His Last Bow Part 2 (1/2)
”We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon the evening of his death We may put aside this idea of Baynes's that Garcia's servants were concerned in the matter 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 It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and apparently a criht in the course of which he met his death I say 'criminal' because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires to establish an alibi Who, then, is ainst whom the criminal enterprise was directed So far it seeround
”We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household They were ALL confederates in the same unknown crime If it came off when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the Englishman's evidence, and all would be well But the atteerous one, and if Garcia did NOT return by a certain hour it was probable that his own life had been sacrificed It had been arranged, therefore, that in such a case his two subordinates were to ed spot where they could escape investigation and be in a position afterwards to renew their attempt That would fully explain the facts, would it not?”
The whole inexplicable tangle seehten out before me I wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me before
”But why should one servant return?”
”We can i precious, so which he could not bear to part with, had been left behind That would explain his persistence, would it not?”
”Well, what is the next step?”
”The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner It indicates a confederate at the other end Nohere was the other end? I have already shown you that it could only lie in soe houses is lie were devoted to a series of walks in which in the intervals of my botanical researches I e houses and an examination of the family history of the occupants One house, and only one, riveted h Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott, and less than half a ed to prosaic and respectable people who live far aloof froh Gable, was by all accounts a curious ht befall I concentrated my attention, therefore, upon hiular set of people, Watson--the ed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I see eyes that he was perfectly aware of , active, with iron-gray 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 parch in the tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord His friend and secretary, Mr Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate broily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness of speech You see, Watson, we have coe and one at High Gable--so our gaps are beginning to close
”These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of the household; but there is one other person who for our immediate purpose irls of eleven and thirteen Their governess is a Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman of forty or thereabouts There is also one confidential roup forether, and Henderson is a great traveller, always on the move It is only within the last weeks that he has returned, after a year's absence, to High Gable I may add that he is enormously rich, and whatever his whims may be he can very easily satisfy them For the rest, his house is full of butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the usual overfed, underworked staff of a large English country house
”So ossip and partly from my own observation There are no better instrurievance, and I was lucky enough to find one I call it luck, but it would not have co out for it As Baynes remarks, we all have our systems It was ardener of High Gable, sacked in a moment of te the indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their master So I had my key to the secrets of the establishment
”Curious people, Watson! I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but very curious people anyway It's a double-winged house, and the servants live on one side, the family on the other There's no link between the two save for Henderson's own servant, who serves the fa is carried to a certain door, which foro out at all, except into the garden Henderson never by any chance walks alone His dark secretary is like his shadow The gossip a the servants is that their'Sold his soul to the devil in exchange for money,' says Warner, 'and expects his creditor to come up and claim his own' Where they came from, or who they are, nobody has an idea They are very violent Twice Henderson has lashed at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy compensation have kept hie the situation by this new infore household and was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already been planned Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel, and it was a wooverness? All our reasoning seems to point that way At any rate, we may take it asa hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail I e and character ht be a love interest in our story is out of the question
”If she wrote the note she was presuht she be expected to do if she heard of his death? If he ht be sealed Still, in her heart, she ainst those who had killed hie upon them Could we see her, then and try to use her? That was ht But noe come to a sinister fact Miss Burnet has not been seen by any hu she has utterly vanished Is she alive? Has she perhaps ht as the friend whom she had summoned? Or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point which we still have to decide
”You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, Watson There is nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant Our whole scheistrate The wo, since in that extraordinary household any ht be invisible for a week And yet she er of her life All I can do is to watch the house and leave ates We can't let such a situation continue If the law can do nothing we est?”
”I knohich is her rooestion is that you and I go to-night and see if we can strike at the very heart of theprospect The old house with its atular and forers of the approach, and the fact that ere putting ourselves legally in a false position all co in the ice- cold reasoning of Holmes which ht recommend One knew that thus, and only thus, could a solution be found I clasped his hand in silence, and the die was cast
But it was not destined that our investigation should have so adventurous an ending It was about five o'clock, and the shadows of the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed into our rooone, Mr Holmes They went by the last train The lady broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs”
”Excellent, Warner!” cried Hol rapidly”
In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion She bore upon her aquiline and e listlessly upon her breast, but as she raised it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her pupils were dark dots in the centre of the broad gray iris She was drugged with opiuate, same as you advised, Mr Holardener ”When the carriage ca in her sleep, but when they tried to get her into the train she cae She fought her way out again I took her part, got her into a cab, and here we are I shan't forget the face at the carriageas I led her away I'd have a short life if he had his way--the black-eyed, scowling, yellow devil”
We carried her upstairs, laid her on the sofa, and a couple of cups of the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain fro Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly explained to hiot me the very evidence I want,” said the inspector war my friend by the hand ”I was on the same scent as you from the first”
”What! You were after Henderson?”
”Why, Mr Holh Gable I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below It was just ould get his evidence first”
”Then why did you arrest the mulatto?”
Baynes chuckled
”I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected, and that he would lie low and er I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our eyes were off hiive us a chance of getting at Miss Burnet”
Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector's shoulder
”You will rise high in your profession You have instinct and intuition,” said he
Baynes flushed with pleasure
”I've had a plain-clothes h Gable folk go he will keep theht But he must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet broke away However, your man picked her up, and it all ends well We can't arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get a stateer,” said Holoverness ”But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?”
”Henderson,” the inspector answered, ”is Don Murillo, once call the Tiger of San Pedro”
The Tiger of San Pedro! The whole history of the man came back to me in a flash He had made his naoverned any country with a pretence to civilization Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient virtue to enable hi people for ten or twelve years His nah all Central A against hi as he was cruel, and at the first whisper of co trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a shi+p which was manned by devoted adherents It was an eents next day The dictator, his two children, his secretary, and his wealth had all escaped them >From that moment he had vanished from the world, and his identity had been a frequent subject for comment in the European press
”Yes, sir, Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro,” said Baynes ”If you look it up you will find that the San Pedro colours are green and white, same as in the note, Mr Holmes Henderson he called himself, but I traced him back, Paris and Rome and Madrid to Barcelona, where his shi+p ca for hie, but it is only now that they have begun to find hio,” said Miss Burnet, who had sat up and was now intently following the conversation ”Once already his life has been atteain, it is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who has fallen, while the oes safe But another will come, and yet another, until some day justice will be done; that is as certain as the rise of to-morrow's sun” Her thin hands clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her hatred
”But how come you into this lish lady join in such a murderous affair?”
”I join in it because there is no other way in the world by which justice can be gained What does the law of England care for the rivers of blood shed years ago in San Pedro, or for the shi+pload of treasure which this man has stolen? To you they are like crimes committed in some other planet But WE know We have learned the truth in sorrow and in suffering To us there is no fiend in hell like Juan Murillo, and no peace in life while his victieance”
”No doubt,” said Holmes, ”he was as you say I have heard that he was atrocious But how are you affected?”
”I will tell you it all This villain's policy was to murder, on one pretext or another, every ht in tierous rival My husband--yes, nora Victor Durando--was the San Pedro minister in London He met me and married me there A nobler man never lived upon earth Unhappily, Murillo heard of his excellence, recalled him on some pretext, and had him shot With a premonition of his fate he had refused to take me with him His estates were confiscated, and I was left with a pittance and a broken heart
”Then came the downfall of the tyrant He escaped as you have just described But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose nearest and dearest had suffered torture and death at his hands, would not let the matter rest They banded themselves into a society which should never be dissolved until the as done It was my part after we had discovered in the transformed Henderson the fallen despot, to attach myself to his household and keep the others in touch with his overness in his family He little knew that the woman who faced him at every meal was the woman whose husband he had hurried at an hour's notice into eternity I smiled on him, did my duty to his children, and bided ed swiftly here and there over Europe to throw off the pursuers and finally returned to this house, which he had taken upon his first arrival in England
”But here also thethat he would return there, Garcia, who is the son of the for with two trusty companions of hue He could do little during the day, for Murillo took every precaution and never went out save with his satellite Lucas, or Lopez as he was known in the days of his greatness At night, however, he slept alone, and the avenger ed, I sent my friend final instructions, for the ed his rooreen or white light in a hich faced the drive was to give notice if all was safe or if the atte with us In some way I had excited the suspicion of Lopez, the secretary He crept up behindupon ed ment upon me as a convicted traitress Then and there they would have plunged their knives into me could they have seen how to escape the consequences of the deed Finally, after erous But they detered ave hiht have twisted it off had I understood what it would mean to Garcia Lopez addressed the note which I had written, sealed it with his sleeve-link, and sent it by the hand of the servant, Jose How they murdered him I do not know, save that it was Murillo's hand who struck hiuard orse bushes through which the path winds and struck him down as he passed At first they were of a mind to let hilar; but they argued that if they were mixed up in an inquiry their own identity would at once be publicly disclosed and they would be open to further attacks With the death of Garcia, the pursuit hten others from the task
”All would now have been well for thee of what they had done I have no doubt that there were ti in the balance I was confined to my room, terrorized by the most horrible threats, cruelly ill-used to break my spirit--see this stab on my shoulder and the bruises fro was thrust into my mouth on the one occasion when I tried to call from theFor five days this cruel ih food to hold body and soul together This afternoon a good lunch was brought ged In a sort of dreae; in the same state I was conveyed to the train Only then, when the wheels were al, did I suddenly realize thatout, they tried to drag ood man, who led me to the cab, I should never had broken away Now, thank God, I am beyond their power forever”
We had all listened intently to this remarkable statement It was Holmes who broke the silence
”Our difficulties are not over,” he real work begins”
”Exactly,” said I ”A plausible lawyer could make it out as an act of self-defence There round, but it is only on this one that they can be tried”
”Come, come,” said Baynes cheerily, ”I think better of the law than that Self-defence is one thing To entice ahier you may fear from him No, no, we shall all be justified e see the tenants of High Gable at the next Guildford assizes”