The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge, Part 1

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us this evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's time to relax.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let your body fall into a comfortable position in your bed and drift gently into a state of total relaxation with tonight's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter 1.
[SPEAKER_00]: The singular experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes had received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply.
[SPEAKER_00]: He made no remark but the matter remained in his thoughts for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe and casting an occasional glance at the message.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose Watson we must look upon you as a man of letters, said he.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you define the word, grotesque?
[SPEAKER_00]: strange, remarkable, I suggested.
[SPEAKER_00]: He shook his head at my definition.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is surely something more than that, said he, some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a long suffering public, you will recognise how often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of that little affair of the red-headed man.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was grotesque enough in the outset and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or again there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips which led straight to a murderous conspiracy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word puts me on the alert.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you it there?
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked.
[SPEAKER_00]: He read the telegram aloud.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: May I consult you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Scott Eckles, post office chairing cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man or woman, I asked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: No woman would ever send a reply paid telegram.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would have come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will you see him?
[SPEAKER_00]: My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.
[SPEAKER_00]: Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile, audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you ask me then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove?
[SPEAKER_00]: But here, unless I mistaken, is our client.
[SPEAKER_00]: A measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later, a stout tall gray whiskered
[SPEAKER_00]: his life history was written in his heavy features and pompous manner.
[SPEAKER_00]: From his spats to his gold rimed spectacles he was a conservative a churchman, a good citizen, orthodox and conventional to the last degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: But some amazing experience had disturbed his native composure, and left its traces in his bristling hair, his flushed angry cheeks and his flurryd excited manner.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had a most singular and unpleasant experience Mr. Holmes, said he, never in my life of I've been placed in such a situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is most improper, most outrageous, I must insist upon some explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He swelled and puffed in his anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Praise sit down Mr. Scott Eckles, said Holmes in a soothing voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: May I ask in the first
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, sir, it did not appear to be a matter which concerned the police, and yet, when you have heard the facts, you must admit that I could not leave it where it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Private detectives are a class with whom I have absolutely no sympathy, but none the less having heard your name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Quite so, but in the second place, why did you not come at once?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a quarter past two, he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your telegram was dispatched about one.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no one can glance at your toilet and the tire without seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment of your waking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our client smoothed down his unbrushed hair and felt his unshaven chin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your right Mr. Holmes, I never gave a thought to my toilet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was only too glad to get out of such a house.
[SPEAKER_00]: but I have been running round, making inquiries before I came to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the house agents, you know, and they said that Mr. Garcia's rent was paid up all right and that everything was in order at where Stereo Lodge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come come sir, said Holmes laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are like my friend, Dr. Watson, who has a bad habit of telling his stories wrong and foremost.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please arrange your thoughts and let me know in their due sequence, exactly what those events are which have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt with dress boots and waistcoat buttoned a rye in search of advice and assistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our client looked down with a roofal face at his own unconventional appearance.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure it must look very bad Mr. Holmes and I am not aware that in my whole life such
[SPEAKER_00]: but I will tell you the whole queer business, and when I have done so, you will admit I am sure that there has been enough to excuse me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But his narrative was nipped in the bud.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a bustle outside, and Mrs Hudson opened the door to usher in two robust and official looking individuals.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of whom was well known to us as Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard, an energetic gallant
[SPEAKER_00]: He shook hands with homes and introduced his comrade as Inspector Bains of the Surrey Constabulary.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are hunting together Mr. Holmes and are trail lay in this direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: He turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you Mr. John Scott Eckles of Popham House Lee?
[SPEAKER_00]: I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have been following you about all the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: You traced him through the telegram, no doubt, said Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly Mr. Holmes, we picked up the centre chairing cross post office and came on here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why do you follow me what do you want?
[SPEAKER_00]: We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which led up to the death last night of Mr. Aloisius Garcia, of Wistiria Lodge near Isha.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our client had sat up with staring eyes in every tinge of colour struck from his astonished face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dead?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you say he was dead?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir, he is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: But how?
[SPEAKER_00]: An accident?
[SPEAKER_00]: Murder, if ever there was one upon Earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good God, this is awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't mean you don't mean that I am suspected?
[SPEAKER_00]: A letter of yours was found in the Deadman's pocket and we know by it that you had planned to pass last night at his house.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you did, did you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Outcame the official notebook.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait a bit, Gregson, said Sherlock Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: All you desire is a plain statement, is it not?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eckles that it may be used against him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Eccles was going to tell us about it when you entered the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Watson, a brandy and soda, would do him no harm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, sir, I suggest that you take no notice of this addition to your audience, and that you proceed with your narrative exactly as you would have done had you never been interrupted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our visitor had gulped off the brandy and the colour had returned to his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: With a dubious glance at the inspectors' notebook, he plunged at once into his extraordinary statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a bachelor, said he.
[SPEAKER_00]: And being of a sociable turn I cultivate a large number of friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Among these are the family of a retired brewer called Melville, living at Abamal Mansion Kensington.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was at his table that I met some weeks ago a young fellow named Garcia.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was, I understood, of Spanish descent, and connected in some way with the embassy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spoke perfect English, was pleasing in his manners, and as good-looking a man as ever I saw in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: In some way we struck up quite a friendship this young fellow and I.
[SPEAKER_00]: He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first and within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing led to another.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it ended in his inviting me out to spend a few days at his house with stereo lodge between Isha and Okshot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yesterday evening, I went to Isha to fulfil this engagement.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had described his household to me before I went there.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lived with a faithful servant, a countryman of his own, who looked after all his needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: This fellow could speak English and did his housekeeping for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there was a wonderful cook he said, a half-breed whom he had picked up in his travels who could serve an excellent dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember that he remarked what a queer household it was to find in the heart of Surrey and that I agreed with him, though it has proved a good deal queerer than I thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: I drove to the place about two miles on the south side of Isha,
[SPEAKER_00]: The house was a fair sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving drive which was banked with high evergreen shrubs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an old tumble-down building in a crazy state of disrepair.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly.
[SPEAKER_00]: He opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great show of cordiality.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was handed over to the man's servant, a melancholy, swore the individual who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole place was depressing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adina was tetatet and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually wander, and he talked so vaguely and wildly that I could hardly understand him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He continually drummed his fingers on the table, nor his nails and gave other signs of nervous
[SPEAKER_00]: The dinner itself was neither well-served nor well-cooked, and the gloomy presence of the taciturn servant did not help to enliven us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can assure you that many times in the course of the evening I wish that I could invent some excuse which would take me back to Lee.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing comes back to my memory, which may have a bearing upon the business that you two gentlemen are investigating.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought nothing of it at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Near the end of dinner a note was handed in by the servant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I noticed that after my host had read it he seemed even more distraint and strange than before.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave up all pretence at conversation and sat, smoking endless cigarettes, lost in his own thoughts.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he made no remark as to the contents.
[SPEAKER_00]: About 11 I was glad to go to bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some time later Garcia looked in at my door, the room was dark at the time, and asked me if I had
[SPEAKER_00]: I said that I had not.
[SPEAKER_00]: He apologized for having disturbed me so late saying that it was nearly 1 o'clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: I dropped off after this and slept soundly all night.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I come to the amazing part of my tale.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I woke, it was broad daylight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I glanced at my watch, and the time was nearly 9.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had particularly asked to be called at 8, so I was very much astonished at this forgetfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sprang up and rang for the servant, there was no response.
[SPEAKER_00]: I rang again and again with the same result.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I came to the conclusion that the bell was out of order.
[SPEAKER_00]: I huddled on my clothes and hurried downstairs in an exceedingly bad temper to order some hot water.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can imagine my surprise when I found that there was no one there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shouted in the hall.
[SPEAKER_00]: there was no answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I ran from room to room, all were deserted.
[SPEAKER_00]: My host had shown me which was his bedroom the night before, so I knocked at the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: No reply.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned the handle and walked in.
[SPEAKER_00]: The room was empty, and the bed had never been slept in.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had gone with the rest.
[SPEAKER_00]: The foreign host, the foreign footman, the foreign cook, all had vanished in the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the end of my visit to hysteria lodge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sherlock Holmes was rubbing his hands and chuckling as he added this bizarre incident to his collection of strange episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your experience is so far as I know perfectly unique, said he.
[SPEAKER_00]: May I ask Sir, what you did then?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was furious.
[SPEAKER_00]: My first idea was that I had been the victim of some absurd, practical joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: I packed my things, banged the whole door behind me, and set off for Isha with my bag in my hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I called it Alan Brothers, the chief land agents in the village, and found that it was from this firm that the villa had been rented.
[SPEAKER_00]: It struck me that the whole proceeding could hardly be for the purpose of making a fool of me, and that the main object must be to get out of the rent it is late in March, so quarter day is at hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this theory would not work.
[SPEAKER_00]: The agent was obliged to me for my warning, but told me that the rent had been paid in advance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I made my way to town and called at the Spanish Embassy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man was unknown there.
[SPEAKER_00]: After this I went to see Melville, at whose house I had first met Garcia, but I found that he really knew rather less about him than I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, when I got your reply to my wire I came out to you,
[SPEAKER_00]: since I gather that you are a person who gives advice in difficult cases.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now, Mr.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inspector, I understand, from what you said when you entered the room, that you can carry the story on and that some tragedy had occurred.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can assure you that every word I have said is the truth and that outside of what I have told you, I know absolutely nothing about the fate of this man.
[SPEAKER_00]: My only desire is to help the law in every possible way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am sure of it, Mr. Scott Eccles, I am sure of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Said Inspector Gregson in a very amiable tone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am bound to say that everything which you have said agrees very closely with the facts as they have come to our notice, for example, there was that note which arrived during dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you chance to observe what became of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Garcia rolled it up and threw it into the fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you say to that Mr. Baines?
[SPEAKER_00]: The country detective was a stout, Puffy Redman, whose face was only redeemed from grossness by two extraordinarily bright eyes, almost hidden behind the heavy creases of cheek and brow.
[SPEAKER_00]: With a slow smile he drew a folded and discoloured scrap of paper from his pocket.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a dog-grade Mr. Holmes, and he overpitched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I picked this out unburned from the back of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes smiled his appreciation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You must have examined the house very carefully to find a single pellet of paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my wish.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read it, Mr. Gregson.
[SPEAKER_00]: The note is written upon ordinary cream-laid paper without watermark.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a quarter-sheet.
[SPEAKER_00]: The paper is cut off in two snips with a short-bladeed scissors.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has been folded over three times and sealed with purple wax, put on hurriedly and pressed down with some flat oval object.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is addressed to Mr. Garcia with Stereo Lodge.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says,
[SPEAKER_00]: Our own colours, green and white, green open, white shut, main stair first corridor, seventh-right green base, Godspeed, D. It is a woman's writing done with a sharp pointed pen but the address is either done with another pen or by someone else, it is thicker and bolder as you see.
[SPEAKER_00]: A very remarkable note, said Holmes, glancing it over.
[SPEAKER_00]: I must compliment you Mr. Bains, upon your attention to detail in your examination of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few trifling points might perhaps be added.
[SPEAKER_00]: The oval seal is undoubtedly a plain sleeve link, what else is of such a shape the scissors were bent nail scissors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Short as the two snips are you can distinctly see the same slight curve in each.
[SPEAKER_00]: The country detective chuckle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I had squeezed all the juice out of it but I see there was a little over, he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm bound to say that I make nothing of the note except that there was something on hand, and that a woman, as usual, was at the bottom of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Scott Eccles had fidgeted in his seat during this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am glad you found the note since it corroborates my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: but I'd beg to point out that I have not yet heard what has happened to Mr. Garcia, nor what has become of his household.
[SPEAKER_00]: As to Garcia, said Gregson, that is easily answered.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was found dead this morning upon Oxhot Common, nearly a mile from his home.
[SPEAKER_00]: His head had been smashed to pulp by heavy blows of a sandbag or some such instrument, which had crushed rather than wounded.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a lonely corner, and there is no house within a quarter of a mile of the spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had apparently been struck down first from behind, but his assailant had gone on beating him long after he was dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a most furious assault.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no footsteps nor any clue to the criminals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Robbed No, there was no attempt at robbery.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is very painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very painful and terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Said Mr. Scott Eccles in a Queryllas voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is really uncommonly hard on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had nothing to do with my host going off upon a nocturnal excursion and meeting so sad and end.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I come to be mixed up with the case?
[SPEAKER_00]: Very simply sir, Inspector Baines answered.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only document found in the pocket of the deceased was a letter from you saying that you would be with him on the night of his death.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the envelope of this letter which gave us the dead man's name and address.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was after nine this morning when we reached his house and found neither you nor anyone else inside it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wired to Mr. Gregson to run you down in London, while I examined with Stereo Lodge, then I came into town joined Mr. Gregson and here we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think now, said Gregson rising, we had best put this matter into an official shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will come round with us to the station, Mr. Scott Eccles, and let us have your statement in writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly I will come at once, but I retain your services, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I desire you to spare no expense and no pains to get at the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose that you have no objection to my collaborating with you, Mr. Baines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Highly honoured, sir, I'm sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You appeared to have been very prompt and business-like in all that you have done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there any clue May I ask, as to the exact hour that the man met his death?
[SPEAKER_00]: He had been there since one o'clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: there was rain about that time, and his death had certainly been before the rain.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is perfectly impossible, Mr. Baines.
[SPEAKER_00]: cried our client.
[SPEAKER_00]: His voice is unmistakable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could swear to it that it was he who addressed me in my bedroom at that very hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: you have a clue, asked Gregson.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the face of it, the case is not a very complex one, though it certainly presents some novel and interesting features.
[SPEAKER_00]: A further knowledge of facts is necessary before I would venture to give a final and definite opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, Mr. Baines, did you find anything remarkable besides this note in your examination of the house?
[SPEAKER_00]: the detective looked at my friend in a singular way.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were, said he, one or two very remarkable things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps when I have finished at the police station, you would care to come out and give me your opinion of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am entirely at your service to Sherlock Holmes ringing the bell.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will show these gentlemen out, Mrs. Hudson, and kindly send the boy with this telegram.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is to pay a five-chilling reply.
[SPEAKER_00]: We sat for some time in silence after our visitors had left.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes smoked hard, with his brows drawn down over his keen eyes, and his head thrust forward
[SPEAKER_00]: Well Watson, he asked turning suddenly upon me, what do you make of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I can make nothing of this mystification of Scott Eccles, but the crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well taken with the disappearance of the man's companions, I should say that they were in some way concerned in the murder and had fled from justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is certainly a possible point of view.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the face of it you must admit, however, that it is very strange that his two servants should have been in a conspiracy against him and should have attacked him on the one night when he had a guest.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had him alone at their mercy every other night in the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then why did they fly?
[SPEAKER_00]: Quite so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did they fly?
[SPEAKER_00]: Another big fact is the remarkable experience of our client, Scott Eccles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now my dear Watson, is it beyond the limits of human ingenuity to furnish an explanation which would cover both of these big facts?
[SPEAKER_00]: If it were one which would also admit of the mysterious note with its very curious phrase theology, why then it would be worth accepting as a temporary hypothesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the fresh facts which come to our knowledge all fit themselves into the scheme, then our hypothesis may gradually become a solution.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is our hypothesis?
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes leaned back in his chair with half closed eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You must admit my dear Watson that the idea of a joke is impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were grave events afoot as the sequel showed, and the coaxing of Scott Eccles to hysteria large had some connection with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what possible connection?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let us take it link by link.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is on the face of it, something unnatural about this strange and sudden friendship between the young Spaniard and Scott Eccles.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the former who forced the pace.
[SPEAKER_00]: He called upon Eccles at the other end of London on the very day after he first met him and he kept in close touch with him until he got him down to Isha.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what did he want with Eccles?
[SPEAKER_00]: What could Eccles supply?
[SPEAKER_00]: I see no charm in the man.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is not particularly intelligent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why then was he picked out from all the other people whom Garcia met as particularly suited to his purpose?
[SPEAKER_00]: Has he anyone outstanding quality?
[SPEAKER_00]: I say that he has.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the very type of conventional British respectability, and the very man as a witness to impress another Britain.
[SPEAKER_00]: You saw yourself how neither of the inspectors dreamed of questioning his statement extraordinary as it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing has things turned out, but everything had they gone another way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is how I read the matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see he might have proved an alibi.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly my dear Watson, he might have proved an alibi.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will suppose for arguments sake that the household of Wistieria lodge are confederation in some design.
[SPEAKER_00]: The attempt, whatever it may be, is to come off we will say before one o'clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: By some juggling of the clocks, it is quite possible that they may have got Scott Eccles to bed earlier than he thought, but in any case it is likely that when Garcia went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was really not more than 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Garcia could do whatever he had to do and be backed by the hour, mentioned he had evidently a powerful reply to any accusation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here was this irreprotable Englishman ready to swear in any court of law that the accused was in the house all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an insurance against the worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, I see that, but how about the disappearance of the others?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have not all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any insuprobable difficulties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data.
[SPEAKER_00]: you find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the message, how did it run?
[SPEAKER_00]: Our own colours green and white sounds like racing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Green open, white shut, that is clearly a signal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Main stair, first corridor, seventh
[SPEAKER_00]: We may find a jealous husband at the bottom of it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was clearly a dangerous quest.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would not have said, Godspeed had it not been so.
[SPEAKER_00]: D. That should be a guide.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man was a Spaniard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suggest that D stands for Dolores, a common female name in Spain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good Watson very good but quite inadmissible.
[SPEAKER_00]: A Spaniard would write to a Spaniard in Spanish.
[SPEAKER_00]: The writer of this note is certainly English.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we can only possess our soul in patience until this excellent inspector come back for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, we can thank our lucky fate which has rescued us for a few short hours from the insufferable fatigues of idleness.
[SPEAKER_00]: An answer had arrived to Holmes' telegram before our Surrey officer had returned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes read it and was about to place it in his notebook when he caught a glimpse of my expectant face.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tossed it across with a laugh.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are moving in exalted circles, said he.
[SPEAKER_00]: The telegram was a list of names and addresses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Haringby the Dingle, so George Follyart, Okshot Towers, Mr. Hines Hines J. P. P. P. P. P. P. Mr. James Baker Williams, Fort Nulled Hall, Mr. Henderson High Gable, Reverend Joshua Stone, Neather Walsling.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a very obvious way of limiting our field of operations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Said Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: No doubt bans with his methodical mind has already adopted some similar
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't quite understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well my dear fellow, we have already arrived at the conclusion that the message received by Garcia Adina was an appointment or an asignation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now if the obvious reading of it is correct and in order to keep the trist one has to ascend a main stare and seek the seventh door in a corridor, it is perfectly clear that the house is a very large one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is equally certain that this house cannot be more than a mile or two from Okshot, since Garcia was walking in that direction and hoped according to my reading of the facts, to be back in Westeria Lodge, in time to avail himself of an alibi, which would only be valid up to one o'clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: As the number of large houses close to Okshot must be limited, I adopted the obvious method of sending to the agents mentioned by Scott Eccles, and obtaining a list of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here they are in this telegram, and the other end of our tangled skein must lie among them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was nearly six o'clock before we found ourselves in the pretty Surrey village of Isha, with Inspector Baines as our companion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Homes and I had taken things for the night and found comfortable quarters at the bull.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, we set out in the company of the detective on our visit to hysteria lodge.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a cold, dark, march evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: With a sharp wind and a fine rain beating upon our faces, a fit setting for the wild commonover which our road passed, and the tragic goal to which it led us.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: you
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.