The Sign of the Four
savage, distorted creature. He was wrapped in some sort of dark ulster
or blanket, which left only his face exposed; but that face was enough
to give a man a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply
marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and
burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from
his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with a half animal fury.
“Fire if he raises his hand,” said Holmes, quietly. We were within a
boat’s-length by this time, and almost within touch of our quarry. I
can see the two of them now as they stood, the white man with his legs
far apart, shrieking out curses, and the unhallowed dwarf with his
hideous face, and his strong yellow teeth gnashing at us in the light
of our lantern.
It was well that we had so clear a view of him. Even as we looked he
plucked out from under his covering a short, round piece of wood, like
a school-ruler, and clapped it to his lips. Our pistols rang out
together. He whirled round, threw up his arms, and with a kind of
choking cough fell sideways into the stream. I caught one glimpse of
his venomous, menacing eyes amid the white swirl of the waters. At the
same moment the wooden-legged man threw himself upon the rudder and put
it hard down, so that his boat made straight in for the southern bank,
while we shot past her stern, only clearing her by a few feet. We were
round after her in an instant, but she was already nearly at the bank.
It was a wild and desolate place, where the moon glimmered upon a wide
expanse of marsh-land, with pools of stagnant water and beds of
decaying vegetation. The launch with a dull thud ran up upon the
mud-bank, with her bow in the air and her stern flush with the water.
The fugitive sprang out, but his stump instantly sank its whole length
into the sodden soil. In vain he struggled and writhed. Not one step
could he possibly take either forwards or backwards. He yelled in
impotent rage, and kicked frantically into the mud with his other foot,
but his struggles only bored his wooden pin the deeper into the sticky
bank. When we brought our launch alongside he was so firmly anchored
that it was only by throwing the end of a rope over his shoulders that
we were able to haul him out, and to drag him, like some evil fish,
over our side. The two Smiths, father and son, sat sullenly in their
launch, but came aboard meekly enough when commanded. The _Aurora_
herself we hauled off and made fast to our stern. A solid iron chest of
Indian workmanship stood upon the deck. This, there could be no
question, was the same that had contained the ill-omened treasure of
the Sholtos. There was no key, but it was of considerable weight, so we
transferred it carefully to our own little cabin. As we steamed slowly
up-stream again, we flashed our search-light in every direction, but
there was no sign of the Islander. Somewhere in the dark ooze at the
bottom of the Thames lie the bones of that strange visitor to our
shores.
“See here,” said Holmes, pointing to the wooden hatchway. “We were
hardly quick enough with our pistols.” There, sure enough, just behind
where we had been standing, stuck one of those murderous darts which we
knew so well. It must have whizzed between us at the instant that we
fired. Holmes smiled at it and shrugged his shoulders in his easy
fashion, but I confess that it turned me sick to think of the horrible
death which had passed so close to us that night.
Chapter XI
The Great Agra Treasure
Our captive sat in the cabin opposite to the iron box which he had done
so much and waited so long to gain. He was a sunburned, reckless-eyed
fellow, with a network of lines and wrinkles all over his mahogany
features, which told of a hard, open-air life. There was a singular
prominence about his bearded chin which marked a man who was not to be
easily turned from his purpose. His age may have been fifty or
thereabouts, for his black, curly hair was thickly shot with grey. His
face in repose was not an unpleasing one, though his heavy brows and
aggressive chin gave him, as I had lately seen, a terrible expression
when moved to anger. He sat now with his handcuffed hands upon his lap,
and his head sunk upon his breast, while he looked with his keen,
twinkling eyes at the box which had been the cause of his ill-doings.
It seemed to me that there was more sorrow than anger in his rigid and
contained countenance. Once he looked up at me with a gleam of
something like humour in his eyes.
“Well, Jonathan Small,” said Holmes, lighting a cigar, “I am sorry that
it has come to this.”
“And so am I, sir,” he answered, frankly. “I don’t believe that I can
swing over the job. I give you my word on the book that I never raised
hand against Mr. Sholto. It was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot
one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as
grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil
with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not
undo it again.”
“Have a cigar,” said Holmes; “and you had best take a pull out of my
flask, for you are very wet. How could you expect so small and weak a
man as this black fellow to overpower Mr. Sholto and hold him while you
were climbing the rope?”
“You seem to know as much about it as if you were there, sir. The truth
is that I hoped to find the room clear. I knew the habits of the house
pretty well, and it was the time when Mr. Sholto usually went down to
his supper. I shall make no secret of the business. The best defence
that I can make is just the simple truth. Now, if it had been the old
major I would have swung for him with a light heart. I would have
thought no more of knifing him than of smoking this cigar. But it’s
cursed hard that I should be lagged over this young Sholto, with whom I
had no quarrel whatever.”
“You are under the charge of Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard. He
is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true
account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you
do I hope that I may be of use to you. I think I can prove that the
poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached
the room.”
“That he was, sir. I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw him
grinning at me with his head on his shoulder as I climbed through the
window. It fairly shook me, sir. I’d have half killed Tonga for it if
he had not scrambled off. That was how he came to leave his club, and
some of his darts too, as he tells me, which I dare say helped to put
you on our track; though how you kept on it is more than I can tell. I
don’t feel no malice against you for it. But it does seem a queer
thing,” he added, with a bitter smile, “that I who have a fair claim to
nigh upon half a million of money should spend the first half of my
life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the
other half digging drains at Dartmoor. It was an evil day for me when
first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the
Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the
man who owned it. To him it brought murder, to Major Sholto it brought
fear and guilt, to me it has meant slavery for life.”
At this moment Athelney Jones thrust his broad face and heavy shoulders
into the tiny cabin. “Quite a family party,” he remarked. “I think I
shall have a pull at that flask, Holmes. Well, I think we may all
congratulate each other. Pity we didn’t take the other alive; but there
was no choice. I say, Holmes, you must confess that you cut it rather
fine. It was all we could do to overhaul her.”
“All is well that ends well,” said Holmes. “But I certainly did not
know that the _Aurora_ was such a clipper.”
“Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that
if he had had another man to help him with the engines we should never
have caught her. He swears he knew nothing of this Norwood business.”
“Neither he did,” cried our prisoner,—“not a word. I chose his launch
because I heard that she was a flier. We told him nothing, but we paid
him well, and he was to get something handsome if we reached our
vessel, the _Esmeralda_, at Gravesend, outward bound for the Brazils.”
“Well, if he has done no wrong we shall see that no wrong comes to him.
If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are not so quick in
condemning them.” It was amusing to notice how the consequential Jones
was already beginning to give himself airs on the strength of the
capture. From the slight smile which played over Sherlock Holmes’s
face, I could see that the speech had not been lost upon him.
“We will be at Vauxhall Bridge presently,” said Jones, “and shall land
you, Dr. Watson, with the treasure-box. I need hardly tell you that I
am taking a very grave responsibility upon myself in doing this. It is
most irregular; but of course an agreement is an agreement. I must,
however, as a matter of duty, send an inspector with you, since you
have so valuable a charge. You will drive, no doubt?”
“Yes, I shall drive.”
“It is a pity there is no key, that we may make an inventory first. You
will have to break it open. Where is the key, my man?”
“At the bottom of the river,” said Small, shortly.
“Hum! There was no use your giving this unnecessary trouble. We have
had work enough already through you. However, doctor, I need not warn
you to be careful. Bring the box back with you to the Baker Street
rooms. You will find us there, on our way to the station.”
They landed me at Vauxhall, with my heavy iron box, and with a bluff,
genial inspector as my companion. A quarter of an hour’s drive brought
us to Mrs. Cecil Forrester’s. The servant seemed surprised at so late a
visitor. Mrs. Cecil Forrester was out for the evening, she explained,
and likely to be very late. Miss Morstan, however, was in the
drawing-room: so to the drawing-room I went, box in hand, leaving the
obliging inspector in the cab.
She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white
diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and
waist. The soft light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back
in the basket chair, playing over her sweet, grave face, and tinting
with a dull, metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One
white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole
pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy. At the sound of my
foot-fall she sprang to her feet, however, and a bright flush of
surprise and of pleasure coloured her pale cheeks.
“I heard a cab drive up,” she said. “I thought that Mrs. Forrester had
come back very early, but I never dreamed that it might be you. What
news have you brought me?”
“I have brought something better than news,” said I, putting down the
box upon the table and speaking jovially and boisterously, though my
heart was heavy within me. “I have brought you something which is worth
all the news in the world. I have brought you a fortune.”
She glanced at the iron box. “Is that the treasure, then?” she asked,
coolly enough.
“Yes, this is the great Agra treasure. Half of it is yours and half is
Thaddeus Sholto’s. You will have a couple of hundred thousand each.
Think of that! An annuity of ten thousand pounds. There will be few
richer young ladies in England. Is it not glorious?”
I think that I must have been rather overacting my delight, and that
she detected a hollow ring in my congratulations, for I saw her
eyebrows rise a little, and she glanced at me curiously.
“If I have it,” said she, “I owe it to you.”
“No, no,” I answered, “not to me, but to my friend Sherlock Holmes.
With all the will in the world, I could never have followed up a clue