Adrian Conan Doyle collaborated with suspense master John Dickson Carr on The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of “new” adventures. “The Deptford Horror,” a story fully as harrowing as Sir Arthur’s own “The Speckled Band,” was written entirely by Adrian, who seems to have inherited a great deal more than just his father’s name.
I have remarked elsewhere that my friend Sherlock Holmes, like all great artists, lived for his art’s sake and, save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse, I have seldom known him to claim any substantial reward. However powerful or wealthy the client, he would refuse to undertake any problem that lacked appeal to his sympathies, whilst he would devote his most intense energies to the affairs of some humble person whose case contained those singular and bizarre qualities which struck a responsive chord in his imagination.
On glancing through my notes for that memorable year of 1895, I find recorded the details of a case which may be taken as a typical instance of this disinterested and even altruistic attitude of his which placed the rendering of a kindly service above that of material reward. I refer to the dreadful affair of the canaries and the soot marks on the ceiling.
It was early in June that my friend completed his investigations into the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca, an inquiry which he had undertaken at the special request of the pope. The case had demanded the most exacting work on Holmes’s part and, as I had feared at the time, the aftermath had left him in a highly nervous and restless state that caused me some concern both as his friend and his medical adviser.
One rainy night towards the end of the same month, I persuaded him to dine with me at Frascatti’s and thereafter we had gone on to the Cafe Royal for our coffee and liqueurs. As I had hoped, the bustle of the great room with its red plush seats and stately palms bathed in the glow of numerous crystal chandeliers drew him out of his introspective mood. As he leaned back on our sofa, his fingers playing with the stem of his glass, I noted with satisfaction a gleam of interest in those keen grey eyes as he studied the somewhat Bohemian clientele that thronged the tables and alcoves.
I was in the act of replying to some remark when Holmes nodded suddenly in the direction of the door. “Lestrade,” said he. “What can he be doing here?”
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the lean rat-faced figure of the Scotland Yard man standing in the entrance, his dark eyes looking slowly around the room. The police agent caught sight of us and pushed his way through the throng.
“He may be seeking you, Holmes,” I remarked, “on some urgent case.”
“Hardly, Watson. His wet boots show that he has walked. If there was urgency, he would have taken a cab. But here he is.”
“Only a routine check,” said Lestrade, drawing up a chair. “But duty’s duty, Mr. Holmes, and I can tell you that I’ve netted some strange fish before now in these respectable places. Whilst you are comfortably dreaming up your theories in Baker Street, we poor devils at Scotland Yard are doing the practical work. No thanks to us from popes and kings, but a bad hour with the superintendent if we fail.”
“Tut,” said Holmes good-humouredly. “Your superiors must surely hold you in some esteem since I solved the Ronald Adair murder, the Bruce-Partington theft, the—”
“Quite so, quite so,” interrupted Lestrade hurriedly. “And now,” he added, with a heavy wink at me, “I have something for you.”
“Ah!”
“Of course, a young woman who starts at shadows may be more in Dr. Watson’s line.”
“Really, Lestrade,” I protested warmly, “I cannot approve your—”
“One moment, Watson. Let us hear the facts.”
Lestrade continued: “Well, Mr. Holmes, they are absurd enough, and I would not waste your time were it not that I have known you to do a kindness or two before now, and in this instance your word of advice may prevent a young woman from acting foolishly. Now, here’s the position.
“Down Deptford way, along the edge of the river, there are some of the worst slums in the East End of London but, right in the middle of them, you can still find some fine old houses, which centuries ago were the homes of wealthy merchants. One of these tumble-down mansions has been occupied by a family named Wilson for the past hundred years and more. I understand that they were originally in the China trade and when that went to the dogs a generation back, they got out in time and retired into their old home. The recent household consisted of Horatio Wilson and his wife, with one son and a daughter, and Horatio’s younger brother Theobold, who had come to live with them on his return from foreign parts.
“Some three years ago, the body of Horatio Wilson was hooked out of the river. He had been drowned, and, as he was known to have been a hard-drinking man, it was generally accepted that he had missed his step in the fog and fallen into the water. A year later his wife, who suffered from a weak heart, died from a heart attack. We know this to be the case, because the doctor made a very careful examination following the statements of a police constable and a night watchman employed on a barge.”
“Statements to what effect?” interposed Holmes.
“Well, there was talk of a noise that seemed to come that night from the old Wilson house, but the nights are often foggy along Thames-side and the men were probably misted. The constable described the sound as a dreadful yell that froze his blood in his veins. If I had him in my division, I’d teach him such words should never pass the lips of an officer of the law.”
“What time was this noise heard?”
“Ten o’clock at night, the hour of the old lady’s death. It’s merely a coincidence, for there is no doubt that she died of heart.”
“Go on.”
Lestrade consulted his notebook for a moment. “I’ve been digging up the facts,” he continued. “On the night of May seventeenth last, the daughter went to a magic-lantern entertainment accompanied by a woman servant. On her return, she found her brother, Jabez Wilson, dead in his armchair. He had inherited a bad heart and insomnia from his mother. This time there were no rumors of shrieks and yells, but owing to the expression on the dead man’s face, the local doctor called in the police surgeon to assist in the examination. It was heart all right, and our man confirmed that this can sometimes cause a distortion of the features that will convey an impression of stark terror.”
“That is perfectly true,” I remarked.
“Now, it seems that the daughter Janet has become so overwrought that, according to her uncle, she proposes to sell the property and go abroad,” went on Lestrade. “Her feelings are, I suppose, natural. Death has been busy with the Wilson family.”
“And what of this uncle? Theobold, I think you said his name was.”
“Well, I fancy that you will find him on your doorstep tomorrow morning. He came to me at the Yard in the hope that the official police could put his niece’s fears at rest and persuade her to take a more reasonable view. As we are engaged on more important affairs than calming hysterical young women, I suggested that he call on you.”
“Indeed! Well, it is natural enough that he should resent the unnecessary loss of what is probably a snug corner.”
“Oh, there is no resentment, Mr. Holmes. Wilson seems to be genuinely attached to his niece and concerned only for her future.” Lestrade paused, whilst a grin spread over his foxy face. “He is not a very worldly person, is Mr. Theobold, and though I’ve met some queer trades in my time, his beats the band. He trains canaries.”
“It is an established profession.”
“Is it?” There was an irritating smugness in Lestrade’s manner as he rose to his feet and reached for his hat. “It is quite evident that you do not suffer from insomnia, Mr. Holmes,” he said, “or you would know that birds trained by Theobold Wilson are different from other canaries. Good night.”
“What on earth does the fellow mean?” I asked, as the police agent threaded his way towards the door.
“Merely that he knows something that we do not,” replied Holmes dryly. “But, as conjecture is as profitless as it is misleading to the analytical mind, let us wait until tomorrow. I can say however that I do not propose to waste my time over a matter that appears to fall more properly within the province of the local vicar.”
• • •
To my friend’s relief, the morning brought no visitor. But when, on my return from an urgent case to which I had been summoned shortly after lunch, I entered our sitting room I found that our spare chair was occupied by a bespectacled middle-aged man. As he rose to his feet, I observed that he was of an exceeding thinness and that his face, which was scholarly and even austere in expression, was seamed with countless wrinkles and of that dull parchment yellow that comes from years under a tropic sun.
“Ah, Watson, you have arrived just in time,” said Holmes. “This is Mr. Theobold Wilson, about whom Lestrade spoke to us last night.”
Our visitor wrung my hand warmly. “Your name is, of course, well-known to me. Dr. Watson,” he said. “Indeed, if Mr. Sherlock Holmes will pardon me for saying so, it is largely thanks to you that we are aware of his genius. As a medical man doubtless well versed in the handling of nervous cases, your presence should have a most beneficial effect upon my unhappy niece.”
Holmes looked at me resignedly. “I have promised Mr. Wilson to accompany him to Deptford, Watson,” said he, “for it would seem that the young lady is determined to leave her home tomorrow. But I must repeat, Mr. Wilson, that I fail to see in what way my presence can affect the matter.”
“You are overmodest, Mr. Holmes. When I appealed to the official police, I had hoped that they might convince Janet that, terrible though our family losses have been in the past three years, nevertheless they lay in natural causes and there is no reason why she should flee from her home. I had the impression,” he added, with a chuckle, “that the inspector was somewhat chagrined at my ready acceptance of his own suggestion that I seek your aid.”
“I shall most certainly remember my small debt to Lestrade,” replied Holmes dryly as he rose to his feet. “Perhaps, Watson, you would ask Mrs. Hudson to whistle a four-wheeler, and Mr. Wilson can clarify certain points as we drive to Deptford.”
• • •
It was one of those grey, brooding summer days when London is at its worst and, as we rattled over Blackfriars Bridge, I noted that wreaths of mist were rising from the river like the poisonous vapors of some hot jungle swamp. The spacious streets of the West End had given place to the great commercial thoroughfares that resounded with the stamp and clatter of the dray horses, and these in turn merged at last into a maze of dingy streets. As we followed the curve of the river, I noted the neighbourhood grew more and more wretched the nearer we approached to that labyrinth of tidal basins and dark evil-smelling lanes that were the ancient cradle of England’s sea trade and of the Empire’s wealth.
I could see that Holmes was listless and bored to a point of irritation and I did my best, therefore, to engage our companion in conversation. “I understand that you are an expert on canaries,” I remarked.
Theobold Wilson’s eyes, behind their powerful spectacles, lighted with the glow of the enthusiast. “A mere student, sir—but with thirty years of practical research,” he cried. “Can it be that you too—No? A pity! The study, breeding and training of the Fringilla canaria—a rare species I have helped develop—is a task worthy of a man’s lifetime. You would not credit the ignorance, Dr. Watson, that prevails on this subject even in the most enlightened circles.”
“Inspector Lestrade hinted at some special characteristic in your training of these little songsters.”
“Songsters, sir! A thrush is a songster. The Fringilla is the supreme ear of nature, possessing a unique power of imitation which can be trained for the benefit and edification of the human race. But the inspector was correct,” he went on more calmly, “in that I have put my birds to a special effect. They are trained to sing by night in artificial light.”
“Surely a singular pursuit.”
“I like to think that it is a kindly one. My birds are trained for the benefit of those who suffer from insomnia and I have clients in all parts of the country. Their tuneful song helps to while away the long night hours; only the dousing of the lamplight will terminate the concert.”
“It seems to me that Lestrade was right,” I observed. “Yours is indeed a unique profession.”
During our conversation, Holmes, who had idly picked up our companion’s heavy stick, had been examining it with some attention. “I understand that you returned to England some three years ago,” he observed.
“I did.”
“From Cuba, I perceive.”
Theobold Wilson started and for an instant I seemed to catch a gleam of something like wariness in the swift glance that he shot at Holmes. “That is so,” he said. “How did you know?”
“Your stick is cut from Cuban ebony. There is no mistaking that greenish tint and the high polish.”
“It might have been bought in London since my return from, say, Africa,” Wilson suggested.
“No, it has been yours for some years.” Holmes lifted the stick to the carriage window and tilted it so that the daylight shone upon the handle. “You will perceive,” he went on, “that there is a slight but regular scraping that has worn through the polish along the left side of the handle, just where the ring finger of a left-handed man would close upon the grip. Ebony is among the toughest of woods and it would require not only considerable time to cause such wear, but also a ring of some harder metal than gold. You are left-handed, Mr. Wilson, and wear a silver ring on your ring finger.”
“Dear me, how simple. I thought for the moment that you had done something clever. As it happens, I was in the sugar trade in Cuba and brought my old stick back with me. But here we are at the house and, if you can put my silly niece’s fears at rest as quickly as you can deduce my past, I shall be your debtor.”
• • •
On descending from our four-wheeler, we found ourselves in a lane of slatternly houses. So far as I could judge, for the yellow mist was already creeping in, the lower end of the lane sloped down to the river’s edge. At one side was a high wall of crumbling brickwork, and set in it was an iron gate through which we caught a glimpse of a substantial mansion surrounded by its own garden.
“The old house has known better days,” said our companion, as we followed him through the gate and up the path. “It was built in the year that Peter the Great came to Deptford to study shipbuilding.”
Usually I am not unduly affected by my surroundings but I must confess that I was aware of a feeling of depression at the melancholy spectacle that lay before us. The house, though of dignified and even imposing proportions, was faced with blotched weather-stained plaster which had fallen away in places to disclose the ancient brickwork that lay beneath, whilst a tangled mass of ivy covering one wall had sent its long tendrils across the high-peaked roof to wreathe itself around the chimney stacks. The garden was an overgrown wilderness, and the air of the whole place reeked with the damp musty smell of the river.
Theobold Wilson led us through a small hall and into a comfortably furnished drawing room. A young woman with auburn hair and a freckled face, who was sorting through some papers at a writing desk, sprang to her feet at our entrance.
“Here are Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson,” announced our companion. “This is my niece Janet, whose interests you are here to protect against her own unreasonable conduct.”
The young lady faced us bravely enough, though I noted a twitch and tremor of the lips that spoke of a high nervous tension. “I am leaving tomorrow, Uncle,” she cried, “and nothing that these gentlemen can say will alter my decision. Here there is only sorrow and fear—above all, fear!”
“Fear of what?” asked Holmes.
The girl passed her hand over her eyes. “I—I cannot explain. I hate the shadows and the funny little noises.”
“You have inherited both money and property, Janet,” said Mr. Wilson earnestly. “Will you, because of shadows, desert the roof of your fathers?”
“We are here only to serve you, young lady,” said Holmes with some gentleness, “and to try to put your fears at rest. It is often so in life that we injure our own best interests by precipitate actions.”
“You will laugh at a woman’s intuitions, sir?”
“By no means. They are often the signposts of providence. Understand clearly that you will go or stay as you see fit, but perhaps, as I am here, it might relieve your mind to show me over the house.”
“An admirable suggestion!” cried Theobold Wilson cheerily. “Come, Janet, we will soon dispose of your shadows and noises.”
In a little procession, we trooped from one over-furnished room to another on the ground floor.
“I will show you the bedrooms now,” said Miss Wilson as we paused at last before the staircase.
“Are there no cellars in a house of this antiquity?”
“There is one cellar, Mr. Holmes, but it is little used, save for the storage of wood and some of Uncle’s old nest boxes. However, this way, please.”
It was a gloomy stone-built chamber in which we found ourselves. Logs were piled against one wall, and a potbellied stove, its iron pipe running through the ceiling, filled the far corner. Through a glazed door at the top of a flight of steps, a dim light filtered down upon the flagstones. Holmes sniffed the air keenly, and I was myself aware of an increased mustiness from the nearby river.
“Like most Thames-side houses, you must be plagued by rats,” he remarked.
“We used to be. But since Uncle came here, he has got rid of them.”
“Quite so. Dear me,” Holmes continued, peering down at the floor, “what busy little fellows!”
Following his gaze, I saw that his attention had been drawn by a few garden ants scurrying across the floor from beneath the edge of the stove and up the steps leading to the door. “It is as well for us, Watson,” he said, pointing with his stick at the tiny particles with which they were encumbered, “that we are not under the necessity of lugging along dinners thrice our own size. It is a lesson to us.”
Mr. Wilson’s thin lips tightened. “What foolery is this!” he exclaimed. “The ants are there because the servants would throw garbage in the stove to save themselves the trouble of going to the dustbin.”
“And so you put a lock on the lid?”
“We did. If you wish, I can fetch the key. No? Then, if you are finished, let me take you to see the bedrooms,” said Mr. Wilson.
“Perhaps, Miss Wilson, I may see the room where your brother died?” requested Holmes as we reached the top floor.
“It is here,” replied the girl, throwing open the door. It was a large chamber furnished with some taste and even luxury, and it was lighted by two deeply recessed windows flanking another potbellied stove. A pair of bird cages hung from the stove pipe.
“Where does that side door lead?” asked my friend.
“It opens into my room, which was formerly my mother’s,” she answered.
For a few minutes, Holmes prowled around listlessly. “I perceive that your brother was addicted to night reading,” he remarked.
“Yes. He suffered from sleeplessness. But how—”
“Tut, the pile of the carpet on the right of the armchair is thick with traces of candle wax. But hullo! What have we here?”
Holmes had halted near the window and was staring intently at a section of the wall up near the ceiling. Then, mounting the sill, he stretched out an arm and, touching the plaster lightly here and there, sniffed at his fingertips. There was a puzzled frown on his face as he climbed down and commenced to circle slowly around the room, his eyes fixed upon the ceiling.
“Most singular,” he said.
“Is anything wrong, Mr. Holmes?” asked Miss Wilson.
“I am merely interested to account for these odd whorls and lines across the upper wall and ceiling.”
“It must be those dratted cockroaches dragging the dust all over the place,” exclaimed Wilson apologetically. “I’ve told you before, Janet, that you would be better employed in supervising the servants’ work. But what now, Mr. Holmes?”
My friend, who had crossed to the side door and glanced within, now closed it again and strolled across to the window. “My visit has been a useless one,” said he, “and, as I see that the fog is rising, I fear that we must take our leave. These are, I suppose, your famous canaries?” he added, pointing to the cages above the stove.
“A mere sample. But come this way,” Wilson led us along the passage and threw open a door. “There!”
Obviously it was his own bedroom, yet it was unlike any bedroom that I had entered in all my professional career. From floor to ceiling it was festooned with scores of cages, and the little golden-feathered singers within filled the air with their sweet warbling and trilling.
“Daylight or lamplight, it’s all the same to them. Here, Carrie, Carrie!” he said and whistled a few liquid notes. The bird took them up into a lovely flow of song.
“A skylark,” I cried.
“Precisely. As I said before, the Fringilla if properly trained are the supreme imitators.”
“I confess that I do not recognize that song,” I remarked, as one of the birds broke into a low rising whistle ending in a curious tremolo.
Mr. Wilson threw a towel over the cage. “It is the song of a tropic night bird,” he said shortly, “and, as I have the foolish pride to prefer my birds to sing the songs of the day whilst it is day, we will punish Peperino by putting him in darkness.”
“I am surprised that you prefer an open fireplace here to a stove,” observed Holmes. “There must be a considerable draft.”
“I have not noticed one. Dear me, the fog is indeed increasing, and you have a bad journey before you.”
“Then we must be on our way,” said my friend.
We descended the stairs and, whilst Theobold Wilson fetched our hats, Sherlock Holmes leaned over towards our young companion. “I would remind you. Miss Wilson, of what I said earlier about a woman’s intuition,” he said quietly. “There are occasions when the truth can be sensed more easily than it can be seen. Good night.”
A moment later we were feeling our way down the garden path to where the lights of our waiting four-wheeler shone dimly through the rising fog.
My companion was sunk in thought as we rumbled westward through the mean streets whose squalor was the more aggressive under the garish light of the gas lamps that flared and whistled outside the numerous public houses. The night promised to be a bad one and already, through the yellow vapor thickening and writhing above die pavements, the occasional wayfarer was nothing more than a vague hurrying shadow.
“I could have wished, my dear fellow,” I remarked, “that you had been spared the need to waste your energies which are already sufficiently depleted.”
“Well, well, Watson. I fancied that the affairs of the Wilson family would prove no concern of ours. And yet”—he sank back, absorbed for a moment in his own thoughts—“and yet, it is wrong, wrong, all wrong!”
“I observed nothing of a sinister nature.”
“Nor I. But every danger bell in my head is jangling its warning. Why a fireplace, Watson, why a fireplace? I take it that you noticed that the pipe from the cellar connected with the stoves in the other bedrooms?”
“In one bedroom.”
“No. There was the same arrangement in the adjoining room where the mother died.”
“I see nothing in this save an old-fashioned system of heating flues.”
“And what of the marks on the ceiling?”
“You mean the whorls of dust?”
“I mean the whorls of soot.”
“Soot! Surely you are mistaken, Holmes.”
“I touched them, smelled them, examined them. They were speckles and lines of wood soot.”
“Well, there is probably some perfectly natural explanation.”
For a time we sat in silence. Our cab had reached the beginnings of the city and I was gazing out of the window, my fingers drumming idly on the half-lowered pane, which was already befogged with moisture, when I was startled by a sharp ejaculation from my companion.
He was staring fixedly at the window. “The glass,” he muttered.
Over the clouded surface there now lay an intricate tracery of whorls where my finger had wandered aimlessly.
Holmes clapped his hand to his brow and, throwing open the other window, he shouted an order to the cabby. The vehicle turned in its tracks and, with the driver lashing at his horse, we clattered away into the thickening gloom.
“Ah, Watson, Watson, true it is that there are none so blind as those that will not see!” quoted Holmes bitterly, sinking back into his corner. “All the facts were there, staring me in the face, and yet logic failed to respond.”
“What facts?”
“Here is a man from Cuba, he not only trains canaries in a singular manner but knows the call of tropical night birds, and he uses the fireplace in his bedroom. There is deviltry here, Watson. Stop, cabby, stop!”
We were crossing a junction of two busy thoroughfares, and the golden balls of a pawnshop glimmered above a streetlamp. Holmes sprang out. After a few minutes he was back again and we recommenced our journey.
“It is fortunate that we are still in the City,” he chuckled, “for I fancy that the East End pawnshops are unlikely to run to golf clubs.”
“Good heavens . . .” I began only to lapse into silence whilst I stared down at the heavy niblick which he had thrust into my hand. The first shadows of some monstrous horror seemed to rise up and creep over my mind.
“We are too early,” exclaimed Holmes, consulting his watch. “A sandwich and a glass of whisky at the first public house will not come amiss.”
• • •
The clock on St. Nicholas’ Church was striking ten when we found ourselves once again in that evil-smelling garden. Through the mist, the dark bulk of the house was broken by a single feeble light in an upper window. “It is Miss Wilson’s room,” said Holmes. “Let us hope that this handful of gravel will rouse her without alarming the household.”
An instant later there came the sound of an opening window. “Who is there?” demanded a tremulous voice.
“It is Sherlock Holmes,” my friend called back softly. “I must speak with you at once. Is there a side door?”
“There is one to your left. But what has happened?”
“Pray descend immediately. Not a word to your uncle.”
We felt our way along the wall and reached the door just as it opened to disclose Miss Wilson. She was in her dressing gown, her hair tumbled about her shoulders and, as her startled eyes peered at us across the light of the candle in her hand, the shadows danced and trembled on the wall.
“What is it, Mr. Holmes?” she gasped.
“All will be well if you carry out my instructions,” my friend replied quietly. “Where is your uncle?”
“He is in his room.”
“Good. Whilst Dr. Watson and I occupy your room, you will move into your late brother’s bedchamber. If you value your life,” he added solemnly, “you will not attempt to leave it.”
“You frighten me!” she whimpered.
“Rest assured that we will take care of you. And now two final questions before you retire. Has your uncle visited you this evening?”
“Yes. He brought Peperino and put him with the other bird in the cage in my room. He said that as it was my last night at home I should have the best entertainment that he had the power to give me.”
“Ha! Quite so. Your last night. Tell me. Miss Wilson, do you suffer at all from the same malady as your mother and brother?”
“A weak heart? Why, yes, I do.”
“Well, we will accompany you upstairs where you will retire to the adjoining room. Come, Watson.”
Guided by the light of Janet Wilson’s candle, we mounted silently to the floor above and thence into the bedchamber where Holmes had found the markings on the walls. Whilst we waited for our companion to collect her things from the adjoining room, Holmes strolled over and, lifting the edge of the cloths which now covered the two bird cages, peered in at the tiny occupants.
“The evil of man is as inventive as it is immeasurable,” said he, and I noticed that his face was very stern.
On Miss Wilson’s return, having seen that she was safely ensconced for the night, I followed Holmes into the room which she had lately occupied. It was a small chamber but comfortably furnished and lighted by a heavy silver oil lamp. Immediately above the tiled stove there hung a cage containing two canaries which, momentarily ceasing their song, cocked their little heads at our approach.
“I think, Watson, that it would be well to relax for half an hour,” whispered Holmes as we sank into our chairs. “So kindly put out the light.”
“But, my dear fellow, if there is any danger it would be an act of madness!” I protested.
“There is no danger in the darkness,” Holmes said.
“Would it not be better,” I said severely, “that you were frank with me? You have made it obvious that the birds are being put to some evil purpose, but what is this danger that exists only in the lamplight?”
“I have my own idea on that matter, Watson, but it is better that we should wait and see. I would draw your attention, however, to the hinged lid on the top of the stove.”
“It appears to be perfectly normal.”
“Just so. But is there not some significance in the fact that an iron stove should be fitted with a tin lid?”
“Great heavens, Holmes!” I cried as the light of understanding burst upon me. “You mean that this man Wilson has used the interconnecting pipes from the stove in the cellar to those in the bedrooms to circulate some deadly poison to wipe out his own kith and kin and thus obtain the property. It is for that reason that he has a fireplace in his own bedroom.”
“Well, you are not far wrong, Watson, though I fancy that Mr. Theobold is rather more subtle than you suppose. He possesses the two qualities vital to the successful murderer—ruthlessness and imagination. But now, douse the light like a good fellow and for a while let us relax. If my reading of the problem is correct, our nerves may be tested to their limit before we see tomorrow’s dawn.”
Lying back in the darkness and drawing some comfort from the thought that ever since the affair with Colonel Sebastian Morgan I had carried my revolver in my pocket, I sought in my mind for some explanation that would account for the warning contained in Holmes’s words. But I must have been wearier than I had imagined. My thoughts grew confused and finally I dozed off.
It was a touch upon my arm that awoke me. The lamp had been relighted and my friend was bending over me, his long black shadow thrown upon the ceiling. “Sorry to disturb you,” he whispered. “But duty calls.”
“What do you wish me to do?”
“Sit still and listen. Peperino is singing.”
• • •
It was a vigil that I shall long remember. Holmes had tilted the lampshade, so that the light fell on the wall with the window and the tiled stove with its hanging bird cage. The fog had thickened and the rays from the lamp, filtering through the window glass, lost themselves in luminous clouds that swirled and boiled against the panes. My mind darkened by a premonition of evil, I would have found our surroundings melancholy enough without the eerie sound that was rising and falling from the canary cage. It was a kind of whistling, beginning with a low throaty warble and slowly ascending to a single note that rang through the room like the peal of a great wineglass. As I listened to the song’s uninterrupted repetition, my imagination seemed to reach out beyond those fogbound windows into the dark lush depth of some exotic jungle. I had lost all count of time, and it was only the stillness following a sudden cessation of the bird’s song that brought me back to the present. I glanced across and, in an instant, my heart gave one great throb and then seemed to stop beating.
The lid of the stove was slowly rising.
My friends will agree that I am neither a nervous nor an impressionable man but I must confess that, as I sat there gripping the sides of my chair and staring at the dreadful thing that was clambering into view, my limbs momentarily refused to function.
The lid had tilted back a few centimetres or more and through the gap this created, a writhing mass of yellow sticklike objects was clawing and scrabbling for a hold. And then, in a flash, it was out and standing on top of the stove.
Though I have always viewed with horror the bird-eating tarantulas of South America, they shrank into insignificance when compared with the loathsome creature that faced us now across that lamplighted room. It looked to be bigger in its spread than a saucer, and it had a hard smooth yellow body surrounded by legs that, rising high above it, conveyed a fearful impression that the thing was crouching for a spring. It was absolutely hairless save for tufts of stiff bristles around the leg joints and, above the glint of its great poison mandibles, clusters of beady eyes shone with a baleful iridescence.
“Don’t move, Watson,” whispered Holmes, and there was a note of horror in his voice that I had never heard before. The sound roused the creature and, in a single lightning bound, it sprang from the stove to the top of the bird cage, and then, reaching the wall, it whizzed around the room and over the ceiling with a swiftness that the eye could scarcely follow.
Holmes flung himself forward like a man possessed. “Kill it! Smash it!” he yelled hoarsely, raining blow after blow with his golf club at the shape racing across the walls.
Dust from broken plaster choked the air and a table crashed over as I flung myself to the ground when the great spider cleared the room in a single leap and turned at bay. Holmes bounded across me, swinging his club. “Keep where you are!” he shouted and even as his voice rang through the room, the thud—thud—thud of the blows was broken by a horrible squelching sound. For an instant the creature hung there and then, slipping slowly down, it lay like a mess of smashed eggs with three thin bony legs still plucking at the floor.
“Thank God that it missed you when it sprang!” I gasped, scrambling to my feet.
He made no reply and glancing up I caught a glimpse of his face reflected in a wall mirror. He looked pale and strained and there was a curious rigidity in his expression. “I am afraid it’s up to you, Watson,” he said quietly. “It has a mate.”
I spun round to be greeted by a spectacle that I shall remember for the rest of my days. Sherlock Holmes was standing perfectly still within two feet of the stove and on top of it, reared up on its back legs, its loathsome body shuddering for the spring, stood another monstrous spider.
I knew instinctively that any sudden movement would merely precipitate the creature’s leap and so, carefully drawing my revolver from my pocket, I fired point-blank.
Through the powder smoke I saw the thing shrink into itself and then, toppling slowly backward, it fell through the open lid of the stove. There was a rasping slithering sound rapidly fading away into silence.
“It’s fallen down the pipe,” I cried, conscious that my hands were now shaking under a strong reaction. “Are you all right, Holmes?”
He looked at me and there was a singular light in his eyes. “Thanks to you, my dear fellow!” he said soberly. “If you—but what is that?”
A door had slammed below and, an instant later, we caught the swift patter of feet upon the gravel path.
“After him!” cried Holmes, springing for the door. “Your shot warned him that the game was up. He must not escape!”
But fate decreed otherwise. Though we rushed down the stairs and out into the fog, Theobold Wilson had too much start on us and the advantage of knowing the terrain. For a while we followed the faint sound of his running footsteps down the empty lanes towards the river, but at length these died away in the distance.
“It is no good, Watson. We have lost our man,” panted Holmes. “This is where the official police may be of use. But listen! Surely that was a cry?”
“I thought I heard something.”
“Well, it is hopeless to look further in the fog. Let us return and comfort this poor girl with the assurance that her troubles are now at an end.”
“They were nightmare creatures. Holmes,” I exclaimed, as we retraced out steps towards the house, “and of some unknown species.”
“I think not, Watson,” said he. “It was the Galeodes spider, the horror of the Cuban forests. It is perhaps fortunate for the rest of the world that it is found nowhere else. The creature is nocturnal in its habits and, unless my memory belies me, it possesses the power to actually break the spine of smaller creatures with a single blow of its mandibles. You will recall that Miss Janet mentioned that the rats had vanished since her uncle’s return. Doubtless Wilson brought the brutes back with him,” he went on, “and then conceived the idea of training certain of his canaries to imitate the song of some Cuban night bird upon which the Galeodes fed. The marks on the ceiling were caused, of course, by the soot adhering to the spiders’ legs after they had scrambled up the flues.
“It is fortunate for the consulting detective that the duster of the average housemaid seldom strays beyond the height of a mantelpiece. Indeed, I can discover no excuse for my lamentable slowness in solving this case, for the facts were before me from the first and the whole affair was elemental in its construction.
“And yet to give Theobold Wilson his due, one must recognize his almost diabolical cleverness. Once these horrors were installed in the stove in the cellar, what more simple than to arrange two ordinary flues communicating with the bedrooms above. With the cages hung over the stoves, the flues would themselves act as magnifiers of the bird’s song and, guided by their predatory instinct, the creatures would invariably ascend whichever pipe led to the bird. And Wilson knew, having devised some means of luring the spiders back again to their nest, that they represented a comparatively safe way of getting rid of those who stood between himself and the property.”
“Then its bite is deadly?” I asked.
“To a person in weak health, probably so. But there lies the devilish cunning of the scheme, Watson. It was the sight of the things rather than their bite, poisonous though it may be, which he relied upon to kill his victims. Can you imagine the effect upon an elderly woman, and later upon her son, both suffering from insomnia and heart disease, when in the midst of a bird’s seemingly innocent song this appalling spectacle arose from the inside of the stove? We have sampled it ourselves, and we are healthy men. It killed them as surely as a bullet through their hearts.”
“There is one thing I cannot understand, Holmes. Why did he appeal to Scotland Yard?”
“Because he is a man of iron nerve. His niece was instinctively frightened and, finding that she was adamant in her intention of leaving, he planned to kill her at once, in the same way.
“Once done, who should dare to point the finger of suspicion at Master Theobold? Had he not appealed to Scotland Yard and even invoked the aid of Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself to satisfy one and all? The girl had died of a heart attack like the others and her uncle would have been the recipient of general condolences.
“Remember the padlocked cover of the stove in the cellar and admire the cold nerve that offered to fetch the key. It was bluff, of course, for he would have discovered that he had ‘lost’ it. Had we persisted and forced that lock, I prefer not to think of what we would have found clinging around our collars.”
• • •
Theobold Wilson was never heard of again. But some two days after his disappearance, a man’s body was fished out of the Thames. The corpse was mutilated beyond recognition, probably by a ship’s propeller, and the police searched his pockets in vain for definite identification. They contained nothing, however, save for a small notebook filled with jottings on the brooding period of the Fringilla canaria.
“It is the wise man who keeps bees,” remarked Sherlock Holmes when he read the report. “You know where you are with them, and at least they do not attempt to represent themselves as something that they are not.”