The Adventure of the Red Circle, Part 1

Sherlock Holmes Bedtime Stories

Sherlock Holmes has a new client. He's been visited by Mrs. Warren, a landlady with a new lodger that who is behaving very suspiciously. Since renting her rooms, he's nowhere to be seen, and only communicates via printed notes left outside the front door of the room. Mrs. Warren is convinced that something isn't right, and has enlisted the help of Sherlock Holmes to find out exactly what is going on. The case is intriguing, and Holmes and Watson set off to investigate the mysterious boarder. As a new investigation begins, let it fill your mind and help you relax as you drift into a night of peaceful and restorative sleep.

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Music: 'Permafrost' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. - www.scottbuckley.com.au



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2026-04-22 39 min Transcript

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Transcript

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to the Sherlock Holmes Bedtime Stories podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each episode is a section from a classic Sherlock Holmes story with relaxing music to help you fall asleep.
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[SPEAKER_00]: sharing with friends and family really does help.
[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]: The Adventure of the Red Circle
[SPEAKER_00]: part one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well Mrs. Warren, I cannot see that you have any particular cause for an easiness, nor do I understand why I, whose time is of some value, should interfere in the matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really have other things to engage me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So spoke Sherlock Holmes and turned back to the great scrapbook in which he was arranging and indexing some of his recent material.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the landlady had the pertinacity and also the cunning of her sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: She held her ground firmly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year, she said, Mr. Fairdale Hobbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah yes, a simple matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: but he would never cease talking of it, your kindness, sir, and the way in which you brought light into the darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remembered his words when I was in doubt and darkness myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you could, if you only would.
[SPEAKER_00]: Homes was accessible upon the side of flattery and also to do him justice, upon the side of kindness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two forces made him lay down his gumbrush
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, well, Mrs. Warren, let us hear about it then.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't object to tobacco, I take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: The match is, you're uneasy as I understand because your new logic remains in his rooms and you cannot see him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why bless you, Mrs. Warren, if I were your logic, you often would not see me for weeks on end.
[SPEAKER_00]: No doubts her, but this is different.
[SPEAKER_00]: It frightens me, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't sleep for fright.
[SPEAKER_00]: To hear his quick step moving here, and moving there from early morning to late at night, and yet never to catch so much as a glimpse of him it's more than I can stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: My husband is as nervous over it as I am, but he is out at his work all day, while I get no rest from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is he hiding for?
[SPEAKER_00]: What has he done?
[SPEAKER_00]: Except for the girl, I am all alone in the house with him and it's more than my nerves can stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes leaned forward and laid his long thin fingers upon the woman's shoulder.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished.
[SPEAKER_00]: The scared look faded from her eyes and her agitated features smoothed into their usual commonplace.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'd take it up, I must understand every detail, said he.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take time to consider.
[SPEAKER_00]: The smallest point may be the most essential.
[SPEAKER_00]: You say that the man came 10 days ago and paid you for a fortnight's board and lodging?
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked my terms, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said 50 shillings a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a small sitting room and bedroom and all complete at the top of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well?
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I'll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my own terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a poor woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little and the money meant much to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He took out a ten pound note, and he held it out to me then and there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have the same every fortnight for a long time to come if you keep the terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, if not, I'll have no more to do with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What were the terms?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well Sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lodges often have them, also that he was to be left entirely to himself and never upon any excuse to be disturbed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing wonderful in that surely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in reason Sir, but this is out of all reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has been there for 10 days, and neither Mr. Warren nor I nor the girl has once set eyes upon him.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can hear that quick step of his pacing up and down up and down night morning and noon, but except on that first night he had never once gone out of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he went out the first night, did he?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir, and returned very late, after we were all in bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He told me after he had taken the rooms that he would do so and asked me not to bar the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard him come up the stair after midnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: but his meals.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was his particular direction that we should always when he rang, leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he rings again when he has finished, and we take it down from the same chair.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he wants anything else, he prints it on a slip of paper and leaves it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, uh, printed in pencil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the word, nothing more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the one I brought to show you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's another match.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one he left the first morning, daily Gazette.
[SPEAKER_00]: I leave that paper with his breakfast every morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dear me Watson, said Holmes, staring with great curiosity at the slips of Fools' cap which the land lady had handed to him, this is certainly a little unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suclusion I can understand, but why print?
[SPEAKER_00]: Printing is a clumsy process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not write?
[SPEAKER_00]: What would it suggest Watson?
[SPEAKER_00]: But why, what can it matter to him that his landlady should have a word of his writing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, it may be as you say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then again, why such leconic messages?
[SPEAKER_00]: I cannot imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It opens a pleasing field for intelligence speculation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The words are written with a broad pointed violet tinted pencil of a not unusual pattern.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will observe that the paper is torn away at the side here after the printing was done so that the S of soap is partly gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suggestive what's and is it not?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of caution?
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was evidently some mark, some thumbprint, something which might give a clue to the person's identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now Mrs. Warren, you say that the man was of middle size, dark and bearded.
[SPEAKER_00]: youngest sir, not over 30.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, can you give me no further indications?
[SPEAKER_00]: He spoke good English sir, and yet I thought he was a foreigner by his accent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was well dressed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Very smartly dressed sir, quite the gentleman, dark clothes, nothing you would note.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave no name, no sir, and has had no letters or callers, none.
[SPEAKER_00]: But surely you are the girl enter his room of a morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dear me, that is certainly remarkable what about his luggage.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had one big brown bag with him, nothing else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well we don't seem to have much material to help us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you say nothing has come out of that room?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: From it she shook out two burnt matches and a cigarette end upon the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were on his tray this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I brought them because I had heard that you can read great things out of small ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is nothing here, said he.
[SPEAKER_00]: The matches have, of course, been used to light cigarettes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is obvious from the shortness of the burnt end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Half the match is consumed in lighting a pipe or cigar.
[SPEAKER_00]: But dear me, this cigarette stub is certainly remarkable.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gentleman was bearded and moustache, do you say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should say that only a clean-shaven man could have smoked this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why what's and even your modest mustache would have been cinched?
[SPEAKER_00]: A holder?
[SPEAKER_00]: I suggested.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, the end is matted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose there could not be two people in your rooms, Mrs. Warren.
[SPEAKER_00]: No sir, he eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life in one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think we must wait for a little more material.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, you have nothing to complain of.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have received your rent, and he is not a troublesome lodger, though he is certainly an unusual one.
[SPEAKER_00]: He pays you well, and if he chooses to lie concealed, it is no direct business of yours.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no excuse for an intrusion upon his privacy, until we have some reason to think that there is a guilty reason for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've taken up the matter, and I won't lose sight of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: report to me if anything fresher occurs and rely upon my assistance if it should be needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are certainly some points of interest in this case Watson, he remarked when the land lady had left us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may of course be trivial, individual eccentricity, or it may be very much deeper than appears on the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing that strikes one is the obvious possibility
[SPEAKER_00]: that the person now in the rooms may be entirely different from the one who engaged them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should you think so?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, apart from this cigarette end, was it not suggestive that the only time the lodger went out was immediately after his taking the rooms?
[SPEAKER_00]: He came back, or someone came back when all witnesses were out of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have no proof that the person who came back was the
[SPEAKER_00]: Then again, the man who took the room spoke English well.
[SPEAKER_00]: This other, however, prints match when it should have been matches.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can imagine that the word was taken out of a dictionary, which would give the noun but not the plural.
[SPEAKER_00]: The leconic style may be to conceal the absence of knowledge of English.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Watson, there are good reasons to suspect that there has been a substitution of lodges.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, their lies are problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is one rather obvious line of investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He took down the great book in which day by day he filed the agony columns of the various London journals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dear me, said he turning over the pages, what a chorus of groans, cries and bleetings,
[SPEAKER_00]: But surely the most valuable hunting ground that ever was given to a student of the unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: This person is alone and cannot be approached by letter without a breach of that absolute secrecy which is desired.
[SPEAKER_00]: How is any news or any message to reach him from without?
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously by advertisement through a newspaper.
[SPEAKER_00]: There seems no other way, unfortunately we need concern ourselves with the one paper only.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here are the Daily Gazette extracts of the last fortnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lady with a black boar at Prince's skating club that we may pass.
[SPEAKER_00]: Surely Jimmy will not break his mother's heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: That appears to be irrelevant.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the lady who fainted on Brickston Bus, she does not interest me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every day my heart longs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bleed Watson and mitigated Bleed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, this is a little more possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: be patient will find some sure means of communications.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, this column, G, that is two days after Mrs. Warren's larger arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds plausible, does it not?
[SPEAKER_00]: The mysterious one could understand English even if he could not print it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let us see if we can pick up the trace again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, here we are three days later.
[SPEAKER_00]: and making successful arrangements, patience and prudence, the clouds will pass, G. Nothing for a week after that, then comes something much more definite.
[SPEAKER_00]: The path is clearing if I find chance signal message remember code agreed, 1a, 2b and so on you will hear soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: G. That was in yesterday's paper, and there is nothing in today's.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all very appropriate to Mrs. Warren's lodger.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we wait a little what's and I don't doubt that the affair will grow more intelligible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it proved.
[SPEAKER_00]: For in the morning I found my friend standing on the harth rug with his back to the fire, and a smile of complete satisfaction upon his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: How's this Watson?
[SPEAKER_00]: He cried, picking up the paper from the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: High-red house with white stone facings, third floor, second window left, after dusk.
[SPEAKER_00]: G. That is definite enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think after breakfast we must make a little reconnaissance of Mrs. Warren's neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, Mrs. Warren.
[SPEAKER_00]: What news do you bring us this morning?
[SPEAKER_00]: Our client had suddenly burst into the room with an explosive energy, which told of some new and momentous development.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a police matter, Mr. Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: She cried.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll have no more of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He shall pack out of there with his baggage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have gone straight up and told him so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only I thought it was but fair to you to take your opinion first, but I'm at the end of my patience
[SPEAKER_00]: knocking Mr. Warren about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Using him roughly anyway, but who used him roughly?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, that's what we want to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was this morning's sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Warren is a timekeeper at Morton and Waylights in Tottenham Court Road.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has to be out of the house before 7.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well this morning he had not gone 10 paces down the road when two men came up behind him through a coat over his head and bundled him into a cab that was beside the curb.
[SPEAKER_00]: They drove him an hour and then opened the door and shot him out.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lay in the roadway so shaken in his wits that he never saw what became of the cab.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he picked himself up, he found he was on hamstered Heath, so he took a bus home, and there he lies now on his sofa, while I came straight round to tell you what had happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most interesting, said Holmes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did he observe the appearance of these men?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did he hear them talk?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, he is clean-dazed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just knows that he was lifted up as if by magic, and dropped as if by magic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two at least were in it and maybe three.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you connect this attack with your logic?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we've lived there 15 years and no such happenings ever came before.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had enough of him, money's not everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll have him out of my house before the day is done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait a bit, Mrs. Warren.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do nothing rash.
[SPEAKER_00]: I begin to think that this affair may be very much more important than appeared at first sight.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is clear now that some danger is threatening your logic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is equally clear that his enemies lying in wait for him near your door mistook your husband for him in the foggy morning light, on discovering their mistake they released him.
[SPEAKER_00]: What they would have done had it not been a mistake.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can only conjecture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what am I to do, Mr. Holmes?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a great fancy to see this larger of yours, Mrs. Warren.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't see how that is to be managed unless you break in the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always hear him unlock it as I go down the stair after I leave the tray.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has to take the tray in surely we could conceal ourselves and see him do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: the landlady thought for a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, sir, there's the boxroom opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could arrange a looking glass maybe, and if you were behind the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: Excellent, said Holmes, when does he lunch?
[SPEAKER_00]: About once, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Dr. Watson and I will come round in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the present Mrs. Warren?
[SPEAKER_00]: Goodbye.
[SPEAKER_00]: At half past 12, we found ourselves upon the steps of Mrs. Warren's house, a high thin, yellow brick edifice in Great Orm Street, a narrow thoroughfare at the northeastern side of the British Museum.
[SPEAKER_00]: Standing as it does near the corner of the street, it commands a view down a house street with its more pretentious houses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes pointed with a chuckle to one of these, a row of residential flats, which projected so that they could not fail to catch the eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: See Watson?
[SPEAKER_00]: See Watson?
[SPEAKER_00]: Said he?
[SPEAKER_00]: High-red house with stone-facings.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is the signal station all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know the place, and we know the code.
[SPEAKER_00]: So surely our task should be simple.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a two-let card in that window.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is evidently an empty flat to which the Confederate has access.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Mrs. Warren, what now?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have it already for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you will both come up and leave your boots below on the landing, I'll put you there now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an excellent hiding place which she had arranged.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mirror was so placed that seated in the dark, we could very plainly see the door opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had hardly settled down in it, and Mrs. Warren left us when a distant tinkle announced that our mysterious neighbour had run.
[SPEAKER_00]: Presently the land lady appeared with the tray, laid it down upon a chair beside the closed door, and then, treading heavily, departed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crouching together in the angle of the door we kept our eyes fixed upon the mirror.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, as the landlady's footsteps died away, there was the creek of a turning key.
[SPEAKER_00]: The handle revolved, and two thin hands darted out and lifted the tray from the chair.
[SPEAKER_00]: An instant later it was hurriedly replaced and I caught a glimpse of a dark, beautiful, horrified face glaring at the narrow opening of the boxroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the door crashed too, the key turned once more and all was silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holmes twitched my sleeve and together we stole down the stair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will call again in the evening, said he to the expectant land lady.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Watson, we can discuss this business better in our own quarters.
[SPEAKER_00]: My surmise as you saw proved to be correct, said he, speaking from the depths of his easy chair.
[SPEAKER_00]: There has been a substitution of lodges.
[SPEAKER_00]: what I did not foresee is that we should find a woman, a no ordinary woman Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: She saw us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, she saw something to alarm her, that is certain.
[SPEAKER_00]: The general sequence of events is pretty clear, is it not?
[SPEAKER_00]: A couple seek refuge in London from a very terrible and instant danger.
[SPEAKER_00]: The measure of that danger is the rigor of their precautions.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man who has some work which he must do desires to leave the woman in absolute safety while he does it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not an easy problem, but he solved it in an original fashion, and so effectively that her presence was not even known to the land lady who supplies her with food.
[SPEAKER_00]: The printed messages, as is now evident, were to prevent her sex being discovered by her writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man cannot come near the woman, or he will guide their enemies
[SPEAKER_00]: Since he cannot communicate with her direct, he has recourse to the agony column of a paper, so far all is clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is at the root of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah yes, Watson severely practical as usual, what is at the root of it all?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mrs. Warren's whimsical problem enlarges somewhat, and assumes a more sinister aspect as we proceed.
[SPEAKER_00]: this much we can say that it is no ordinary love escapade.
[SPEAKER_00]: You saw the woman's face at the sign of danger.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have heard two of the attack upon the landlord, which was undoubtedly meant for the lodger.
[SPEAKER_00]: These alarms and the desperate need for secrecy argue that the matter is one of life or death.
[SPEAKER_00]: The attack upon Mr. Warren further shows that the enemy, whoever they are, are themselves not aware of the substitution of the female lodger for the male.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very curious and complex Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should you go further in it?
[SPEAKER_00]: What have you to gain from it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee.
[SPEAKER_00]: For my education homes, education never ends Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an instructive case.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is neither money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: When dusk comes, we should find ourselves one stage advanced in our investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we return to Mrs. Warren's rooms, the gloom of a London winter evening had thickened into one grey curtain, a dead monotone of colour, broken only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows, and the blurred hallows of the gas lamps.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we peered from the dark and sitting room of the lodging house, one more dim light glimmed high up through the obscurity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone is moving in that room, said Holmes in a whisper, his gone to Niga face thrust forward to the window pane.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I can see his shadow.
[SPEAKER_00]: There he is again.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has a candle in his hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he is peering across.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants to be sure that she is on the lookout.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he begins to flash.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take the message also Watson that we may check each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: A single flash that is A surely.
[SPEAKER_00]: now then.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many did you make it?
[SPEAKER_00]: 20?
[SPEAKER_00]: So did I, that should mean T at T, that's intelligible enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another T. Surely this is the beginning of a second word, now then Tenter deadstop.
[SPEAKER_00]: That can't be all Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: A Tenter gives no sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor is it any better as three words A T, Tenter and less T, A are a person's initials.
[SPEAKER_00]: There it goes again.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's that?
[SPEAKER_00]: At?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why it is the same message over again?
[SPEAKER_00]: Curious Watson.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he is off once more.
[SPEAKER_00]: A T why he is repeating it for the third time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Attent her three times.
[SPEAKER_00]: How often will he repeat it?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: That seems to be the finish.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is withdrawn from the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you make of it Watson?
[SPEAKER_00]: A Cypher message homes.
[SPEAKER_00]: My companion gave a sudden chuckle of comprehension.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not a very obscure cipher Watson said he.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why, of course, it is Italian?
[SPEAKER_00]: The A means that it is addressed to a woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beware, beware, beware.
[SPEAKER_00]: How's that, Watson?
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe you have hit it.
[SPEAKER_00]: not a doubt of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a very urgent message thrice repeated to make it more so.
[SPEAKER_00]: But beware of what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is coming to the window once more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again we saw the dim-sil-awaret of a crouching man and the whisk of the small flame across the window as the signals were renewed.
[SPEAKER_00]: They came more rapidly than before, so rapid
[SPEAKER_00]: Pericola, Pericola, A.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's that?
[SPEAKER_00]: What'sm?
[SPEAKER_00]: Danger, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, by Joe, it's a danger signal.
[SPEAKER_00]: There he goes again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peri.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, what on earth?
[SPEAKER_00]: The light had suddenly gone out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The glimmering square of window had disappeared, and the third floor formed a dark band round the lofty building with its tears of shining casements.
[SPEAKER_00]: That last warning cry had been suddenly cut short.
[SPEAKER_00]: how and by whom.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thought occurred on the instant to us both.
[SPEAKER_00]: Homes sprang up from where he crouched by the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is serious Watson, he cried.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is some devil re-going forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should such a message stop in such a way?
[SPEAKER_00]: I should put Scotland yard in touch with this business and yet it is too pressing for us to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shall I go for the police?
[SPEAKER_00]: We must define the situation a little more clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may bear some more innocent interpretation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come Watson, let us go across ourselves and see what we can make of it.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: You
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

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