Wily and bold, he and his companion threw their pursuer offtheir track by entering a lodging-house in Edmonton Street andleaving by the back-gate into Curzon Square. From that day theywere seen no more in England. Some six months afterwards theMarquess of Montalva and Signor Rulli, his secretary, were bothmurdered in their rooms at the Hotel Escurial at Madrid. Thecrime was ascribed to Nihilism, and the murderers were neverarrested. Inspector Baynes visited us at Baker Street with a printeddescription of the dark face of the secretary, and of the masterfulfeatures, the magnetic black eyes, and the tufted brows of hismaster. We could not doubt that justice, if belated, had come atlast.
“A chaotic case, my dear Watson,” said Holmes over an eveningpipe. “It will not be possible for you to present in that compactform which is dear to your heart. It covers two continents,concerns two groups of mysterious persons, and is furthercomplicated by the highly respectable presence of our friend, ScottEccles, whose inclusion shows me that the deceased Garcia had ascheming mind and a well-developed instinct of self-preservation.
It is remarkable only for the fact that amid a perfect jungle ofpossibilities we, with our worthy collaborator, the inspector, havekept our close hold on the essentials and so been guided along thecrooked and winding path. Is there any point which is not quiteclear to you?”
“The object of the mulatto cook’s return?”
“I think that the strange creature in the kitchen may accountfor it. The man was a primitive savage from the backwoods ofSan Pedro, and this was his fetish. When his companion andhe had fled to some prearranged retreat—already occupied, nodoubt by a confederate—the companion had persuaded him toleave so compromising an article of furniture. But the mulatto’sheart was with it, and he was driven back to it next day, when, onreconnoitering through the window, he found policeman Waltersin possession. He waited three days longer, and then his piety orhis superstition drove him to try once more. Inspector Baynes,who, with his usual astuteness, had minimized the incident beforeme, had really recognized its importance and had left a trap intowhich the creature walked. Any other point, Watson?”
“The torn bird, the pail of blood, the charred bones, all themystery of that weird kitchen?”
Holmes smiled as he turned up an entry in his notebook.
“I spent a morning in the British Museum reading up on that andother points. Here is a quotation from Eckermann’s Voodooism andthe Negroid Religions:
The true voodoo-worshipper attempts nothing of importancewithout certain sacrifices which are intended to propitiate hisunclean gods. In extreme cases these rites take the form of humansacrifices followed by cannibalism. The more usual victims are awhite cock, which is plucked in pieces alive, or a black goat, whosethroat is cut and body burned.
“So you see our savage friend was very orthodox in his ritual.
It is grotesque, Watson,” Holmes added, as he slowly fastened hisnotebook, “but, as I have had occasion to remark, there is but onestep from the grotesque to the horrible.”
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkablemental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I haveendeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presentedthe minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field forhis talents. It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely toseparate the sensational from the criminal, and a chronicler isleft in the dilemma that he must either sacrifice details which areessential to his statement and so give a false impression of theproblem, or he must use matter which chance, and not choice,has provided him with. With this short preface I shall turn to mynotes of what proved to be a strange, though a peculiarly terrible,chain of events.
It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like anoven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork ofthe house across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard tobelieve that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomilythrough the fogs of winter. Our blinds were half-drawn, andHolmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letterwhich he had received by the morning post. For myself, my termof service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold,and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship. But the morningpaper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen. Everybody was outof town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or theshingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me topostpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the countrynor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved tolie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filamentsstretching out and running through them, responsive to everylittle rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation ofnature found no place among his many gifts, and his only changewas when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town totrack down his brother of the country.
Finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I hadtossed aside the barren paper, and leaning back in my chair I fellinto a brown study. Suddenly my companion’s voice broke in uponmy thoughts:
“You are right, Watson,” said he. “It does seem a mostpreposterous way of settling a dispute.”
“Most preposterous!” I exclaimed, and then suddenly realizinghow he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in mychair and stared at him in blank amazement.
“What is this, Holmes?” I cried. “This is beyond anything whichI could have imagined.”
He laughed heartily at my perplexity.
“You remember,” said he, “that some little time ago when I readyou the passage in one of Poe’s sketches in which a close reasonerfollows the unspoken thoughts of his companion, you wereinclined to treat the matter as a mere tour-de-force of the author.