The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (123 page)

“Then in God's name why?”

“Of that I have no definite idea. But she is in the grip of someone, we may be sure of it. Some powerful man who bears me a grudge. He has a honed and evil cast of mind, and works her strings like a master of marionettes. Certain women, and often the more strong among their sex, are made slaves by the man who can subdue them. And now, old chap, I shall be delighted to see you later.”

I was so downcast and irascible after our talk, I went up to my room, where I wrote out the facts of the case up to that point. These notes have assisted me now, in putting the story together at last.

When I went down to lunch, I found Holmes once more absent, and Miss Caston also. She sent me her compliments by Nettie, who said her mistress was suffering from a cruel headache to which she was prone. Naturally I asked if I could be of any help. I was rather relieved, things standing as now they did, when Nettie thanked me and declined.

Vine waited on me at lunch, in a slapdash manner. Afterwards I played Patience in the side parlour, and was soundly beaten, as it were, nothing coming out. Beyond the long windows which ran to the floor, as they did in the dining room, the snow swirled on with a leaden feverishness.

Finally I went upstairs again to dress for dinner. I had on me, I remember, that sensation I experienced in my army days when an action was delayed. Some great battle was imminent, but the facts of it obscured. I could only curb my fretfulness and wait, trusting to my commander, Sherlock Holmes.

Outside, night had thickened, and the snow still fell. Dressed, I kept my revolver by me. Tonight was the fifth night of the Caston curse, and despite Holmes's words, perhaps because of them, I still feared not only for my friend, but for Eleanor Caston.

As I went down the corridor, for some reason I paused to look out again, through a window there. Before me on the pale ground I saw something run glimmering, like a phantom. Despite what we had learned, I drew back, startled. It was the Caston fox, pure white, its eyes flashing green in the light of the windows.

“Yes, sir. The beast exists.”

I turned, and there stood the footman, Vine. He was clad, not in his uniform, but in a decent farmer's best, and looked in it both older and more sober.

“The fox is not a myth,” I said.

“No, sir.”

“Why are you dressed in that way?”

“I am going home. I have given her my notice. I have no mind to stay longer. I will take up my life on the land, as I was meant to. There is a living to be made there, without bowing and scraping. And when I have enough put by, I shall bring Lucy home, and marry her.”

From a bad-tempered boy he had become a man, I saw. My instinct was to respect him, but I said, “And what of your mistress, Miss Caston?”

“She may do as she pleases. There was love, but nothing improper between Lucy and me.
That was her excuse. Miss Caston threw Lucy out on account of her reading—and I will say it now, on account of you, sir, and Mr. Holmes.”

Dumbfounded, I asked what he meant.

“Why, sir, when Miss Caston came here, she would rather have read the coal-scuttle than anything of yours.”

“Indeed.”

“Any popular story was beneath her. She likes the Greek philosophers and all such. But when she had her headaches, Lucy read to her, and one day it was a tale of yours, sir, concerning Mr. Holmes. And after that, Lucy read others, since Miss Caston asked for them.”

My vanity was touched, I confess. But there was more to this than my vanity.

“She made a regular study of Mr. Holmes, through your tales, Doctor. And then, this last September, she said Lucy must go, as her conduct with me was unseemly, which it never was. Even so, she gave my girl a fine reference, and Lucy has work now in a house better than this one.”

I was searching in my mind for what to say, when the lad gave me a nod, and walked away. There was a travelling bag in his hand.

“But the weather, the snow,” I said.

“This is a cold house,” said he. “Snow is nothing to that.” And he was gone.

Downstairs, I found Holmes, as I had hoped to. He stood by the dining room hearth, drinking a whisky and soda.

“Well, Watson, some insight has come your way.”

“How do you know?”

“Merely look in a mirror. Something has fired you up.”

We drew back from the hearth, mindful of a listener in the secret place behind it, and I told him what Vine had said.

“Ah, yes,” said Holmes. “She has studied me. This confirms what I suspected. I think you see it too, do you not?”

“It is very strange.”

“But the man who is her master, despite all my efforts, with which I will not tax you, he eludes me. What is his purpose? His name? It is a long way round to come at me.”

Just then, Eleanor Caston entered the room. She wore a gown the dark colour of the green holly, which displayed her milk-white shoulders. Her burnished hair was worn partly loose. Seldom have I seen so fetching a woman.

Our dinner was an oddity. Only Reynolds waited on us, but efficiently. No one spoke of the affair at hand, as if it did not exist and we were simply there to celebrate the season.

Then Miss Caston said, “At midnight, all this will be over. I shall be safe, then, surely. I do believe your presence, Mr. Holmes, has driven the danger off. I will be forever in your debt.”

Holmes had talked during the meal with wit and energy. When he set himself to charm, which was not often, there was none better. Now he lit a cigarette, and said, “The danger is not at all far off, Miss Caston. Notice the clock. It lacks only half an hour to midnight. Now we approach the summit, and the peril is more close than it has ever been.”

She stared at him, very pale, her bright eyes wide.

“What then?” she asked.

“Watson,” said Holmes, “be so kind, old man, as to excuse us. Miss Caston and I will retire into the parlour there. It is necessary I speak to her alone. Will you remain here, in the outer room, and stay alert?”

I was at once full of apprehension. Nevertheless I rose without argument, as they left the table. Eleanor Caston seemed to me in those moments almost like a woman gliding in a trance. She and Holmes moved into the parlour, and the door was shut. I took my stance by the fireplace of the dining room.

How slowly those minutes ticked by. Never before, or since, I think, have I observed both hands of a clock moving. Through a gap in the curtains, snow and black night blew violently about together. A log settled, and I started. There was no other sound. Yet then I heard Miss Caston laugh. She had a pretty laugh, musical as her piano. There after, the silence came again.

I began to pace about. Holmes had given me no indication whether I should listen at the door, or what I should do. Now and then I touched the revolver in my pocket.

At last, the hands of the clock closed upon midnight. At this hour, the curse of the Gall, real or imagined, was said to end.

Taking up my glass, I drained it. The next second I heard Miss Caston give a wild shrill cry, followed by a bang, and a crash like that of a breaking vase.

I ran to the parlour door and flung it open. I met a scene that checked me.

The long doors stood wide on the terrace and the night and in at them blew the wild snow, flurrying down upon the carpet. Only Eleanor Caston was in the room. She lay across the sofa, her hair streaming, her face as white as porcelain, still as a waxwork.

I crossed to her, my feet crunching on glass that had scattered from a broken pane of the windows. I thought to find her dead, but as I reached her, she stirred and opened her eyes.

“Miss Caston—what has happened? Are you hurt?”

“Yes,” she said, “wounded mortally.”

There was no mark on her, however, and now she gave me an awful smile. “He is out there.”

“Who is? Where is Holmes?”

She sank back again and shut her eyes. “On the terrace. Or in the garden. Gone.”

I went at once to the windows, taking out the revolver as I did so. Even through the movement of the snow, I saw Holmes at once, at the far end of the terrace, lit up by the lighted windows of the house. He was quite alone. I called to him, and at my voice he turned, glancing at me, shaking his head, and holding up one hand to bar me from the night. He too appeared unharmed and his order to remain where I was seemed very clear.

Going back into the dining room I fetched a glass of brandy. Miss Caston had sat up, and took it from me on my return.

“How chivalrous you always are, Doctor.”

Her pulse was strong, although not steady. I hesitated to increase her distress but the circumstances brooked no delay. “Miss Caston, what has gone on here?”

“Oh, I have gambled and lost. Shall I tell you? Pray sit down. Close the window if you wish. He will not return this way.”

Unwillingly I did as she said, and noted Holmes had now vanished, presumably into the icy garden below.

“Well then, Miss Caston.”

She smiled again that sorry smile, and began to speak.

“All my life I have had nothing, but then my luck changed. It was as if Fate took me by the hand, and anything I had ever wanted might at last be mine. I have always been alone. I had no parents, no friends. I do not care for people much, they are generally so stupid. And then, Lucy, my maid, read me your stories, Doctor, of the wonderful Mr. Holmes. Oh, I was not struck by your great literary ability. My intimates have been Dante and Sophocles, Milton, Aristotle and Erasmus. I am sure you do not aspire to compete with them. But Holmes, of course—ah, there. His genius shines through your pages like a great white light from an obscure lantern. At first I thought you had invented this marvellous being, this man of so many parts: chemist, athlete, actor, detective, deceiver—the most effulgent mind this century has known. So ignorant I was. But little Lucy told me that Sherlock Holmes was quite real. She even knew of his address, 221
B
Baker Street, London.”

Miss Caston gazed into her thoughts and I watched her, prepared at any moment for a relapse, for she was so blanched, and she trembled visibly.

“From your stories, I have learned that Holmes is attracted by anything which engages his full interest. That he honours a mind which can duel with his own. And here you have it all, Doctor. I had before me in the legend of this house the precise means to offer him just such a plot as many of your tales describe—the Caston Gall, which of course is a farrago of anecdote,
coincidence, and superstition. I had had nothing, but now I had been given so much, why should I not try for everything?”

“You are saying you thought that Holmes—”

“I am saying I wanted the esteem and friendship of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that especial friendship and esteem which any woman hopes for, from the man she has come to reverence above all others.”

“In God's name, Miss Caston! Holmes!”

“Oh, you have written often enough of his coldness, his arrogance, and his dislike of my sex. But then, what are women as a rule but silly witless creatures, geese done up in ribbons. I have a mind. I sought to show him. I knew he would solve my riddle in the end, and so he did. I thought he would laugh and shake my hand.”

“He believed you in the toils of some villain, a man ruthless and powerful.”

“As if no woman could ever connive for herself. He told me what he thought. I convinced him of the truth, and that I worked only for myself, but never to harm him. I wanted simply to render him some sport.”

“Miss Caston,” I said, aghast, “you will have angered him beyond reason.”

Her form drooped. She shut her eyes once more. “Yes, you are quite right. I have enraged him. Never have I seen such pitiless fury in a face. It was as if he struck me with a lash of steel. I was mistaken, and have lost everything.”

Agitated as I was, I tried to make her sip the brandy but she only held it listlessly in one hand, and stood up, leaning by the fireplace.

“I sent Lucy away because she began, I thought, to suspect my passion. There has been nothing but ill-will round me since then. You see, I am becoming as superstitious as the rest. I should like to beg you to intercede for me—but I know it to be useless.”

“I will attempt to explain to him, when he is calmer, that you meant no annoyance. That you mistakenly thought to amuse him.”

As I faltered, she rounded on me, her eyes flaming. “You think you are worthy of him, Watson? The only friend he will tolerate. What I would have offered him! My knowledge, such as it is, my ability to work, which is marvellous. All my funds. My love, which I have never given any other. In return I would have asked little. Not marriage, not one touch of his hand. I would have lain down and let him walk upon me if it would have given him ease.”

She raised her glass suddenly and threw it on the hearth. It broke in sparkling pieces.

“There is my heart,” said she. “Good night, Doctor.” And with no more than that, she went from the room.

I never saw her again. In the morning when we left that benighted house, she sent down no word. Her carriage took us to Chislehurst, from where we made a difficult Christmas journey back to London.

Holmes's mood was beyond me, and I kept silent as we travelled. He was like one frozen, but to my relief his health seemed sound. On our return, I left him alone as much as I could. Nor did I quiz him on what he did, or what means he used to allay his bitterness and inevitable rage. It was plain to me the episode had been infinitely horrible to him. He was so finely attuned. Another would not have felt it so. She had outraged his very spirit. Worse, she had trespassed.

Not until the coming of a new year did he refer to the matter, and then only once. “The Caston woman, Watson. I am grateful to you for your tact.”

“It was unfortunate.”

“You suppose her deranged and vulgar, and that I am affronted at having been duped.”

“No, Holmes. I should never put it in that way. And she was but too plausible.”