know so well."
"'"You don't deserve much consideration, Brunton," I answered. "Your
conduct has been most infamous. However, as you have been a long time
in the family, I have no wish to bring public disgrace upon you. A
month, however is too long. Take yourself away in a week, and give
what reason you like for going."
"'"Only a week, sir?" he cried, in a despairing voice. "A
fortnight--say at least a fortnight!"
"'"A week," I repeated, "and you may consider yourself to have been
very leniently dealt with."
"'He crept away, his face sunk upon his breast, like a broken man,
while I put out the light and returned to my room.
"'For two days after this Brunton was most assiduous in his attention
to his duties. I made no allusion to what had passed, and waited with
some curiosity to see how he would cover his disgrace. On the third
morning, however he did not appear, as was his custom, after
breakfast to receive my instructions for the day. As I left the
dining-room I happened to meet Rachel Howells, the maid. I have told
you that she had only recently recovered from an illness, and was
looking so wretchedly pale and wan that I remonstrated with her for
being at work.
"'"You should be in bed," I said. "Come back to your duties when you
are stronger."
"'She looked at me with so strange an expression that I began to
suspect that her brain was affected.
"'"I am strong enough, Mr. Musgrave," said she.
"'"We will see what the doctor says," I answered. "You must stop work
now, and when you go downstairs just say that I wish to see Brunton."
"'"The butler is gone," said she.
"'"Gone! Gone where?"
"'"He is gone. No one has seen him. He is not in his room. Oh, yes,
he is gone, he is gone!" She fell back against the wall with shriek
after shriek of laughter, while I, horrified at this sudden
hysterical attack, rushed to the bell to summon help. The girl was
taken to her room, still screaming and sobbing, while I made
inquiries about Brunton. There was no doubt about it that he had
disappeared. His bed had not been slept in, he had been seen by no
one since he had retired to his room the night before, and yet it was
difficult to see how he could have left the house, as both windows
and doors were found to be fastened in the morning. His clothes, his
watch, and even his money were in his room, but the black suit which
he usually wore was missing. His slippers, too, were gone, but his
boots were left behind. Where then could butler Brunton have gone in
the night, and what could have become of him now?
"'Of course we searched the house from cellar to garret, but there
was no trace of him. It is, as I have said, a labyrinth of an old
house, especially the original wing, which is now practically
uninhabited; but we ransacked every room and cellar without
discovering the least sign of the missing man. It was incredible to
me that he could have gone away leaving all his property behind him,
and yet where could he be? I called in the local police, but without
success. Rain had fallen on the night before and we examined the lawn
and the paths all round the house, but in vain. Matters were in this
state, when a new development quite drew our attention away from the
original mystery.
"'For two days Rachel Howells had been so ill, sometimes delirious,
sometimes hysterical, that a nurse had been employed to sit up with
her at night. On the third night after Brunton's disappearance, the
nurse, finding her patient sleeping nicely, had dropped into a nap in
the arm-chair, when she woke in the early morning to find the bed
empty, the window open, and no signs of the invalid. I was instantly
aroused, and, with the two footmen, started off at once in search of
the missing girl. It was not difficult to tell the direction which
she had taken, for, starting from under her window, we could follow
her footmarks easily across the lawn to the edge of the mere, where
they vanished close to the gravel path which leads out of the
grounds. The lake there is eight feet deep, and you can imagine our
feelings when we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl came to
an end at the edge of it.
"'Of course, we had the drags at once, and set to work to recover the
remains, but no trace of the body could we find. On the other hand,
we brought to the surface an object of a most unexpected kind. It was
a linen bag which contained within it a mass of old rusted and
discolored metal and several dull-colored pieces of pebble or glass.
This strange find was all that we could get from the mere, and,
although we made every possible search and inquiry yesterday, we know
nothing of the fate either of Rachel Howells or of Richard Brunton.
The county police are at their wits' end, and I have come up to you
as a last resource.'
"You can imagine, Watson, with what eagerness I listened to this
extraordinary sequence of events, and endeavored to piece them
together, and to devise some common thread upon which they might all
hang. The butler was gone. The maid was gone. The maid had loved the
butler, but had afterwards had cause to hate him. She was of Welsh
blood, fiery and passionate. She had been terribly excited
immediately after his disappearance. She had flung into the lake a
bag containing some curious contents. These were all factors which
had to be taken into consideration, and yet none of them got quite to
the heart of the matter. What was the starting-point of this chain of
events? There lay the end of this tangled line.
"'I must see that paper, Musgrave,' said I, 'which this butler of
your thought it worth his while to consult, even at the risk of the
loss of his place.'
"'It is rather an absurd business, this ritual of ours,' he answered.
'But it has at least the saving grace of antiquity to excuse it. I
have a copy of the questions and answers here if you care to run your
eye over them.'
"He handed me the very paper which I have here, Watson, and this is
the strange catechism to which each Musgrave had to submit when he
came to man's estate. I will read you the questions and answers as
they stand.
"'Whose was it?'
"'His who is gone.'
"'Who shall have it?'
"'He who will come.'
"'Where was the sun?'
"'Over the oak.'
"'Where was the shadow?'
"'Under the elm.'
"'How was it stepped?'
"'North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and
by two, west by one and by one, and so under.'
"'What shall we give for it?'
"'All that is ours.'
"'Why should we give it?'
"'For the sake of the trust.'
"'The original has no date, but is in the spelling of the middle of
the seventeenth century,' remarked Musgrave. 'I am afraid, however,
that it can be of little help to you in solving this mystery.'
"'At least,' said I, 'it gives us another mystery, and one which is
even more interesting than the first. It may be that the solution of
the one may prove to be the solution of the other. You will excuse
me, Musgrave, if I say that your butler appears to me to have been a
very clever man, and to have had a clearer insight that ten
generations of his masters.'
"'I hardly follow you,' said Musgrave. 'The paper seems to me to be
of no practical importance.'
"'But to me it seems immensely practical, and I fancy that Brunton
took the same view. He had probably seen it before that night on
which you caught him.'
"'It is very possible. We took no pains to hide it.'
"'He simply wished, I should imagine, to refresh his memory upon that
last occasion. He had, as I understand, some sort of map or chart
which he was comparing with the manuscript, and which he thrust into
his pocket when you appeared.'
"'That is true. But what could he have to do with this old family
custom of ours, and what does this rigmarole mean?'
"'I don't think that we should have much difficulty in determining
that,' said I; 'with your permission we will take the first train
down to Sussex, and go a little more deeply into the matter upon the
spot.'
"The same afternoon saw us both at Hurlstone. Possibly you have seen
pictures and read descriptions of the famous old building, so I will
confine my account of it to saying that it is built in the shape of
an L, the long arm being the more modern portion, and the shorter the
ancient nucleus, from which the other had developed. Over the low,
heavily-lintelled door, in the centre of this old part, is chiseled
the date, 1607, but experts are agreed that the beams and stone-work
are really much older than this. The enormously thick walls and tiny
windows of this part had in the last century driven the family into
building the new wing, and the old one was used now as a store-house
and a cellar, when it was used at all. A splendid park with fine old
timber surrounds the house, and the lake, to which my client had
referred, lay close to the avenue, about two hundred yards from the
building.
"I was already firmly convinced, Watson, that there were not three
separate mysteries here, but one only, and that if I could read the
Musgrave Ritual aright I should hold in my hand the clue which would
lead me to the truth concerning both the butler Brunton and the maid
Howells. To that then I turned all my energies. Why should this
servant be so anxious to master this old formula? Evidently because
he saw something in it which had escaped all those generations of
country squires, and from which he expected some personal advantage.
What was it then, and how had it affected his fate?
"It was perfectly obvious to me, on reading the ritual, that the
measurements must refer to some spot to which the rest of the
document alluded, and that if we could find that spot, we should be
in a fair way towards finding what the secret was which the old
Musgraves had thought it necessary to embalm in so curious a fashion.
There were two guides given us to start with, an oak and an elm. As
to the oak there could be no question at all. Right in front of the
house, upon the left-hand side of the drive, there stood a patriarch
among oaks, one of the most magnificent trees that I have ever seen.
"'That was there when your ritual was drawn up,' said I, as we drove
past it.
"'It was there at the Norman Conquest in all probability,' he
answered. 'It has a girth of twenty-three feet.'
"Here was one of my fixed points secured.
"'Have you any old elms?' I asked.
"'There used to be a very old one over yonder but it was struck by
lightning ten years ago, and we cut down the stump,'
"'You can see where it used to be?'
"'Oh, yes.'
"'There are no other elms?'
"'No old ones, but plenty of beeches.'
"'I should like to see where it grew.'
"We had driven up in a dogcart, and my client led me away at once,
without our entering the house, to the scar on the lawn where the elm
had stood. It was nearly midway between the oak and the house. My
investigation seemed to be progressing.
"'I suppose it is impossible to find out how high the elm was?' I
asked.
"'I can give you it at once. It was sixty-four feet.'
"'How do you come to know it?' I asked, in surprise.
"'When my old tutor used to give me an exercise in trigonometry, it
always took the shape of measuring heights. When I was a lad I worked
out every tree and building in the estate.'
"This was an unexpected piece of luck. My data were coming more
quickly than I could have reasonably hoped.
"'Tell me,' I asked, 'did your butler ever ask you such a question?'
"Reginald Musgrave looked at me in astonishment. 'Now that you call
it to my mind,' he answered, 'Brunton did ask me about the height of
the tree some months ago, in connection with some little argument
with the groom.'
"This was excellent news, Watson, for it showed me that I was on the
right road. I looked up at the sun. It was low in the heavens, and I
calculated that in less than an hour it would lie just above the
topmost branches of the old oak. One condition mentioned in the
Ritual would then be fulfilled. And the shadow of the elm must mean
the farther end of the shadow, otherwise the trunk would have been
chosen as the guide. I had, then, to find where the far end of the
