"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
criminal enterprise, in hand that night 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 most likely
to have taken his life? Surely the person against whom the criminal
enterprise was directed. So far it seems to me that we are on safe
ground.
"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 attempt was
a dangerous 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
make for some prearranged 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 seemed to straighten 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 imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious,
something 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. Now, where was the other
end? I have already shown you that it could only lie in some large
house, and that the number of large houses is limited. My first days
in this village were devoted to a series of walks in which in the
intervals of my botanical researches I made a reconnaissance of all
the large houses and an examination of the family history of the
occupants. One house, and only one, riveted my attention. It is the
famous old Jacobean grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther
side of Oxshott, and less than half a mile from the scene of the
tragedy. The other mansions belonged to prosaic and respectable
people who live far aloof from romance. But Mr. Henderson, of High
Gable, was by all accounts a curious man to whom curious adventures
might befall. I concentrated my attention, therefore, upon him and
his household.
"A singular set of people, Watson--the man himself the most singular
of them all. I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I
seemed to read in his dark, deepset, brooding eyes that he was
perfectly aware of my true business. He is a man of fifty, strong,
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 parchment face. He is either a foreigner or
has lived long in the tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but
tough as whipcord. His friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is
undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate brown, wily, suave, and catlike,
with a poisonous gentleness of speech. You see, Watson, we have come
already upon two sets of foreigners--one at Wisteria Lodge 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 may be even more important. Henderson has two children--girls
of eleven and thirteen. Their governess is a Miss Burnet, an
Englishwoman of forty or thereabouts. There is also one confidential
manservant. This little group forms the real family, for their travel
about together, 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 much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own
observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants
with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck,
but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it.
As Baynes remarks, we all have our systems. It was my system which
enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of High Gable, sacked
in a moment of temper by his imperious employer. He in turn had
friends among 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
family's meals. Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms
the one connection. Governess and children hardly go out at all,
except into the garden. Henderson never by any chance walks alone.
His dark secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the servants
is that their master is terribly afraid of something. '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 him out of the courts.
"Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new
information. We may take it that the letter came out of this strange
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 woman. Who then but Miss Burnet, the
governess? All our reasoning seems to point that way. At any rate, we
may take it as a hypothesis and see what consequences it would
entail. I may add that Miss Burnet's age and character make it
certain that my first idea that there might be a love interest in our
story is out of the question.
"If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate
of Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of
his death? If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might
be sealed. Still, in her heart, she must retain bitterness and hatred
against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as
she could to have revenge upon them. Could we see her, then and try
to use her? That was my first thought. But now we come to a sinister
fact. Miss Burnet has not been seen by any human eye since the night
of the murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she
alive? Has she perhaps met her end on the same night 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 scheme
might seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate. The woman's
disappearance counts for nothing, since in that extraordinary
household any member of it might be invisible for a week. And yet she
may at the present moment be in danger of her life. All I can do is
to watch the house and leave my agent, Warner, on guard at the gates.
We can't let such a situation continue. If the law can do nothing we
must take the risk ourselves."
"What do you suggest?"
"I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an
outhouse. My suggestion is that you and I go to-night and see if we
can strike at the very heart of the mystery."
It was not, I must confess, a very alluring prospect. The old house
with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable
inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that
we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to
damp my ardour. But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of
Holmes which made it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he
might 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 room.
"They've gone, Mr. Holmes. They went by the last train. The lady
broke away, and I've got her in a cab downstairs."
"Excellent, Warner!" cried Holmes, springing to his feet. "Watson,
the gaps are closing rapidly."
In the cab was a woman, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She
bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent
tragedy. Her head hung 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
opium.
"I watched at the gate, same as you advised, Mr. Holmes," said our
emissary, the discharged gardener. "When the carriage came out I
followed it to the station. She was like one walking in her sleep,
but when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and
struggled. They pushed her into the carriage. 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 carriage window as 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 from the mists of the
drug. Baynes had been summoned by Holmes, and the situation rapidly
explained to him.
"Why, sir, you've got me the very evidence I want," said the
inspector warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. "I was on the same
scent as you from the first."
"What! You were after Henderson?"
"Why, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High
Gable I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down
below. It was just who would 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 make no move so long as he
thought he was in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him
believe that our eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to
clear off then and give 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 man waiting at the station all the week.
Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight. 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 statement the
better."
"Every minute she gets stronger," said Holmes, glancing at the
governess. "But tell me, Baynes, who is this man Henderson?"
"Henderson," the inspector answered, "is Don Murillo, once called 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 name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty
tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to
civilization. Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient
virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering
people for ten or twelve years. His name was a terror through all
Central America. At the end of that time there was a universal rising
against him. But he was as cunning as he was cruel, and at the first
whisper of coming trouble he had secretly conveyed his treasures
aboard a ship which was manned by devoted adherents. It was an empty
palace which was stormed by the insurgents 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
