The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge, Part 2

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[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 2, The Tiger of San Pedro Part 1 A cold and melancholy walk of a couple of miles brought us to a high wooden gate, which opened into a gloomy avenue of chestnuts.
[SPEAKER_00]: The curved and shadowed drive led us to a low dark house, pitch black against a slate-coloured sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: From the front window upon the left of the door there peeped a glimmer of a feeble light,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a constable impossession, said Baines, I'll knock at the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on the pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Through the fogged glass, I dimly saw a man spring up from a chair beside the fire and heard a sharp cry from within the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: An instant later a white-faced, hard-breathing policeman had opened the door, the candle wavering in his trembling hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the matter, Walters?
[SPEAKER_00]: Us bane sharply.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and gave a long sigh of relief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you have come, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has been a long evening and I don't think my nerve is as good as it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nerve, Walters, I should not have thought you had a nerve in your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, sir, it's this lonely silent house and the queer thing in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then when you tapped at the window, I thought it had come again.
[SPEAKER_00]: That what had come again?
[SPEAKER_00]: The devil, sir, for all I know, it was at the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was at the window and when?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just about two hours ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: The light was just fading.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was sitting reading in the chair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what made me look up, but there was a face looking in at me through the lower pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord sir, what a face it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see it in my dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tat-Tut Walters, this is not talk for a police constable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, sir, I know, but it shook me, sir, and there's no use to deny it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't black, sir, nor was it white.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor any color that I know, but a kind of queer shade, like clay, with a splash of milk in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there was the size of it, it was twice your, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the look of it, the great, staring, goggle eyes, and the line of white teeth, like a hungry beast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tell you, sir, I couldn't move a finger, nor get my breath till it whisked away and was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: out I ran and threw the shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I didn't know you were a good man-walt as I should put a black mark against you for this, if it were the devil himself a constable on duty should never thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose the whole thing is not a vision and a touch of nerves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, he reported after a short examination of the grass bed, a number 12 shoe I should say.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he was all on the same scale as his foot, he must certainly have been a giant.
[SPEAKER_00]: What became of him?
[SPEAKER_00]: He seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever he may have been, and whatever he may have wanted, he's gone for the present, and we have more immediate things to attend to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Mr. Holmes, with your permission, I will show you around the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: The various bedrooms and sitting rooms had yielded nothing to a careful search.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apparently the tenants had brought little or nothing with them, and all the furniture
[SPEAKER_00]: A good deal of clothing with the stamp of marks and company high-holpen had been left behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Telegraphic inquiries had been already made, which showed that marks knew nothing of his customer, saved that he was a good payer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Odds and ends, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire revolver, and a guitar were among the personal property.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing in all this, said Baines, stalking candle in hand from room to room.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now Mr. Holmes, I invite your attention to the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a gloomy high ceiling room at the back of the house with a straw litter in one corner, which served apparently as a bed for the cook.
[SPEAKER_00]: The table was piled with half-eaten dishes and dirty plates the debris of last night's dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at this, said Baines, what do you make of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: He held up his candle before an extraordinary object which stood at the back of the dresser.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so wrinkled and shrunken and withered that it was difficult to say what it might have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: One could but say that it was black and leathery and that it bore some resemblance to a
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, as I examined it, I thought that it was a mummified Negro baby and then it seemed a very twisted and ancient monkey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally I was left in doubt as to whether it was animal or human.
[SPEAKER_00]: A double band of white shells was strong around the center of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very interesting, very interesting indeed said Holmes peering at this sinister relic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anything more?
[SPEAKER_00]: In silence, Baines led the way to the sink and held forward his candle.
[SPEAKER_00]: The limbs and body of some large white bird tawn savagely to pieces with the feathers still on were littered all over it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Homes pointed to the wattles on the severed head.
[SPEAKER_00]: A white cock said he, most interesting, it is really a very curious case.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Mr. Baines had kept his most sinister exhibit to the last.
[SPEAKER_00]: From under the sink, he drew a zinc pale which contained a quantity of blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then from the table, he took a platter, heaped with small pieces of charred bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something has been killed and something has been burned.
[SPEAKER_00]: We raked all these out of the fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a doctor in this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: home-smile and rubbed his hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must congratulate you inspector on handling so distinctive and instructive a case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your powers, if I may say so, without offense, seem superior to your opportunities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inspector Bains is small eyes twinkled with pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: A case of this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you make of these bones?
[SPEAKER_00]: A lamb, I should say, or a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the white cock?
[SPEAKER_00]: Curious Mr. Baines, very curious, I should say almost unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes sir, there must have been some very strange people with some very strange ways in
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did his companions follow him and kill him?
[SPEAKER_00]: If they did, we should have them.
[SPEAKER_00]: For every port is watched, but my own views are different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir, my own views are very different.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a theory then.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll work it myself, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only due to my own credit to do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your name is made, but I have still to make mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should be glad to be able to say afterwards that I had solved it without your help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes laughed good humanly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well well inspector said he, do you follow your path and I will follow mine?
[SPEAKER_00]: My results are always very much at your service if you care to apply to me for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that I have seen all that I wish in this house and that my time may be more profitably employed elsewhere, or ever, and good luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could tell by numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost upon anyone but myself, that homes was on a hot cent.
[SPEAKER_00]: As impassive as ever to the casual observer,
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were none the less a subdued eagerness and suggestion of tension in his bright and eyes and brisk a manner, which assured me that the game was a foot.
[SPEAKER_00]: After his habit he said nothing, and after mine I asked no questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sufficient for me to share the sport and lend my humble help to the capture, without distracting that intent brain with needless interruption.
[SPEAKER_00]: All would come round to me in due time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I waited there for, but to my ever deepening disappointment I waited in vain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: One morning he spent in town and I learned from a casual reference that he had visited the British Museum.
[SPEAKER_00]: Say for this one excursion, he spent his days in long and often solitary walks, or in chatting
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure Watson a week in the country will be invaluable to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He remarked, it is very pleasant to see the first green shoots upon the hedges and the catkins on the hazel's once again.
[SPEAKER_00]: With a spud, a tin box and an elementary book on botany, there are instructive days to be spent.
[SPEAKER_00]: He prowled about with this equipment himself, but it was a poor show of plants which he would bring back of an evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Occasionally, in our rambles, we came across Inspector Baines.
[SPEAKER_00]: His fat, red face, breathed itself in smiles, and his small eyes glittered as he greeted my companion.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said little about the case, but from that little we gathered that he also was not dissatisfied at the course of events.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when some five days after the crime, I opened my morning paper to find in large letters, the Okshot Mystery, a solution, a rest of supposed assassin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes sprang in his chair as if he had been stung when I read the headlines.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't mean that Baines has got him?
[SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, said I as I read the following report.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great excitement was caused in Isha and the neighbouring district.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it was learned late last night that an arrest had been affected in connection with the Okshot murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be remembered that Mr. Garcia of Westeria Lodge was found dead on Okshot common his body showing signs of extreme violence, and that on the same night his servant and his cook fled, which appeared to show their participation in the crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was suggested but never proved that the deceased gentleman may have had valuables in the house and that their abstraction was the motive of the crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every effort was made by Inspector Baines, who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding place of the fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they had not gone far but were lurking in some retreat which had been already prepared.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was certain from the first, however, that they would eventually be detected, as the cook, from the evidence of one or two tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of him through the window, was a man of most remarkable appearance, being a huge and hideous mulatto with yellowish features of a pronounced negroid type.
[SPEAKER_00]: This man has been seen since the crime, for he was detected and pursued by constable
[SPEAKER_00]: Inspector Baines, considering that such a visit must have some purpose in view and was likely therefore to be repeated, abandoned the house but left an ambush gate in the shrubbery.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man walked into the trap and was captured last night after a struggle in which constable downing was badly bitten by the savage.
[SPEAKER_00]: We understand that when the prisoner is brought before the magistrates a remand will be applied for by the police and that great developments are hoped from his capture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, we must see Baines at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cried Holmes picking up his hat, we will just catch him before he starts.
[SPEAKER_00]: We hurried down the village street and found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just leaving his lodgings.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've seen the paper, Mr. Holmes?
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked holding one out to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Baines, I've seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pray, don't think it a liberty if I give you a word of friendly warning.
[SPEAKER_00]: of warning Mr. Holmes, I have looked into this case with some care and I am not convinced that you are on the right lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want you to commit yourself too far unless you are sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're very kind, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I assure you I speak for your good,
[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an instant over one of Mr. Bains' tiny eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I am doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: O very good said Holmes, don't blame me.
[SPEAKER_00]: No sir, I believe you mean well by me, but we all have our own systems, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have yours, and maybe I have mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let us say no more about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're welcome always to my news.
[SPEAKER_00]: This fellow is a perfect savage, as strong as a cart horse and as fierce as the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: He chewed downings thumb nearly off before they could master him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hardly speaks a word of English and we can get nothing out of him but grunts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't say so, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't say so.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have our little ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: You try yours and I will try mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the agreement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes shrugged his shoulders as we walked away together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't make the man out.
[SPEAKER_00]: He seems to be riding for a fall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as he says, we must each try our own way and see what comes of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something in Inspector Baines which I can't quite understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just sit down in that chair, Watson, said Sherlock Holmes, when we had returned to our apartment at the ball.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to put you in touch with the situation, as I may need your help tonight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me show you the evolution of this case so far as I've been able to follow it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simple as it has been in its leading features, it has nonetheless presented surprising difficulties in the way of an arrest.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are gaps in that direction which we have still to fill.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will go back to the note which was handed into Garcia upon the evening of his death.
[SPEAKER_00]: We made put aside this idea of banses that Garcia's servants were concerned in the matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The proof of this lies in the fact that it was he who had arranged for the presence of Scott Eccles, which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was Garcier, then, who had an enterprise and apparently a criminal enterprise in hand that night in the course of which he met his death.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say criminal because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires to establish an alibi.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who, then, is most likely to have taken his life?
[SPEAKER_00]: Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was directed, so far it seems to me that we are on safe ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were all confederates in the same unknown crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it came off when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be awarded off by the Englishman's evidence and all would be well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the attempt was a dangerous one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if Garcia did not return by a certain hour, it was probable that his own life had been sacrificed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had been arranged therefore that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for some pre-arranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a position afterwards to renew their attempt.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would fully explain the facts, would it not?
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole inexplicable tangles seem to straighten out before me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wondered as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me before.
[SPEAKER_00]: but why should one servant return?
[SPEAKER_00]: We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious, something which he could not bear to part with had been left behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would explain his persistence, would it not?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well what is the next step?
[SPEAKER_00]: The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: It indicates a confederate at the other end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, where was the other end?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have already shown you that it could only lie in some large house and that the number of large houses is limited.
[SPEAKER_00]: My first days in this village were devoted to a series of walks in which in the intervals of my botanical researchers, I made a reconnaissance of all the large houses and an examination of the family history of the occupants.
[SPEAKER_00]: One house and only one riveted my attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the famous old Jacobian Grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxhot,
[SPEAKER_00]: The other mansions belong to Priseic and respectable people who live far aloof from romance.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Mr. Henderson of High Gable was by all accounts a curious man to whom curious adventures might befall.
[SPEAKER_00]: I concentrated my attention therefore upon him and his household.
[SPEAKER_00]: a singular set of people Watson, the man himself the most singular of them all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark, deep set brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of my true business.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is a man of 50, strong, active with iron grey hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of an emperor, a fierce, masterful man with a red hot spirit behind his parchment face.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whip-coord.
[SPEAKER_00]: His friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate brown, wily, swarve and cat-like, with a poisonous gentleness of speech.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see what's in, we have come already upon two sets of foreigners, one at Westeria large and one at high-gable, so our gaps are beginning to close.
[SPEAKER_00]: These two men close and confidential friends are the center of the household, but there is one other person who, for our immediate purpose, may be even more important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Henderson has two children.
[SPEAKER_00]: Girls of 11 and 13.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their governess is a misbernet and English woman of 40 are thereabouts.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is also one confidential man's servant.
[SPEAKER_00]: This little group forms the real family for they travel about together and Henderson is a great traveler always on the move.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is only within the last weeks that he has returned after a year's absence to high gable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may add that he is enormously rich and whatever his whims may be, he can very easily satisfy them.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the rest, his house is full of butlers, footmen, made servants, and the usual overfed underworked staff of a large English country house.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own observation.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no better instruments than discharge servants with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call it luck, but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Baines remarks, we all have our systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was my system which enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of high gable, sacked in a moment of temper by his imperious employer.
[SPEAKER_00]: He in turn had friends among the indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their master, so I had my key to the secrets of the establishment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Curious people Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but very curious people anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a double-winged house, and the servants live on one side, the family on the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no link between the two, say, for Henderson's own servant who serves the family's meals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is carried to a certain door which forms the one connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Governors and children hardly go out at all, except into the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: His dark secretary is like his shadow.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gossip among the servants is that their master is terribly afraid of something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sold his soul to the devil in exchange for money, says Warner, and expects his creditor to come up and claim his own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where they came from, or who they are, nobody has an idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are very violent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Twice Henderson has lashed at folk with his dog whip, and only his long-person heavy compensation of kept him out of the courts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well now what's and let us judge the situation by this new information.
[SPEAKER_00]: We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt, which had already been planned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who wrote the note?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was someone within the Citadel, and it was a woman, who then but Miss Burnett, the Governors.
[SPEAKER_00]: All our reasoning seems to point that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: At any rate, we may take it as a hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may add that Miss Burnett's agent character make it certain that my first idea that there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of Garcia.
[SPEAKER_00]: What then might she be expected to do if she heard of his death?
[SPEAKER_00]: If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be sealed, still in her heart she must retain bitterness and hatred against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as she could to have revenge upon them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could we see her then, and try to use her?
[SPEAKER_00]: that was my first thought, but now we come to a sinister fact.
[SPEAKER_00]: Miss Burnett has not been seen by any human eye since the night of the murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: From that evening she has utterly vanished.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is she alive?
[SPEAKER_00]: Has she perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend whom she had summoned?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is she merely a prisoner?
[SPEAKER_00]: There is the point which we still have to decide.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our whole scheme might seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman's disappearance counts for nothing, since in that extraordinary household any member of it might be invisible for a week, and yet she may at the present moment be in danger of her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: All I can do is to watch the house and leave my agent Warner on guard at the gates we can't let such a situation continue.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the law can do nothing, we must take the risk ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you suggest?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know which is her room.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is accessible from the top of an outhouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: My suggestion is that you and I go tonight and see if we can strike at the very heart of the mystery.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the old house with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my order.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there was something in the ice cold reasoning of homes which made it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend.
[SPEAKER_00]: I clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: you
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.