The Sign of the Four Chapter 5

"Books at bedtime by calming anxiety." The sign of the four, chapter five, the tragedy of pondicherry-Lodge. It was nearly eleven o'clock when we reached the final stage of our night's adventures. We had left the damp fog of the great city behind us, and the night was fairly fine.

A warm wind blew from the westward, and heavy clouds moved slowly across the sky, with a half a moon peeping occasionally through the rins. It was clear enough to see for some distance, but Thaddeus-Scholto took down one of the sidelines from the carriage to give us a better light upon our way. Pandi-Khary-Lodge stood in its own grounds, and was girt-round with a very high stone wall topped with broken glass.

A single narrow iron clamp door formed the only means of entrance. On this, our guide knocked with a peculiar postman like Rat-Tat, who was there cried a gruff voice from within. It is I, McMurdo, you surely know my knock by this time. There was a grumbling sound and a clanking and jarring of keys.

The door swung heavily back, and a short, deep-chested man stood in the opening, with the yellow light of the lantern shining upon his protruded face and twinkling distrust lies. "That you, Mr Thaddeus? But who are the others? I had no orders about them from the master." "No," McMurdo, "you surprised me. I told my brother last night that I should bring some friends." "Yay, been out of his room today, Mr Thaddeus, and I have no orders. You know very well that I must stick to regulations.

I can let you in, but your friends must stop where they are." This was an unexpected obstacle. Thaddeus Shalto looked about him in perplexed and helpless manner. "This is too bad of you, Mr McMurdo," he said.

"If I guarantee them, that is enough for you. There is the young lady too. She cannot wait on the public road at this hour." "Very sorry, Mr Thaddeus," said the porter in exile, really. "Foke may be friends of yours, and yet no friends are masters.

He pays me well to do my duty, and my duty I'll do. I don't know none of your friends." "Oh yes you do," McMurdo cried, "Shilla Cames," jeanally. "I don't think you can have forgotten me. Don't you remember the amateur who brought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of your benefit four years back?"

"Not Mr Shalto Cames, Lord, the price fighter. God's truth. How could I have missed a cue?" "If instead of standing there so quiet, you had just stepped up and given me the crosshit of yours under the jaw." "I'd have known you without a question." "Ah, your one that is wasted your gifts you have?"

"You might have aimed high if you had joined your fancy." "You see, Watson. If all else fails me, I still have one of the scientific professions open to me," said Holmes laughing.

"Our friend won't keep us out in the cold now, I'm sure." "In you come, sir, in you come, you and your friends," he answered, "Very sorry, Mr Thaddeus, but orders are very strict. Had to be certain of your friends before I let them in." Inside, a gravel path wound through desolate grounds to a huge clump of the house, square and prosaic, all plunged in shadow, saved where a moonbeam struck one corner and glimmered in a carrot window.

The vast size of the building, with its gloom and its desolate silence struck a chill to the heart. Even Thaddeus Shaltow, seemed ill at ease and the lantern quivered and rattled in his hand.

"I cannot understand," he said, "there must be some mistake. I distinctly told Bartholomew that we'd be here, and yet there is no light in this window. I do not know what to make of it." "Does he always guard the premises in this way?" asked Holmes.

"Yes, he has followed my father's custom. He was the favourite son, you know, and I sometimes think that my father may have told him more than he ever told me. That is Bartholomew's window up there, where the moon shines strikes. It is quite bright, but there is no light from within, I think."

"Nun," said Holmes. "But I see the glint of a light in that little window beside the door." "Ah, that is the housekeeper's room. That is where old Mrs. Bernstone sits.

She can tell us all about it. But perhaps you would not mind waiting here for a minute or two. But if we all go in together and she is no word of your coming, she may be alarmed, but hush, what is that?" He held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light flickered and waved all around us.

Miss Mauston seized my wrist, and we all stood with bumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great black house, their sounded though, the silent night, the saddest and most pitiful of sounds, the shrill, broken whimpering of a frightened woman. "It is Mrs. Bernstone," said Schulte. "She is the only woman in the house, wait here, I shall be back in a moment," he hurried for the door, and knocked in his peculiar way.

"You could see a tall, old woman admit him, and sway with pleasure at the very sight of him." "Oh, Mr. Thadius, sir, I'm so glad you've come, I'm so glad you have come, Mr. Thadius, sir." "We heard her reiterate of rejoicings until the door was closed and her voice died away in a muffled monotone."

"Our guide had left us the lantern, home swung it slowly around, and peered keenly at the house, and at the great rubbish-heaps with crumpled the grounds. Miss Mauston and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous, subtle thing is love, for here were we, too, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now, in an hour of trouble, our hands instinctively sought for each other." "I have marveled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out for her to do so, and, as she often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection."

"So he stood, hand in hand, like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us."

"What a strange place," she said, looking around. "It looks as though all the moulds in England had been let loose in it. I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Balarat, where the prospectors had been at work." "And from the same cause," said Holmes, "these are the traces of the treasure seekers.

You must remember that there were six years looking for it. No wonder that the grounds looked like a gravel pit." "At that moment, the door of the house burst open, and Thaddeus' shelter came running out with his hands thrown forward and terror in his eyes."

"There is something amiss with Bartholomew," he cried, "I'm frightened, my nerves cannot stand it." He was indeed half-blubbering with fear, and his twitching feeble face peeping out from a great, extra-canned collar had the helpless appealing expression of a terrified child.

"Come into the house," said Holmes, in his crisp, firm way. "Yes, do, pleaded, shaltow. I really do not feel equal to giving directions." "We all followed him into the housekeeper's room, which stood upon the left hand side of the passage." "The old woman was pacing up and down, with a scared look and restless picking fingers, but the sight at Miss Morston's appeared to have the soothing effect upon her."

"God bless your sweet calm face, she cried with a hysterical sob. It does me good to see you, oh, but I have been sorely tired this day." Our companion, Patted Hitchin, worked worn-hand and murmured some words of kindly, womanly comfort, which brought the color back into the house's bloodless cheeks.

Master has locked himself in and will not answer me, she explained. "All day, I have waited to hear from him, for he often likes to be alone, but an hour ago I feared that something was a miss."

"So I went up and peeped through the keyhole." "You must go up, Mr. Thaddeus. You must go up and look for yourself." "I have seen Mr. Batholumus Shelter enjoy an insurro for ten young years, but I have never saw him with such a face on him as that."

Sherlock Holmes took the lamp and led the way. For Thaddeus Shelter's teeth were chattering in his head. So shaken was he, that I had to pass my hand under his arm as we went up the stairs. For his knees were trembling under him.

Twice, as we ascended Holmes whipped his lends out of his pocket and carefully examined marks which appeared to be mere shapeless smudges of dust upon the cocoa nut matting which served as a stair carpet.

He walked slowly from step to step, holding the lamp and shooting keen glances to right and left. Miss Morston had remained behind with the frightened housekeeper. The third flight of stairs ended in a straight passage of some length, with a great picture in Indian tapestry upon the right of it and three doors upon the left.

Holmes advanced along in it in the same slow and methodical way, while we kept close at his heels with our long black shadow streaming backwards down the corridor.

The third door was that which we were seeking, Holmes knocked, without receiving any answer and then tried to turn the handle and force it open.

It was locked on the inside, however and by a broad and powerful bolt as we could see when we set our lamp up against it.

The key being turned however, the bolt was not entirely closed. Sherlock Holmes bent down to it and instantly rose again with a sharp intaking of breath. There is something devilish in this, Watson said he, "More moved than I had ever seen him before. What do you make of it?"

Ice dupe to the home and recoiled in horror. Moonlight was streaming in the room and it was bright with a vague and shifty radiance looking straight at me and suspended as it were in the air.

For all beneath was in shadow, the hunger face, the very face of our companion, Thadius. There was the same high, shining forehead, the same circular bristle of red hair, the same bloodless countenance.

The features were set, however in a horrible smile affixed an unnatural grin, which in that still and moonlit room were more jarring to the nerve.

Then any scound or contortion, so like was the face to that far little friend that I looked round at him to make sure that he was indeed with us.

Then I recalled to mind that he had mentioned to us that his brother and he were twins. "That is terrible," I said to Holmes, "what is to be done?" The door must come down, he answered, and springing against it he put all his way to pawn the lock. It creaked and groaned, but did not yield.

Together we flung ourselves upon it once more and this time it gave way with a sudden snap and we found ourselves within Bartholomew's shelter's chamber.

It appeared to have been fitted up as a chemical laboratory. A double line of glass-stopper bottles was drawn up upon the wall opposite the door and the table was littered over with Bunsen burners, test tubes and retorts.

In the corners stood carboys of acid and wicker baskets. One of these appeared to leak or to have been broken for a stream of dark coloured liquid had trickled out of it and the air was heavy with a particularly pungent tar-like odor.

A set of steps stood at one side of the room in the midst of a litter of laze of plaster and above them there was an opening in the ceiling, large enough for a man to pass through.

At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope had been thrown carelessly together. By the table in a wooden armchair the master of the house was seated all in a heap with his head sunk upon his left shoulder and that ghastly, inscrutable smile upon his face.

He was stiff and cold and had clearly been dead many hours. It seemed to me that not only his features but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion.

By his hand upon the table there lay a peculiar instrument, a brown, close grain stick with a stowed head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine.

Decided was a torn sheet of note paper with some words crawled upon it, Holmes glanced at it and then handed it to me.

"You see," he said, "with a significant raising of the eyebrows in the light of the lantern I read with a thrill of horror, the sign of the form."

"In God's name, what does it all mean?" I asked. "It means murder," said he, stooping over the dead man.

"Ah, I expected it. Look here." He pointed to what looked like a long dark thorn stuck in the skin just above the ear.

"It looks like a thorn," said I. "It is a thorn. You may pick it out but be careful for it is poisoned."

I took it up between my fingers and thumb. It came away from the skin so readily that hardly any mark was left behind.

One tiny speck of blood showed where the punctured been. "This is all an insoluble mystery to me," said I. "It grows dark instead of clearer." On the contrary, he answered, "It clears every instant. I only require a few missing links to have an entirely connected case."

We had almost forgotten our companion's presence since we entered the chamber. He was still standing in the doorway. The very picture of Terra ringing his hands and moaning to himself. Suddenly, however, he broke out into a sharp, queryless cry.

"The treasure is gone," he said. "They have robbed him of the treasure. There is a hole through which he lowered it. I helped him to lower it. I was the last person who saw him.

I left him here last night and I heard him lock the door as I came downstairs." "What time was that?" "It was ten o'clock and now he is dead and the police will be called in and I shall be suspected of having a hand in it." "Oh yes, I'm sure I shall. But you don't think so, gentlemen. Surely you don't think that I was—that it was I.

It is likely that I would have brought you here if it was I. Oh dear, oh dear, I know that I shall go mad." He jerked his arms and stamped his feet in a kind of convulsive frenzy. "You have no reason for fear," Mr. Shaltow said, "homes kindly, putting his hand upon his shoulder. Take my advice and drive down to the station to report this matter to the police. Offer to the system in every way. We shall wait here until your return."

The little man obeyed in a half-stuperfied fashion and we heard him stumbling down the stairs in the dark.