welcome, visitors."
Mr. Thaddeus Sholto ceased and sat twitching on his luxurious
settee. We all remained silent, with our thoughts upon the new
development which the mysterious business had taken. Holmes was the
first to spring to his feet.
"You have done well, sir, from first to last," said he. "It is
possible that we may be able to make you some small return by throwing
some light upon that which is still dark to you. But, as Miss
Morstan remarked just now, it is late, and we had best put the
matter through without delay."
Our new acquaintance very deliberately coiled up the tube of his
hookah and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged
topcoat with astrakhan collar and cuffs. This he buttoned tightly up
in spite of the extreme closeness of the night and finished his attire
by putting on a rabbit-skin cap with hanging lappets which covered the
ears, so that no part of him was visible save his mobile and peaky
face.
"My health is somewhat fragile," he remarked as he led the way
down the passage. "I am compelled to be a valetudinarian."
Our cab was awaiting us outside, and our programme was evidently
prearranged, for the driver started off at once at a rapid pace.
Thaddeus Sholto talked incessantly in a voice which rose high above
the rattle of the wheels.
"Bartholomew is a clever fellow," said he. "How do you think he
found out where the treasure was? He had come to the conclusion that
it was somewhere indoors, so he worked out all the cubic space of
the house and made measurements everywhere so that not one inch should
be unaccounted for. Among other things, he found that the height of
the building was seventy-four feet, but on adding together the heights
of all the separate rooms and making every allowance for the space
between, which he ascertained by borings, he could not bring the total
to more than seventy feet. There were four feet unaccounted for. These
could only be at the top of the building. He knocked a hole,
therefore, in the lath and plaster ceiling of the highest room, and
there, sure enough, he came upon another little garret above it, which
had been sealed up and was known to no one. In the centre stood the
treasure-chest resting upon two rafters. He lowered it through the
hole, and there it lies. He computes the value of the jewels at not
less than half a million sterling."
At the mention of this gigantic sum we all stared at one another
open-eyed. Miss Morstan, could we secure her rights, would change from
a needy governess to the richest heiress in England. Surely it was the
place of a loyal friend to rejoice at such news, yet I am ashamed to
say that selfishness took me by the soul and that my heart turned as
heavy as lead within me. I stammered out some few halting words of
congratulation and then sat downcast, with my head drooped, deaf to
the babble of our new acquaintance. He was clearly a confirmed
hypochondriac, and I was dreamily conscious that he was pouring
forth interminable trains of symptoms, and imploring information as to
the composition and action of innumerable quack nostrums, some of
which he bore about in a leather case in his pocket. I trust that he
may not remember any of the answers which I gave him that night.
Holmes declares that he overheard me caution him against the great
danger of taking more than two drops of castor-oil, while I
recommended strychnine in large doses as a sedative. However that
may be, I was certainly relieved when our cab pulled up with a jerk
and the coachman sprang down to open the door.
"This, Miss Morstan, is Pondicherry Lodge," said Mr. Thaddeus Sholto
as he handed her out.
Chapter 5
THE TRAGEDY OF PONDICHERRY LODGE
It was nearly eleven o'clock when we reached this final stage of our
night's adventures. We had left the damp fog of the great city
behind us, and the night was fairly fine. A warm wind blew from the
westward, and heavy clouds moved slowly across the sky, with half a
moon peeping occasionally through the rifts. It was clear enough to
see for some distance, but Thaddeus Sholto took down one of the side
lamps from the carriage to give us a better light upon our way.
Pondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds and was girt round with a
very high stone wall topped with broken glass. A single narrow
iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance. On this our guide
knocked with a peculiar postman-like rat-tat.
Who is there?" cried a gruff voice from within.
"It is I, McMurdo. You surely know my knock by this time."
There was a grumbling sound and a clanking and jarring of keys.
The door swung heavily back, and a short, deep-chested man stood in
the opening, with the yellow light of the lantern shining upon his
protruded face and twinkling, distrustful eyes.
"That you, Mr. Thaddeus? But who are the others? I had no orders
about them from the master."
"No, McMurdo? You surprise me! I told my brother last night that I
should bring some friends."
"He hain't been out o' his rooms to-day, Mr. Thaddeus, and I have no
orders. You know very well that I must stick to regulations. I can let
you in, but your friends they must just stop where they are."
This was an unexpected obstacle. Thaddeus Sholto looked about him in
a perplexed and helpless manner.
"This is too bad of you, McMurdo!" he said. "If I guarantee them,
that is enough for you. There is the young lady, too. She cannot
wait on the public road at this hour."
"Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus," said the porter inexorably. "Folk may be
friends o' yours, and yet no friend o' the master's. He pays me well
to do my duty, and my duty I'll do. I don't know none o' your
friends."
"Oh, yes you do, McMurdo," cried Sherlock Holmes genially. "I
don't think you can have forgotten me. Don't you remember that amateur
who fought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of
your benefit four years back?"
"Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes!" roared the prize-fighter. "God's truth!
how could I have mistook you? If instead o' standin' there so quiet
you had just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the
jaw, I'd ha' known you without a question. Ah, you're one that has
wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had
joined the fancy."
"You see, Watson, if all else fails me, I have still one of the
scientific professions open to me," said Holmes, laughing. "Our friend
won't keep us out in the cold now, I am sure."
"In you come, sir, in you come- you and your friends," he
answered. "Very sorry, Mr. Thaddeus, but orders are very strict. Had
to be certain of your friends before I let them in."
Inside, a gravel path wound through desolate grounds to a huge clump
of a house, square and prosaic, all plunged in shadow save where a
moonbeam struck one corner and glimmered in a garret window. The
vast size of the building, with its gloom and its deathly silence,
struck a chill to the heart. Even Thaddeus Sholto seemed ill at
ease, and the lantern quivered and rattled in his hand.
"I cannot understand it," he said. "There must be some mistake. I
distinctly told Bartholomew that we should be here, and yet there is
no light in his window. I do not know what to make of it."
"Does he always guard the premises in this way?" asked Holmes.
"Yes; he has followed my father's custom. He was the favourite son
you know, and I sometimes think that my father may have told him
more than he ever told me. That is Bartholomew's window up there where
the moonshine strikes. It is quite bright, but there is no light
from within, I think."
"None," said Holmes. "But I see the glint of a light in that
little window beside the door."
Ah, that is the housekeeper's room. That is where old Mrs. Bernstone
sits. She can tell us all about it. But perhaps you would not mind
waiting here for a minute or two, for if we all go in together, and
she has had no word of our coming, she may be alarmed. But, hush! what
is that?"
He held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of
light flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my
wrist, and we all stood, with thumping hearts, straining our ears.
From the great black house there sounded through the silent night
the saddest and most pitiful of sounds- the shrill, broken
whimpering of a frightened woman.
"It is Mrs. Bernstone," said Sholto. "She is the only woman in the
house. Wait here. I shall be back in a moment."
He hurried for the door and knocked in his peculiar way. We could
see a tall old woman admit him and sway with pleasure at the very
sight of him.
"Oh, Mr. Thaddeus, sir, I am so glad you have come! I am so glad you
have come, Mr. Thaddeus, sir!"
We heard her reiterated rejoicings until the door was closed and her
voice died away into a muffled monotone.
Our guide had left us the lantern. Holmes swung it slowly round
and peered keenly at the house and at the great rubbish-heaps which
cumbered the grounds. Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her
hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we
two, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no
word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour
of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have
marvelled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural
thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me,
there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and
protection. So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there
was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.
"What a strange place!" she said, looking round.
"It looks as though all the moles in England had been let loose in
it. I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near
Ballarat, where the prospectors had been at work."
"And from the same cause," said Holmes. "These are the traces of the
treasure seekers. You must remember that they were six years looking
for it. No wonder that the grounds look like a gravel-pit."
At that moment the door of the house burst open, and Thaddeus Sholto
came running out, with his hands thrown forward and terror in his
eyes.
"There is something amiss with Bartholomew!" he cried. "I am
frightened! My nerves cannot stand it."
He was, indeed, half blubbering with fear, and his twitching, feeble
face peeping out from the great astrakhan collar had the helpless,
appealing expression of a terrified child.
"Come into the house," said Holmes in his crisp, firm way.
"Yes, do!" pleaded Thaddeus Sholto. "I really do not feel equal to
giving directions."
We all followed him into the housekeeper's room, which stood upon
the lefthand side of the passage. The old woman was pacing up and down
with a scared look and restless, picking fingers, but the sight of
Miss Morstan appeared to have a soothing effect upon her.
"God bless your sweet, calm face!" she cried with a hysterical
sob. "It does me good to see you. Oh, but I have been sorely tried
this day!"
Our companion patted her thin, work-worn hand and murmured some
few words of kindly, womanly comfort which brought the colour back
into the other's bloodless cheeks.
"Master has locked himself in and will not answer me," she
explained. "All day I have waited to hear from him, for he often likes
to be alone; but an hour ago I feared that something was amiss, so I
went up and peeped through the keyhole. You must go up, Mr.
Thaddeus- you must go up and look for yourself. I have seen Mr.
Bartholomew Sholto in joy and in sorrow for ten long years, but I
never saw him with such a face on him as that."
Sherlock Holmes took the lamp and led the way, for Thaddeus Sholto's
teeth were chattering in his head. So shaken was he that I had to pass
my hand under his arm as we went up the stairs, for his knees were
trembling under him. Twice as we ascended, Holmes whipped his lens out
of his pocket and carefully examined marks which appeared to me to
be mere shapeless smudges of dust upon the cocoanut-matting which
served as a stair-carpet. He walked slowly from step to step,
holding the lamp low, and shooting keen glances to right and left.
Miss Morstan had remained behind with the frightened housekeeper.
The third flight of stairs ended in a straight passage of some
length, with a great picture in Indian tapestry upon the right of it
and three doors upon the left. Holmes advanced along it in the same
slow and methodical way, while we kept close at his heels, with our
long black shadows streaming backward down the corridor. The third
door was that which we were seeking. Holmes knocked without
receiving any answer, and then tried to turn the handle and force it
open. It was locked on the inside, however, and by a broad and
powerful bolt, as we could see when we set our lamp up against it. The
key being turned, however, the hole was not entirely closed.
Sherlock Holmes bent down to it and instantly rose again with a
sharp intaking of the breath.
"There is something devilish in this, Watson," said he, more moved
than I had ever before seen him. "What do you make of it?"
I stooped to the hole and recoiled in horror. Moonlight was
streaming into the room, and it was bright with a vague and shifty
radiance. Looking straight at me and suspended, as it were, in the
air, for all beneath was in shadow, there hung a face- the very face
of our companion Thaddeus. There was the same high, shining head,
