from his downcast face that he had made no progress. He brought with
him a tall, slim, brown-faced girl.
"The tea is ready, Dolores," said Ferguson. "See that your mistress
has everything she can wish."
"She verra ill," cried the girl, looking with indignant eyes at her
master. "She no ask for food. She verra ill. She need doctor. I
frightened stay alone with her without doctor."
Ferguson looked at me with a question in his eyes.
"I should be so glad if I could be of use."
"Would your mistress see Dr. Watson?"
"I take him. I no ask leave. She needs doctor."
"Then I'll come with you at once."
I followed the girl, who was quivering with strong emotion, up the
staircase and down an ancient corridor. At the end was an
iron-clamped and massive door. It struck me as I looked at it that if
Ferguson tried to force his way to his wife he would find it no easy
matter. The girl drew a key from her pocket, and the heavy oaken
planks creaked upon their old hinges. I passed in and she swiftly
followed, fastening the door behind her.
On the bed a woman was lying who was clearly in a high fever. She
was only half conscious, but as I entered she raised a pair of
frightened but beautiful eyes and glared at me in apprehension.
Seeing a stranger, she appeared to be relieved and sank back with a
sigh upon the pillow. I stepped up to her with a few reassuring
words, and she lay still while I took her pulse and temperature. Both
were high, and yet my impression was that the condition was rather
that of mental and nervous excitement than of any actual seizure.
"She lie like that one day, two day. I 'fraid she die," said the
girl.
The woman turned her flushed and handsome face towards me.
"Where is my husband?"
"He is below and would wish to see you."
"I will not see him. I will not see him." Then she seemed to wander
off into delirium. "A fiend! A fiend! Oh, what shall I do with this
devil?"
"Can I help you in any way?"
"No. No one can help. It is finished. All is destroyed. Do what I
will, all is destroyed."
The woman must have some strange delusion. I could not see honest Bob
Ferguson in the character of fiend or devil.
"Madame," I said, "your husband loves you dearly. He is deeply
grieved at this happening."
Again she turned on me those glorious eyes.
"He loves me. Yes. But do I not love him? Do I not love him even to
sacrifice myself rather than break his dear heart? That is how I love
him. And yet he could think of me--he could speak of me so."
"He is full of grief, but he cannot understand."
"No, he cannot understand. But he should trust."
"Will you not see him?" I suggested.
"No, no, I cannot forget those terrible words nor the look upon his
face. I will not see him. Go now. You can do nothing for me. Tell him
only one thing. I want my child. I have a right to my child. That is
the only message I can send him." She turned her face to the wall and
would say no more.
I returned to the room downstairs, where Ferguson and Holmes still
sat by the fire. Ferguson listened moodily to my account of the
interview.
"How can I send her the child?" he said. "How do I know what strange
impulse might come upon her? How can I ever forget how she rose from
beside it with its blood upon her lips?" He shuddered at the
recollection. "The child is safe with Mrs. Mason, and there he must
remain."
A smart maid, the only modern thing which we had seen in the house,
had brought in some tea. As she was serving it the door opened and a
youth entered the room. He was a remarkable lad, pale-faced and
fair-haired, with excitable light blue eyes which blazed into a
sudden flame of emotion and joy as they rested upon his father. He
rushed forward and threw his arms round his neck with the abandon of
a loving girl.
"Oh, daddy," he cried, "I did not know that you were due yet. I
should have been here to meet you. Oh, I am so glad to see you!"
Ferguson gently disengaged himself from the embrace with some little
show of embarrassment.
"Dear old chap," said he, patting the flaxen head with a very tender
hand. "I came early because my friends, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson,
have been persuaded to come down and spend an evening with us."
"Is that Mr. Holmes, the detective?"
"Yes."
The youth looked at us with a very penetrating and, as it seemed to
me, unfriendly gaze.
"What about your other child, Mr. Ferguson?" asked Holmes. "Might we
make the acquaintance of the baby?"
"Ask Mrs. Mason to bring baby down," said Ferguson. The boy went off
with a curious, shambling gait which told my surgical eyes that he
was suffering from a weak spine. Presently he returned, and behind
him came a tall, gaunt woman bearing in her arms a very beautiful
child, dark-eyed, golden-haired, a wonderful mixture of the Saxon and
the Latin. Ferguson was evidently devoted to it, for he took it into
his arms and fondled it most tenderly.
"Fancy anyone having the heart to hurt him," he muttered as he
glanced down at the small, angry red pucker upon the cherub throat.
It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Holmes and saw a
most singular intentness in his expression. His face was as set as if
it had been carved out of old ivory, and his eyes, which had glanced
for a moment at father and child, were now fixed with eager curiosity
upon something at the other side of the room. Following his gaze I
could only guess that he was looking out through the window at the
melancholy, dripping garden. It is true that a shutter had half
closed outside and obstructed the view, but none the less it was
certainly at the window that Holmes was fixing his concentrated
attention. Then he smiled, and his eyes came back to the baby. On its
chubby neck there was this small puckered mark. Without speaking,
Holmes examined it with care. Finally he shook one of the dimpled
fists which waved in front of him.
"Good-bye, little man. You have made a strange start in life. Nurse,
I should wish to have a word with you in private."
He took her aside and spoke earnestly for a few minutes. I only heard
the last words, which were: "Your anxiety will soon, I hope, be set
at rest." The woman, who seemed to be a sour, silent kind of
creature, withdrew with the child.
"What is Mrs. Mason like?" asked Holmes.
"Not very prepossessing externally, as you can see, but a heart of
gold, and devoted to the child."
"Do you like her, Jack?" Holmes turned suddenly upon the boy. His
expressive mobile face shadowed over, and he shook his head.
"Jacky has very strong likes and dislikes," said Ferguson, putting
his arm round the boy. "Luckily I am one of his likes."
The boy cooed and nestled his head upon his father's breast. Ferguson
gently disengaged him.
"Run away, little Jacky," said he, and he watched his son with loving
eyes until he disappeared. "Now, Mr. Holmes," he continued when the
boy was gone, "I really feel that I have brought you on a fool's
errand, for what can you possibly do save give me your sympathy? It
must be an exceedingly delicate and complex affair from your point of
view."
"It is certainly delicate," said my friend with an amused smile, "but
I have not been struck up to now with its complexity. It has been a
case for intellectual deduction, but when this original intellectual
deduction is confirmed point by point by quite a number of
independent incidents, then the subjective becomes objective and we
can say confidently that we have reached our goal. I had, in fact,
reached it before we left Baker Street, and the rest has merely been
observation and confirmation."
Ferguson put his big hand to his furrowed forehead.
"For heaven's sake, Holmes," he said hoarsely; "if you can see the
truth in this matter, do not keep me in suspense. How do I stand?
What shall I do? I care nothing as to how you have found your facts
so long as you have really got them."
"Certainly I owe you an explanation, and you shall have it. But you
will permit me to handle the matter in my own way? Is the lady
capable of seeing us, Watson?"
"She is ill, but she is quite rational."
"Very good. It is only in her presence that we can clear the matter
up. Let us go up to her."
"She will not see me," cried Ferguson.
"Oh, yes, she will," said Holmes. He scribbled a few lines upon a
sheet of paper. "You at least have the entree, Watson. Will you have
the goodness to give the lady this note?"
I ascended again and handed the note to Dolores, who cautiously
opened the door. A minute later I heard a cry from within, a cry in
which joy and surprise seemed to be blended. Dolores looked out.
"She will see them. She will leesten," said she.
At my summons Ferguson and Holmes came up. As we entered the room
Ferguson took a step or two towards his wife, who had raised herself
in the bed, but she held out her hand to repulse him. He sank into an
armchair, while Holmes seated himself beside him, after bowing to the
lady, who looked at him with wide-eyed amazement.
"I think we can dispense with Dolores," said Holmes. "Oh, very well,
madame, if you would rather she stayed I can see no objection. Now,
Mr. Ferguson, I am a busy man with many calls, and my methods have to
be short and direct. The swiftest surgery is the least painful. Let
me first say what will ease your mind. Your wife is a very good, a
very loving, and a very ill-used woman."
Ferguson sat up with a cry of joy.
"Prove that, Mr. Holmes, and I am your debtor forever."
"I will do so, but in doing so I must wound you deeply in another
direction."
"I care nothing so long as you clear my wife. Everything on earth is
insignificant compared to that."
"Let me tell you, then, the train of reasoning which passed through
my mind in Baker Street. The idea of a vampire was to me absurd. Such
things do not happen in criminal practice in England. And yet your
observation was precise. You had seen the lady rise from beside the
child's cot with the blood upon her lips."
"I did."
"Did it not occur to you that a bleeding wound may be sucked for some
other purpose than to draw the blood from it? Was there not a queen
in English history who sucked such a wound to draw poison from it?"
"Poison!"
"A South American household. My instinct felt the presence of those
weapons upon the wall before my eyes ever saw them. It might have
been other poison, but that was what occurred to me. When I saw that
little empty quiver beside the small bird-bow, it was just what I
expected to see. If the child were pricked with one of those arrows
dipped in curare or some other devilish drug, it would mean death if
the venom were not sucked out.
"And the dog! If one were to use such a poison, would one not try it
first in order to see that it had not lost its power? I did not
foresee the dog, but at least I understand him and he fitted into my
reconstruction.
"Now do you understand? Your wife feared such an attack. She saw it
made and saved the child's life, and yet she shrank from telling you
all the truth, for she knew how you loved the boy and feared lest it
break your heart."
"Jacky!"
"I watched him as you fondled the child just now. His face was
clearly reflected in the glass of the window where the shutter formed
a background. I saw such jealousy, such cruel hatred, as I have
seldom seen in a human face."
"My Jacky!"
"You have to face it, Mr. Ferguson. It is the more painful because it
is a distorted love, a maniacal exaggerated love for you, and
possibly for his dead mother, which has prompted his action. His very
soul is consumed with hatred for this splendid child, whose health
and beauty are a contrast to his own weakness."
"Good God! It is incredible!"
"Have I spoken the truth, madame?"
The lady was sobbing, with her face buried in the pillows. Now she
turned to her husband.
"How could I tell you, Bob? I felt the blow it would be to you. It
was better that I should wait and that it should come from some other
lips than mine. When this gentleman, who seems to have powers of
magic, wrote that he knew all, I was glad."
"I think a year at sea would be my prescription for Master Jacky,"
said Holmes, rising from his chair. "Only one thing is still clouded,
madame. We can quite understand your attacks upon Master Jacky. There
is a limit to a mother's patience. But how did you dare to leave the
