faces the road and opens by a large glass folding-door on to the
lawn. The lawn is thirty yards across, and is only divided from the
highway by a low wall with an iron rail above it. It was into this
room that Mrs. Barclay went upon her return. The blinds were not
down, for the room was seldom used in the evening, but Mrs. Barclay
herself lit the lamp and then rang the bell, asking Jane Stewart, the
house-maid, to bring her a cup of tea, which was quite contrary to
her usual habits. The Colonel had been sitting in the dining-room,
but hearing that his wife had returned he joined her in the
morning-room. The coachman saw him cross the hall and enter it. He
was never seen again alive.
"The tea which had been ordered was brought up at the end of ten
minutes; but the maid, as she approached the door, was surprised to
hear the voices of her master and mistress in furious altercation.
She knocked without receiving any answer, and even turned the handle,
but only to find that the door was locked upon the inside. Naturally
enough she ran down to tell the cook, and the two women with the
coachman came up into the hall and listened to the dispute which was
still raging. They all agreed that only two voices were to be heard,
those of Barclay and of his wife. Barclay's remarks were subdued and
abrupt, so that none of them were audible to the listeners. The
lady's, on the other hand, were most bitter, and when she raised her
voice could be plainly heard. 'You coward!' she repeated over and
over again. 'What can be done now? What can be done now? Give me
back my life. I will never so much as breathe the same air with you
again! You coward! You Coward!' Those were scraps of her
conversation, ending in a sudden dreadful cry in the man's voice,
with a crash, and a piercing scream from the woman. Convinced that
some tragedy had occurred, the coachman rushed to the door and strove
to force it, while scream after scream issued from within. He was
unable, however, to make his way in, and the maids were too
distracted with fear to be of any assistance to him. A sudden
thought struck him, however, and he ran through the hall door and
round to the lawn upon which the long French windows open. One side
of the window was open, which I understand was quite usual in the
summer-time, and he passed without difficulty into the room. His
mistress had ceased to scream and was stretched insensible upon a
couch, while with his feet tilted over the side of an arm-chair, and
his head upon the ground near the corner of the fender, was lying the
unfortunate soldier stone dead in a pool of his own blood.
"Naturally, the coachman's first thought, on finding that he could do
nothing for his master, was to open the door. But here an unexpected
and singular difficulty presented itself. The key was not in the
inner side of the door, nor could he find it anywhere in the room.
He went out again, therefore, through the window, and having obtained
the help of a policeman and of a medical man, he returned. The lady,
against whom naturally the strongest suspicion rested, was removed to
her room, still in a state of insensibility. The Colonel's body was
then placed upon the sofa, and a careful examination made of the
scene of the tragedy.
"The injury from which the unfortunate veteran was suffering was
found to be a jagged cut some two inches long at the back part of his
head, which had evidently been caused by a violent blow from a blunt
weapon. Nor was it difficult to guess what that weapon may have
been. Upon the floor, close to the body, was lying a singular club
of hard carved wood with a bone handle. The Colonel possessed a
varied collection of weapons brought from the different countries in
which he had fought, and it is conjectured by the police that his
club was among his trophies. The servants deny having seen it
before, but among the numerous curiosities in the house it is
possible that it may have been overlooked. Nothing else of
importance was discovered in the room by the police, save the
inexplicable fact that neither upon Mrs. Barclay's person nor upon
that of the victim nor in any part of the room was the missing key to
be found. The door had eventually to be opened by a locksmith from
Aldershot.
"That was the state of things, Watson, when upon the Tuesday morning
I, at the request of Major Murphy, went down to Aldershot to
supplement the efforts of the police. I think that you will
acknowledge that the problem was already one of interest, but my
observations soon made me realize that it was in truth much more
extraordinary than would at first sight appear.
"Before examining the room I cross-questioned the servants, but only
succeeded in eliciting the facts which I have already stated. One
other detail of interest was remembered by Jane Stewart, the
housemaid. You will remember that on hearing the sound of the
quarrel she descended and returned with the other servants. On that
first occasion, when she was alone, she says that the voices of her
master and mistress were sunk so low that she could hear hardly
anything, and judged by their tones rather than their words that they
had fallen out. On my pressing her, however, she remembered that she
heard the word David uttered twice by the lady. The point is of the
utmost importance as guiding us towards the reason of the sudden
quarrel. The Colonel's name, you remember, was James.
"There was one thing in the case which had made the deepest
impression both upon the servants and the police. This was the
contortion of the Colonel's face. It had set, according to their
account, into the most dreadful expression of fear and horror which a
human countenance is capable of assuming. More than one person
fainted at the mere sight of him, so terrible was the effect. It was
quite certain that he had foreseen his fate, and that it had caused
him the utmost horror. This, of course, fitted in well enough with
the police theory, if the Colonel could have seen his wife making a
murderous attack upon him. Nor was the fact of the wound being on
the back of his head a fatal objection to this, as he might have
turned to avoid the blow. No information could be got from the lady
herself, who was temporarily insane from an acute attack of
brain-fever.
"From the police I learned that Miss Morrison, who you remember went
out that evening with Mrs. Barclay, denied having any knowledge of
what it was which had caused the ill-humor in which her companion had
returned.
"Having gathered these facts, Watson, I smoked several pipes over
them, trying to separate those which were crucial from others which
were merely incidental. There could be no question that the most
distinctive and suggestive point in the case was the singular
disappearance of the door-key. A most careful search had failed to
discover it in the room. Therefore it must have been taken from it.
But neither the Colonel nor the Colonel's wife could have taken it.
That was perfectly clear. Therefore a third person must have entered
the room. And that third person could only have come in through the
window. It seemed to me that a careful examination of the room and
the lawn might possibly reveal some traces of this mysterious
individual. You know my methods, Watson. There was not one of them
which I did not apply to the inquiry. And it ended by my discovering
traces, but very different ones from those which I had expected.
There had been a man in the room, and he had crossed the lawn coming
from the road. I was able to obtain five very clear impressions of
his foot-marks: one in the roadway itself, at the point where he had
climbed the low wall, two on the lawn, and two very faint ones upon
the stained boards near the window where he had entered. He had
apparently rushed across the lawn, for his toe-marks were much deeper
than his heels. But it was not the man who surprised me. It was his
companion."
"His companion!"
Holmes pulled a large sheet of tissue-paper out of his pocket and
carefully unfolded it upon his knee.
"What do you make of that?" he asked.
The paper was covered with he tracings of the foot-marks of some
small animal. It had five well-marked foot-pads, an indication of
long nails, and the whole print might be nearly as large as a
dessert-spoon.
"It's a dog," said I.
"Did you ever hear of a dog running up a curtain? I found distinct
traces that this creature had done so."
"A monkey, then?"
"But it is not the print of a monkey."
"What can it be, then?"
"Neither dog nor cat nor monkey nor any creature that we are familiar
with. I have tried to reconstruct it from the measurements. Here
are four prints where the beast has been standing motionless. You
see that it is no less than fifteen inches from fore-foot to hind.
Add to that the length of neck and head, and you get a creature not
much less than two feet long--probably more if there is any tail.
But now observe this other measurement. The animal has been moving,
and we have the length of its stride. In each case it is only about
three inches. You have an indication, you see, of a long body with
very short legs attached to it. It has not been considerate enough
to leave any of its hair behind it. But its general shape must be
what I have indicated, and it can run up a curtain, and it is
carnivorous."
"How do you deduce that?"
"Because it ran up the curtain. A canary's cage was hanging in the
window, and its aim seems to have been to get at the bird."
"Then what was the beast?"
"Ah, if I could give it a name it might go a long way towards solving
the case. On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel
and stoat tribe--and yet it is larger than any of these that I have
seen."
"But what had it to do with the crime?"
"That, also, is still obscure. But we have learned a good deal, you
perceive. We know that a man stood in the road looking at the
quarrel between the Barclays--the blinds were up and the room
lighted. We know, also, that he ran across the lawn, entered the
room, accompanied by a strange animal, and that he either struck the
Colonel or, as is equally possible, that the Colonel fell down from
sheer fright at the sight of him, and cut his head on the corner of
the fender. Finally, we have the curious fact that the intruder
carried away the key with him when he left."
"Your discoveries seem to have left the business more obscure that it
was before," said I.
"Quite so. They undoubtedly showed that the affair was much deeper
than was at first conjectured. I thought the matter over, and I came
to the conclusion that I must approach the case from another aspect.
But really, Watson, I am keeping you up, and I might just as well
tell you all this on our way to Aldershot to-morrow."
"Thank you, you have gone rather too far to stop."
"It is quite certain that when Mrs. Barclay left the house at
half-past seven she was on good terms with her husband. She was
never, as I think I have said, ostentatiously affectionate, but she
was heard by the coachman chatting with the Colonel in a friendly
fashion. Now, it was equally certain that, immediately on her
return, she had gone to the room in which she was least likely to see
her husband, had flown to tea as an agitated woman will, and finally,
on his coming in to her, had broken into violent recriminations.
Therefore something had occurred between seven-thirty and nine
o'clock which had completely altered her feelings towards him. But
Miss Morrison had been with her during the whole of that hour and a
half. It was absolutely certain, therefore, in spite of her denial,
that she must know something of the matter.
"My first conjecture was, that possibly there had been some passages
between this young lady and the old soldier, which the former had now
confessed to the wife. That would account for the angry return, and
also for the girl's denial that anything had occurred. Nor would it
be entirely incompatible with most of the words overhead. But there
was the reference to David, and there was the known affection of the
Colonel for his wife, to weigh against it, to say nothing of the
tragic intrusion of this other man, which might, of course, be
entirely disconnected with what had gone before. It was not easy to
pick one's steps, but, on the whole, I was inclined to dismiss the
idea that there had been anything between the Colonel and Miss
Morrison, but more than ever convinced that the young lady held the
clue as to what it was which had turned Mrs. Barclay to hatred of her
husband. I took the obvious course, therefore, of calling upon Miss
M., of explaining to her that I was perfectly certain that she held
the facts in her possession, and of assuring her that her friend,
Mrs. Barclay, might find herself in the dock upon a capital charge
