"this man Fairbairn is never to darken my door again." "Why not?"
says she. "Because I order it." "Oh!" says she, "if my friends are
not good enough for this house, then I am not good enough for it
either." "You can do what you like," says I, "but if Fairbairn shows
his face here again I'll send you one of his ears for a keepsake."
She was frightened by my face, I think, for she never answered a
word, and the same evening she left my house.
"'Well, I don't know now whether it was pure devilry on the part of
this woman, or whether she thought that she could turn me against my
wife by encouraging her to misbehave. Anyway, she took a house just
two streets off and let lodgings to sailors. Fairbairn used to stay
there, and Mary would go round to have tea with her sister and him.
How often she went I don't know, but I followed her one day, and as I
broke in at the door Fairbairn got away over the back garden wall,
like the cowardly skunk that he was. I swore to my wife that I would
kill her if I found her in his company again, and I led her back with
me, sobbing and trembling, and as white as a piece of paper. There
was no trace of love between us any longer. I could see that she
hated me and feared me, and when the thought of it drove me to drink,
then she despised me as well.
"'Well, Sarah found that she could not make a living in Liverpool, so
she went back, as I understand, to live with her sister in Croydon,
and things jogged on much the same as ever at home. And then came
this week and all the misery and ruin.
"'It was in this way. We had gone on the May Day for a round voyage
of seven days, but a hogshead got loose and started one of our
plates, so that we had to put back into port for twelve hours. I left
the ship and came home, thinking what a surprise it would be for my
wife, and hoping that maybe she would be glad to see me so soon. The
thought was in my head as I turned into my own street, and at that
moment a cab passed me, and there she was, sitting by the side of
Fairbairn, the two chatting and laughing, with never a thought for me
as I stood watching them from the footpath.
"'I tell you, and I give you my word for it, that from that moment I
was not my own master, and it is all like a dim dream when I look
back on it. I had been drinking hard of late, and the two things
together fairly turned my brain. There's something throbbing in my
head now, like a docker's hammer, but that morning I seemed to have
all Niagara whizzing and buzzing in my ears.
"'Well, I took to my heels, and I ran after the cab. I had a heavy
oak stick in my hand, and I tell you I saw red from the first; but as
I ran I got cunning, too, and hung back a little to see them without
being seen. They pulled up soon at the railway station. There was a
good crowd round the booking-office, so I got quite close to them
without being seen. They took tickets for New Brighton. So did I, but
I got in three carriages behind them. When we reached it they walked
along the Parade, and I was never more than a hundred yards from
them. At last I saw them hire a boat and start for a row, for it was
a very hot day, and they thought, no doubt, that it would be cooler
on the water.
"'It was just as if they had been given into my hands. There was a
bit of a haze, and you could not see more than a few hundred yards. I
hired a boat for myself, and I pulled after them. I could see the
blur of their craft, but they were going nearly as fast as I, and
they must have been a long mile from the shore before I caught them
up. The haze was like a curtain all round us, and there were we three
in the middle of it. My God, shall I ever forget their faces when
they saw who was in the boat that was closing in upon them? She
screamed out. He swore like a madman and jabbed at me with an oar,
for he must have seen death in my eyes. I got past it and got one in
with my stick that crushed his head like an egg. I would have spared
her, perhaps, for all my madness, but she threw her arms round him,
crying out to him, and calling him "Alec." I struck again, and she
lay stretched beside him. I was like a wild beast then that had
tasted blood. If Sarah had been there, by the Lord, she should have
joined them. I pulled out my knife, and--well, there! I've said
enough. It gave me a kind of savage joy when I thought how Sarah
would feel when she had such signs as these of what her meddling had
brought about. Then I tied the bodies into the boat, stove a plank,
and stood by until they had sunk. I knew very well that the owner
would think that they had lost their bearings in the haze, and had
drifted off out to sea. I cleaned myself up, got back to land, and
joined my ship without a soul having a suspicion of what had passed.
That night I made up the packet for Sarah Cushing, and next day I
sent it from Belfast.
"'There you have the whole truth of it. You can hang me, or do what
you like with me, but you cannot punish me as I have been punished
already. I cannot shut my eyes but I see those two faces staring at
me--staring at me as they stared when my boat broke through the haze.
I killed them quick, but they are killing me slow; and if I have
another night of it I shall be either mad or dead before morning. You
won't put me alone into a cell, sir? For pity's sake don't, and may
you be treated in your day of agony as you treat me now.'
"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid
down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and
violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is
ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the
great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from
an answer as ever."
THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE
Table of contents
One
Two
CHAPTER I
One
"Well, Mrs. Warren, I cannot see that you have any particular cause
for uneasiness, nor do I understand why I, whose time is of some
value, should interfere in the matter. I really have other things to
engage me." So spoke Sherlock Holmes and turned back to the great
scrapbook in which he was arranging and indexing some of his recent
material.
But the landlady had the pertinacity and also the cunning of her sex.
She held her ground firmly.
"You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year," she
said--"Mr. Fairdale Hobbs."
"Ah, yes--a simple matter."
"But he would never cease talking of it--your kindness, sir, and the
way in which you brought light into the darkness. I remembered his
words when I was in doubt and darkness myself. I know you could if
you only would."
Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, and also, to do him
justice, upon the side of kindliness. The two forces made him lay
down his gum-brush with a sigh of resignation and push back his
chair.
"Well, well, Mrs. Warren, let us hear about it, then. You don't
object to tobacco, I take it? Thank you, Watson--the matches! You are
uneasy, as I understand, because your new lodger remains in his rooms
and you cannot see him. Why, bless you, Mrs. Warren, if I were your
lodger you often would not see me for weeks on end."
"No doubt, sir; but this is different. It frightens me, Mr. Holmes. I
can't sleep for fright. To hear his quick step moving here and moving
there from early morning to late at night, and yet never to catch so
much as a glimpse of him--it's more than I can stand. My husband is
as nervous over it as I am, but he is out at his work all day, while
I get no rest from it. What is he hiding for? What has he done?
Except for the girl, I am all alone in the house with him, and it's
more than my nerves can stand."
Holmes leaned forward and laid his long, thin fingers upon the
woman's shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he
wished. The scared look faded from her eyes, and her agitated
features smoothed into their usual commonplace. She sat down in the
chair which he had indicated.
"If I take it up I must understand every detail," said he. "Take time
to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential. You say
that the man came ten days ago and paid you for a fortnight's board
and lodging?"
"He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week. There is a
small sitting-room and bedroom, and all complete, at the top of the
house."
"Well?"
"He said, 'I'll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my own
terms.' I'm a poor woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little, and the
money meant much to me. He took out a ten-pound note, and he held it
out to me then and there. 'You can have the same every fortnight for
a long time to come if you keep the terms,' he said. 'If not, I'll
have no more to do with you.'
"What were the terms?"
"Well, sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house. That
was all right. Lodgers often have them. Also, that he was to be left
entirely to himself and never, upon any excuse, to be disturbed."
"Nothing wonderful in that, surely?"
"Not in reason, sir. But this is out of all reason. He has been there
for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once
set eyes upon him. We can hear that quick step of his pacing up and
down, up and down, night, morning, and noon; but except on that first
night he had never once gone out of the house."
"Oh, he went out the first night, did he?"
"Yes, sir, and returned very late--after we were all in bed. He told
me after he had taken the rooms that he would do so and asked me not
to bar the door. I heard him come up the stair after midnight."
"But his meals?"
"It was his particular direction that we should always, when he rang,
leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he rings again
when he has finished, and we take it down from the same chair. If he
wants anything else he prints it on a slip of paper and leaves it."
"Prints it?"
"Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here's
the one I brought to show you--soap. Here's another--match. This is
one he left the first morning--daily gazette. I leave that paper with
his breakfast every morning."
"Dear me, Watson," said Homes, staring with great curiosity at the
slips of foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, "this is
certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can understand; but why
print? Printing is a clumsy process. Why not write? What would it
suggest, Watson?"
"That he desired to conceal his handwriting."
"But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady should have a
word of his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then, again, why
such laconic messages?"
"I cannot imagine."
"It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The words are
written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not unusual
pattern. You will observe that the paper is torn away at the side
here after the printing was done, so that the 's' of 'soap' is partly
gone. Suggestive, Watson, is it not?"
"Of caution?"
"Exactly. There was evidently some mark, some thumbprint, something
which might give a clue to the person's identity. Now. Mrs. Warren,
you say that the man was of middle size, dark, and bearded. What age
would he be?"
"Youngish, sir--not over thirty."
"Well, can you give me no further indications?"
"He spoke good English, sir, and yet I thought he was a foreigner by
his accent."
"And he was well dressed?"
"Very smartly dressed, sir--quite the gentleman. Dark
clothes--nothing you would note."
"He gave no name?"
"No, sir."
"And has had no letters or callers?"
"None."
"But surely you or the girl enter his room of a morning?"
"No, sir; he looks after himself entirely."
"Dear me! that is certainly remarkable. What about his luggage?"
"He had one big brown bag with him--nothing else."
"Well, we don't seem to have much material to help us. Do you say
nothing has come out of that room--absolutely nothing?"
The landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shook out two
burnt matches and a cigarette-end upon the table.
"They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because I had
heard that you can read great things out of small ones."
Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"There is nothing here," said he. "The matches have, of course, been
used to light cigarettes. That is obvious from the shortness of the
