Colonel Warburton’s Madness

by Gayle Lange Puhl

I have written elsewhere of the fact I was twice able to bring to the attention of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes cases of interest to his extensive study of crime. One I published as “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”. The other I hesitated to release to the public because aspects of the story were personal to me. However, under Holmes’s encouragement, I have decided to put down the facts at last, in order to clear the name of a courageous and honorable man from the dark clouds that formed about him during his last years.

My friend was away from London on that early spring day of 1888. He had journeyed to Madrid the week before at the behest of a high government official to investigate the disappearance of certain pieces of art from the Palmatoria Museo. The thief had been seen escaping by jumping from a second-story balcony. Soon afterwards, a small fire broke out in one of the galleries. The police were baffled, and so Sherlock Holmes was consulted.

Holmes had sent a wire that day that he would return the next morning. I was alone in our sitting room at 221b Baker Street when a young woman was shown up by Mrs. Hudson.

She looked up at me with bright, intelligent blue eyes. She appeared to be in her late twenties, below the average height, but with a determined air. She was dressed in a walking suit of dark green, with a wisp of a hat on her wavy blonde hair, and a package wrapped in brown paper in her neatly gloved hands.

“Doctor Watson? Doctor John H. Watson, who served at the fatal Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan?”

“I am. But madame, you have the advantage of me.”

“I am Miss Katherine Warburton, the daughter of Colonel Jeremiah Warburton.”

I ushered her in at once. “My dear, I remember your father well. Please, sit down. The last I heard of the colonel, he had retired and moved to the family home in the Lake District.”

She accepted the glass of brandy I offered her from the sideboard. I never claimed to have Holmes’s skills at observation and deduction, but the signs of her having been on a long railway journey were evident in the state of her clothes, her obvious fatigue, and the ticket she had thrust halfway up the wrist of her left glove. At my remark, she patted the wrapped bundle beside her and tears welled up in her eyes.

“I come on a sad errand, Doctor Watson. My father devoted his life to Her Majesty’s service. He endured many hardships over the decades and never faltered from his duties. But his final posting, to lead the 66th Berkshires during the second war in Afghanistan, broke him.

“He came back to our family estate at Lake Windermere a shell of the man who had left from home just three years before. He didn’t move into the main house, which he as head of the family was entitled to do. Instead, he retreated to a small cottage on the grounds. He refused to accept visitors, withdrew from those who loved him, and seldom left his ‘quarters’, as he called the tiny cottage. My father was content to continue the arrangement, begun years ago, whereas his brother administered the estate as he had done during the colonel’s long absences.

“The entailment with which the estate had been set up long ago specified that no female could inherit the land or property, and that it descend to the oldest surviving son. I am given a generous allowance, but everything will eventually go to my oldest cousin. Fenton was a brilliant success at university, and has since found fulfillment as headmaster of our local school.

“My father, meanwhile, settled into the life of a recluse. He seemed to tolerate my presence, but still at times refused to admit me. He became more solitary. He desired no company. Often, for days and weeks at a time, he would refuse the society of a single human being. The signs of deep melancholia were obvious. This went on for years. The only time he seemed even moderately cheerful was when he spoke of you, Doctor Watson.”

“Of me?” I exclaimed. “I think we met only a half-dozen times, and then only briefly before the battle.”

“Yes. It was about the only thing in which he showed any interest after his return. When your story about Mr. Sherlock Holmes came out in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual last year, he bought a copy and read it over and over. It was the only thing he wanted to take with him and he was heart-broken when that one small kindness was denied.”

“What happened to Colonel Warburton?” I asked. I remembered a stocky, bluff commanding officer with a flowing blonde mustache and a head of hair to match, his battle uniform always crisp and neatly ironed.

“His health, both physical and mental, has declined steeply during the past year. Finally, about three weeks ago, I was forced, on the advice of his doctor and my uncle, his brother, to sign the papers to have him committed to a private sanitarium in Carlisle.”

I sat stunned. What a sad ending to a long and honorable career! After a minute, I looked again at the young woman before me. She was watching me expectantly. There was something else she had to say.

“Miss Warburton, I cannot tell you how much your story upsets me. Is there anything I can do for you or your father?”

She picked up the paper-wrapped package. “I wish you to take his diary, Doctor. He had kept it for nearly thirty years, starting just before his marriage to my mother. He entered notes haphazardly, as his circumstances permitted. He continued his entries after his retirement to The Fortress, as our estate is named. Before his commitment, he was making wild and unbelievable accusations about the people around him. I thought that you, being a doctor, could study his record of his own decline and perhaps find out why his illness changed from a deep melancholia to a violent madness that endangered his own life.”

“Why don’t you give his diary to his own physician?”

“That would be my Uncle Isaiah. According to the quick reading I gave the last pages, he wrote harsh things about Uncle, and I am afraid he would not be impartial to the slurs. Uncle Isaiah has been ill, and I think the knowledge of his brother’s accusations would further undermine his health.”

“I am sorry to hear of your uncle’s troubles, Miss Warburton.”

“Yes, he was diagnosed last year. The disease is terminal and we are very upset. His older son Fenton has given up his own educational duties and moved into The Fortress to take some of the burden of running the estate from his shoulders. My other cousin, Farley, Fenton’s brother, visits often from Durham, where he is at university. Besides, Father did enjoy your story, Doctor, and I think he would like you to have his writings.”

What could I do but agree to take them? Miss Warburton refused any more help and announced she had made arrangements to return to Ambleside in Cumbria the next day. I insisted upon hailing her a cab. Then I returned to our rooms and contemplated the paper-wrapped bundle.

I reflected for a time upon Colonel Warburton’s circumstances, the war, and upon the concerned daughter who had left his diary with me. Finally I drew the lamp closer and unwrapped the package.

Sherlock Holmes returned the next day. I had left the loose-leaf diary on my desk. As Holmes roamed about the room, touching items and looking through the windows into Baker Street, he spied the manuscript. He picked up the diary and flipped through the pages with a lazy curiosity.

“This is not your handwriting, Watson,” he drawled.

“No,” I replied. I told him the story of the diary and the daughter of my former commanding officer. “I have read it. As a military document it is interesting, spanning a recent period of time in British history. However, I found the most fascinating part to be what the colonel experienced after his retirement.”

Holmes took the manuscript and settled into his armchair. He thumbed through the pages, giving particular attention to the last twenty. Those pages covered the last years before Colonel Warburton’s confinement. He read those carefully as I lit my cigar and rang Mrs. Hudson for tea.

It was quite twenty minutes until Mrs. Hudson brought up the tea and Holmes spoke. He accepted a cup from me and I nodded to the papers now stacked on the table beside him.

“What do you make of it, Holmes?’ I asked.

“As a history of a man’s mental decline it has some interest, but I am more drawn to the crime it describes.”

“Crime? The poor man relates from his perspective a slow slide into madness, but I saw no sign of crime.”

“On the contrary, Watson, there is ample evidence of a crime, and a dastardly one at that.”

“Please explain.”

“You know I have little interest in military matters. Therefore I only skimmed through the accounts of his exploits on the battlefield. My attention was piqued by his description of Maiwand and its aftermath. Although the causes of the battle were later firmly established by a military investigation, Colonel Warburton blamed himself. Guilt crippled him, and shortly after the results became known, he retired. He retreated to the family estate in the Lake District. He refused to move into The Fortress, the main house. Instead he took over an old gamekeeper’s cottage and shut himself away from the world.”

“Yes, his melancholia was well-developed by then. His symptoms were typical, craving solitude, showing poor eating habits, exhibiting self-neglect, and lack of interest in things he normally would have enjoyed. Then he believed that his mind cracked after the sightings began.”

“The sightings?” Holmes reached for his pipe.

“Yes, the delusions. He heard voices, saw spirits in the night, and experienced sleep walking. All signs of a deep mental upset.”

“I think the clues he left in his diary do not support the idea that he suffered from delusions, Watson. I think he really experienced all those effects. I think someone close to him used his circumstances to drive him mad.”

“That would be diabolical! If true, how can it be proven? To what purpose would such a thing be done?”

“Oh, the motive is obvious. The question is who and how, not why. Persecution like this cannot be allowed to go unpunished. We must go to The Fortress, Watson, consult with Miss Katherine Warburton, and investigate. I believe that you said she is returning to Cumbria today? Wire a message to be left for the young lady at the Ambleside Station and tell her we are coming along behind her, and then pack a bag. There is a train in two hours.”

As the train pulled out of London and headed north, Holmes spent his time reading the Colonel’s diary in more detail. I was happy to be on a case with Holmes again. Life had been too quiet while my friend was gone. Now he had asked me to join him to solve the case of Colonel Warburton’s madness, and I felt that frisson of excitement that marked our unique relationship rush through my body again.

Half-way through the trip, Holmes set aside the diary and began to discourse on the history of British railways, Lake District cuisine, and the District’s influence on literature.

At Ambleside, up the side of a mountain, we were met by Miss Warburton in a hired trap. The air was crisp with a bite to it, and I was glad we had brought our overcoats. We wound through the pretty little town with its narrow, twisting streets until we alighted at the Lake Windermere pier. There the three of us clambered into a dory manned by a sullen, bearded man in rough fisherman clothing. He took our bags and stowed them away. The man must have had his orders previous to our arrival, for he cast off at once and began rowing in a southerly direction.

“There is a road around the lake to The Fortress,” said Miss Warburton. “But it is long and must make allowance for the terrain. I was about to leave in this trap when the postmaster caught me with your telegram. I arranged this because going by boat is much more direct.”

Holmes pulled out his pipe and filled it with tobacco from his pouch. He blinked at the sight of the cold lake surface that stretched out for miles before us and the evergreen and oak forest that stood on either side. Hours had passed since we had left London and the sky was darkening. The sun had set before our arrival and twilight was upon us.

Miss Warburton introduced the fisherman as Mr. Bonner, a worker on the Warburton estate. He grunted and stuck to his oars. I asked him how long it would take to reach The Fortress. “It’ll take as long as it’ll take,” he muttered, giving a sharp glance at my city shoes and soft hands. Sherlock Holmes shifted his feet and let his attention fall on Mr. Bonner.

“We are fortunate, Watson, to be under the care of Mr. Bonner, an experienced sailor and former member of the crew of the whaler Bailey’s Hope out of Plymouth. I dare say that if we were suddenly attacked by a pod of narwhals, Mr. Bonner would know how to handle them.”

Bonner never stopped rowing, but his bearded face turned to my friend and he frowned. “How’d you ken that, Mister? ‘Tis true, every word, but I swear I never saw you before in my life, nor your friend, either.”

Holmes chuckled. He would never admit it, but he loved dazzling people with his observational techniques. “The foul weather gear you are wearing is heavy duty and designed for Artic climes. The coat, hat, gloves, and boots are necessary for a whaling excursion, but very expensive for such berths as the Lake District offers. They are years old, a part of your original ship’s kit. The name of the ship is tattooed on your left wrist, which was visible when you extended your hand to take our baggage. As to the narwhals, that earring hanging from your left ear is crafted from a bit of narwhal ivory. Did you carve it yourself, as some sailors do whilst on long voyages?”

Bonner’s jaw had slowly dropped as he listened to Holmes, but as the question hung in the air he snapped it shut and bent again to his rowing. Holmes waited with an amicable air for the man’s response, but nothing more was forthcoming.

Sherlock Holmes asked Miss Warburton about the occupants of The Fortress. Beside her uncle and his wife, their sons Fenton and Farley had apartments in the big house. Farley was about to take his diploma in engineering at Durham University. There were maids, a kitchen staff, a butler called Morell, and several men employed as gardeners and stable workers. It sounded like a large establishment. Miss Warburton admitted that her father had inherited the estate from a rich great-grandfather, who had secured the property in the late 1700’s. The Fortress and the two-thousand acres that came with it had been in the family for generations.

Jeramiah Warburton had loved the military since he was a child. He enlisted in the Horse Guards in his twenties, and after he became the family patriarch, he had seen his brother through medical school, used his money to advance in the Army, and married late to Miss Katherine Murphy of the Sligo Murphys. She had died young when her husband was stationed abroad, and our client had been raised by her aunt and a succession of governesses.

After nearly an hour, our dory approached a pier that extended out from a rocky point crowned with the faded grey stones that supported the Warburton Fortress. Bonner slipped the boat into a covered boathouse and secured the lines. A winding staircase took us up to a path that led to the main house. In the dark of the evening, we could pick out the rough limestone walls glowing at the edges of windows lit by the gleam of oil lamps.

Holmes stopped suddenly and turned to Miss Warburton. “Who has had access to your father’s cottage since he was removed to the asylum?” She looked at him in wonder. “Why, no one, Mr. Holmes. I locked the door myself and I have the only key.”

“So the cottage is secure?”

“Quite.”

Holmes nodded and proceeded to the front door. We were greeted there by the butler Morell, a silent man who handed off our hats and coats to an equally silent maid. We were greeted in the hall by Dr. Warburton, an imposing man with slicked back yellow hair, and his short, round wife. I viewed Dr. Warburton with interest. He leaned on a stick and was too thin, with yellowish, papery skin. It was clear to my trained medical eye that he was well into the final stage of his illness and did not have many months left.

“Katherine, we have been worried about you. How could you go down to London without telling your aunt and me?”

“I left you a note, Uncle Isaiah.”

“Highly irregular, my dear. Are this the gentleman you mentioned you were going to consult?”

“Yes. This is Dr. John H. Watson and his friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes. This is my uncle, Dr. Isaiah Warburton, and my aunt Susan.”

We nodded to the pair, neither of whom extended a hand. Our bags were dispatched to our rooms and, over a cup of tea in the library, Miss Warburton explained that we had accompanied her to The Fortress to examine Colonel Warburton’s effects in order to form a theory as to why he became mad.

Dr. Warburton and his wife exchanged a glance. “I know you have been very upset lately, dear Katherine,” cooed Mrs. Warburton, “but do you think this course is wise? Dear Jeramiah has been in his new home for nearly a month now, and he seems happy enough.”

“That place may be the best thing for him, but I want to know why he became ill,” said our client. “Do not interfere, please, Aunt. What do you suggest as our first move, Mr. Holmes?”

“The day is nearly spent and we have had a long trip. Let us repair to our rooms and rest. A little sustenance on a tray for each of us would be welcome, since it is past the dinner hour. Could that be arranged, Miss Warburton?”

The daughter of Colonel Warburton nodded. Her aunt, nominal mistress of The Fortress, tightened her lips but rang the bell. When the butler appeared, Mrs. Warburton gave orders, and then her husband escorted us to the curving staircase that led upstairs. Miss Warburton went to her apartment, while Holmes and I were taken to a suite of three rooms on the same floor.

The Warburton mansion was shaped like the letter U, two stories high, with the center block housing the main rooms and the wings containing several three or four-room suites. Ours consisted of two small bedrooms and a sitting room whose windows looked over a view of the lake, the water barely visible as the moon rose behind the building.

A maid appeared first, lighting the fires and turning down the narrow beds. Trays of food soon appeared. Mrs. Warburton may have had to obey the requests of the daughter of the house, but apparently she did not feel she had to extend the resources of the house to do so. Thin cold sandwiches were good enough for her uninvited guests, along with pickles and more tea. Sherlock Holmes surveyed the spread and laughed.

“Eat hearty, my friend,” he chuckled. “If this is what we get for dinner, I cannot predict what our hosts might offer for breakfast. As for me, I am more interested in what is in Colonel Warburton’s diary than in food.”

As I ate what was before me, Holmes sat on the floor and divided up the pages of the manuscript. He set the main stack to one side and spread several pages out in a semi-circle before him. After the sandwiches were gone, I joined him. He took up the first page on his left.

“Here we have mention of the first time he heard a voice. It happened five months ago, during Christmas month. He was alone in his bedroom. He wrote that the voice was hollow and repeated the words, ‘You know what you did. You know what you did.’ He searched the room and found nothing. He then went from room to room and discovered that there was no explanation for the voice. He dismissed it as some kind of recollection of the battle and went to sleep.

“That might have been it, but he heard the voice repeat those words twice during the next twenty-four hours, and frequently over the next months, always at night or in the middle of the night. He began to fixate on the words, wondering which of his many faults were being highlighted. He became anxious. He began sitting up late, waiting for the mysterious voice. It was one night while he sat looking out the sitting room window into the darkness that he first saw the floating figure.”

“Yes. He was deep into the clutches of his delusions.”

Sherlock Holmes picked up another page from the floor. “He saw a white, flapping figure moving under the trees between his cottage and the cliff. There was a waning moon and he saw it through the branches. Colonel Warburton described the figure as ‘luminous and grey’. It came from the north and vanished into the trees on the south. Soon after it disappeared, he heard the voice again, saying, ‘You know what you did.’ He slammed the shutters shut and hid under his bedclothes until dawn. He didn’t sleep all night.

“He got little sleep, according to his diary, after that. The image kept appearing, irregularly, for the next three months. Frequently the voice was also heard. Sometimes it came soon after the colonel sighted the white figure. He began to fear that his mind was going. He didn’t dare tell his daughter. He thought she would mention it to his brother and Isaiah would seek to put him away if he thought the colonel was crazy.

“He wrote that Isaiah was jealous of him because he was the first-born. He believed his brother was plotting against him and that he would snatch the first opportunity given to ‘depose’ him. He knew Isaiah was ill, but wouldn’t admit to himself how badly off he was.”

“Paranoia can be a symptom of melancholia,” I remarked.

“He also didn’t want to worry his daughter. He loves her very much. He began to have suicidal thoughts.” Holmes picked up another piece of paper. “He began to sleep more. He would wake up in places other than his bedroom. Once in the kitchen, once in the front hall. The culmination of these ‘sleep walking’ episodes came when he found himself in the woods above the cliff outside his cottage. There was a storm that night, and he came to his senses soaking wet and covered with leaves and twigs. He made it back to his rooms without anyone seeing him, but the incident frightened him.

“He started to hide the kitchen knives all over the cottage. Miss Warburton noticed and quietly took them away. She found it increasingly difficult to hide her worries from her father. He could tell that from her behavior. Finally one night, he saw the white figure from the window while she was there. He crashed through the glass after it. She screamed for help and Bonner and Morell chased after him. They caught him on the edge of the cliff and dragged him back to the cottage. He made his last entries in the diary that night under guard. The next day his daughter, on her uncle’s advice, signed the papers that put him into the asylum.”

I shook my head. “A sad, sad case. He once was an honorable officer, a credit to his regiment. The breakdown of a mind is a terrible thing.”

Holmes gathered up the papers and got to his feet. “I think we have done everything we can do tonight, Watson. Tomorrow we shall examine the scene of the crime.”

The scene of the crime? I was not convinced there had been a crime. As I lay in my bed that night, I gazed out the window and watched the half-moon suspended in the black sky above. I remembered my old commanding officer, his bright blue eyes snapping in amusement at the banter at the evening mess, and the way he sat on his horse as he reviewed the troops. Finally I rose and drew the curtains to shut out the moon. Only then could I sleep.

The next morning began with a bright sunrise. Holmes roused me out and, fueled by only a cup of coffee, we joined Miss Warburton on the side terrace. The colonel’s cottage was situated only four-hundred feet away, behind some outbuildings and a line of low shrubs. It was a one-story red brick building with a slate roof. When we stood on its tiny front porch, we could see the line of trees between the cottage and the shore cliff on the left.

Miss Warburton produced a key and unlocked the front door. Before us was a narrow hallway. A row of hooks held a coat and a hat, suitable for colder weather, on our left. Beyond that was an open set of pocket doors that led to a small sitting room, holding a number of books. A cast-iron fireplace stood to the right of the door. An overstuffed high-backed winged armchair was positioned by the window on the far wall. It offered a clear view of the aforementioned line of trees that led up to the cliff’s edge. The walls held shelves of books covering the dull dove grey wallpaper. There was a wooden straight chair and two small tables bearing oil lamps. A faded blue rug took pride of place on the wooden floor. The front window looked over the path we had used to approach the house. Thick brick-red curtains hung at every window of the cottage.

To the right of the hallway was another room of the same size, also equipped with pocket doors, set up as a Spartan bedroom. It had a matching fireplace to the left of the entrance and contained little besides an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, a small rug, and a battered military foot locker. The wallpaper in this room was a muted brown. A wash stand stood by the window on the right. That window looked toward the shrubs and sheds that separated the gamekeeper’s cottage from the main house. The most notable item in the room was an odd-looking handcrafted Afghan rifle, most likely taken as a souvenir, that hung over the bedroom’s front window. Afghan tribesmen were famous for the hand-forged rifles they created in the hills to fight their enemies. Beneath it was placed the foot locker. “Col. J. Warburton” was stenciled on the lid.

In the back were domestic offices, including a modest kitchen, pantries, a coal bin, and a back door that led to a walled kitchen garden. It was complete with a garden shed and a pair of apple trees set against the back stone wall.

Holmes lost no time. Pulling out his magnifying glass, he began to examine the contents of the cottage. He took the bedroom first. I kept Miss Warburton out of his way as he systematically covered every item the room contained. She was fascinated to see him at work - opening drawers, examining bedclothes, crawling along the floor and into the corners, lifting the lid of Colonel Warburton’s foot locker and poking about in the contents. He examined the fireplace, looked under the drugget that covered the center of the room, and even peered through his lens at every inch of the brown wallpaper. He spent extra time on the wall against which the headboard of the bed was placed. I could see no reason why the paper there drew his attention. Finally he left the bedroom and moved on to the sitting-room.

Again he was very thorough. He searched that room by opening each book from the many on the shelves, again lifting the rug, poking his long fingers into the armchair’s stuffing, and even checking the levels on the oil lamps. Again he paid particular attention to the wallpaper of the room. At one point he picked up a volume from the table closest to the armchair and handed it to me. It was the copy of last year’s Beeton’s Christmas Annual that Miss Warburton had mentioned as her father’s favorite reading material.

I cannot describe the feelings that washed over me as I gazed on the cover of my feeble effort to tell of my friend’s extraordinary powers of observation and deduction. We had had many adventures together since that first one. Some had gone well and others had ended in stalemate or failure. Yet the case I had entitled A Study in Scarlet still held a special place in my heart.

To think that my poor attempt at storytelling had comforted my old commanding officer! I tried to imagine him in his chair, holding the little volume and turning the pages as he read it again for the nth time. My heart grew warm as I thought of the old man, beset with fears for his own sanity, losing his worries by following our cab to No. 3 Lauriston Gardens, or trekking over the wild landscape of the American West in words that I had written down.

Sherlock Holmes had moved away from the armchair to check out more shelves of books. I laid the copy of Beeton’s back on the little table with a humble heart. An author is always gratified to hear that his readers think highly of his efforts. In this case I felt unworthy. I moved away from the armchair and went out to the hall, where I paced up and down until Holmes had finished his labours in the sitting-room and moved on to the back of the house.

Here he was no less thorough in his investigation. Holmes peered into the pots and pans stored on the kitchen shelves, sifted through the stove’s ashes, tapped the white-washed walls, turned over every lump of coal in the bin, and even used his magnifying lens to examine the cracks between the flagstones that formed the floor. Finally he opened the back door and walked outside. There he briefly searched the little garden shed, paced along the stone walls of the kitchen garden, and then circled the cottage. That last maneuver took a long time, as he poked and pried at what seemed every exterior brick within his reach.

I was used to his methods, but Miss Warburton grew weary as time passed. I urged her to re-enter the cottage while I made her some tea. By the time Holmes walked into the sitting room, she was ensconced in her father’s armchair with an empty teacup at her side. Holmes brushed off my offer of refreshment for him.

“Perhaps you would like to stay here, Miss Warburton, while Dr. Watson and I continue our investigation,” said he. “My next step is to examine the trees that stand between this cottage and the cliff.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Holmes,” she said brightly, rising to her feet. “Dr. Watson’s tea has quite revived me. I am eager to continue.”

The three of us crossed the grass and entered the little grove of oaks and beeches. I noticed nothing unusual. Holmes strode along, hands slapping the trunks, shoes shuffling through the grasses, with his eyes darting everywhere - to the left, the right, and particularly up at the canopy. At one point, he even shinnied up a bole and crept out on a limb to look at something on a budding set of branches that only his eye had seen. Miss Warburton and I remained below, craning our necks and watching as he scrambled from one tree to the next for several minutes. When he dropped to the ground and turned to us, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his hands.

“This has been a most interesting and fruitful exercise. I think the next step should be a visit with your father.”

Miss Warburton looked surprised. She obviously had a number of questions to ask, but she had learned by now that it was futile to question Sherlock Holmes in the midst of his investigation. We walked back to The Fortress. As we entered the front hall, we were met by Dr. Warburton, his wife, and two young men, obviously also of Warburton stock. The men were putting on their overcoats as the butler Morell stood by with an armful of hats and scarves.

“Katherine, where have you been?” asked the older of the two men. Miss Warburton murmured introductions to her cousins, Fenton and Farley Warburton, the doctor’s sons. “We were about to go out and find you. There has been most upsetting news from the asylum. Uncle Jeremiah has escaped!”

“Escaped!” exclaimed our client. She went pale to the lips and dropped into a hall chair.

“A telegram was received an hour ago from the institution’s superintendent, Mr. Belloes,” said Isaiah Warburton. “Jeremiah was discovered missing right before breakfast this morning. The attendants believe he ran away sometime after lights-out last night.”

“Where is this institution located?” asked Sherlock Holmes.

“In Carlisle to the north,” answered the doctor.

“Then he has had plenty of time to make his way back to The Fortress,” mused my friend.

Miss Warburton raised her stricken face to all of us. “Why do you think he would come here?” she asked.

“Because here is his home,” I answered gently.

“What are we to do? He must not be harmed!” Miss Warburton cried.

“Mr. Holmes, what do you think?” asked Dr. Warburton. “He is my older brother, but if he is unstable and offers violence to the women-”

“He must be tracked down and captured,” declared Fenton firmly. “Mother and Katherine must stay in The Fortress with the maid servants. Father, you cannot walk far. You must stay with them. I will send Bonner down to the pier to watch for him there. Morell and the gardeners and stablemen can search the outbuildings and the fields, starting at the north edge of the property, closest to Carlisle. Farley and I will contact the local police. Mr. Holmes, you and your friend must guard The Fortress. In his madness, our uncle could be capable of anything. Above all, the women must be protected.”

The Warburton men agreed at once. Within a few moments, the available forces had been thus dispatched and Holmes and I found ourselves alone in the deserted hall. The maids, along with Miss Warburton and her aunt, had found refuge somewhere upstairs. Before he joined them, Dr. Warburton instructed the butler to hand over the keys to The Fortress to Holmes. Out of Miss Warburton’s sight, Fenton distributed rifles to his brother and the servants. Two horses were hastily saddled, and the younger Warburtons rode away in the direction of Ambleside.

“Do you have your service revolver with you, Watson?” asked Sherlock Holmes.

“Of course I do,” I replied. “But Miss Warburton does not want her father harmed.”

“There may not be the luxury of choice available to us, Doctor,” replied the detective. “The Fortress is secure enough, but the Warburtons have forgotten something important. Follow me.”

Still wearing our outside garments, we slipped through the front door and locked it. Then we silently crossed the distance between the main house and the Colonel’s cottage. The door entering off the tiny front porch was easily opened under Holmes’s sure touch, and we found ourselves standing once more in the little hallway.

“The Colonel, once away from the asylum, is more likely to return here to his cottage. As you said so eloquently to Miss Warburton, here is his home. We must be ready for his arrival. You will find a place of concealment within while I take up watch outside. It is most important that we find the Colonel before any of his family does.”

Holmes put his finger to his lips and disappeared outside. I looked around the cottage. There were not many places to hide. The bed sat too low to offer any cover, nor was there any to find amid the other bedroom furniture. The back part of the cottage was too exposed for shelter. Finally I closed all the curtains, turned the high-backed wingchair so its back was to the sitting room, and seated myself there.

The fair morning sky had turned overcast, and in the small rooms, lacking fires and lighted lamps, the corners were full of shadows. The atmosphere grew even gloomier as the sun passed the meridian and crawled downward. The afternoon slowly advanced. The only sounds were the ticking of the mantel clock and faint noises of Lake Windermere’s waters lapping at the bottom of the nearby cliff. I was comfortably seated in the depths of the high-backed wingchair, but the need for absolute silence was nerve-racking. My muscles, motionless and tense with waiting, felt like they were on fire. Involuntarily I remembered that last night before Maiwand, when the entire regiment was ordered to wait silently at arms before dawn broke and the Afghans came screaming down from the hills to begin their bloody slaughter.

It was almost with relief that I finally heard a faint sound from the back of the house. I could see nothing, but my hearing was excellent. There was the click of a lock. A door opened, then closed. Faint sounds of scuffling were heard. Footfalls came toward me. They did not come into the sitting room as I expected, but instead shifted to the bedroom. I could hear metallic clinking, then the unmistakable sound of a rifle bolt being drawn back. I gripped my revolver and leapt from my hiding spot to confront the intruder.

I only had time to glimpse a muffled figure standing in the hallway. At my sudden appearance, the figure turned and I recognized Colonel Warburton’s Afghan rifle pointed at me. I raised my weapon but the rifle muzzle blazed and smoke filled the air. I felt a sharp, hot pain in my right lower leg as my own shot went wild. I fell to the carpet as the mysterious assailant dashed out the front door. Holmes had left it unlocked.

I tried to follow, but the pain of my wound made it impossible for me to stand. Blood was spreading across the floor. I grabbed my leg to compress the artery and felt my fibula shift. I fumbled for a handkerchief to stem the bleeding. Outside I could hear yells and footfalls. Time slowed down as I concentrated on my wound until Sherlock Holmes burst through the door, shouting my name.

“Watson! Watson!” Holmes first turned to the bedroom but when I responded with “I’m here, Holmes,” he swiftly ran to where I was crouched on the sitting-room carpet.

“Watson! Believe me, if I had had any idea this would happen, I never would have sent you in here!” He dropped to my side and examined my injury. Gentle fingers added another handkerchief to the binding I had applied. He lifted me up to sit on the wooden chair. Holmes’s face was white and strained, his eyes anxious. I wanted to reassure him, but for some reason I could not speak. I was growing weak from pain, loss of blood, and shock. I did not notice when others entered. Orders were given, and I was carried out of the gamekeeper’s cottage and placed into a carriage. Before it left the cottage, I lifted my head and saw through the window the man who had shot me. It was Fenton Warburton, securely bound and guarded by a Cumbria policeman.

At The Fortress, where I was carried up to my room, Dr. Warburton examined my injury. The crude Jezail bullet had passed through my lower leg, just above the ankle, leaving a jagged, still-bleeding hole. My right fibula was broken, as I had thought in the cottage. The local doctor, a surgeon named Quimby, was called in. Anesthesia was applied. The last thing I remember was Holmes’s worried face hovering over me as I counted down to blackness.

When I awoke the next morning, Sherlock Holmes was slumped in the chair next to my bed. It was obvious he had never left my side. When he saw that I was conscious, he gave my hand a warm squeeze. “I shall never forgive myself,” he murmured, “for failing to see Fenton Warburton taking the colonel into the cottage after leaving you there.” With that he got up and left, sending in the doctor.

I was told by the cheerful surgeon the operation was a success. My right leg was heavily bandaged but the pain was managed. After the breakfast things were cleared away, Holmes returned, bringing Miss Warburton, her uncle, his wife, and their son Farley. A moment later a knock was heard at my door and a familiar voice asked to enter.

It was Colonel Warburton.

He looked older, of course. It had been several years since we had last seen each other before the Battle of Maiwand. He was thinner, his hair was silvered at the temples, his step was a bit unsteady. Yet his blue eyes were bright and his handshake strong as he greeted me. Except for dark circles under his eyes, there was no sign of melancholia.

My exclamations of surprise were interrupted by Holmes, who bustled about finding chairs for everyone around my bed. When he planted his feet on the hearth rug and pulled out his pipe, I knew the time had come for his explanation of the case. Sherlock Holmes would not admit it, but he lived for dramatic moments like these, when he could expound upon his methods and astonish his audiences with the results.

Sherlock Holmes waved his pipe at the mantelpiece where Colonel Warburton’s diary was placed. “I took an interest in this case when Dr. Watson showed me your diary, sir.” he said to the colonel. “There are three ways that a man may be driven to madness. One is chemically, another is by defects of the mind, and the third is deliberately. The entries kept in that diary made it clear to me that neither defects of the mind or chemicals were responsible for the experiences that you had undergone in the past half-year. It was simple for me to pick out the clues that told me you were being persecuted. I determined that the danger had not yet passed, and so we made the journey up to Lake Windermere and The Fortress that same day.”

He turned to the rest of us. “Miss Warburton allowed us to examine the colonel’s cottage the next morning. The most interesting thing I found was that by the head of the bed in the bedroom and on either side of the sitting-room armchair were odd spots in the walls hidden behind the wallpaper. They were hollow spaces, just the size of a single brick. An examination of the outside of the cottage revealed that at each location the outer bricks had been pried from their places and then replaced. Behind the bricks, all insulation had been removed. That allowed someone outside the building to take away the brick and speak into the resulting opening in order to be heard inside.

“That explained the voices. It also established that there was a plot against Colonel Warburton. Imagination doesn’t need to move bricks to be heard.

“The floating figure in the trees was also part of the persecution. Watson and Miss Warburton can tell you that I even went to the extreme of climbing the trunks and balancing on unstable limbs in order to scrutinize the bark of the branches at the top for marks left by a human hand. I found evidence that a wire had been strung between the oaks and beeches in order to convey a lightweight something to the cliff from the other end of the line. That explained the floating figure the colonel glimpsed through his window. It was, I surmise, a thin wire framework draped in muslin or a similar fabric. I might also remark that each time the phenomenon occurred it was at night, dark and very late. All the better to disguise the perpetrator.

“Many of the pieces of the puzzle were now in my hands. Motive had been obvious from the beginning. Colonel Warburton was the landowner of a considerable property. He had returned home with no interest in the estate and isolated himself from contact with his family. His brother, next in line, since the entailment didn’t allow inheritance by females, was terminally ill and not long to live. I am sorry, Doctor.”

Dr. Warburton shook his head. “It is true. Over the past year, I have had to turn over much of the running of the estate to Fenton. He has had full access to all estate papers and contracts.”

“Therefore he knew best how much the estate is worth,” said Holmes. “If he could connive to gain permanent control of its assets, he would prosper far more than working as a headmaster at a local school. Fenton Warburton was an intelligent and ambitious man. Since his own father was dying, he reasoned that only one life stood between him and great wealth. He was also an impatient man. He decided to take steps. If his Uncle Jeremiah was declared to be insane, there would be no question of his ever gaining back control of the estate in the future.

“The reasons for the colonel’s melancholia were well known in the family. From his reading, Fenton found the most effective ways to feed his uncle’s fears. The accusing voice in the night, only when he was alone, and the specter fluttering through the trees. Even the sleep-walking which was a side effect of the stress the colonel was under, all served Fenton’s purpose.

“He felt triumphant after Colonel Warburton was admitted to the asylum. His plan had succeeded and now it would be only a matter of months before everything was his. Fenton is not a good man, and could not be expected to be a good son. With him, family considerations did not hold a candle to the possibility of profit. It was his nature.

“Then his cousin Katherine left a note and traveled to London in order to consult Dr. Watson, whose good friend was Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The family knew that because of Colonel Warburton’s favorite reading material, the Beeton’s Christmas Annual, which carried Dr. Watson’s tale, A Study in Scarlet.

“Fenton, like many intelligent criminals, made the mistake of improving upon perfection. Confinement for attempted self-destruction suddenly was not enough. Colonel Warburton must be proven to be not only a danger to himself but to others. So Fenton devised a new plan. He smuggled his uncle out of the asylum the night we arrived and left him tied up and gagged in an outbuilding close to his cottage. He realized he was taking a chance of discovery, but why would anyone look in that storage area without a good reason? Fenton knew the staff at the asylum wouldn’t discover that their patient was missing until breakfast. They would then spend some hours searching their own premises before notifying the family.

“In his confession after he was captured outside the cottage, he told how he watched as Miss Warburton, Dr. Watson, and I examined the cottage, the kitchen garden, and the line of trees from which he had previously removed his wire. The telegram arrived from Dr. Belloes, and it was time to raise the alarm.

“He assigned tasks for all the men that would scatter them over the property, but not toward the colonel’s cottage. Fenton and Farley then took the overland route to inform the Cumbrian police, but he faked an injury to his horse before they had gone far. He sent Farley ahead while he turned back to the estate. He spirited Colonel Warburton out of hiding, carried him into the cottage through the back door, and left him in the kitchen while he went into the bedroom and loaded the colonel’s old Afghan rifle with Jezail bullets from the footlocker. He planned to fire several shots toward the searchers outside, untie and leave his uncle in the hallway, and see that he was blamed for the attack. That would guarantee that Colonel Warburton would never be released from the asylum, and he would lose all rights pertaining to the management of the estate.

“Of course, the colonel would protest his innocence and tell his own story, but who would believe a crazy, homicidal old man?”

“Why shoot Dr. Watson?” asked Miss Warburton.

“Fenton Warburton admitted that the sudden appearance of my friend startled him and his finger slipped on the trigger. He never meant to hit anyone, just to fire the weapon enough times to make us think the colonel had gone completely mad.”

“Well, he failed,” said Isaiah Warburton. “I’m sorry, Jeremiah, that I ever urged Katherine to sign those commitment papers.”

“You thought you were acting for the best,” replied his brother. “Even I was convinced that I had completely lost my senses. I do not blame you for thinking the same. The question is: What do we do now?”

“That is the subject of a private family discussion,” said Sherlock Holmes. “If you need the co-operation of Dr. Watson and myself in further dealings against Fenton, Miss Warburton knows our address in London. Meanwhile, as soon as Watson can travel, we shall return to Baker Street.”

That is the story of Colonel Warburton’s madness and the surprising results of Sherlock Holmes’s investigation. Fenton was sentenced to a long term in prison for the attacks on the colonel and myself. Miss Warburton married the surgeon, Dr. Quimby, and they made Colonel Warburton their special concern. Colonel Warburton became interested in assisting his brother in the management of the estate which helped to lift his melancholia. Dr. Warburton’s illness did take him within the year, but his son Farley proved to be an able administrator who became the rock of the family. As for me, for a time I limped from my wound, and even years later damp weather could cause my leg to ache. That was my souvenir from the adventure I always thought of as “The Case of the Diary and the Detective”.

Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy, there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice - that of Mr. Hatherley’s thumb, and that of Colonel Warburton’s madness.

Dr. John H. Watson - “The Engineer’s Thumb”

... and ...

I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.

Dr. John H. Watson - The Sign of Four