V, and R.
N-V-R
“Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy thought
put me in possession of several other letters. It occurred to me
that if these appeals came, as I expected, from someone who had
been intimate with the lady in her early life, a combination
which contained two E’s with three letters between might very
well stand for the name ‘ELSIE.’ On examination I found that such
a combination formed the termination of the message which was
three times repeated. It was certainly some appeal to ‘Elsie.’ In
this way I had got my L, S, and I. But what appeal could it be?
There were only four letters in the word which preceded ‘Elsie,’
and it ended in E. Surely the word must be ‘COME.’ I tried all
other four letters ending in E, but could find none to fit the