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- Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
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“Mr. Mortimer Tregennis died during the night, and with exactly
the same symptoms as the rest of his family.”
Holmes sprang to his feet, all energy in an instant.
“Can you fit us both into your dog-cart?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Then, Watson, we will postpone our breakfast. Mr. Roundhay, we
are entirely at your disposal. Hurry—hurry, before things get
disarranged.”
The lodger occupied two rooms at the vicarage, which were in an
angle by themselves, the one above the other. Below was a large
sitting-room; above, his bedroom. They looked out upon a croquet
lawn which came up to the windows. We had arrived before the
doctor or the police, so that everything was absolutely
undisturbed. Let me describe exactly the scene as we saw it upon
that misty March morning. It has left an impression which can
never be effaced from my mind.
The atmosphere of the room was of a horrible and depressing
stuffiness. The servant had first entered had thrown up the
window, or it would have been even more intolerable. This might
partly be due to the fact that a lamp stood flaring and smoking
on the centre table. Beside it sat the dead man, leaning back in
his chair, his thin beard projecting, his spectacles pushed up
on to his forehead, and his lean dark face turned towards the
window and twisted into the same distortion of terror which had
marked the features of his dead sister. His limbs were convulsed
and his fingers contorted as though he had died in a very
paroxysm of fear. He was fully clothed, though there were signs
that his dressing had been done in a hurry. We had already
learned that his bed had been slept in, and that the tragic end
had come to him in the early morning.
One realized the red-hot energy which underlay Holmes’s
phlegmatic exterior when one saw the sudden change which came
over him from the moment that he entered the fatal apartment. In
an instant he was tense and alert, his eyes shining, his face
set, his limbs quivering with eager activity. He was out on the
lawn, in through the window, round the room, and up into the
bedroom, for all the world like a dashing foxhound drawing a
cover. In the bedroom he made a rapid cast around and ended by
throwing open the window, which appeared to give him some fresh
cause for excitement, for he leaned out of it with loud
ejaculations of interest and delight. Then he rushed down the
stair, out through the open window, threw himself upon his face
on the lawn, sprang up and into the room once more, all with the
energy of the hunter who is at the very heels of his quarry. The
lamp, which was an ordinary standard, he examined with minute
care, making certain measurements upon its bowl. He carefully
scrutinized with his lens the talc shield which covered the top
of the chimney and scraped off some ashes which adhered to its
upper surface, putting some of them into an envelope, which he
placed in his pocketbook. Finally, just as the doctor and the
official police put in an appearance, he beckoned to the vicar
and we all three went out upon the lawn.
“I am glad to say that my investigation has not been entirely
barren,” he remarked. “I cannot remain to discuss the matter
with the police, but I should be exceedingly obliged, Mr.
Roundhay, if you would give the inspector my compliments and
direct his attention to the bedroom window and to the sitting-room lamp. Each is suggestive, and together they are almost
conclusive. If the police would desire further information I
shall be happy to see any of them at the cottage. And now,
Watson, I think that, perhaps, we shall be better employed
elsewhere.”
It may be that the police resented the intrusion of an amateur,
or that they imagined themselves to be upon some hopeful line of
investigation; but it is certain that we heard nothing from them
for the next two days. During this time Holmes spent some of his
time smoking and dreaming in the cottage; but a greater portion
in country walks which he undertook alone, returning after many
hours without remark as to where he had been. One experiment
served to show me the line of his investigation. He had bought a
lamp which was the duplicate of the one which had burned in the
room of Mortimer Tregennis on the morning of the tragedy. This
he filled with the same oil as that used at the vicarage, and he
carefully timed the period which it would take to be exhausted.
Another experiment which he made was of a more unpleasant nature,
and one which I am not likely ever to forget.
“You will remember, Watson,” he remarked one afternoon, “that
there is a single common point of resemblance in the varying
reports which have reached us. This concerns the effect of the
atmosphere of the room in each case upon those who had first
entered it. You will recollect that Mortimer Tregennis, in
describing the episode of his last visit to his brother’s house,
remarked that the doctor on entering the room fell into a chair?
You had forgotten? Well I can answer for it that it was so.
Now, you will remember also that Mrs. Porter, the housekeeper,
told us that she herself fainted upon entering the room and had
afterwards opened the window. In the second case—that of
Mortimer Tregennis himself—you cannot have forgotten the
horrible stuffiness of the room when we arrived, though the
servant had thrown open the window. That servant, I found upon
inquiry, was so ill that she had gone to her bed. You will
admit, Watson, that these facts are very suggestive. In each
case there is evidence of a poisonous atmosphere. In each case,
also, there is combustion going on in the room—in the one case a
fire, in the other a lamp. The fire was needed, but the lamp was
lit—as a comparison of the oil consumed will show—long after it
was broad daylight. Why? Surely because there is some
connection between three things—the burning, the stuffy
atmosphere, and, finally, the madness or death of those
unfortunate people. That is clear, is it not?”
“It would appear so.”
“At least we may accept it as a working hypothesis. We will
suppose, then, that something was burned in each case which
produced an atmosphere causing strange toxic effects. Very good.
In the first instance—that of the Tregennis family—this
substance was placed in the fire. Now the window was shut, but
the fire would naturally carry fumes to some extent up the
chimney. Hence one would expect the effects of the poison to be
less than in the second case, where there was less escape for the
vapour. The result seems to indicate that it was so, since in
the first case only the woman, who had presumably the more
sensitive organism, was killed, the others exhibiting that
temporary or permanent lunacy which is evidently the first effect
of the drug. In the second case the result was complete. The
facts, therefore, seem to bear out the theory of a poison which
worked by combustion.
“With this train of reasoning in my head I naturally looked about
in Mortimer Tregennis’s room to find some remains of this
substance. The obvious place to look was the talc shelf or
smoke-guard of the lamp. There, sure enough, I perceived a number
of flaky ashes, and round the edges a fringe of brownish powder,
which had not yet been consumed. Half of this I took, as you
saw, and I placed it in an envelope.”
“Why half, Holmes?”
“It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the
official police force. I leave them all the evidence which I
found. The poison still remained upon the talc had they the wit
to find it. Now, Watson, we will light our lamp; we will,
however, take the precaution to open our window to avoid the
premature decease of two deserving members of society, and you
will seat yourself near that open window in an armchair unless,
like a sensible man, you determine to have nothing to do with the
affair. Oh, you will see it out, will you? I thought I knew my
Watson. This chair I will place opposite yours, so that we may
be the same distance from the poison and face to face. The door
we will leave ajar. Each is now in a position to watch the other
and to bring the experiment to an end should the symptoms seem
alarming. Is that all clear? Well, then, I take our powder—or
what remains of it—from the envelope, and I lay it above the
burning lamp. So! Now, Watson, let us sit down and await
developments.”
They were not long in coming. I had hardly settled in my chair
before I was conscious of a thick, musky odour, subtle and
nauseous. At the very first whiff of it my brain and my
imagination were beyond all control. A thick, black cloud
swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud,
unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses,
lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and
inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and
swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of
something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the
threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul. A freezing
horror took possession of me. I felt that my hair was rising,
that my eyes were protruding, that my mouth was opened, and my
tongue like leather. The turmoil within my brain was such that
something must surely snap. I tried to scream and was vaguely
aware of some hoarse croak which was my own voice, but distant
and detached from myself At the same moment, in some effort of
escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse
of Holmes’s face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror—the very
look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that
vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I
dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we
lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown
ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side,
conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its
way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in.
Slowly it rose from our souls like the mists from a landscape
until peace and reason had returned, and we were sitting upon the
grass, wiping our clammy foreheads, and looking with apprehension
at each other to mark the last traces of that terrific experience
which we had undergone.
“Upon my word, Watson!” said Holmes at last with an unsteady
voice, “I owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an
unjustifiable experiment even for one’s self, and doubly so for a
friend. I am really very sorry.”
“You know,” I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen
so much of Holmes’s heart before, “that it is my greatest joy and
privilege to help you.”
He relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein
which was his habitual attitude to those about him. “It would be
superfluous to drive us mad, my dear Watson,” said he. “A candid
observer would certainly declare that we were so already before
we embarked upon so wild an experiment. I confess that I never
imagined that the effect could be so sudden and so severe.” He
dashed into
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