burnt end. Half the match is consumed in lighting a pipe or cigar.
But, dear me! this cigarette stub is certainly remarkable. The
gentleman was bearded and moustached, you say?"
"Yes, sir."
"I don't understand that. I should say that only a clean-shaven man
could have smoked this. Why, Watson, even your modest moustache would
have been singed."
"A holder?" I suggested.
"No, no; the end is matted. I suppose there could not be two people
in your rooms, Mrs. Warren?"
"No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life in
one."
"Well, I think we must wait for a little more material. After all,
you have nothing to complain of. You have received your rent, and he
is not a troublesome lodger, though he is certainly an unusual one.
He pays you well, and if he chooses to lie concealed it is no direct
business of yours. We have no excuse for an intrusion upon his
privacy until we have some reason to think that there is a guilty
reason for it. I've taken up the matter, and I won't lose sight of
it. Report to me if anything fresh occurs, and rely upon my
assistance if it should be needed.
"There are certainly some points of interest in this case, Watson,"
he remarked when the landlady had left us. "It may, of course, be
trivial--individual eccentricity; or it may be very much deeper than
appears on the surface. The first thing that strike one is the
obvious possibility that the person now in the rooms may be entirely
different from the one who engaged them."
"Why should you think so?"
"Well, apart form this cigarette-end, was it not suggestive that the
only time the lodger went out was immediately after his taking the
rooms? He came back--or someone came back--when all witnesses were
out of the way. We have no proof that the person who came back was
the person who went out. Then, again, the man who took the rooms
spoke English well. This other, however, prints 'match' when it
should have been 'matches.' I can imagine that the word was taken out
of a dictionary, which would give the noun but not the plural. The
laconic style may be to conceal the absence of knowledge of English.
Yes, Watson, there are good reasons to suspect that there has been a
substitution of lodgers."
"But for what possible end?"
"Ah! there lies our problem. There is one rather obvious line of
investigation." He took down the great book in which, day by day, he
filed the agony columns of the various London journals. "Dear me!"
said he, turning over the pages, "what a chorus of groans, cries, and
bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! But surely the most
valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to a student of the
unusual! This person is alone and cannot be approached by letter
without a breach of that absolute secrecy which is desired. How is
any news or any message to reach him from without? Obviously by
advertisement through a newspaper. There seems no other way, and
fortunately we need concern ourselves with the one paper only. Here
are the Daily Gazette extracts of the last fortnight. 'Lady with a
black boa at Prince's Skating Club'--that we may pass. 'Surely Jimmy
will not break his mother's heart'--that appears to be irrelevant.
'If the lady who fainted on Brixton bus'--she does not interest me.
'Every day my heart longs--' Bleat, Watson--unmitigated bleat! Ah,
this is a little more possible. Listen to this: 'Be patient. Will
find some sure means of communications. Meanwhile, this column. G.'
That is two days after Mrs. Warren's lodger arrived. It sounds
plausible, does it not? The mysterious one could understand English,
even if he could not print it. Let us see if we can pick up the trace
again. Yes, here we are--three days later. 'Am making successful
arrangements. Patience and prudence. The clouds will pass. G.'
Nothing for a week after that. Then comes something much more
definite: 'The path is clearing. If I find chance signal message
remember code agreed--One A, two B, and so on. You will hear soon.
G.' That was in yesterday's paper, and there is nothing in to-day's.
It's all very appropriate to Mrs. Warren's lodger. If we wait a
little, Watson, I don't doubt that the affair will grow more
intelligible."
So it proved; for in the morning I found my friend standing on the
hearthrug with his back to the fire and a smile of complete
satisfaction upon his face.
"How's this, Watson?" he cried, picking up the paper from the table.
"'High red house with white stone facings. Third floor. Second window
left. After dusk. G.' That is definite enough. I think after
breakfast we must make a little reconnaissance of Mrs. Warren's
neighbourhood. Ah, Mrs. Warren! what news do you bring us this
morning?"
Our client had suddenly burst into the room with an explosive energy
which told of some new and momentous development.
"It's a police matter, Mr. Holmes!" she cried. "I'll have no more of
it! He shall pack out of there with his baggage. I would have gone
straight up and told him so, only I thought it was but fair to you to
take your opinion first. But I'm at the end of my patience, and when
it comes to knocking my old man about--"
"Knocking Mr. Warren about?"
"Using him roughly, anyway."
"But who used him roughly?"
"Ah! that's what we want to know! It was this morning, sir. Mr.
Warren is a timekeeper at Morton and Waylight's, in Tottenham Court
Road. He has to be out of the house before seven. Well, this morning
he had not gone ten paces down the road when two men came up behind
him, threw a coat over his head, and bundled him into a cab that was
beside the curb. They drove him an hour, and then opened the door and
shot him out. He lay in the roadway so shaken in his wits that he
never saw what became of the cab. When he picked himself up he found
he was on Hampstead Heath; so he took a bus home, and there he lies
now on his sofa, while I came straight round to tell you what had
happened."
"Most interesting," said Holmes. "Did he observe the appearance of
these men--did he hear them talk?"
"No; he is clean dazed. He just knows that he was lifted up as if by
magic and dropped as if by magic. Two a least were in it, and maybe
three."
"And you connect this attack with your lodger?"
"Well, we've lived there fifteen years and no such happenings ever
came before. I've had enough of him. Money's not everything. I'll
have him out of my house before the day is done."
"Wait a bit, Mrs. Warren. Do nothing rash. I begin to think that this
affair may be very much more important than appeared at first sight.
It is clear now that some danger is threatening your lodger. It is
equally clear that his enemies, lying in wait for him near your door,
mistook your husband for him in the foggy morning light. On
discovering their mistake they released him. What they would have
done had it not been a mistake, we can only conjecture."
"Well, what am I to do, Mr. Holmes?"
"I have a great fancy to see this lodger of yours, Mrs. Warren."
"I don't see how that is to be managed, unless you break in the door.
I always hear him unlock it as I go down the stair after I leave the
tray."
"He has to take the tray in. Surely we could conceal ourselves and
see him do it."
The landlady thought for a moment.
"Well, sir, there's the box-room opposite. I could arrange a
looking-glass, maybe, and if you were behind the door--"
"Excellent!" said Holmes. "When does he lunch?"
"About one, sir."
"Then Dr. Watson and I will come round in time. For the present, Mrs.
Warren, good-bye."
At half-past twelve we found ourselves upon the steps of Mrs.
Warren's house--a high, thin, yellow-brick edifice in Great Orme
Street, a narrow thoroughfare at the northeast side of the British
Museum. Standing as it does near the corner of the street, it
commands a view down Howe Street, with its ore pretentious houses.
Holmes pointed with a chuckle to one of these, a row of residential
flats, which projected so that they could not fail to catch the eye.
"See, Watson!" said he. "'High red house with stone facings.' There
is the signal station all right. We know the place, and we know the
code; so surely our task should be simple. There's a 'to let' card in
that window. It is evidently an empty flat to which the confederate
has access. Well, Mrs. Warren, what now?"
"I have it all ready for you. If you will both come up and leave your
boots below on the landing, I'll put you there now."
It was an excellent hiding-place which she had arranged. The mirror
was so placed that, seated in the dark, we could very plainly see the
door opposite. We had hardly settled down in it, and Mrs. Warren left
us, when a distant tinkle announced that our mysterious neighbour had
rung. Presently the landlady appeared with the tray, laid it down
upon a chair beside the closed door, and then, treading heavily,
departed. Crouching together in the angle of the door, we kept our
eyes fixed upon the mirror. Suddenly, as the landlady's footsteps
died away, there was the creak of a turning key, the handle revolved,
and two thin hands darted out and lifted the tray form the chair. An
instant later it was hurriedly replaced, and I caught a glimpse of a
dark, beautiful, horrified face glaring at the narrow opening of the
box-room. Then the door crashed to, the key turned once more, and all
was silence. Holmes twitched my sleeve, and together we stole down
the stair.
"I will call again in the evening," said he to the expectant
landlady. "I think, Watson, we can discuss this business better in
our own quarters."
"My surmise, as you saw, proved to be correct," said he, speaking
from the depths of his easy-chair. "There has been a substitution of
lodgers. What I did not foresee is that we should find a woman, and
no ordinary woman, Watson."
"She saw us."
"Well, she saw something to alarm her. That is certain. The general
sequence of events is pretty clear, is it not? A couple seek refuge
in London from a very terrible and instant danger. The measure of
that danger is the rigour of their precautions. The man, who has some
work which he must do, desires to leave the woman in absolute safety
while he does it. It is not an easy problem, but he solved it in an
original fashion, and so effectively that her presence was not even
known to the landlady who supplies her with food. The printed
messages, as is now evident, were to prevent her sex being discovered
by her writing. The man cannot come near the woman, or he will guide
their enemies to her. Since he cannot communicate with her direct, he
has recourse to the agony column of a paper. So far all is clear."
"But what is at the root of it?"
"Ah, yes, Watson--severely practical, as usual! What is at the root
of it all? Mrs. Warren's whimsical problem enlarges somewhat and
assumes a more sinister aspect as we proceed. This much we can say:
that it is no ordinary love escapade. You saw the woman's face at the
sign of danger. We have heard, too, of the attack upon the landlord,
which was undoubtedly meant for the lodger. These alarms, and the
desperate need for secrecy, argue that the matter is one of life or
death. The attack upon Mr. Warren further shows that the enemy,
whoever they are, are themselves not aware of the substitution of the
female lodger for the male. It is very curious and complex, Watson."
"Why should you go further in it? What have you to gain from it?"
"What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson. I suppose when you
doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?"
"For my education, Holmes."
"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the
greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither
money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up. When
dusk comes we should find ourselves one stage advanced in our
investigation."
When we returned to Mrs. Warren's rooms, the gloom of a London winter
evening had thickened into one gray curtain, a dead monotone of
colour, broken only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows and
the blurred haloes of the gas-lamps. As we peered from the darkened
sitting-room of the lodging-house, one more dim light glimmered high
up through the obscurity.
"Someone is moving in that room," said Holmes in a whisper, his gaunt
and eager face thrust forward to the window-pane. "Yes, I can see his
shadow. There he is again! He has a candle in his hand. Now he is
