His Last Bow, Arthur Conan Doyle [love books to read TXT] 📗

>that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely

without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the

criminal classes. Go, then, my dear Watson, and if my humble

counsel can ever be valued at so extravagant a rate as two pence

a word, it waits your disposal night and day at the end of the

Continental wire.”

 

Two days later found me at the Hotel National at Lausanne, where

I received every courtesy at the hands of M. Moser, the well-known manager. Lady Frances, as he informed me, had stayed there

for several weeks. She had been much liked by all who met her.

Her age was not more than forty. She was still handsome and bore

every sign of having in her youth been a very lovely woman. M.

Moser knew nothing of any valuable jewellery, but it had been

remarked by the servants that the heavy trunk in the lady’s

bedroom was always scrupulously locked. Marie Devine, the maid,

was as popular as her mistress. She was actually engaged to one

of the head waiters in the hotel, and there was no difficulty in

getting her address. It was 11 Rue de Trajan, Montpellier. All

this I jotted down and felt that Holmes himself could not have

been more adroit in collecting his facts.

 

Only one corner still remained in the shadow. No light which I

possessed could clear up the cause for the lady’s sudden

departure. She was very happy at Lausanne. There was every

reason to believe that she intended to remain for the season in

her luxurious rooms overlooking the lake. And yet she had left

at a single day’s notice, which involved her in the useless

payment of a week’s rent. Only Jules Vibart, the lover of the

maid, had any suggestion to offer. He connected the sudden

departure with the visit to the hotel a day or two before of a

tall, dark, bearded man. “Un sauvage—un veritable sauvage!”

cried Jules Vibart. The man had rooms somewhere in the town. He

had been seen talking earnestly to Madame on the promenade by the

lake. Then he had called. She had refused to see him. He was

English, but of his name there was no record. Madame had left

the place immediately afterwards. Jules Vibart, and, what was of

more importance, Jules Vibart’s sweetheart, thought that this

call and the departure were cause and effect. Only one thing

Jules would not discuss. That was the reason why Marie had left

her mistress. Of that he could or would say nothing. If I

wished to know, I must go to Montpellier and ask her.

 

So ended the first chapter of my inquiry. The second was devoted

to the place which Lady Frances Carfax had sought when she left

Lausanne. Concerning this there had been some secrecy, which

confirmed the idea that she had gone with the intention of

throwing someone off her track. Otherwise why should not her

luggage have been openly labelled for Baden? Both she and it

reached the Rhenish spa by some circuitous route. This much I

gathered from the manager of Cook’s local office. So to Baden I

went, after dispatching to Holmes an account of all my

proceedings and receiving in reply a telegram of half-humorous

commendation.

 

At Baden the track was not difficult to follow. Lady Frances had

stayed at the Englischer Hof for a fortnight. While there she

had made the acquaintance of a Dr. Shlessinger and his wife, a

missionary from South America. Like most lonely ladies, Lady

Frances found her comfort and occupation in religion. Dr.

Shlessinger’s remarkable personality, his whole hearted devotion,

and the fact that he was recovering from a disease contracted in

the exercise of his apostolic duties affected her deeply. She

had helped Mrs. Shlessinger in the nursing of the convalescent

saint. He spent his day, as the manager described it to me, upon

a lounge-chair on the veranda, with an attendant lady upon either

side of him. He was preparing a map of the Holy Land, with

special reference to the kingdom of the Midianites, upon which he

was writing a monograph. Finally, having improved much in

health, he and his wife had returned to London, and Lady Frances

had started thither in their company. This was just three weeks

before, and the manager had heard nothing since. As to the maid,

Marie, she had gone off some days beforehand in floods of tears,

after informing the other maids that she was leaving service

forever. Dr. Shlessinger had paid the bill of the whole party

before his departure.

 

“By the way,” said the landlord in conclusion, “you are not the

only friend of Lady Frances Carfax who is inquiring after her

just now. Only a week or so ago we had a man here upon the same

errand.”

 

“Did he give a name?” I asked.

 

“None; but he was an Englishman, though of an unusual type.”

 

“A savage?” said I, linking my facts after the fashion of my

illustrious friend.

 

“Exactly. That describes him very well. He is a bulky, bearded,

sunburned fellow, who looks as if he would be more at home in a

farmers’ inn than in a fashionable hotel. A hard, fierce man, I

should think, and one whom I should be sorry to offend.”

 

Already the mystery began to define itself, as figures grow

clearer with the lifting of a fog. Here was this good and pious

lady pursued from place to place by a sinister and unrelenting

figure. She feared him, or she would not have fled from

Lausanne. He had still followed. Sooner or later he would

overtake her. Had he already overtaken her? Was THAT the secret

of her continued silence? Could the good people who were her

companions not screen her from his violence or his blackmail?

What horrible purpose, what deep design, lay behind this long

pursuit? There was the problem which I had to solve.

 

To Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly and surely I had got down

to the roots of the matter. In reply I had a telegram asking for

a description of Dr. Shlessinger’s left ear. Holmes’s ideas of

humour are strange and occasionally offensive, so I took no

notice of his ill-timed jest—indeed, I had already reached

Montpellier in my pursuit of the maid, Marie, before his message

came.

 

I had no difficulty in finding the ex-servant and in learning all

that she could tell me. She was a devoted creature, who had only

left her mistress because she was sure that she was in good

hands, and because her own approaching marriage made a separation

inevitable in any case. Her mistress had, as she confessed with

distress, shown some irritability of temper towards her during

their stay in Baden, and had even questioned her once as if she

had suspicions of her honesty, and this had made the parting

easier than it would otherwise have been. Lady Frances had given

her fifty pounds as a wedding-present. Like me, Marie viewed

with deep distrust the stranger who had driven her mistress from

Lausanne. With her own eyes she had seen him seize the lady’s

wrist with great violence on the public promenade by the lake.

He was a fierce and terrible man. She believed that it was out

of dread of him that Lady Frances had accepted the escort of the

Shlessingers to London. She had never spoken to Marie about it,

but many little signs had convinced the maid that her mistress

lived in a state of continual nervous apprehension. So far she

had got in her narrative, when suddenly she sprang from her chair

and her face was convulsed with surprise and fear. “See!” she

cried. “The miscreant follows still! There is the very man of

whom I speak.”

 

Through the open sitting-room window I saw a huge, swarthy man

with a bristling black beard walking slowly down the centre of

the street and staring eagerly at he numbers of the houses. It

was clear that, like myself, he was on the track of the maid.

Acting upon the impulse of the moment, I rushed out and accosted

him.

 

“You are an Englishman,” I said.

 

“What if I am?” he asked with a most villainous scowl.

 

“May I ask what your name is?”

 

“No, you may not,” said he with decision.

 

The situation was awkward, but the most direct way is often the

best.

 

“Where is the Lady Frances Carfax?” I asked.

 

He stared at me with amazement.

 

“What have you done with her? Why have you pursued her? I

insist upon an answer!” said I.

 

The fellow gave a below of anger and sprang upon me like a tiger.

I have held my own in many a struggle, but the man had a grip of

iron and the fury of a fiend. His hand was on my throat and my

senses were nearly gone before an unshaven French ouvrier in a

blue blouse darted out from a cabaret opposite, with a cudgel in

his hand, and struck my assailant a sharp crack over the forearm,

which made him leave go his hold. He stood for an instant fuming

with rage and uncertain whether he should not renew his attack.

Then, with a snarl of anger, he left me and entered the cottage

from which I had just come. I turned to thank my preserver, who

stood beside me in the roadway.

 

“Well, Watson,” said he, “a very pretty hash you have made of it!

I rather think you had better come back with me to London by the

night express.”

 

An hour afterwards, Sherlock Holmes, in his usual garb and style,

was seated in my private room at the hotel. His explanation of

his sudden and opportune appearance was simplicity itself, for,

finding that he could get away from London, he determined to head

me off at the next obvious point of my travels. In the disguise

of a workingman he had sat in the cabaret waiting for my

appearance.

 

“And a singularly consistent investigation you have made, my dear

Watson,” said he. “I cannot at the moment recall any possible

blunder which you have omitted. The total effect of your

proceeding has been to give the alarm everywhere and yet to

discover nothing.”

 

“Perhaps you would have done no better,” I answered bitterly.

 

“There is no ‘perhaps’ about it. I HAVE done better. Here is

the Hon. Philip Green, who is a fellow-lodger with you in this

hotel, and we may find him the starting-point for a more

successful investigation.”

 

A card had come up on a salver, and it was followed by the same

bearded ruffian who had attacked me in the street. He started

when he saw me.

 

“What is this, Mr. Holmes?” he asked. “I had your note and I

have come. But what has this man to do with the matter?”

 

“This is my old friend and associate, Dr. Watson, who is helping

us in this affair.”

 

The stranger held out a huge, sunburned hand, with a few words of

apology.

 

“I hope I didn’t harm you. When you accused me of hurting her I

lost my grip of myself. Indeed, I’m not responsible in these

days. My nerves are like live wires. But this situation is

beyond me. What I want to know, in the first place, Mr. Holmes,

is, how in the world you came to hear of my existence at all.”

 

“I am in touch with Miss Dobney, Lady Frances’s governess.”

 

“Old Susan Dobney with the mob cap! I remember her well.”

 

“And she remembers you. It was in the days before—before you

found it better to go to South Africa.”

 

“Ah, I see you know