"You look a little bewildered," said he.
"I cannot see how such a message as this could inspire horror. It seems to me to be rather grotesque than otherwise."
"Very likely. Yet the fact remains that the reader, who was a fine, robust old man, was knocked clean down by it as if it had been the b.u.t.t end of a pistol."
"You arouse my curiosity," said I. "But why did you say just now that there were very particular reasons why I should study this case?"
"Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged."
I had often endeavored to elicit from my companion what had first turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never caught him before in a communicative humor. Now he sat forward in this arm-chair and spread out the doc.u.ments upon his knees. Then he lit his pipe and sat for some time smoking and turning them over.
"You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?" he asked. "He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.
"It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days, but Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At first it was only a minute"s chat, but soon his visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and energy, the very opposite to me in most respects, but we had some subjects in common, and it was a bond of union when I found that he was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his father"s place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation.
"Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a J.P., and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was an old-fashioned, wide-spread, oak-beamed brick building, with a fine lime-lined avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that he would be a fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month there.
"Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend his only son.
"There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while on a visit to Birmingham. The father interested me extremely. He was a man of little culture, but with a considerable amount of rude strength, both physically and mentally. He knew hardly any books, but he had traveled far, had seen much of the world. And had remembered all that he had learned. In person he was a thick-set, burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet he had a reputation for kindness and charity on the country-side, and was noted for the leniency of his sentences from the bench.
"One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were sitting over a gla.s.s of port after dinner, when young Trevor began to talk about those habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a system, although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in my life. The old man evidently thought that his son was exaggerating in his description of one or two trivial feats which I had performed.
""Come, now, Mr. Holmes," said he, laughing good-humoredly. "I"m an excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me."
""I fear there is not very much," I answered; "I might suggest that you have gone about in fear of some personal attack within the last twelvemonth."
"The laugh faded from his lips, and he stared at me in great surprise.
""Well, that"s true enough," said he. "You know, Victor," turning to his son, "when we broke up that poaching gang they swore to knife us, and Sir Edward Holly has actually been attacked. I"ve always been on my guard since then, though I have no idea how you know it."
""You have a very handsome stick," I answered. "By the inscription I observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you have taken some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole so as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not take such precautions unless you had some danger to fear."
""Anything else?" he asked, smiling.
""You have boxed a good deal in your youth."
""Right again. How did you know it? Is my nose knocked a little out of the straight?"
""No," said I. "It is your ears. They have the peculiar flattening and thickening which marks the boxing man."
""Anything else?"
""You have done a good deal of digging by your callosities."
""Made all my money at the gold fields."
""You have been in New Zealand."
""Right again."
""You have visited j.a.pan."
""Quite true."
""And you have been most intimately a.s.sociated with some one whose initials were J. A., and whom you afterwards were eager to entirely forget."
"Mr. Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes upon me with a strange wild stare, and then pitched forward, with his face among the nutsh.e.l.ls which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.
"You can imagine, Watson, how shocked both his son and I were. His attack did not last long, however, for when we undid his collar, and sprinkled the water from one of the finger-gla.s.ses over his face, he gave a gasp or two and sat up.
""Ah, boys," said he, forcing a smile, "I hope I haven"t frightened you. Strong as I look, there is a weak place in my heart, and it does not take much to knock me over. I don"t know how you manage this, Mr. Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of fancy would be children in your hands. That"s your line of life, sir, and you may take the word of a man who has seen something of the world."
"And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby. At the moment, however, I was too much concerned at the sudden illness of my host to think of anything else.
""I hope that I have said nothing to pain you?" said I.
""Well, you certainly touched upon rather a tender point. Might I ask how you know, and how much you know?" He spoke now in a half-jesting fashion, but a look of terror still lurked at the back of his eyes.
""It is simplicity itself," said I. "When you bared your arm to draw that fish into the boat I saw that J. A. Had been tattooed in the bend of the elbow. The letters were still legible, but it was perfectly clear from their blurred appearance, and from the staining of the skin round them, that efforts had been made to obliterate them. It was obvious, then, that those initials had once been very familiar to you, and that you had afterwards wished to forget them."
"What an eye you have!" he cried, with a sigh of relief. "It is just as you say. But we won"t talk of it. Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old lovers are the worst. Come into the billiard-room and have a quiet cigar."
"From that day, amid all his cordiality, there was always a touch of suspicion in Mr. Trevor"s manner towards me. Even his son remarked it. "You"ve given the governor such a turn," said he, "that he"ll never be sure again of what you know and what you don"t know." He did not mean to show it, I am sure, but it was so strongly in his mind that it peeped out at every action. At last I became so convinced that I was causing him uneasiness that I drew my visit to a close. On the very day, however, before I left, and incident occurred which proved in the sequel to be of importance.
"We were sitting out upon the lawn on garden chairs, the three of us, basking in the sun and admiring the view across the Broads, when a maid came out to say that there was a man at the door who wanted to see Mr. Trevor.
""What is his name?" asked my host.
""He would not give any."
""What does he want, then?"
""He says that you know him, and that he only wants a moment"s conversation."
""Show him round here." An instant afterwards there appeared a little wizened fellow with a cringing manner and a shambling style of walking. He wore an open jacket, with a splotch of tar on the sleeve, a red-and-black check shirt, dungaree trousers, and heavy boots badly worn. His face was thin and brown and crafty, with a perpetual smile upon it, which showed an irregular line of yellow teeth, and his crinkled hands were half closed in a way that is distinctive of sailors. As he came slouching across the lawn I heard Mr. Trevor make a sort of hiccoughing noise in his throat, and jumping out of his chair, he ran into the house. He was back in a moment, and I smelt a strong reek of brandy as he pa.s.sed me.
""Well, my man," said he. "What can I do for you?"
"The sailor stood looking at him with puckered eyes, and with the same loose-lipped smile upon his face.
""You don"t know me?" he asked.
""Why, dear me, it is surely Hudson," said Mr. Trevor in a tone of surprise.
""Hudson it is, sir," said the seaman. "Why, it"s thirty year and more since I saw you last. Here you are in your house, and me still picking my salt meat out of the harness cask."
""Tut, you will find that I have not forgotten old times," cried Mr. Trevor, and, walking towards the sailor, he said something in a low voice. "Go into the kitchen," he continued out loud, "and you will get food and drink. I have no doubt that I shall find you a situation."
""Thank you, sir," said the seaman, touching his fore-lock. "I"m just off a two-yearer in an eight-knot tramp, short-handed at that, and I wants a rest. I thought I"d get it either with Mr. Beddoes or with you."
""Ah!" cried Trevor. "You know where Mr. Beddoes is?"
""Bless you, sir, I know where all my old friends are," said the fellow with a sinister smile, and he slouched off after the maid to the kitchen. Mr. Trevor mumbled something to us about having been shipmate with the man when he was going back to the diggings, and then, leaving us on the lawn, he went indoors. An hour later, when we entered the house, we found him stretched dead drunk upon the dining-room sofa. The whole incident left a most ugly impression upon my mind, and I was not sorry next day to leave Donnithorpe behind me, for I felt that my presence must be a source of embarra.s.sment to my friend.
"All this occurred during the first month of the long vacation. I went up to my London rooms, where I spent seven weeks working out a few experiments in organic chemistry. One day, however, when the autumn was far advanced and the vacation drawing to a close, I received a telegram from my friend imploring me to return to Donnithorpe, and saying that he was in great need of my advice and a.s.sistance. Of course I dropped everything and set out for the North once more.
"He met me with the dog-cart at the station, and I saw at a glance that the last two months had been very trying ones for him. He had grown thin and careworn, and had lost the loud, cheery manner for which he had been remarkable.
""The governor is dying," were the first words he said.
""Impossible!" I cried. "What is the matter?"
""Apoplexy. Nervous shock, He"s been on the verge all day. I doubt if we shall find him alive."
"I was, as you may think, Watson, horrified at this unexpected news.
""What has caused it?" I asked.
""Ah, that is the point. Jump in and we can talk it over while we drive. You remember that fellow who came upon the evening before you left us?"
""Perfectly."
""Do you know who it was that we let into the house that day?"
""I have no idea."
""It was the devil, Holmes," he cried.
"I stared at him in astonishment.
""Yes, it was the devil himself. We have not had a peaceful hour since--not one. The governor has never held up his head from that evening, and now the life has been crushed out of him and his heart broken, all through this accursed Hudson."
""What power had he, then?"
""Ah, that is what I would give so much to know. The kindly, charitable, good old governor--how could he have fallen into the clutches of such a ruffian! But I am so glad that you have come, Holmes. I trust very much to your judgment and discretion, and I know that you will advise me for the best."
"We were dashing along the smooth white country road, with the long stretch of the Broads in front of us glimmering in the red light of the setting sun. From a grove upon our left I could already see the high chimneys and the flag-staff which marked the squire"s dwelling.
""My father made the fellow gardener," said my companion, "and then, as that did not satisfy him, he was promoted to be butler. The house seemed to be at his mercy, and he wandered about and did what he chose in it. The maids complained of his drunken habits and his vile language. The dad raised their wages all round to recompense them for the annoyance. The fellow would take the boat and my father"s best gun and treat himself to little shooting trips. And all this with such a sneering, leering, insolent face that I would have knocked him down twenty times over if he had been a man of my own age. I tell you, Holmes, I have had to keep a tight hold upon myself all this time; and now I am asking myself whether, if I had let myself go a little more, I might not have been a wiser man.
""Well, matters went from bad to worse with us, and this animal Hudson became more and more intrusive, until at last, on making some insolent reply to my father in my presence one day, I took him by the shoulders and turned him out of the room. He slunk away with a livid face and two venomous eyes which uttered more threats than his tongue could do. I don"t know what pa.s.sed between the poor dad and him after that, but the dad came to me next day and asked me whether I would mind apologizing to Hudson. I refused, as you can imagine, and asked my father how he could allow such a wretch to take such liberties with himself and his household.
"""Ah, my boy," said he, "it is all very well to talk, but you don"t know how I am placed. But you shall know, Victor. I"ll see that you shall know, come what may. You wouldn"t believe harm of your poor old father, would you, lad?" He was very much moved, and shut himself up in the study all day, where I could see through the window that he was writing busily.
""That evening there came what seemed to me to be a grand release, for Hudson told us that he was going to leave us. He walked into the dining-room as we sat after dinner, and announced his intention in the thick voice of a half-drunken man.
"""I"ve had enough of Norfolk," said he. "I"ll run down to Mr. Beddoes in Hampshire. He"ll be as glad to see me as you were, I dare say."
"""You"re not going away in an unkind spirit, Hudson, I hope," said my father, with a tameness which made my blood boil.
"""I"ve not had my "pology," said he sulkily, glancing in my direction.
"""Victor, you will acknowledge that you have used this worthy fellow rather roughly," said the dad, turning to me.
"""On the contrary, I think that we have both shown extraordinary patience towards him," I answered.
"""Oh, you do, do you?" he snarls. "Very good, mate. We"ll see about that!"
""He slouched out of the room, and half an hour afterwards left the house, leaving my father in a state of pitiable nervousness. Night after night I heard him pacing his room, and it was just as he was recovering his confidence that the blow did at last fall."
""And how?" I asked eagerly.
""In a most extraordinary fashion. A letter arrived for my father yesterday evening, bearing the Fordingbridge post-mark. My father read it, clapped both his hands to his head, and began running round the room in little circles like a man who has been driven out of his senses. When I at last drew him down on to the sofa, his mouth and eyelids were all puckered on one side, and I saw that he had a stroke. Dr. Fordham came over at once. We put him to bed; but the paralysis has spread, he has shown no sign of returning consciousness, and I think that we shall hardly find him alive."
""You horrify me, Trevor!" I cried. "What then could have been in this letter to cause so dreadful a result?"
""Nothing. There lies the inexplicable part of it. The message was absurd and trivial. Ah, my G.o.d, it is as I feared!"
"As he spoke we came round the curve of the avenue, and saw in the fading light that every blind in the house had been drawn down. As we dashed up to the door, my friend"s face convulsed with grief, a gentleman in black emerged from it.
""When did it happen, doctor?" asked Trevor.
""Almost immediately after you left."
""Did he recover consciousness?"
""For an instant before the end."
""Any message for me."
""Only that the papers were in the back drawer of the j.a.panese cabinet."
"My friend ascended with the doctor to the chamber of death, while I remained in the study, turning the whole matter over and over in my head, and feeling as sombre as ever I had done in my life. What was the past of this Trevor, pugilist, traveler, and gold-digger, and how had he placed himself in the power of this acid-faced seaman? Why, too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingham? Then I remembered that Fordingham was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit and presumably to blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a betrayal was imminent. So far it seemed clear enough. But then how could this letter be trivial and grotesque, as describe by the son? He must have misread it. If so, it must have been one of those ingenious secret codes which mean one thing while they seem to mean another. I must see this letter. If there were a hidden meaning in it, I was confident that I could pluck it forth. For an hour I sat pondering over it in the gloom, until at last a weeping maid brought in a lamp, and close at her heels came my friend Trevor, pale but composed, with these very papers which lie upon my knee held in his grasp. He sat down opposite to me, drew the lamp to the edge of the table, and handed me a short note scribbled, as you see, upon a single sheet of gray paper. "The supply of game for London is going steadily up," it ran. "Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant"s life."
"I dare say my face looked as bewildered as yours did just now when first I read this message. Then I reread it very carefully. It was evidently as I had thought, and some secret meaning must lie buried in this strange combination of words. Or could it be that there was a prearranged significance to such phrases as "fly-paper" and "hen-pheasant"? Such a meaning would be arbitrary and could not be deduced in any way. And yet I was loath to believe that this was the case, and the presence of the word Hudson seemed to show that the subject of the message was as I had guessed, and that it was from Beddoes rather than the sailor. I tried it backwards, but the combination "life pheasant"s hen" was not encouraging. Then I tried alternate words, but neither "the of for" nor "supply game London" promised to throw any light upon it.
"And then in an instant the key of the riddle was in my hands, and I saw that every third word, beginning with the first, would give a message which might well drive old Trevor to despair.
"It was short and terse, the warning, as I now read it to my companion: ""The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life."
"Victor Trevor sank his face into his shaking hands. "It must be that, I suppose," said he. "This is worse than death, for it means disgrace as well. But what is the meaning of these "head-keepers" and "hen-pheasants"?"
""It means nothing to the message, but it might mean a good deal to us if we had no other means of discovering the sender. You see that he has begun by writing "The...game...is," and so on. Afterwards he had, to fulfill the prearranged cipher, to fill in any two words in each s.p.a.ce. He would naturally use the first words which came to his mind, and if there were so many which referred to sport among them, you may be tolerably sure that he is either an ardent shot or interested in breeding. Do you know anything of this Beddoes?"
""Why, now that you mention it," said he, "I remember that my poor father used to have an invitation from him to shoot over his preserves every autumn."
""Then it is undoubtedly from him that the note comes," said I. "It only remains for us to find out what this secret was which the sailor Hudson seems to have held over the heads of these two wealthy and respected men."