from the way in which the flags were distributed that they were used
to break the sentence up into words. I accepted this as a hypothesis,
and noted that E was represented by
"But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of the
English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any
preponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed sheet may
be reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I,
N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in which letters occur;
but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each other, and it
would be an endless task to try each combination until a meaning was
arrived at. I, therefore, waited for fresh material. In my second
interview with Mr. Hilton Cubitt he was able to give me two other
short sentences and one message, which appeared--since there was no
flag--to be a single word. Here are the symbols. Now, in the single
word I have already got the two E's coming second and fourth in a
word of five letters. It might be 'sever,' or 'lever,' or 'never.'
There can be no question that the latter as a reply to an appeal is
far the most probable, and the circumstances pointed to its being a
reply written by the lady. Accepting it as correct, we are now able
to say that the symbols
stand respectively for N, V, and R.
"Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy thought put
me in possession of several other letters. It occurred to me that if
these appeals came, as I expected, from someone who had been intimate
with the lady in her early life, a combination which contained two
E's with three letters between might very well stand for the name
'ELSIE.' On examination I found that such a combination formed the
termination of the message which was three times repeated. It was
certainly some appeal to 'Elsie.' In this way I had got my L, S, and
I. But what appeal could it be? There were only four letters in the
word which preceded 'Elsie,' and it ended in E. Surely the word must
be 'COME.' I tried all other four letters ending in E, but could find
none to fit the case. So now I was in possession of C, O, and M, and
I was in a position to attack the first message once more, dividing
it into words and putting dots for each symbol which was still
unknown. So treated it worked out in this fashion:
.M .ERE ..E SL.NE.
"Now the first letter can only be A, which is a most useful
discovery, since it occurs no fewer than three times in this short
sentence, and the H is also apparent in the second word. Now it
becomes:--
AM HERE A.E SLANE.
Or, filling in the obvious vacancies in the name:--
AM HERE ABE SLANEY.
I had so many letters now that I could proceed with considerable
confidence to the second message, which worked out in this fashion:--
A. ELRI.ES.
Here I could only make sense by putting T and G for the missing
letters, and supposing that the name was that of some house or inn at
which the writer was staying."
Inspector Martin and I had listened with the utmost interest to the
full and clear account of how my friend had produced results which
had led to so complete a command over our difficulties.
"What did you do then, sir?" asked the inspector.
"I had every reason to suppose that this Abe Slaney was an American,
since Abe is an American contraction, and since a letter from America
had been the starting-point of all the trouble. I had also every
cause to think that there was some criminal secret in the matter. The
lady's allusions to her past and her refusal to take her husband into
her confidence both pointed in that direction. I therefore cabled to
my friend, Wilson Hargreave, of the New York Police Bureau, who has
more than once made use of my knowledge of London crime. I asked him
whether the name of Abe Slaney was known to him. Here is his reply:
'The most dangerous crook in Chicago.' On the very evening upon which
I had his answer Hilton Cubitt sent me the last message from Slaney.
Working with known letters it took this form:--
ELSIE .RE.ARE TO MEET THY GO.
The addition of a P and a D completed a message which showed me that
the rascal was proceeding from persuasion to threats, and my
knowledge of the crooks of Chicago prepared me to find that he might
very rapidly put his words into action. I at once came to Norfolk
with my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, but, unhappily, only in
time to find that the worst had already occurred."
"It is a privilege to be associated with you in the handling of a
case," said the inspector, warmly. "You will excuse me, however, if I
speak frankly to you. You are only answerable to yourself, but I have
to answer to my superiors. If this Abe Slaney, living at Elrige's, is
indeed the murderer, and if he has made his escape while I am seated
here, I should certainly get into serious trouble."
"You need not be uneasy. He will not try to escape."
"How do you know?"
"To fly would be a confession of guilt."
"Then let us go to arrest him."
"I expect him here every instant."
"But why should he come?"
"Because I have written and asked him."
"But this is incredible, Mr. Holmes! Why should he come because you
have asked him? Would not such a request rather rouse his suspicions
and cause him to fly?"
"I think I have known how to frame the letter," said Sherlock Holmes.
"In fact, if I am not very much mistaken, here is the gentleman
himself coming up the drive."
A man was striding up the path which led to the door. He was a tall,
handsome, swarthy fellow, clad in a suit of grey flannel, with a
Panama hat, a bristling black beard, and a great, aggressive hooked
nose, and flourishing a cane as he walked. He swaggered up the path
as if the place belonged to him, and we heard his loud, confident
peal at the bell.
"I think, gentlemen," said Holmes, quietly, "that we had best take up
our position behind the door. Every precaution is necessary when
dealing with such a fellow. You will need your handcuffs, inspector.
You can leave the talking to me."
We waited in silence for a minute--one of those minutes which one can
never forget. Then the door opened and the man stepped in. In an
instant Holmes clapped a pistol to his head and Martin slipped the
handcuffs over his wrists. It was all done so swiftly and deftly that
the fellow was helpless before he knew that he was attacked. He
glared from one to the other of us with a pair of blazing black eyes.
Then he burst into a bitter laugh.
"Well, gentlemen, you have the drop on me this time. I seem to have
knocked up against something hard. But I came here in answer to a
letter from Mrs. Hilton Cubitt. Don't tell me that she is in this?
Don't tell me that she helped to set a trap for me?"
"Mrs. Hilton Cubitt was seriously injured and is at death's door."
The man gave a hoarse cry of grief which rang through the house.
"You're crazy!" he cried, fiercely. "It was he that was hurt, not
she. Who would have hurt little Elsie? I may have threatened her, God
forgive me, but I would not have touched a hair of her pretty head.
Take it back--you! Say that she is not hurt!"
"She was found badly wounded by the side of her dead husband."
He sank with a deep groan on to the settee and buried his face in his
manacled hands. For five minutes he was silent. Then he raised his
face once more, and spoke with the cold composure of despair.
"I have nothing to hide from you, gentlemen," said he. "If I shot the
man he had his shot at me, and there's no murder in that. But if you
think I could have hurt that woman, then you don't know either me or
her. I tell you there was never a man in this world loved a woman
more than I loved her. I had a right to her. She was pledged to me
years ago. Who was this Englishman that he should come between us? I
tell you that I had the first right to her, and that I was only
claiming my own."
"She broke away from your influence when she found the man that you
are," said Holmes, sternly. "She fled from America to avoid you, and
she married an honourable gentleman in England. You dogged her and
followed her and made her life a misery to her in order to induce her
to abandon the husband whom she loved and respected in order to fly
with you, whom she feared and hated. You have ended by bringing about
the death of a noble man and driving his wife to suicide. That is
your record in this business, Mr. Abe Slaney, and you will answer for
it to the law."
"If Elsie dies I care nothing what becomes of me," said the American.
He opened one of his hands and looked at a note crumpled up in his
palm. "See here, mister," he cried, with a gleam of suspicion in his
eyes, "you're not trying to scare me over this, are you? If the lady
is hurt as bad as you say, who was it that wrote this note?" He
tossed it forwards on to the table.
"I wrote it to bring you here."
"You wrote it? There was no one on earth outside the Joint who knew
the secret of the dancing men. How came you to write it?"
"What one man can invent another can discover," said Holmes. "There
is a cab coming to convey you to Norwich, Mr. Slaney. But, meanwhile,
you have time to make some small reparation for the injury you have
wrought. Are you aware that Mrs. Hilton Cubitt has herself lain under
grave suspicion of the murder of her husband, and that it was only my
presence here and the knowledge which I happened to possess which has
saved her from the accusation? The least that you owe her is to make
it clear to the whole world that she was in no way, directly or
indirectly, responsible for his tragic end."
"I ask nothing better," said the American. "I guess the very best
case I can make for myself is the absolute naked truth."
"It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you," cried
the inspector, with the magnificent fair-play of the British criminal
law.
Slaney shrugged his shoulders.
"I'll chance that," said he. "First of all, I want you gentlemen to
understand that I have known this lady since she was a child. There
were seven of us in a gang in Chicago, and Elsie's father was the
boss of the Joint. He was a clever man, was old Patrick. It was he
who invented that writing, which would pass as a child's scrawl
unless you just happened to have the key to it. Well, Elsie learned
some of our ways; but she couldn't stand the business, and she had a
bit of honest money of her own, so she gave us all the slip and got
away to London. She had been engaged to me, and she would have
married me, I believe, if I had taken over another profession; but
she would have nothing to do with anything on the cross. It was only
after her marriage to this Englishman that I was able to find out
where she was. I wrote to her, but got no answer. After that I came
over, and, as letters were no use, I put my messages where she could
read them.
"Well, I have been here a month now. I lived in that farm, where I
had a room down below, and could get in and out every night, and no
one the wiser. I tried all I could to coax Elsie away. I knew that
she read the messages, for once she wrote an answer under one of
them. Then my temper got the better of me, and I began to threaten
her. She sent me a letter then, imploring me to go away and saying
that it would break her heart if any scandal should come upon her
husband. She said that she would come down when her husband was
asleep at three in the morning, and speak with me through the end
window, if I would go away afterwards and leave her in peace. She
came down and brought money with her, trying to bribe me to go. This
made me mad, and I caught her arm and tried to pull her through the
window. At that moment in rushed the husband with his revolver in his
hand. Elsie had sunk down upon the floor, and we were face to face. I
was heeled also, and I held up my gun to scare him off and let me get
away. He fired and missed me. I pulled off almost at the same
instant, and down he dropped. I made away across the garden, and as I
went I heard the window shut behind me. That's God's truth,
gentlemen, every word of it, and I heard no more about it until that
lad came riding up with a note which made me walk in here, like a
jay, and give myself into your hands."
A cab had driven up whilst the American had been talking. Two
uniformed policemen sat inside. Inspector Martin rose and touched his
prisoner on the shoulder.
"It is time for us to go."
"Can I see her first?"
"No, she is not conscious. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I only hope that if
