38b Wisteria Lodge (Part Two) from His Last Bow Remi

0:002. The Tiger of San Pedro A cold and melancholy walk of a couple of miles brought us to a high wooden gate, which opened into a gloomy avenue of chestnuts. The curved and shadowed drive led us to a low dark house, pitch black against a slate-coloured sky. From the front window upon the left of the door there peeped a glimmer of a feeble light. There's a constable in possession, said Benges. I'll knock at the window. He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on the pain. Through the fogged glass I dimly saw a man spring up from a chair beside the fire, and heard a sharp cry from within the room. An instant later a white-faced, hard-breathing policeman had opened the door, the candle wavering in his trembling hand. What's the matter, Walters? Asked Benges sharply. The man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, and gave a long sigh of relief.

1:05I'm glad you've come, sir. It has been a long evening, and I don't think my nerve is as good as it was. Your nerve, Walters, I should not have thought you had a nerve in your body. Well, sir, it's this lonely silent house and the queer thing in the kitchen, then when you tapped at the window I thought it had come again, but what had come again? The devil served for all I know. It was at the window. What was at the window? And when? It was just about two hours ago. The light was just fading. I was sitting reading in the chair. I don't know what made me look up, but there was a face looking in at me through the lower pain. Lord, sir, what a face it was. I'll see it in my dreams. Tatt-tatt, Walters. This is not talk for a police constable. I know, sir. I know. But it shook me, sir, and there's no use to deny it. It wasn't black, sir. Nor was it white. Nor any colour that I know, but a kind of queer shade like clay, over the splash of milk in it. Then there was the size of it. It was twice your, sir,

2:08and the look of it. The great staring, gargolized, and the line of white teeth like a hungry beast, I tell you, sir, I couldn't move a finger. And I'll get my breath till it whisked away and was gone, out, I ran, and threw the shrubbery. But thank God there was no one there. If I didn't know you were a good man, Walters, I should put a black mark against you for this. If it were the devil himself, a constable on duty, should never thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him. I suppose the whole thing is not a vision, and a touch of nerves. That at least is very easily settled, said Holmes, lighting his little pocket lantern. Yes, he reported after a short examination of the grass-bed, a number-twelf shoe, I should say, if he was all on the same scale as his foot, he must certainly have been a giant. While it became of them, he seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road. Well, said the inspector with a grave and thoughtful face,

3:12whoever he may have been and whatever he may have wanted, he's gone for the present. And we have more immediate things to attend to. Now, Mr. Holmes, with your permission, I will show you round the house. The various bedrooms and sitting rooms had yielded nothing to a careful search. Apparently, the tenants had brought little or nothing with them, and all the furniture down to the smallest details had been taken over with the house. A good deal of clothing, with the stamp of marks and co-high-hobin, had been left behind. Telegraphic inquiries had been already made, which showed that marks knew nothing of his customer, and saved that he was a good pair. Odds and ends, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish, an old-fashioned pinfire, revolver, and a guitar were among the personal property. Nothing in all this, said Baines, stalking, candle in hand from room to room, but now, Mr. Holmes, I invite your attention to the

4:14kitchen. It was a gloomy, high-ceiling room at the back of the house, with a straw litter in one corner, which served apparently as a bed for the cook. The table was piled with half-eaten dishes and dirty plates. The debris of last night's dinner, look at this, said Baines, what do you make of it? He held up his candle before an extraordinary object, which stood at the back of the dresser. It was so wrinkled and shrunken and withered that it was difficult to say what it might have been. One could but say that it was black and leathery, and that it bore some resemblance to a doorfish human figure. At first, as I examined it, I thought that it was a mummified, knee-grow baby, and then it seemed a very twisted and ancient monkey. Finally, I was left in doubt as to whether it

5:15was animal or human. A double-band of white shells were strung around the centre of it, very interesting, very interesting indeed, said Holmes, peering at this sinister relic, anything more. In silence, Baines led the way to the sink and held forward his candle. The limbs and body of some large, white bird, torn savagely to pieces with the feathers still on, were littered all over it. Holmes pointed to the wattles on the severed head, a white cock said he, most interesting. It is really a very curious case. But Mr. Baines had kept his most sinister exhibit to the last. From under the sink he drew a zinc pale, which contained a quantity of blood. Then from the table he took a platter, heaped with small pieces of charred bone, something has been killed, and something has been burned.

6:17We raked all these out of the fire. We had a doctor in this morning. He says that they are not human. Holmes smiled and rubbed his hands. I must congratulate you inspector on handling so distinctive and instructive a case. Your powers, if I may so so without offense, seem superior to your opportunities. Inspector Baines's small eyes twinkled with pleasure. Your right, Mr. Holmes, we stagnate in the provinces. The case of this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it. What do you make of these bones? A lamb, I should say, or a kid? And the white cock? Curious, Mr. Baines, very curious. I should say almost unique. Yes, sir, there must have been some very strange people with some very strange ways in this house. One of them is dead. Did his companions follow him and kill him? If they did, we should have them, for every port is watched. But my own views are different.

7:21Yes, sir, my own views are very different. You have a theory then, and I'll work it myself, Mr. Holmes. It's only due to my own credit to do so. Your name is made, but I still have to make mine. I should be glad to be able to say afterwards that I had solved it without your help. Holmes laughed good humanly. Well, well inspector, said he, do you follow your path and I will follow mine? My results are always very much at your service if you care to apply to me for them. I think that I have seen all that I wish in this house, and that my time may be more profitably employed elsewhere, or of why, and good luck. I could tell by numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost upon anyone but myself that Holmes was on a hot scent. As impassive as ever to the casual observer, there were nonetheless a subdued eagerness and suggestion of tension in his brightened eyes and brisker manner, which assured me that the game was a foot. After his habit he said nothing.

8:30After mine I asked no questions, sufficient for me to share the sport, and lend my humble help to the capture without distracting that intent brain with needless interruption. All would come round to me in due time. I waited therefore, but to my ever-deepening disappointment I waited in vain. Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step forward. One morning he spent in town, and I learned from a casual reference that he had visited the British Museum. Say for this one excursion he spent his days in long and often solitary walks, or in chatting with a number of village gossips whose acquaintance he had cultivated. I'm sure Watson, a week in the country, will be invaluable to you, he remarked. It is very pleasant to see the first green shoots upon the hedges and the catkins on the hazel once again, with a spud, a tin box and an elementary book on botany, there are instructive

9:31days to be spent. He prowled about with this equipment himself, but it was a poor show of plants, which he would bring back of an evening. Occasionally in our rambles we came across Inspector Baines, his fat red face wreathed itself in smiles and his small eyes glittered as he greeted my companion. He said little about the case, but from that little we gathered that he also was not dissatisfied at the course of events. I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when some five days after the crime I opened my morning paper to find in large letters, the ox-shot mystery, a solution, a rest of supposed assassin, homes sprang in his chair as if he had been stung when I read the headlines, by chove he cried, you don't mean that Baines has got him, apparently, said I, as I read the following report. Great excitement was caused in Isha

10:34and the neighbouring district, when it was learned late last night that an arrest had been affected in connection with the ox-shot murder. It will be remembered that Mr Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on ox-shot common, his body showing signs of extreme violence, and that on the same night his servant and his cook fled, which appeared to show their participation in the crime, it was suggested but never proved that the deceased gentleman may have had valuables in the house, and that their abstraction was the motive of the crime. Every effort was made by Inspector Baines, who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding place of the fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they had not gone far but were lurking in some retreat, which had been already prepared. It was certain from the first, however, that they would eventually be detected. As the cook, from the evidence of one or two tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of

11:38him through the window, was a man of most remarkable appearance, being a huge and hideous mulatto, with yellowish features of a pronounced, negroid type. This man has been seen since the crime for he was detected and pursued by Constable Walters on the same evening, when he had the audacity to revisit Wisteria Lodge. Inspector Baines, considering that such a visit must have some purpose in view and was likely therefore to be repeated, abandoned the house, but left an ambush-caid in the shrubbery. The man walked into the trap and was captured last night after a struggle, in which Constable Downing was badly bitten by the savage. We understand that when the prisoner is brought before the magistrates, a demand will be applied for by the police and that great developments are hoped from his capture. Really we must see Baines at once, cried Holmes, picking up his hat. We will

12:41just catch him before he starts. We hurried down the village street and found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just leaving his lodgings. You've seen the paper Mr. Holmes, he asked, holding one out to us. Yes, Baines, I've seen it. Pray, don't think it a liberty if I give you a word of friendly warning of warning, Mr. Holmes. I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not convinced that you are on the right lines. I don't want you to commit yourself too far unless you are sure. You're very kind, Mr. Holmes. I assure you I speak for your good. It seemed to me that something like a wink, quivered for an instant over one of Mr. Baines's tiny eyes, we agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes. That's what I am doing. Oh, very good, said Holmes. Don't blame me. No, sir, I believe you mean well by me. But we all have our own systems, Mr. Holmes. You have yours, and maybe I have mine. Let us say no more

13:41about it. You're welcome always to my news. This fellow is a perfect savage as strong as a cart horse and as fierce as the devil. He chewed downings thumb nearly off before they could master him. He hardly speaks a word of English, and we can get nothing out of him but grunts. And you think you have evidence that he murdered his late master? I didn't say so, Mr. Holmes. I didn't say so. We all have our little ways. You try yours, and I will try mine. That's the agreement. Holmes tracked his shoulders as we walked away together. I can't make the man out. He seems to be riding for a fall. Well, as he says, we must each try our own way and see what comes of it. But there's something in Inspector Baines which I can't quite understand. Just sit down in that chair, Watson, said Sherlock Holmes when we had returned to our apartment at the ball. I want to put you in touch with the situation. As I may need your help tonight,

14:42let me show you the evolution of this case so far as I have been able to follow it. Simple as it has been in its leading features, it has nonetheless presented surprising difficulties in the way of an arrest. There are gaps in that direction which we have still to fill. We will go back to the note which was handed into Garcia upon the evening of his death. We may put aside this idea of Baines' that Garcia's servants were concerned in the matter. The proof of this lies in the fact that it was he who had arranged for the presence of Scott Eccles which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi. It was Garcia then who had an enterprise and apparently a criminal enterprise in hand that night in the course of which he met his death. I say criminal because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires to establish an alibi who then is most likely to have taken his life surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was directed. So far it seems to me that we are on safe ground.

15:44We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household. They were all confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off when Garcia returned any possible suspicion would be warded off by the Englishman's evidence and all would be well but the attempt was a dangerous one and if Garcia did not return by a certain hour it was probable that his own life had been sacrificed. It had been arranged therefore that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for some pre-arranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a position afterwards to renew their attempt. That would fully explain the facts would it not? The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me. I wondered as I always did how it had not been obvious to me before but why should one servant return? We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious, something which he could not bear to part with had been left

16:47behind. That would explain his persistence would it not? Well, what is the next step? The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner. It indicates a confederate at the other end. Now where was the other end? I have already shown you that it could only lie in some large house and that the number of large houses is limited. My first days in this village were devoted to a series of walks in which in the intervals of my botanical researches I made a reconnaissance of all the large houses and an examination of the family history of the occupants, one house and only one riveted my attention. It is the famous old Jacobian grain of high gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshot and less than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy. The other mansions belong to Prosek and respectable people who live far aloof from romance.

17:51But Mr Henderson of high gable was by all accounts a curious man to whom curious adventures might before. I concentrated my attention therefore upon him and his household. A singular set of people Watson, the man himself the most singular of them all. I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to read in his dark, deep-set, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware of my true business. He is a man of fifty strong, active, with iron-gray hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and the heir of an emperor, a fierce, masterful man with a red heart spirit behind his parchment face. He is either a foreigner or has lived long in the tropics for he is yellow and saplings, but tough as with court, his friend and secretary Mr Lucas is undoubtedly a foreigner, chocolate brown, wily, suave and cat-like, with a poisonous gentleness of speech.

19:00You see Watson, we have come already upon two sets of foreigners, one at Wisteria Lodge and one at high gable, so our gaps are beginning to close. These two men, close and confidential friends are the centre of the household, but there is one other person who for our immediate purpose may be even more important. Henderson has two children, girls of eleven and thirteen. Their governess is a misburnt, an English woman of forty or thereabouts. There is also one confidential man-sevent. This little group forms the real family for they travel about together and Henderson is a great traveller always on the move. It is only within the last weeks that he has returned, after a year's absence, to high gable. I may add that he is enormously rich, and whatever his whims may be, he can very easily satisfy them. For the rest his house is full of butlers,

20:03footmen, made servants, and the usual overfaired underworked staff of a large English country house. So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck, but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it, as banes remarks we all have our systems. It was my system which enabled me to find John Warner, late gardener of high gable, sacked in a moment of temper by his imperious employer. He in turn had friends among the indoor servants, who unite in their fear and dislike of their master, so I had my key to the secrets of the establishment. Here is people Watson. I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but very curious people anyway. It's a double-winged house and the servants live on one side the family, on the other. There's

21:04no link between the two, save for Henderson's own servant, who serves the family's meals. Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms the one connection. The governess and children hardly go out at all except into the garden, Henderson never by any chance walks alone. His dark secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the servants is that their master is terribly afraid of something. Sold his old at the devil in exchange for money, says Warner, and expects his credit to come up and claim his own. Where they came from, or who they are, nobody has an idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson has lashed at folk with his dog whip, and only his long purse and heavy compensation have kept him out of the courts. Well now Watson let us judge the situation by this new information. We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household,

22:05and was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel and it was a woman who then but misburne it, the governess. All our reasoning seems to point that way at any rate we may take it as a hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail. I may add that misburne its age and character make it certain that my first idea that there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question. If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of Garcia, what then might she be expected to do if she heard of his death? If he met it in some nefarious enterprise her lips might be sealed still in her heart she must retain bitterness and hatred against those who had killed him and would presumably help so far as she could to have revenge upon them. Could we see her then and try to use her that was my first thought? But now we come to a

23:11sinister fact misburne it has not been seen by any human eye since the night of the murder. From that evening she has utterly vanished. Is she alive? As she perhaps met her end on the same night as the friend whom she had summoned or is she merely a prisoner? There is the point which we still have to decide. You will appreciate the difficulty of the situation Watson there is nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant. Our whole scheme might seem fantastic if laid before a magistrate. The woman's disappearance counts for nothing since in that extraordinary household any member of it might be invisible for a week. Yet she may at the present moment be in danger of her life all I can do is to watch the house and leave my agent warner on guard of the gates. We can't let such a situation continue if the law can do nothing we must take the risk ourselves.

24:12What do you suggest? I know which is her room. It is accessible from the top of an outhouse. My suggestion is that you and I go tonight and see if we can strike at the very heart of the mystery. It was not I must confess a very alluring prospect. The old house with its atmosphere of murder the singular and formidable inhabitants the unknown dangers of the approach and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardor. But there was something in the ice-cold reasoning of homes which made it impossible to shrink from any adventure which he might recommend one knew that thus and only thus could a solution be found. I clasped his hand in silence and the die was cast but it was not destined that our investigation should have so adventurous and ending. It was about five o'clock and the shadows of the

25:12march evening were beginning to fall when an excited rustic rushed into our room. They've gone Mr. Holmes they went by the last train the lady broke away and I've got her in a cab downstairs. Excellent Warner cried homes springing to his feet. What's the gaps are closing rapidly. In the cab was a woman half collapsed from nervous exhaustion. She bore upon her aquiline and emaciated face the traces of some recent tragedy. Her head hung listlessly upon her breast but as she raised it and turned her dull eyes upon us I saw that her pupils were dark dots in the center of the broad grey iris. She was drugged with opium. I watched at the gate same as you advised Mr. Holmes said our emissary the discharged gardener. When the carriage came out I followed it to the station. She was like one walking in her sleep but when they tried to get her into the train she came to life and struggled. They pushed her into the carriage and she fought her way out again. I took her

26:17part, got her into a cab and here we are. I shall not forget the face of the carriage window as I let her away. I'd have a short life if he had his way the black eyed scowling yellow devil. We carried her upstairs later on the sofa and a couple of cups of the strongest coffee soon cleared her brain from the mists of the drug. Bains had been summoned by Holmes and the situation rapidly explained to him. Why, sir, you've got me the very evidence I want, said the inspector warmly, shaking my friend by the hand. I was on the same scent as you from the first. What? You were after Henderson. I, Mr. Holmes, when you were crawling in the shrubbery at High Gable, I was up one of the trees in the plantation and saw you down below. It was just who would get his evidence first. Then why did you arrest them, you lato? Bains chuckled. I was sure Henderson, as he calls himself, felt that he was suspected and that he would lie low and make no move so long

27:20as he thought he was in any danger. I arrested the wrong man to make him believe that our eyes were off him. I knew he would be likely to clear off then and give us a chance of getting a misburnet. Holmes laid his hand upon the inspector's shoulder. You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and intuition, said he. Bains flushed with pleasure. I've had a plain clothesman waiting at the station all the week. Wherever the High Gable folk go, he will keep them in sight. But he must have been hard put to it when misburnet broke away. However, your man picked her up and it all ends well. We can't arrest without her evidence that is clear, so the sooner we get a statement, the better. Every minute she gets stronger, said Holmes, glancing at the governess. But tell me, Bains, who is this man Henderson? Anderson, the inspector answered, is Don Marillo once called the tiger of San Pedro.

28:23The tiger of San Pedro. The whole history of the man came back to me in a flash. He had made his name as the most lured and bloodthirsty tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to civilization. Strong, fearless and energetic. He had sufficient virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering people for ten or twelve years. His name was a terror through all Central America. At the end of that time, there was a universal rising against him, but he was as cunning as he was cruel. And at the first whisper of coming trouble, he had secretly conveyed his treasures aboard a ship, which was manned by devoted adherents. It was an empty palace which was stormed by the insurgents next day. The dictator, his two children, his secretary and his wealth had all escaped them. From that moment, he had vanished from the world. And his identity had been a frequent subject for comment in the European

29:26press. Yes, sir, Don Marillo. The tiger of San Pedro, said Bains. If you look it up, you will find that the San Pedro colors are green and white. Same as in the notes, Mr. Holmes. Anderson, he called himself, but I traced him back, Paris and Rome, and Madrid, to Barcelona. Whereas ship came in, in 86. They've been looking for him all the time for their revenge. But it is only now that they have begun to find him out. They discovered him a year ago, said Miss Burnett, who had sat up and was now intently following the conversation. Once already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him. Now again, it is the noble, chivalrous Garcia who was fallen, while the monster goes safe. But another will come, and yet another, until someday justice will be done. That is as certain as the rise of tomorrow's

30:26sun, a thin-hands clenched, and her worn face blanched with the passion of her hatred. But how come you, into this matter, Miss Burnett? Asked Holmes, how can an English lady join in such a murderous affair? I join it, because there is no other way in the world by which justice can be gained. What does the law of England care for the rivers of blood shed years ago in San Pedro, or for the shipload of treasure which this man has stolen? To you, they are like crimes committed in some other planet, but we know. We have learned the truth in sorrow and in suffering. To us there is no fiend in hell like Juan Morejo, and no peace in life while his victim still cry for vengeance. No doubt, said Holmes, he was, as you say. I have heard that he was atrocious. But how are you affected? I will tell you it all. This villain's policy was to murder on one

31:31pretext or another, every man who showed such promise that he might in time come to be a dangerous rival. My husband, yes, my real name is Signora Victor Durando, was the San Pedro minister in London. He met me and married me there. A nobleman never lived upon earth, unhappily, Morejo heard of his excellence, recalled him on some pretext, and had him shot. With a premonition of his fate, he had refused to take me with him. His estates were confiscated, and I was left with a pittance, and a broken heart. Then came the downfall of the tyrant. He escaped as you have just described. But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose nearest and dearest had suffered torture and death at his hands would not let the matter rest. They banded themselves into a society which should

32:32never be dissolved until the work was done. It was my part. After we had discovered in the transformed Henderson, the fallen, despoit, to attach myself to his household and keep the others in touch with his movements, this I was able to do by securing the position of governess in his family. He little knew that the woman who faced him at every meal was the woman whose husband he had hurried at an hour's notice into eternity. I smiled on him, did my duty to his children, and by did my time. An attempt was made in Paris and failed. We zigzagged swiftly here and there over Europe to throw off the pursuers, and finally returned to this house, which he had taken upon his first arrival in England. But here also the ministers of justice were waiting. Knowing that he would return there, Garcia, who is the son of the former highest dignitarian

33:35San Pedro, was waiting with two trusty companions of Humble Station, all three fired with the same reasons for revenge. He could do little during the day for Murillo took every precaution, and never went out save with his satellite Lucas saw, Lopez, as he was known in the days of his greatness. At night, however, he slept alone, and the Avenger might find him on a certain evening which had been pre-arranged, I sent my friend final instructions. For the man was forever on the alert and continually changed his room. I was to see that the doors were open, and the signal of a green or white light in a window which faced the drive was to give notice if all was safe, or if the attempt had better be postponed. But everything went wrong with us. In some way I had excited the suspicion of Lopez, the secretary.

34:36He crept up behind me and sprang upon me just as I had finished the note. He and his master dragged me to my room and held judgment upon me as a convicted treacherous. Then and there, they would have plunged their knives into me, could they have seen how to escape the consequences of the deed. Finally, after much debate, they concluded that my murder was too dangerous, but they determined to get rid forever of Garcia. They had gagged me and Murillo twisted my arm round until I gave him the address. I swear that he might have twisted it off, had I understood what it would mean to Garcia. Lopez addressed the note which I had written sealed it with his sleeve link consented by the hand of the servant Jose. How they murdered him, I do not know, saved that it was Murillo's hand who struck him down. For Lopez had remained to guard me. I believe he must have waited among the goss bushes through which the path winds and struck him

35:41down as he passed. At first they were of a mind to let him enter the house and to kill him as a detected burglar, but they argued that if they were mixed up in an inquiry, their own identity would at once be publicly disclosed and they would be open to further attacks. With the death of Garcia, the pursuit might cease. Since such a death might frighten others from the task, all would now have been well for them, had it not been for my knowledge of what they had done. I have no doubt that there were times when my life hung in the balance. I was confined to my room terrorized by the most horrible threats, cruelly ill-used to break my spirit. See this stab on my shoulder and the bruises from end to end of my arms, and a gag was thrust into my mouth on the one occasion when I tried to call from the window. For five days this cruel imprisonment continued with hardly enough food to hold

36:44body and soul together. This afternoon a good lunch was brought me, but the moment after I took it. I knew that I had been drugged. In a sort of dream I remember being half-lead, half-carried to the carriage. In the same state I was conveyed to the train. Only then, when the wheels were almost moving did I suddenly realize that my liberty lay in my own hands. I sprang out, they tried to drag me back and had it not been for the help of this good man who led me to the cab. I should never have broken away. Now, thank God, I am beyond their power forever. We had all listened in template this remarkable statement. It was Holmes who broke the silence. Our difficulties are not over. He remarked, shaking his head, our police were agains, but our legal work begins. Exactly said I.

37:48A plausible lawyer could make it out as an act of self-defense. There may be a hundred crimes in the background, but it is only on this one that they can be tried. Come, come, said Baines cheerily. I think better of the law than that. Self-defense is one thing. To entice a man in cold blood with the object of murdering him is another. Whatever danger you may fear from him. No, no, we shall all be justified when we see the tenants of High Gable at the next Gilford Assizes. It is a matter of history, however, that a little time was still to a lapse before the tiger of San Pedro should meet with his desserts. Wily and bold, he and his companion threw their pursuer off their track by entering a lodging house in Edmonton Street and leaving by the back gate into Curzon Square. From that day they were seen no more in England. Some six months afterwards the

38:50Marquis of Montalver and Signor Rulie, his secretary, were both murdered in their rooms at the Otele Escurial at Madrid. The crime was ascribed to nihilism and the murderers were never arrested. Inspector Baines visited us at Baker Street with a printed description of the dark face of the secretary and of the masterful features the magnetic black eyes and the tuffed brows of his master. We could not doubt that justice, if belated, had come at last. A chaotic case, my dear Watson, said Holmes over an evening pipe. It will not be possible for you to present in that compact form which is dear to your heart. It covers two continents, concerns two groups of mysterious persons, and is further complicated by the highly respectable presence of our friend Scott Echols, whose inclusion shows

39:54made that the deceased Garcia had a scheming mind and a well-developed instinct of self-preservation it is remarkable only for the fact that amid a perfect jungle of possibilities we, with our worthy collaborator, the inspector, have kept our close hold on the essentials, and so been guided along the crooked and winding path. Is there any point which is not quite clear to you? The object of the mulatto cooks return. I think that the strange creature in the kitchen may account for it. The man was a primitive savage from the backwards of San Pedro, and this was his fetish. When his companion and he had fled to some pre-arranged retreat, already occupied no doubt by a Confederate, the companion had persuaded him to leave so compromising an article of furniture, but the mulatto's heart was with it,

40:57and he was driven back to it next day when, on recognitering through the window, he found policemen walters in possession. He waited three days longer, and then his piety or his superstition drove him to try once more. Inspector Bain's, who, with his usual astute-ness had minimized the incident before me, had really recognised its importance and had left a trap into which the creature walked. Any other point, Watson? The torn bird, the pale of blood, the charred bones, all the mystery of that weird kitchen. Home smiled as he turned up an entry in his notebook. I spent a morning in the British Museum reading up on that and other points. Here's a quotation from Echermann's vudoism and the Negroid religions. The true vudo worshipper attempts nothing of importance without certain sacrifices, which are intended to propitiate his unclean gods.

42:02In extreme cases these rights take the form of human sacrifices, followed by cannibalism. The more usual victims are a white cock, which is plucked in pieces alive, or a black goat whose throat is cut and body burned. So you see, our savage friend was very orthodox in his ritual. It is Grotesque Watson, homes added, as he slowly fastened his notebook, but, as I have had occasion to remark, there is but one step from the Grotesque to the Horrible. That is the end of the adventure of Wisteria Lodge, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Greg Wackland for Magpie Audio. Copyright Magpie Audio 2019.