Chapter V: Part 5

“‘“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 postmark. 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 God, 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 Japanese
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 Fordingbridge? Then I remembered that
Fordingbridge 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 described 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 grey 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 daresay 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 space. 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.’

“‘Alas, Holmes, I fear that it is one of sin and shame!’ cried my
friend. ‘But from you I shall have no secrets. Here is the
statement which was drawn up by my father when he knew that the
danger from Hudson had become imminent. I found it in the
Japanese cabinet, as he told the doctor. Take it and read it to
me, for I have neither the strength nor the courage to do it
myself.’

“These are the very papers, Watson, which he handed to me, and I
will read them to you, as I read them in the old study that night
to him. They are endorsed outside, as you see, ‘Some particulars
of the voyage of the bark _Gloria Scott_, from her leaving
Falmouth on the 8th October, 1855, to her destruction in N. lat.
15º 20’, W. long. 25º 14’ on Nov. 6th.’ It is in the form of a
letter, and runs in this way:

“‘My dear, dear son,—Now that approaching disgrace begins to
darken the closing years of my life, I can write with all truth
and honesty that it is not the terror of the law, it is not the
loss of my position in the county, nor is it my fall in the eyes
of all who have known me, which cuts me to the heart; but it is
the thought that you should come to blush for me—you who love me
and who have seldom, I hope, had reason to do other than respect
me. But if the blow falls which is forever hanging over me, then
I should wish you to read this, that you may know straight from
me how far I have been to blame. On the other hand, if all should
go well (which may kind God Almighty grant!), then if by any
chance this paper should be still undestroyed and should fall
into your hands, I conjure you, by all you hold sacred, by the
memory of your dear mother, and by the love which had been
between us, to hurl it into the fire and to never give one
thought to it again.

“‘If then your eye goes on to read this line, I know that I shall
already have been exposed and dragged from my home, or as is more
likely, for you know that my heart is weak, by lying with my
tongue sealed forever in death. In either case the time for
suppression is past, and every word which I tell you is the naked
truth, and this I swear as I hope for mercy.

“‘My name, dear lad, is not Trevor. I was James Armitage in my
younger days, and you can understand now the shock that it was to
me a few weeks ago when your college friend addressed me in words
which seemed to imply that he had surmised my secret. As Armitage
it was that I entered a London banking house, and as Armitage I
was convicted of breaking my country’s laws, and was sentenced to
transportation. Do not think very harshly of me, laddie. It was a
debt of honour, so called, which I had to pay, and I used money
which was not my own to do it, in the certainty that I could
replace it before there could be any possibility of its being
missed. But the most dreadful ill-luck pursued me. The money
which I had reckoned upon never came to hand, and a premature
examination of accounts exposed my deficit. The case might have
been dealt leniently with, but the laws were more harshly
administered thirty years ago than now, and on my twenty-third
birthday I found myself chained as a felon with thirty-seven
other convicts in ’tween-decks of the barque _Gloria Scott_,
bound for Australia.

“‘It was the year ’55 when the Crimean war was at its height, and
the old convict ships had been largely used as transports in the
Black Sea. The government was compelled, therefore, to use
smaller and less suitable vessels for sending out their
prisoners. The _Gloria Scott_ had been in the Chinese tea trade,
but she was an old-fashioned, heavy-bowed, broad-beamed craft,
and the new clippers had cut her out. She was a five-hundred-ton
boat, and besides her thirty-eight gaol-birds, she carried
twenty-six of a crew, eighteen soldiers, a captain, three mates,
a doctor, a chaplain, and four warders. Nearly a hundred souls
were in her, all told, when we set sail from Falmouth.

“‘The partitions between the cells of the convicts, instead of
being of thick oak, as is usual in convict-ships, were quite thin
and frail. The man next to me, upon the aft side, was one whom I
had particularly noticed when we were led down the quay. He was a
young man with a clear, hairless face, a long, thin nose, and
rather nut-cracker jaws. He carried his head very jauntily in the
air, had a swaggering style of walking, and was, above all else,
remarkable for his extraordinary height. I don’t think any of our
heads would have come up to his shoulder, and I am sure that he
could not have measured less than six and a half feet. It was
strange among so many sad and weary faces to see one which was
full of energy and resolution. The sight of it was to me like a
fire in a snowstorm. I was glad, then, to find that he was my
neighbour, and gladder still when, in the dead of the night, I
heard a whisper close to my ear, and found that he had managed to
cut an opening in the board which separated us.

“‘“Hallao, chummy!” said he, “what’s your name, and what are you
here for?”

“‘I answered him, and asked in turn who I was talking with.

“‘“I’m Jack Prendergast,” said he, “and by God! You’ll learn to
bless my name before you’ve done with me.”

“‘I remembered hearing of his case, for it was one which had made
an immense sensation throughout the country some time before my
own arrest. He was a man of good family and of great ability, but
of incurably vicious habits, who had by an ingenious system of
fraud obtained huge sums of money from the leading London
merchants.

“‘“Ha, ha! You remember my case!” said he proudly.

“‘“Very well, indeed.”

“‘“Then maybe you remember something queer about it?”

“‘“What was that, then?”

“‘“I’d had nearly a quarter of a million, hadn’t I?”

“‘“So it was said.”

“‘“But none was recovered, eh?”

“‘“No.”

“‘“Well, where d’ye suppose the balance is?” he asked.

“‘“I have no idea,” said I.

“‘“Right between my finger and thumb,” he cried. “By God! I’ve
got more pounds to my name than you’ve hairs on your head. And if
you’ve money, my son, and know how to handle it and spread it,
you can do _anything!_ Now, you don’t think it likely that a man
who could do anything is going to wear his breeches out sitting
in the stinking hold of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden, mouldy old
coffin of a China coaster. No, sir, such a man will look after
himself and will look after his chums. You may lay to that! You
hold on to him, and you may kiss the book that he’ll haul you
through.”

“‘That was his style of talk, and at first I thought it meant
nothing; but after a while, when he had tested me and sworn me in
with all possible solemnity, he let me understand that there
really was a plot to gain command of the vessel. A dozen of the
prisoners had hatched it before they came aboard, Prendergast was
the leader, and his money was the motive power.

“‘“I’d a partner,” said he, “a rare good man, as true as a stock
to a barrel. He’s got the dibbs, he has, and where do you think
he is at this moment? Why, he’s the chaplain of this ship—the
chaplain, no less! He came aboard with a black coat, and his
papers right, and money enough in his box to buy the thing right
up from keel to main-truck. The crew are his, body and soul. He
could buy ’em at so much a gross with a cash discount, and he did
it before ever they signed on. He’s got two of the warders and
Mercer, the second mate, and he’d get the captain himself, if he
thought him worth it.”

“‘“What are we to do, then?” I asked.

“‘“What do you think?” said he. “We’ll make the coats of some of
these soldiers redder than ever the tailor did.”

“‘“But they are armed,” said I.

“‘“And so shall we be, my boy. There’s a brace of pistols for
every mother’s son of us, and if we can’t carry this ship, with
the crew at our back, it’s time we were all sent to a young
misses’ boarding-school. You speak to your mate upon the left
to-night, and see if he is to be trusted.”

“‘I did so, and found my other neighbour to be a young fellow in
much the same position as myself, whose crime had been forgery.
His name was Evans, but he afterwards changed it, like myself,
and he is now a rich and prosperous man in the south of England.
He was ready enough to join the conspiracy, as the only means of
saving ourselves, and before we had crossed the Bay there were
only two of the prisoners who were not in the secret. One of
these was of weak mind, and we did not dare to trust him, and the
other was suffering from jaundice, and could not be of any use to
us.

““From the beginning there was really nothing to prevent us from
taking possession of the ship. The crew were a set of ruffians,
specially picked for the job. The sham chaplain came into our
cells to exhort us, carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of
tracts, and so often did he come that by the third day we had
each stowed away at the foot of our beds a file, a brace of
pistols, a pound of powder, and twenty slugs. Two of the warders
were agents of Prendergast, and the second mate was his
right-hand man. The captain, the two mates, two warders,
Lieutenant Martin, his eighteen soldiers, and the doctor were all
that we had against us. Yet, safe as it was, we determined to
neglect no precaution, and to make our attack suddenly by night.
It came, however, more quickly than we expected, and in this way.

“‘One evening, about the third week after our start, the doctor
had come down to see one of the prisoners who was ill, and
putting his hand down on the bottom of his bunk he felt the
outline of the pistols. If he had been silent he might have blown
the whole thing, but he was a nervous little chap, so he gave a
cry of surprise and turned so pale that the man knew what was up
in an instant and seized him. He was gagged before he could give
the alarm, and tied down upon the bed. He had unlocked the door
that led to the deck, and we were through it in a rush. The two
sentries were shot down, and so was a corporal who came running
to see what was the matter. There were two more soldiers at the
door of the state-room, and their muskets seemed not to be
loaded, for they never fired upon us, and they were shot while
trying to fix their bayonets. Then we rushed on into the
captain’s cabin, but as we pushed open the door there was an
explosion from within, and there he lay with his brains smeared
over the chart of the Atlantic which was pinned upon the table,
while the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand at his
elbow. The two mates had both been seized by the crew, and the
whole business seemed to be settled.

“‘The state-room was next the cabin, and we flocked in there and
flopped down on the settees, all speaking together, for we were
just mad with the feeling that we were free once more. There were
lockers all round, and Wilson, the sham chaplain, knocked one of
them in, and pulled out a dozen of brown sherry. We cracked off
the necks of the bottles, poured the stuff out into tumblers, and
were just tossing them off, when in an instant without warning
there came the roar of muskets in our ears, and the saloon was so
full of smoke that we could not see across the table. When it
cleared again the place was a shambles. Wilson and eight others
were wriggling on the top of each other on the floor, and the
blood and the brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when I
think of it. We were so cowed by the sight that I think we should
have given the job up if it had not been for Prendergast. He
bellowed like a bull and rushed for the door with all that were
left alive at his heels. Out we ran, and there on the poop were
the lieutenant and ten of his men. The swing skylights above the
saloon table had been a bit open, and they had fired on us
through the slit. We got on them before they could load, and they
stood to it like men; but we had the upper hand of them, and in
five minutes it was all over. My God! Was there ever a
slaughter-house like that ship! Prendergast was like a raging
devil, and he picked the soldiers up as if they had been children
and threw them overboard alive or dead. There was one sergeant
that was horribly wounded and yet kept on swimming for a
surprising time, until some one in mercy blew out his brains.
When the fighting was over there was no one left of our enemies
except just the warders, the mates, and the doctor.

“‘It was over them that the great quarrel arose. There were many
of us who were glad enough to win back our freedom, and yet who
had no wish to have murder on our souls. It was one thing to
knock the soldiers over with their muskets in their hands, and it
was another to stand by while men were being killed in cold
blood. Eight of us, five convicts and three sailors, said that we
would not see it done. But there was no moving Prendergast and
those who were with him. Our only chance of safety lay in making
a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with
power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to our sharing the
fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wished we
might take a boat and go. We jumped at the offer, for we were
already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that there
would be worse before it was done. We were given a suit of
sailors’ togs each, a barrel of water, two casks, one of junk and
one of biscuits, and a compass. Prendergast threw us over a
chart, told us that we were shipwrecked mariners whose ship had
foundered in lat. 15º N. and long 25º W., and then cut the
painter and let us go.

“‘And now I come to the most surprising part of my story, my dear
son. The seamen had hauled the foreyard aback during the rising,
but now as we left them they brought it square again, and as
there was a light wind from the north and east the barque began
to draw slowly away from us. Our boat lay, rising and falling,
upon the long, smooth rollers, and Evans and I, who were the most
educated of the party, were sitting in the sheets working out our
position and planning what coast we should make for. It was a
nice question, for the Cape de Verds were about five hundred
miles to the north of us, and the African coast about seven
hundred to the east. On the whole, as the wind was coming round
to the north, we thought that Sierra Leone might be best, and
turned our head in that direction, the barque being at that time
nearly hull down on our starboard quarter. Suddenly as we looked
at her we saw a dense black cloud of smoke shoot up from her,
which hung like a monstrous tree upon the sky line. A few seconds
later a roar like thunder burst upon our ears, and as the smoke
thinned away there was no sign left of the _Gloria Scott_. In an
instant we swept the boat’s head round again and pulled with all
our strength for the place where the haze still trailing over the
water marked the scene of this catastrophe.

“‘It was a long hour before we reached it, and at first we feared
that we had come too late to save any one. A splintered boat and
a number of crates and fragments of spars rising and falling on
the waves showed us where the vessel had foundered; but there was
no sign of life, and we had turned away in despair when we heard
a cry for help, and saw at some distance a piece of wreckage with
a man lying stretched across it. When we pulled him aboard the
boat he proved to be a young seaman of the name of Hudson, who
was so burned and exhausted that he could give us no account of
what had happened until the following morning.

“‘It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast and his gang had
proceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners. The two
warders had been shot and thrown overboard, and so also had the
third mate. Prendergast then descended into the ’tween-decks and
with his own hands cut the throat of the unfortunate surgeon.
There only remained the first mate, who was a bold and active
man. When he saw the convict approaching him with the bloody
knife in his hand he kicked off his bonds, which he had somehow
contrived to loosen, and rushing down the deck he plunged into
the after-hold.

“‘A dozen convicts, who descended with their pistols in search of
him, found him with a match-box in his hand seated beside an open
powder barrel, which was one of a hundred carried on board, and
swearing that he would blow all hands up if he were in any way
molested. An instant later the explosion occurred, though Hudson
thought it was caused by the misdirected bullet of one of the
convicts rather than the mate’s match. Be the cause what it may,
it was the end of the _Gloria Scott_ and of the rabble who held
command of her.

“‘Such, in a few words, my dear boy, is the history of this
terrible business in which I was involved. Next day we were
picked up by the brig _Hotspur_, bound for Australia, whose
captain found no difficulty in believing that we were the
survivors of a passenger ship which had foundered. The transport
ship _Gloria Scott_ was set down by the Admiralty as being lost
at sea, and no word has ever leaked out as to her true fate.
After an excellent voyage the _Hotspur_ landed us at Sydney,
where Evans and I changed our names and made our way to the
diggings, where, among the crowds who were gathered from all
nations, we had no difficulty in losing our former identities.

“‘The rest I need not relate. We prospered, we travelled, we came
back as rich colonials to England, and we bought country estates.
For more than twenty years we have led peaceful and useful lives,
and we hoped that our past was forever buried. Imagine, then, my
feelings when in the seaman who came to us I recognised instantly
the man who had been picked off the wreck. He had tracked us down
somehow, and had set himself to live upon our fears. You will
understand now how it was that I strove to keep the peace with
him, and you will in some measure sympathise with me in the fears
which fill me, now that he has gone from me to his other victim
with threats upon his tongue.’

“Underneath is written in a hand so shaky as to be hardly
legible, ‘Beddoes writes in cipher to say H. has told all. Sweet
Lord, have mercy on our souls!’

“That was the narrative which I read that night to young Trevor,
and I think, Watson, that under the circumstances it was a
dramatic one. The good fellow was heartbroken at it, and went out
to the Terai tea planting, where I hear that he is doing well. As
to the sailor and Beddoes, neither of them was ever heard of
again after that day on which the letter of warning was written.
They both disappeared utterly and completely. No complaint had
been lodged with the police, so that Beddoes had mistaken a
threat for a deed. Hudson had been seen lurking about, and it was
believed by the police that he had done away with Beddoes and had
fled. For myself I believe that the truth was exactly the
opposite. I think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed
to desperation and believing himself to have been already
betrayed, had revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the
country with as much money as he could lay his hands on. Those
are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they are of any use to
your collection, I am sure that they are very heartily at your
service.”

VI. The Musgrave Ritual

An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend
Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he
was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also
he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the
less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever
drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least
conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in
Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of
disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical
man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who
keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end
of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence
transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden
mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have
always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an
open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humours,
would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred
Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a
patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that
neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was
improved by it.

Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics
which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of
turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places.
But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying
documents, especially those which were connected with his past
cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he
would muster energy to docket and arrange them; for, as I have
mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of
passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with
which his name is associated were followed by reactions of
lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his
books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table. Thus month
after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the
room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no
account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by
their owner. One winter’s night, as we sat together by the fire,
I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting
extracts into his common-place book, he might employ the next two
hours in making our room a little more habitable. He could not
deny the justice of my request, so with a rather rueful face he
went off to his bedroom, from which he returned presently pulling
a large tin box behind him. This he placed in the middle of the
floor and, squatting down upon a stool in front of it, he threw
back the lid. I could see that it was already a third full of
bundles of paper tied up with red tape into separate packages.

“There are cases enough here, Watson,” said he, looking at me
with mischievous eyes. “I think that if you knew all that I had
in this box you would ask me to pull some out instead of putting
others in.”

“These are the records of your early work, then?” I asked. “I
have often wished that I had notes of those cases.”

“Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before my
biographer had come to glorify me.” He lifted bundle after bundle
in a tender, caressing sort of way. “They are not all successes,
Watson,” said he. “But there are some pretty little problems
among them. Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders, and the
case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old
Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch,
as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his
abominable wife. And here—ah, now, this really is something a
little _recherché_.”

He dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest, and brought up
a small wooden box with a sliding lid, such as children’s toys
are kept in. From within he produced a crumpled piece of paper,
an old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string
attached to it, and three rusty old disks of metal.

“Well, my boy, what do you make of this lot?” he asked, smiling
at my expression.

“It is a curious collection.”

“Very curious, and the story that hangs round it will strike you
as being more curious still.”

“These relics have a history then?”

“So much so that they _are_ history.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Sherlock Holmes picked them up one by one, and laid them along
the edge of the table. Then he reseated himself in his chair and
looked them over with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

“These,” said he, “are all that I have left to remind me of the
adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.”

I had heard him mention the case more than once, though I had
never been able to gather the details.

“I should be so glad,” said I, “if you would give me an account
of it.”

“And leave the litter as it is?” he cried, mischievously. “Your
tidiness won’t bear much strain after all, Watson. But I should
be glad that you should add this case to your annals, for there
are points in it which make it quite unique in the criminal
records of this or, I believe, of any other country. A collection
of my trifling achievements would certainly be incomplete which
contained no account of this very singular business.

“You may remember how the affair of the _Gloria Scott_, and my
conversation with the unhappy man whose fate I told you of, first
turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has
become my life’s work. You see me now when my name has become
known far and wide, and when I am generally recognised both by
the public and by the official force as being a final court of
appeal in doubtful cases. Even when you knew me first, at the
time of the affair which you have commemorated in ‘A Study in
Scarlet,’ I had already established a considerable, though not a
very lucrative, connection. You can hardly realize, then, how
difficult I found it at first, and how long I had to wait before
I succeeded in making any headway.

“When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street,
just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I
waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all
those branches of science which might make me more efficient. Now
and again cases came in my way, principally through the
introduction of old fellow-students, for during my last years at
the University there was a good deal of talk there about myself
and my methods. The third of these cases was that of the Musgrave
Ritual, and it is to the interest which was aroused by that
singular chain of events, and the large issues which proved to be
at stake, that I trace my first stride towards the position which
I now hold.

“Reginald Musgrave had been in the same college as myself, and I
had some slight acquaintance with him. He was not generally
popular among the undergraduates, though it always seemed to me
that what was set down as pride was really an attempt to cover
extreme natural diffidence. In appearance he was a man of
exceedingly aristocratic type, thin, high-nosed, and large-eyed,
with languid and yet courtly manners. He was indeed a scion of
one of the very oldest families in the kingdom, though his branch
was a cadet one which had separated from the northern Musgraves
some time in the sixteenth century, and had established itself in
western Sussex, where the Manor House of Hurlstone is perhaps the
oldest inhabited building in the county. Something of his
birthplace seemed to cling to the man, and I never looked at his
pale, keen face or the poise of his head without associating him
with grey archways and mullioned windows and all the venerable
wreckage of a feudal keep. Once or twice we drifted into talk,
and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen
interest in my methods of observation and inference.

“For four years I had seen nothing of him until one morning he
walked into my room in Montague Street. He had changed little,
was dressed like a young man of fashion—he was always a bit of a
dandy—and preserved the same quiet, suave manner which had
formerly distinguished him.

“‘How has all gone with you Musgrave?’ I asked, after we had
cordially shaken hands.

“‘You probably heard of my poor father’s death,’ said he; ‘he was
carried off about two years ago. Since then I have of course had
the Hurlstone estates to manage, and as I am member for my
district as well, my life has been a busy one. But I understand,
Holmes, that you are turning to practical ends those powers with
which you used to amaze us?’

“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I have taken to living by my wits.’

“‘I am delighted to hear it, for your advice at present would be
exceedingly valuable to me. We have had some very strange doings
at Hurlstone, and the police have been able to throw no light
upon the matter. It is really the most extraordinary and
inexplicable business.’

“You can imagine with what eagerness I listened to him, Watson,
for the very chance for which I had been panting during all those
months of inaction seemed to have come within my reach. In my
inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed,
and now I had the opportunity to test myself.

“‘Pray, let me have the details,’ I cried.

“Reginald Musgrave sat down opposite to me, and lit the cigarette
which I had pushed towards him.

“‘You must know,’ said he, ‘that though I am a bachelor, I have
to keep up a considerable staff of servants at Hurlstone, for it
is a rambling old place, and takes a good deal of looking after.
I preserve, too, and in the pheasant months I usually have a
house-party, so that it would not do to be short-handed.
Altogether there are eight maids, the cook, the butler, two
footmen, and a boy. The garden and the stables of course have a
separate staff.

“‘Of these servants the one who had been longest in our service
was Brunton the butler. He was a young schoolmaster out of place
when he was first taken up by my father, but he was a man of
great energy and character, and he soon became quite invaluable
in the household. He was a well-grown, handsome man, with a
splendid forehead, and though he has been with us for twenty
years he cannot be more than forty now. With his personal
advantages and his extraordinary gifts—for he can speak several
languages and play nearly every musical instrument—it is
wonderful that he should have been satisfied so long in such a
position, but I suppose that he was comfortable, and lacked
energy to make any change. The butler of Hurlstone is always a
thing that is remembered by all who visit us.

“‘But this paragon has one fault. He is a bit of a Don Juan, and
you can imagine that for a man like him it is not a very
difficult part to play in a quiet country district. When he was
married it was all right, but since he has been a widower we have
had no end of trouble with him. A few months ago we were in hopes
that he was about to settle down again for he became engaged to
Rachel Howells, our second housemaid; but he has thrown her over
since then and taken up with Janet Tregellis, the daughter of the
head gamekeeper. Rachel—who is a very good girl, but of an
excitable Welsh temperament—had a sharp touch of brain-fever, and
goes about the house now—or did until yesterday—like a black-eyed
shadow of her former self. That was our first drama at Hurlstone;
but a second one came to drive it from our minds, and it was
prefaced by the disgrace and dismissal of butler Brunton.

“‘This was how it came about. I have said that the man was
intelligent, and this very intelligence has caused his ruin, for
it seems to have led to an insatiable curiosity about things
which did not in the least concern him. I had no idea of the
lengths to which this would carry him, until the merest accident
opened my eyes to it.

“‘I have said that the house is a rambling one. One day last
week—on Thursday night, to be more exact—I found that I could not
sleep, having foolishly taken a cup of strong _café noir_ after
my dinner. After struggling against it until two in the morning,
I felt that it was quite hopeless, so I rose and lit the candle
with the intention of continuing a novel which I was reading. The
book, however, had been left in the billiard-room, so I pulled on
my dressing-gown and started off to get it.

“‘In order to reach the billiard-room I had to descend a flight
of stairs and then to cross the head of a passage which led to
the library and the gun-room. You can imagine my surprise when,
as I looked down this corridor, I saw a glimmer of light coming
from the open door of the library. I had myself extinguished the
lamp and closed the door before coming to bed. Naturally my first
thought was of burglars. The corridors at Hurlstone have their
walls largely decorated with trophies of old weapons. From one of
these I picked a battle-axe, and then, leaving my candle behind
me, I crept on tiptoe down the passage and peeped in at the open
door.

“‘Brunton, the butler, was in the library. He was sitting, fully
dressed, in an easy-chair, with a slip of paper which looked like
a map upon his knee, and his forehead sunk forward upon his hand
in deep thought. I stood dumb with astonishment, watching him
from the darkness. A small taper on the edge of the table shed a
feeble light which sufficed to show me that he was fully dressed.
Suddenly, as I looked, he rose from his chair, and walking over
to a bureau at the side, he unlocked it and drew out one of the
drawers. From this he took a paper, and returning to his seat he
flattened it out beside the taper on the edge of the table, and
began to study it with minute attention. My indignation at this
calm examination of our family documents overcame me so far that
I took a step forward, and Brunton, looking up, saw me standing
in the doorway. He sprang to his feet, his face turned livid with
fear, and he thrust into his breast the chart-like paper which he
had been originally studying.

“‘“So!” said I. “This is how you repay the trust which we have
reposed in you. You will leave my service to-morrow.”

“‘He bowed with the look of a man who is utterly crushed, and
slunk past me without a word. The taper was still on the table,
and by its light I glanced to see what the paper was which
Brunton had taken from the bureau. To my surprise it was nothing
of any importance at all, but simply a copy of the questions and
answers in the singular old observance called the Musgrave
Ritual. It is a sort of ceremony peculiar to our family, which
each Musgrave for centuries past has gone through on his coming
of age—a thing of private interest, and perhaps of some little
importance to the archaeologist, like our own blazonings and
charges, but of no practical use whatever.’

“‘We had better come back to the paper afterwards,’ said I.

“‘If you think it really necessary,’ he answered, with some
hesitation. ‘To continue my statement, however: I relocked the
bureau, using the key which Brunton had left, and I had turned to
go when I was surprised to find that the butler had returned, and
was standing before me.

“‘“Mr. Musgrave, sir,” he cried, in a voice which was hoarse with
emotion, “I can’t bear disgrace, sir. I’ve always been proud
above my station in life, and disgrace would kill me. My blood
will be on your head, sir—it will, indeed—if you drive me to
despair. If you cannot keep me after what has passed, then for
God’s sake let me give you notice and leave in a month, as if of
my own free will. I could stand that, Mr. Musgrave, but not to be
cast out before all the folk that I know so well.”

“‘“You don’t deserve much consideration, Brunton,” I answered.
“Your conduct has been most infamous. However, as you have been a
long time in the family, I have no wish to bring public disgrace
upon you. A month, however is too long. Take yourself away in a
week, and give what reason you like for going.”

“‘“Only a week, sir?” he cried, in a despairing voice. “A
fortnight—say at least a fortnight!”

“‘“A week,” I repeated, “and you may consider yourself to have
been very leniently dealt with.”

“‘He crept away, his face sunk upon his breast, like a broken
man, while I put out the light and returned to my room.

“‘For two days after this Brunton was most assiduous in his
attention to his duties. I made no allusion to what had passed,
and waited with some curiosity to see how he would cover his
disgrace. On the third morning, however he did not appear, as was
his custom, after breakfast to receive my instructions for the
day. As I left the dining-room I happened to meet Rachel Howells,
the maid. I have told you that she had only recently recovered
from an illness, and was looking so wretchedly pale and wan that
I remonstrated with her for being at work.

“‘“You should be in bed,” I said. “Come back to your duties when
you are stronger.”

“‘She looked at me with so strange an expression that I began to
suspect that her brain was affected.

“‘“I am strong enough, Mr. Musgrave,” said she.

“‘“We will see what the doctor says,” I answered. “You must stop
work now, and when you go downstairs just say that I wish to see
Brunton.”

“‘“The butler is gone,” said she.

“‘“Gone! Gone where?”

“‘“He is gone. No one has seen him. He is not in his room. Oh,
yes, he is gone, he is gone!” She fell back against the wall with
shriek after shriek of laughter, while I, horrified at this
sudden hysterical attack, rushed to the bell to summon help. The
girl was taken to her room, still screaming and sobbing, while I
made inquiries about Brunton. There was no doubt about it that he
had disappeared. His bed had not been slept in, he had been seen
by no one since he had retired to his room the night before, and
yet it was difficult to see how he could have left the house, as
both windows and doors were found to be fastened in the morning.
His clothes, his watch, and even his money were in his room, but
the black suit which he usually wore was missing. His slippers,
too, were gone, but his boots were left behind. Where then could
butler Brunton have gone in the night, and what could have become
of him now?

“‘Of course we searched the house from cellar to garret, but
there was no trace of him. It is, as I have said, a labyrinth of
an old house, especially the original wing, which is now
practically uninhabited; but we ransacked every room and cellar
without discovering the least sign of the missing man. It was
incredible to me that he could have gone away leaving all his
property behind him, and yet where could he be? I called in the
local police, but without success. Rain had fallen on the night
before and we examined the lawn and the paths all round the
house, but in vain. Matters were in this state, when a new
development quite drew our attention away from the original
mystery.

“‘For two days Rachel Howells had been so ill, sometimes
delirious, sometimes hysterical, that a nurse had been employed
to sit up with her at night. On the third night after Brunton’s
disappearance, the nurse, finding her patient sleeping nicely,
had dropped into a nap in the armchair, when she woke in the
early morning to find the bed empty, the window open, and no
signs of the invalid. I was instantly aroused, and, with the two
footmen, started off at once in search of the missing girl. It
was not difficult to tell the direction which she had taken, for,
starting from under her window, we could follow her footmarks
easily across the lawn to the edge of the mere, where they
vanished close to the gravel path which leads out of the grounds.
The lake there is eight feet deep, and you can imagine our
feelings when we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl
came to an end at the edge of it.

“‘Of course, we had the drags at once, and set to work to recover
the remains, but no trace of the body could we find. On the other
hand, we brought to the surface an object of a most unexpected
kind. It was a linen bag which contained within it a mass of old
rusted and discoloured metal and several dull-coloured pieces of
pebble or glass. This strange find was all that we could get from
the mere, and, although we made every possible search and inquiry
yesterday, we know nothing of the fate either of Rachel Howells
or of Richard Brunton. The county police are at their wits’ end,
and I have come up to you as a last resource.’

“You can imagine, Watson, with what eagerness I listened to this
extraordinary sequence of events, and endeavoured to piece them
together, and to devise some common thread upon which they might
all hang. The butler was gone. The maid was gone. The maid had
loved the butler, but had afterwards had cause to hate him. She
was of Welsh blood, fiery and passionate. She had been terribly
excited immediately after his disappearance. She had flung into
the lake a bag containing some curious contents. These were all
factors which had to be taken into consideration, and yet none of
them got quite to the heart of the matter. What was the
starting-point of this chain of events? There lay the end of this
tangled line.

“‘I must see that paper, Musgrave,’ said I, ‘which this butler of
yours thought it worth his while to consult, even at the risk of
the loss of his place.’

“‘It is rather an absurd business, this ritual of ours,’ he
answered. ‘But it has at least the saving grace of antiquity to
excuse it. I have a copy of the questions and answers here if you
care to run your eye over them.’

“He handed me the very paper which I have here, Watson, and this
is the strange catechism to which each Musgrave had to submit
when he came to man’s estate. I will read you the questions and
answers as they stand.

“‘Whose was it?’

“‘His who is gone.’

“‘Who shall have it?’

“‘He who will come.’

“‘Where was the sun?’

“‘Over the oak.’

“‘Where was the shadow?’

“‘Under the elm.’

“How was it stepped?’

“‘North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two
and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.’

“‘What shall we give for it?’

“‘All that is ours.’

“‘Why should we give it?’

“‘For the sake of the trust.’

“‘The original has no date, but is in the spelling of the middle
of the seventeenth century,’ remarked Musgrave. ‘I am afraid,
however, that it can be of little help to you in solving this
mystery.’

“‘At least,’ said I, ‘it gives us another mystery, and one which
is even more interesting than the first. It may be that the
solution of the one may prove to be the solution of the other.
You will excuse me, Musgrave, if I say that your butler appears
to me to have been a very clever man, and to have had a clearer
insight than ten generations of his masters.’

“‘I hardly follow you,’ said Musgrave. ‘The paper seems to me to
be of no practical importance.’