THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES THE ADVENTURE OF THE RETIRED COLOURMAN

 $Unique_ID{SLH00113}

$Title{THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES; The Adventure of the Retired

Colourman}

$Author{Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan}

$Subject{}

$Journal{}

$Volume{}

$Date{}

$Log{Plate*0011301.scf}

                         THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES

                       THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

                    THE ADVENTURE OF THE RETIRED COLOURMAN

SHERLOCK HOLMES was in a melancholy and philosophic mood that morning.  His

alert practical nature was subject to such reactions.

     "Did you see him?" he asked.

     "You mean the old fellow who has just gone out?"

     "Precisely."

     "Yes, I met him at the door."

     "What did you think of him?"

     "A pathetic, futile, broken creature."

     "Exactly, Watson.  Pathetic and futile.  But is not all life pathetic and

futile?  Is not his story a microcosm of the whole?  We reach.  We grasp.  And

what is left in our hands at the end?  A shadow.  Or worse than a shadow--

misery."

     "Is he one of your clients?"

     "Well, I suppose I may call him so.  He has been sent on by the Yard.

Just as medical men occasionally send their incurables to a quack.  They argue

that they can do nothing more, and that whatever happens the patient can be no

worse than he is."

     "What is the matter?"

     Holmes took a rather soiled card from the table.  "Josiah Amberley.  He

says he was junior partner of Brickfall and Amberley, who are manufacturers of

artistic materials.  You will see their names upon paint-boxes.  He made his

little pile, retired from business at the age of sixty-one, bought a house at

Lewisham, and settled down to rest after a life of ceaseless grind.  One would

think his future was tolerably assured."

     "Yes, indeed."

     Holmes glanced over some notes which he had scribbled upon the back of an

envelope.

     "Retired in 1896, Watson.  Early in 1897 he married a woman twenty years

younger than himself--a good-looking woman, too, if the photograph does not

flatter.  A competence, a wife, leisure--it seemed a straight road which lay

before him.  And yet within two years he is, as you have seen, as broken and

miserable a creature as crawls beneath the sun."

     "But what has happened?"

     "The old story, Watson.  A treacherous friend and a fickle wife.  It

would appear that Amberley has one hobby in life, and it is chess.  Not far

from him at Lewisham there lives a young doctor who is also a chess-player.  I

have noted his name as Dr. Ray Ernest.  Ernest was frequently in the house,

and an intimacy between him and Mrs. Amberley was a natural sequence, for you

must admit that our unfortunate client has few outward graces, whatever his

inner virtues may be.  The couple went off together last week--destination

untraced.  What is more, the faithless spouse carried off the old man's

deed-box as her personal luggage with a good part of his life's savings

within.  Can we find the lady?  Can we save the money?  A commonplace problem

so far as it has developed, and yet a vital one for Josiah Amberley."

     "What will you do about it?"

     "Well, the immediate question, my dear Watson, happens to be, What will

you do?--if you will be good enough to understudy me.  You know that I am

preoccupied with this case of the two Coptic Patriarchs, which should come to

a head to-day.  I really have not time to go out to Lewisham, and yet evidence

taken on the spot has a special value.  The old fellow was quite insistent

that I should go, but I explained my difficulty.  He is prepared to meet a

representative."

     "By all means," I answered.  "I confess I don't see that I can be of much

service, but I am willing to do my best."  And so it was that on a summer

afternoon I set forth to Lewisham, little dreaming that within a week the

affair in which I was engaging would be the eager debate of all England.

     It was late that evening before I returned to Baker Street and gave an

account of my mission.  Holmes lay with his gaunt figure stretched in his deep

chair, his pipe curling forth slow wreaths of acrid tobacco, while his eyelids

drooped over his eyes so lazily that he might almost have been asleep were it

not that at any halt or questionable passage of my narrative they half lifted,

and two gray eyes, as bright and keen as rapiers, transfixed me with their

searching glance.

     "The Haven is the name of Mr. Josiah Amberley's house," I explained.  "I

think it would interest you, Holmes.  It is like some penurious patrician who

has sunk into the company of his inferiors.  You know that particular quarter,

the monotonous brick streets, the weary suburban highways.  Right in the

middle of them, a little island of ancient culture and comfort, lies this old

home, surrounded by a high sun-baked wall mottled with lichens and topped with

moss, the sort of wall-- --"

     "Cut out the poetry, Watson," said Holmes severely.  "I note that it was

a high brick wall."

     "Exactly.  I should not have known which was The Haven had I not asked a

lounger who was smoking in the street.  I have a reason for mentioning him.

He was a tall, dark, heavily moustached, rather military-looking man.  He

nodded in answer to my inquiry and gave me a curiously questioning glance,

which came back to my memory a little later.

     "I had hardly entered the gateway before I saw Mr. Amberley coming down

the drive.  I only had a glimpse of him this morning, and he certainly gave me

the impression of a strange creature, but when I saw him in full light his

appearance was even more abnormal."

     "I have, of course, studied it, and yet I should be interested to have

your impression," said Holmes.

     "He seemed to me like a man who was literally bowed down by care.  His

back was curved as though he carried a heavy burden.  Yet he was not the

weakling that I had at first imagined, for his shoulders and chest have the

framework of a giant, though his figure tapers away into a pair of spindled

legs."

     "Left shoe wrinkled, right one smooth."

     "I did not observe that."

     "No, you wouldn't.  I spotted his artificial limb.  But proceed."

     "I was struck by the snaky locks of grizzled hair which curled from under

his old straw hat, and his face with its fierce, eager expression and the

deeply lined features."

     "Very good, Watson.  What did he say?"

     "He began pouring out the story of his grievances.  We walked down the

drive together, and of course I took a good look round.  I have never seen a

worse-kept place.  The garden was all running to seed, giving me an impression

of wild neglect in which the plants had been allowed to find the way of Nature

rather than of art.  How any decent woman could have tolerated such a state of

things, I don't know.  The house, too, was slatternly to the last degree, but

the poor man seemed himself to be aware of it and to be trying to remedy it,

for a great pot of green paint stood in the centre of the hall, and he was

carrying a thick brush in his left hand.  He had been working on the woodwork.

     "He took me into his dingy sanctum, and we had a long chat.  Of course,

he was disappointed that you had not come yourself.  'I hardly expected,' he

said, 'that so humble an individual as myself, especially after my heavy

financial loss, could obtain the complete attention of so famous a man as Mr.

Sherlock Holmes.'

     "I assured him that the financial question did not arise.  'No, of

course, it is art for art's sake with him,' said he, 'but even on the artistic

side of crime he might have found something here to study.  And human nature,

Dr. Watson --the black ingratitude of it all!  When did I ever refuse one of

her requests?  Was ever a woman so pampered?  And that young man--he might

have been my own son.  He had the run of my house.  And yet see how they have

treated me!  Oh, Dr. Watson, it is a dreadful, dreadful world!'

     "That was the burden of his song for an hour or more.  He had, it seems,

no suspicion of an intrigue.  They lived alone save for a woman who comes in

by the day and leaves every evening at six.  On that particular evening old

Amberley, wishing to give his wife a treat, had taken two upper circle seats

at the Haymarket Theatre.  At the last moment she had complained of a headache

and had refused to go.  He had gone alone.  There seemed to be no doubt about

the fact, for he produced the unused ticket which he had taken for his wife."

     "That is remarkable--most remarkable," said Holmes, whose interest in the

case seemed to be rising.  "Pray continue, Watson.  I find your narrative most

arresting.  Did you personally examine this ticket?  You did not, perchance,

take the number?"

     "It so happens that I did," I answered with some pride.  "It chanced to

be my old school number, thirty-one, and so is stuck in my head."

     "Excellent, Watson!  His seat, then, was either thirty or thirty-two."

     "Quite so," I answered with some mystification.  "And on B row."

     "That is most satisfactory.  What else did he tell you?"

     "He showed me his strong-room, as he called it.  It really is a

strong-room --like a bank--with iron door and shutter--burglar-proof, as he

claimed.  However, the woman seems to have had a duplicate key, and between

them they had carried off some seven thousand pounds' worth of cash and

securities."

     "Securities!  How could they dispose of those?"

     "He said that he had given the police a list and that he hoped they would

be unsaleable.  He had got back from the theatre about midnight and found the

place plundered, the door and window open, and the fugitives gone.  There was

no letter or message, nor has he heard a word since.  He at once gave the

alarm to the police."

     Holmes brooded for some minutes.

     "You say he was painting.  What was he painting?"

     "Well, he was painting the passage.  But he had already painted the door

and woodwork of this room I spoke of."

     "Does it not strike you as a strange occupation in the circumstances?"

     "'One must do something to ease an aching heart.'  That was his own

explanation.  It was eccentric, no doubt, but he is clearly an eccentric man.

He tore up one of his wife's photographs in my presence--tore it up furiously

in a tempest of passion.  'I never wish to see her damned face again,' he

shrieked."

     "Anything more, Watson?"

     "Yes, one thing which struck me more than anything else.  I had driven to

the Blackheath Station and had caught my train there when, just as it was

starting, I saw a man dart into the carriage next to my own.  You know that I

have a quick eye for faces, Holmes.  It was undoubtedly the tall, dark man

whom I had addressed in the street.  I saw him once more at London Bridge, and

then I lost him in the crowd.  But I am convinced that he was following me."

     "No doubt!  No doubt!" said Holmes.  "A tall, dark, heavily moustached

man, you say, with gray-tinted sun-glasses?"

     "Holmes, you are a wizard.  I did not say so, but he had gray-tinted

sun-glasses."

     "And a Masonic tie-pin?"

     "Holmes!"

     "Quite simple, my dear Watson.  But let us get down to what is practical.

I must admit to you that the case, which seemed to me to be so absurdly simple

as to be hardly worth my notice, is rapidly assuming a very different aspect.

It is true that though in your mission you have missed everything of

importance, yet even those things which have obtruded themselves upon your

notice give rise to serious thought."

     "What have I missed?"

     "Don't be hurt, my dear fellow.  You know that I am quite impersonal.  No

one else would have done better.  Some possibly not so well.  But clearly you

have missed some vital points.  What is the opinion of the neighbours about

this man Amberley and his wife?  That surely is of importance.  What of Dr.

Ernest?  Was he the gay Lothario one would expect?  With your natural

advantages, Watson, every lady is your helper and accomplice.  What about the

girl at the post-office, or the wife of the greengrocer?  I can picture you

whispering soft nothings with the young lady at the Blue Anchor, and receiving

hard somethings in exchange.  All this you have left undone."

     "It can still be done."

     "It has been done.  Thanks to the telephone and the help of the Yard, I

can usually get my essentials without leaving this room.  As a matter of fact,

my information confirms the man's story.  He has the local repute of being a

miser as well as a harsh and exacting husband.  That he had a large sum of

money in that strong-room of his is certain.  So also is it that young Dr.

Ernest, an unmarried man, played chess with Amberley, and probably played the

fool with his wife.  All this seems plain sailing, and one would think that

there was no more to be said--and yet!--and yet!"

     "Where lies the difficulty?"

     "In my imagination, perhaps.  Well, leave it there, Watson.  Let us

escape from this weary workaday world by the side door of music.  Carina sings

to-night at the Albert Hall, and we still have time to dress, dine, and

enjoy."

     In the morning I was up betimes, but some toast crumbs and two empty

egg-shells told me that my companion was earlier still.  I found a scribbled

note upon the table.

          DEAR WATSON:

               There are one or two points of contact which I should wish to

          establish with Mr. Josiah Amberley.  When I have done so we can

          dismiss the case--or not.  I would only ask you to be on hand about

          three o'clock, as I conceive it possible that I may want you.

                                                                        S. H.

     I saw nothing of Holmes all day, but at the hour named he returned,

grave, preoccupied, and aloof.  At such times it was wiser to leave him to

himself.

     "Has Amberley been here yet?"

     "No."

     "Ah!  I am expecting him."

     He was not disappointed, for presently the old fellow arrived with a very

worried and puzzled expression upon his austere face.

     "I've had a telegram, Mr. Holmes.  I can make nothing of it."  He handed

it over, and Holmes read it aloud.

               "Come at once without fail.  Can give you information as to

          your recent loss.

                                                                 "ELMAN.

                                                               "The Vicarage.

     "Dispatched at 2:10 from Little Purlington," said Holmes.  "Little

Purlington is in Essex, I believe, not far from Frinton.  Well, of course you

will start at once.  This is evidently from a responsible person, the vicar of

the place.  Where is my Crockford?  Yes, here we have him:  'J. C. Elman, M.

A., Living of Moosmoor cum Little Purlington.'  Look up the trains, Watson."

     "There is one at 5:20 from Liverpool Street."

     "Excellent.  You had best go with him, Watson.  He may need help or

advice.  Clearly we have come to a crisis in this affair."

     But our client seemed by no means eager to start.

     "It's perfectly absurd, Mr. Holmes," he said.  "What can this man

possibly know of what has occurred?  It is waste of time and money."

     "He would not have telegraphed to you if he did not know something.  Wire

at once that you are coming."

     "I don't think I shall go."

     Holmes assumed his sternest aspect.

     "It would make the worst possible impression both on the police and upon

myself, Mr. Amberley, if when so obvious a clue arose you should refuse to

follow it up.  We should feel that you were not really in earnest in this

investigation."

     Our client seemed horrified at the suggestion.

     "Why, of course I shall go if you look at it in that way," said he.  "On

the face of it, it seems absurd to suppose that this parson knows anything,

but if you think-- --"

     "I do think," said Holmes with emphasis, and so we were launched upon our

journey.  Holmes took me aside before we left the room and gave me one word of

counsel, which showed that he considered the matter to be of importance.

"Whatever you do, see that he really does go," said he.  "Should he break away

or return, get to the nearest telephone exchange and send the single word

'Bolted.'  I will arrange here that it shall reach me wherever I am."

     Little Purlington is not an easy place to reach, for it is on a branch

line.  My remembrance of the journey is not a pleasant one, for the weather

was hot, the train slow, and my companion sullen and silent, hardly talking at

all save to make an occasional sardonic remark as to the futility of our

proceedings.  When we at last reached the little station it was a two-mile

drive before we came to the Vicarage, where a big, solemn, rather pompous

clergyman received us in his study.  Our telegram lay before him.

     "Well, gentlemen," he asked, "what can I do for you?"

     "We came," I explained, "in answer to your wire."

     "My wire!  I sent no wire."

     "I mean the wire which you sent to Mr. Josiah Amberley about his wife and

his money."

     "If this is a joke, sir, it is a very questionable one," said the vicar

angrily.  "I have never heard of the gentleman you name, and I have not sent a

wire to anyone."

     Our client and I looked at each other in amazement.

     "Perhaps there is some mistake," said I; "are there perhaps two

vicarages?  Here is the wire itself, signed Elman and dated from the

Vicarage."

     "There is only one vicarage, sir, and only one vicar, and this wire is a

scandalous forgery, the origin of which shall certainly be investigated by the

police.  Meanwhile, I can see no possible object in prolonging this

interview."

     So Mr. Amberley and I found ourselves on the roadside in what seemed to

me to be the most primitive village in England.  We made for the telegraph

office, but it was already closed.  There was a telephone, however, at the

little Railway Arms, and by it I got into touch with Holmes, who shared in our

amazement at the result of our journey.

     "Most singular!" said the distant voice.  "Most remarkable!  I much fear,

my dear Watson, that there is no return train to-night.  I have unwittingly

condemned you to the horrors of a country inn.  However, there is always

Nature, Watson--Nature and Josiah Amberley--you can be in close commune with

both."  I heard his dry chuckle as he turned away.

     It was soon apparent to me that my companion's reputation as a miser was

not undeserved.  He had grumbled at the expense of the journey, had insisted

upon travelling third-class, and was now clamorous in his objections to the

hotel bill.  Next morning, when we did at last arrive in London, it was hard

to say which of us was in the worse humour.

     "You had best take Baker Street as we pass," said I.  "Mr. Holmes may

have some fresh instructions."

     "If they are not worth more than the last ones they are not of much use,

" said Amberley with a malevolent scowl.  None the less, he kept me company.

I had already warned Holmes by telegram of the hour of our arrival, but we

found a message waiting that he was at Lewisham and would expect us there.

That was a surprise, but an even greater one was to find that he was not alone

in the sitting-room of our client.  A stern-looking, impassive man sat beside

him, a dark man with gray-tinted glasses and a large Masonic pin projecting

from his tie.

     "This is my friend Mr. Barker," said Holmes.  "He has been interesting

himself also in your business, Mr. Josiah Amberley, though we have been

working independently.  But we both have the same question to ask you!"

     Mr. Amberley sat down heavily.  He sensed impending danger.  I read it in

his straining eyes and his twitching features.

     "What is the question, Mr. Holmes?"

     "Only this:  What did you do with the bodies?"

     The man sprang to his feet with a hoarse scream.  He clawed into the air

with his bony hands.  His mouth was open, and for the instant he looked like

some horrible bird of prey.  In a flash we got a glimpse of the real Josiah

Amberley, a misshapen demon with a soul as distorted as his body.  As he fell

back into his chair he clapped his hand to his lips as if to stifle a cough.

Holmes sprang at his throat like a tiger and twisted his face towards the

ground.  A white pellet fell from between his gasping lips.

     "No short cuts, Josiah Amberley.  Things must be done decently and in

order.  What about it, Barker?"

     "I have a cab at the door," said our taciturn companion.

     "It is only a few hundred yards to the station.  We will go together.

You can stay here, Watson.  I shall be back within half an hour."

     The old colourman had the strength of a lion in that great trunk of his,

but he was helpless in the hands of the two experienced man-handlers.

Wriggling and twisting he was dragged to the waiting cab, and I was left to my

solitary vigil in the ill-omened house.  In less time than he had named,

however, Holmes was back, in company with a smart young police inspector.

     "I've left Barker to look after the formalities," said Holmes.  "You had

not met Barker, Watson.  He is my hated rival upon the Surrey shore.  When you

said a tall dark man it was not difficult for me to complete the picture.  He

has several good cases to his credit, has he not, Inspector?"

     "He has certainly interfered several times," the inspector answered with

reserve.

     "His methods are irregular, no doubt, like my own.  The irregulars are

useful sometimes, you know.  You, for example, with your compulsory warning

about whatever he said being used against him, could never have bluffed this

rascal into what is virtually a confession."

     "Perhaps not.  But we get there all the same, Mr. Holmes.  Don't imagine

that we had not formed our own views of this case, and that we would not have

laid our hands on our man.  You will excuse us for feeling sore when you jump

in with methods which we cannot use, and so rob us of the credit."

     "There shall be no such robbery, MacKinnon.  I assure you that I efface

myself from now onward, and as to Barker, he has done nothing save what I told

him."

     The inspector seemed considerably relieved.

     "That is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes.  Praise or blame can matter

little to you, but it is very different to us when the newspapers begin to ask

questions."

     "Quite so.  But they are pretty sure to ask questions anyhow, so it would

be as well to have answers.  What will you say, for example, when the

intelligent and enterprising reporter asks you what the exact points were

which aroused your suspicion, and finally gave you a certain conviction as to

the real facts?"

     The inspector looked puzzled.

     "We don't seem to have got any real facts yet, Mr. Holmes.  You say that

the prisoner, in the presence of three witnesses, practically confessed by

trying to commit suicide, that he had murdered his wife and her lover.  What

other facts have you?"

     "Have you arranged for a search?"

     "There are three constables on their way."

     "Then you will soon get the clearest fact of all.  The bodies cannot be

far away.  Try the cellars and the garden.  It should not take long to dig up

the likely places.  This house is older than the water-pipes.  There must be a

disused well somewhere.  Try your luck there."

     "But how did you know of it, and how was it done?"

     "I'll show you first how it was done, and then I will give the

explanation which is due to you, and even more to my long-suffering friend

here, who has been invaluable throughout.  But, first, I would give you an

insight into this man's mentality.  It is a very unusual one--so much so that

I think his destination is more likely to be Broadmoor than the scaffold.  He

has, to a high degree, the sort of mind which one associates with the

mediaeval Italian nature rather than with the modern Briton.  He was a

miserable miser who made his wife so wretched by his niggardly ways that she

was a ready prey for any adventurer.  Such a one came upon the scene in the

person of this chess-playing doctor.  Amberley excelled at chess--one mark,

Watson, of a scheming mind.  Like all misers, he was a jealous man, and his

jealousy became a frantic mania.  Rightly or wrongly, he suspected an

intrigue.  He determined to have his revenge, and he planned it with

diabolical cleverness.  Come here!"

     Holmes led us along the passage with as much certainty as if he had lived

in the house and halted at the open door of the strong-room.

     "Pooh!  What an awful smell of paint!" cried the inspector.

     "That was our first clue," said Holmes.  "You can thank Dr. Watson's

observation for that, though he failed to draw the inference.  It set my foot

upon the trail.  Why should this man at such a time be filling his house with

strong odours?  Obviously, to cover some other smell which he wished to

conceal --some guilty smell which would suggest suspicions.  Then came the

idea of a room such as you see here with iron door and shutter--a hermetically

sealed room.  Put those two facts together, and whither do they lead?  I could

only determine that by examining the house myself.  I was already certain that

the case was serious, for I had examined the box-office chart at the Haymarket

Theatre--another of Dr. Watson's bull's-eyes--and ascertained that neither B

thirty nor thirty-two of the upper circle had been occupied that night.

Therefore, Amberley had not been to the theatre, and his alibi fell to the

ground.  He made a bad slip when he allowed my astute friend to notice the

number of the seat taken for his wife.  The question now arose how I might be

able to examine the house.  I sent an agent to the most impossible village I

could think of, and summoned my man to it at such an hour that he could not

possibly get back.  To prevent any miscarriage, Dr. Watson accompanied him.

The good vicar's name I took, of course, out of my Crockford.  Do I make it

all clear to you?"

     "It is masterly," said the inspector in an awed voice.

     "There being no fear of interruption I proceeded to burgle the house.

Burglary has always been an alternative profession had I cared to adopt it,

and I have little doubt that I should have come to the front.  Observe what I

found.  You see the gas-pipe along the skirting here.  Very good.  It rises in

the angle of the wall, and there is a tap here in the corner.  The pipe runs

out into the strong-room, as you can see, and ends in that plaster rose in the

centre of the ceiling, where it is concealed by the ornamentation.  That end

is wide open.  At any moment by turning the outside tap the room could be

flooded with gas.  With door and shutter closed and the tap full on I would

not give two minutes of conscious sensation to anyone shut up in that little

chamber.  By what devilish device he decoyed them there I do not know, but

once inside the door they were at his mercy."

     The inspector examined the pipe with interest.  "One of our officers

mentioned the smell of gas," said he, "but of course the window and door were

open then, and the paint--or some of it--was already about.  He had begun the

work of painting the day before, according to his story.  But what next, Mr.

Holmes?"

     "Well, then came an incident which was rather unexpected to myself.  I

was slipping through the pantry window in the early dawn when I felt a hand

inside my collar, and a voice said:  'Now, you rascal, what are you doing in

there?' When I could twist my head round I looked into the tinted spectacles

of my friend and rival, Mr. Barker.  It was a curious foregathering and set us

both smiling.  It seems that he had been engaged by Dr. Ray Ernest's family to

make some investigations and had come to the same conclusion as to foul play.

He had watched the house for some days and had spotted Dr. Watson as one of

the obviously suspicious characters who had called there.  He could hardly

arrest Watson, but when he saw a man actually climbing out of the pantry

window there came a limit to his restraint.  Of course, I told him how matters

stood and we continued the case together."

     "Why him?  Why not us?"

     "Because it was in my mind to put that little test which answered so

admirably.  I fear you would not have gone so far."

     The inspector smiled.

     "Well, maybe not.  I understand that I have your word, Mr. Holmes, that

you step right out of the case now and that you turn all your results over to

us."

     "Certainly, that is always my custom."

     "Well, in the name of the force I thank you.  It seems a clear case, as

you put it, and there can't be much difficulty over the bodies."

     "I'll show you a grim little bit of evidence," said Holmes, "and I am

sure Amberley himself never observed it.  You'll get results, Inspector, by

always putting yourself in the other fellow's place, and thinking what you

would do yourself.  It takes some imagination, but it pays.  Now, we will

suppose that you were shut up in this little room, had not two minutes to

live, but wanted to get even with the fiend who was probably mocking at you

from the other side of the door.  What would you do?"

     "Write a message."

     "Exactly.  You would like to tell people how you died.  No use writing on

paper.  That would be seen.  If you wrote on the wall someone might rest upon

it.  Now, look here!  Just above the skirting is scribbled with a purple

indelible pencil:  'We we-- --'  That's all."

     "What do you make of that?"

     "Well, it's only a foot above the ground.  The poor devil was on the

floor dying when he wrote it.  He lost his senses before he could finish."

     "He was writing, 'We were murdered.'"

     "That's how I read it.  If you find an indelible pencil on the body-- --"

     "We'll look out for it, you may be sure.  But those securities?  Clearly

there was no robbery at all.  And yet he did possess those bonds.  We verified

that."

     "You may be sure he has them hidden in a safe place.  When the whole

elopement had passed into history, he would suddenly discover them and

announce that the guilty couple had relented and sent back the plunder or had

dropped it on the way."

     "You certainly seem to have met every difficulty," said the inspector.

"Of course, he was bound to call us in, but why he should have gone to you I

can't understand."

     "Pure swank!" Holmes answered.  "He felt so clever and so sure of himself

that he imagined no one could touch him.  He could say to any suspicious

neighbour, 'Look at the steps I have taken.  I have consulted not only the

police but even Sherlock Holmes.'"

     The inspector laughed.

     "We must forgive you your 'even,' Mr. Holmes," said he, "it's as

workmanlike a job as I can remember."

     A couple of days later my friend tossed across to me a copy of the

bi-weekly North Surrey Observer.  Under a series of flaming headlines, which

began with "The Haven Horror" and ended with "Brilliant Police Investigation,

" there was a packed column of print which gave the first consecutive account

of the affair.  The concluding paragraph is typical of the whole.  It ran

thus:

               The remarkable acumen by which Inspector MacKinnon deduced from

          the smell of paint that some other smell, that of gas, for example,

          might be concealed; the bold deduction that the strong-room might

          also be the death-chamber, and the subsequent inquiry which led to

          the discovery of the bodies in a disused well, cleverly concealed by

          a dog-kennel, should live in the history of crime as a standing

          example of the intelligence of our professional detectives.

     "Well, well, MacKinnon is a good fellow," said Holmes with a tolerant

smile.  "You can file it in our archives, Watson.  Some day the true story may

be told."