foreign hand. The marks on the envelopes showed that they were those
which had disturbed the routine of the secretary, and each was dated
from the Commercial Road and signed "A. Dorak." They were mere
invoices to say that a fresh bottle was being sent to Professor
Presbury, or receipt to acknowledge money. There was one other
envelope, however, in a more educated hand and bearing the Austrian
stamp with the postmark of Prague. "Here we have our material!" cried
Holmes as he tore out the enclosure.
Honoured Colleague [it ran]:
Since your esteemed visit I have thought much of your case, and
though in your circumstances there are some special reasons for the
treatment, I would none the less enjoin caution, as my results have
shown that it is not without danger of a kind.
It is possible that the serum of anthropoid would have been better. I
have, as I explained to you, used black-faced langur because a
specimen was accessible. Langur is, of course, a crawler and climber,
while anthropoid walks erect and is in all ways nearer.
I beg you to take every possible precaution that there be no
premature revelation of the process. I have one other client in
England, and Dorak is my agent for both.
Weekly reports will oblige.
Yours with high esteem,
H. Lowenstein.
Lowenstein! The name brought back to me the memory of some snippet
from a newspaper which spoke of an obscure scientist who was striving
in some unknown way for the secret of rejuvenescence and the elixir
of life. Lowenstein of Prague! Lowenstein with the wondrous
strength-giving serum, tabooed by the profession because he refused
to reveal its source. In a few words I said what I remembered.
Bennett had taken a manual of zoology from the shelves. "'Langur,'"
he read, "'the great black-faced monkey of the Himalayan slopes,
biggest and most human of climbing monkeys.' Many details are added.
Well, thanks to you, Mr. Holmes, it is very clear that we have traced
the evil to its source."
"The real source," said Holmes, "lies, of course, in that untimely
love affair which gave our impetuous professor the idea that he could
only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man. When one
tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The
highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the
straight road of destiny." He sat musing for a little with the phial
in his hand, looking at the clear liquid within. "When I have written
to this man and told him that I hold him criminally responsible for
the poisons which he circulates, we will have no more trouble. But it
may recur. Others may find a better way. There is danger there--a
very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material,
the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The
spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be
the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor
world become?" Suddenly the dreamer disappeared, and Holmes, the man
of action, sprang from his chair. "I think there is nothing more to
be said, Mr. Bennett. The various incidents will now fit themselves
easily into the general scheme. The dog, of course, was aware of the
change far more quickly than you. His smell would insure that. It was
the monkey, not the professor, whom Roy attacked, just as it was the
monkey who teased Roy. Climbing was a joy to the creature, and it was
a mere chance, I take it, that the pastime brought him to the young
lady's window. There is an early train to town, Watson, but I think
we shall just have time for a cup of tea at the Chequers before we
catch it."
THE ADVENTURE OF THE LION'S MANE
It is a most singular thing that a problem which was certainly as
abstruse and unusual as any which I have faced in my long
professional career should have come to me after my retirement, and
be brought, as it were, to my very door. It occurred after my
withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up
entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often
yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London. At this
period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An
occasional week-end visit was the most that I ever saw of him. Thus I
must act as my own chronicler. Ah! had he but been with me, how much
he might have made of so wonderful a happening and of my eventual
triumph against every difficulty! As it is, however, I must needs
tell my tale in my own plain way, showing by my words each step upon
the difficult road which lay before me as I searched for the mystery
of the Lion's Mane.
My villa is situated upon the southern slope of the downs, commanding
a great view of the Channel. At this point the coast-line is entirely
of chalk cliffs, which can only be descended by a single, long,
tortuous path, which is steep and slippery. At the bottom of the path
lie a hundred yards of pebbles and shingle, even when the tide is at
full. Here and there, however, there are curves and hollows which
make splendid swimming-pools filled afresh with each flow. This
admirable beach extends for some miles in each direction, save only
at one point where the little cove and village of Fulworth break the
line.
My house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the
estate all to ourselves. Half a mile off, however, is Harold
Stackhurst's well-known coaching establishment, The Gables, quite a
large place, which contains some score of young fellows preparing for
various professions, with a staff of several masters. Stackhurst
himself was a well-known rowing Blue in his day, and an excellent
all-round scholar. He and I were always friendly from the day I came
to the coast, and he was the one man who was on such terms with me
that we could drop in on each other in the evenings without an
invitation.
Towards the end of July, 1907, there was a severe gale, the wind
blowing up-channel, heaping the seas to the base of the cliffs and
leaving a lagoon at the turn of the tide. On the morning of which I
speak the wind had abated, and all Nature was newly washed and fresh.
It was impossible to work upon so delightful a day, and I strolled
out before breakfast to enjoy the exquisite air. I walked along the
cliff path which led to the steep descent to the beach. As I walked I
heard a shout behind me, and there was Harold Stackhurst waving his
hand in cheery greeting.
"What a morning, Mr. Holmes! I thought I should see you out."
"Going for a swim, I see."
"At your old tricks again," he laughed, patting his bulging pocket.
"Yes. McPherson started early, and I expect I may find him there."
Fitzroy McPherson was the science master, a fine upstanding young
fellow whose life had been crippled by heart trouble following
rheumatic fever. He was a natural athlete, however, and excelled in
every game which did not throw too great a strain upon him. Summer
and winter he went for his swim, and, as I am a swimmer myself, I
have often joined him.
At this moment we saw the man himself. His head showed above the edge
of the cliff where the path ends. Then his whole figure appeared at
the top, staggering like a drunken man. The next instant he threw up
his hands and, with a terrible cry, fell upon his face. Stackhurst
and I rushed forward--it may have been fifty yards--and turned him on
his back. He was obviously dying. Those glazed sunken eyes and
dreadful livid cheeks could mean nothing else. One glimmer of life
came into his face for an instant, and he uttered two or three words
with an eager air of warning. They were slurred and indistinct, but
to my ear the last of them, which burst in a shriek from his lips,
were "the Lion's Mane." It was utterly irrelevant and unintelligible,
and yet I could twist the sound into no other sense. Then he half
raised himself from the ground, threw his arms into the air, and fell
forward on his side. He was dead.
My companion was paralyzed by the sudden horror of it, but I, as may
well be imagined, had every sense on the alert. And I had need, for
it was speedily evident that we were in the presence of an
extraordinary case. The man was dressed only in his Burberry
overcoat, his trousers, and an unlaced pair of canvas shoes. As he
fell over, his Burberry, which had been simply thrown round his
shoulders, slipped off, exposing his trunk. We stared at it in
amazement. His back was covered with dark red lines as though he had
been terribly flogged by a thin wire scourge. The instrument with
which this punishment had been inflicted was clearly flexible, for
the long, angry weals curved round his shoulders and ribs. There was
blood dripping down his chin, for he had bitten through his lower lip
in the paroxysm of his agony. His drawn and distorted face told how
terrible that agony had been.
I was kneeling and Stackhurst standing by the body when a shadow fell
across us, and we found that Ian Murdoch was by our side. Murdoch was
the mathematical coach at the establishment, a tall, dark, thin man,
so taciturn and aloof that none can be said to have been his friend.
He seemed to live in some high, abstract region of surds and conic
sections, with little to connect him with ordinary life. He was
looked upon as an oddity by the students, and would have been their
butt, but there was some strange outlandish blood in the man, which
showed itself not only in his coal-black eyes and swarthy face but
also in occasional outbreaks of temper, which could only be described
as ferocious. On one occasion, being plagued by a little dog
belonging to McPherson, he had caught the creature up and hurled it
through the plate-glass window, an action for which Stackhurst would
certainly have given him his dismissal had he not been a very
valuable teacher. Such was the strange complex man who now appeared
beside us. He seemed to be honestly shocked at the sight before him,
though the incident of the dog may show that there was no great
sympathy between the dead man and himself.
"Poor fellow! Poor fellow! What can I do? How can I help?"
"Were you with him? Can you tell us what has happened?"
"No, no, I was late this morning. I was not on the beach at all. I
have come straight from The Gables. What can I do?"
"You can hurry to the police-station at Fulworth. Report the matter
at once."
Without a word he made off at top speed, and I proceeded to take the
matter in hand, while Stackhurst, dazed at this tragedy, remained by
the body. My first task naturally was to note who was on the beach.
From the top of the path I could see the whole sweep of it, and it
was absolutely deserted save that two or three dark figures could be
seen far away moving towards the village of Fulworth. Having
satisfied myself upon this point, I walked slowly down the path.
There was clay or soft marl mixed with the chalk, and every here and
there I saw the same footstep, both ascending and descending. No one
else had gone down to the beach by this track that morning. At one
place I observed the print of an open hand with the fingers towards
the incline. This could only mean that poor McPherson had fallen as
he ascended. There were rounded depressions, too, which suggested
that he had come down upon his knees more than once. At the bottom of
the path was the considerable lagoon left by the retreating tide. At
the side of it McPherson had undressed, for there lay his towel on a
rock. It was folded and dry, so that it would seem that, after all,
he had never entered the water. Once or twice as I hunted round amid
the hard shingle I came on little patches of sand where the print of
his canvas shoe, and also of his naked foot, could be seen. The
latter fact proved that he had made all ready to bathe, though the
towel indicated that he had not actually done so.
And here was the problem clearly defined--as strange a one as had
ever confronted me. The man had not been on the beach more than a
quarter of an hour at the most. Stackhurst had followed him from The
Gables, so there could be no doubt about that. He had gone to bathe
and had stripped, as the naked footsteps showed. Then he had suddenly
huddled on his clothes again--they were all dishevelled and
unfastened--and he had returned without bathing, or at any rate
without drying himself. And the reason for his change of purpose had
been that he had been scourged in some savage, inhuman fashion,
tortured until he bit his lip through in his agony, and was left with
only strength enough to crawl away and to die. Who had done this
barbarous deed? There were, it is true, small grottos and caves in
the base of the cliffs, but the low sun shone directly into them, and
there was no place for concealment. Then, again, there were those
distant figures on the beach. They seemed too far away to have been
connected with the crime, and the broad lagoon in which McPherson had
intended to bathe lay between him and them, lapping up to the rocks.
