Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes X
.pdf
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES • X
“I think not, Mr. Holmes. I know your character and methods too well, for I have followed your work for some years.
Reading is the only pleasure which fate has left me, and I miss
little which passes in the world. But in any case, I will take my
chance of the use which you may make of my tragedy. It will
ease my mind to tell it.”
“My friend and I would be glad to hear it.”
The woman rose and took from a drawer the photograph
of a man. He was clearly a professional acrobat, a man of magnifi cent physique, taken with his huge arms folded across his
swollen chest and a smile breaking from under his heavy moustache — the self-satisfi ed smile of the man of many conquests.
“That is Leonardo,” she said.
“Leonardo, the strong man, who gave evidence?”
“The same. And this — this is my husband.”
It was a dreadful face — a human pig, or rather a human
wild boar, for it was formidable in its bestiality. One could
imagine that vile mouth champing and foaming in its rage,
and one could conceive those small, vicious eyes darting pure
malignancy as they looked forth upon the world. Ruffi an, bully, beast — it was all written on that heavy-jowled face.
“Those two pictures will help you, gentlemen, to understand the story. I was a poor circus girl brought up on the sawdust, and doing springs through the hoop before I was ten.
When I became a woman this man loved me, if such lust as his
can be called love, and in an evil moment I became his wife.
From that day I was in hell, and he the devil who tormented
me. There was no one in the show who did not know of his
treatment. He deserted me for others. He tied me down and
111
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
lashed me with his ridingwhip when I complained. They all
pitied me and they all loathed him, but what could they do?
They feared him, one and all. For he was terrible at all times,
and murderous when he was drunk. Again and again he was
had up for assault, and for cruelty to the beasts, but he had
plenty of money and the fi nes were nothing to him. The best
men all left us, and the show began to go downhill. It was only
Leonardo and I who kept it up — with little Jimmy Griggs, the
clown. Poor devil, he had not much to be funny about, but he
did what he could to hold things together.
“Then Leonardo came more and more into my life. You see
what he was like. I know now the poor spirit that was hidden in that splendid body, but compared to my husband he
seemed like the angel Gabriel. He pitied me and helped me,
till at last our intimacy turned to love — deep, deep, passionate love, such love as I had dreamed of but never hoped to feel.
My husband suspected it, but I think that he was a coward as
well as a bully, and that Leonardo was the one man that he
was afraid of. He took revenge in his own way by torturing me
more than ever. One night my cries brought Leonardo to the
door of our van. We were near tragedy that night, and soon
my lover and I understood that it could not be avoided. My
husband was not fi t to live. We planned that he should die.
“Leonardo had a clever, scheming brain. It was he who
planned it. I do not say that to blame him, for I was ready to go
with him every inch of the way. But I should never have had
the wit to think of such a plan. We made a club — Leonardo
made it — and in the leaden head he fastened fi ve long steel
nails, the points outward, with just such a spread as the lion’s
112
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES • X
paw. This was to give my husband his death-blow, and yet to
leave the evidence that it was the lion which we would loose
who had done the deed.
“It was a pitch-dark night when my husband and I went
down, as was our custom, to feed the beast. We carried with
us the raw meat in a zinc pail. Leonardo was waiting at the
corner of the big van which we should have to pass before we
reached the cage. He was too slow, and we walked past him before he could strike, but he followed us on tiptoe and I heard
the crash as the club smashed my husband’s skull. My heart
leaped with joy at the sound. I sprang forward, and I undid the
catch which held the door of the great lion’s cage.
“And then the terrible thing happened. You may have
heard how quick these creatures are to scent human blood,
and how it excites them. Some strange instinct had told the
creature in one instant that a human being had been slain. As
I slipped the bars it bounded out and was on me in an instant.
Leonardo could have saved me. If he had rushed forward and
struck the beast with his club he might have cowed it. But the
man lost his nerve. I heard him shout in his terror, and then
I saw him turn and fl y. At the same instant the teeth of the
lion met in my face. Its hot, fi lthy breath had already poisoned
me and I was hardly conscious of pain. With the palms of my
hands I tried to push the great steaming, blood-stained jaws
away from me, and I screamed for help. I was conscious that
the camp was stirring, and then dimly I remembered a group
of men. Leonardo, Griggs, and others, dragging me from under
the creature’s paws. That was my last memory, Mr. Holmes, for
many a weary month. When I came to myself and saw myself
in the mirror, I cursed that lion — oh, how I cursed him! —
113
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
not because he had torn away my beauty but because he had
not torn away my life. I had but one desire, Mr. Holmes, and
I had enough money to gratify it. It was that I should cover
myself so that my poor face should be seen by none, and that
I should dwell where none whom I had ever known should
fi nd me. That was all that was left to me to do — and that is
what I have done. A poor wounded beast that has crawled into
its hole to die — that is the end of Eugenia Ronder.”
We sat in silence for some time after the unhappy woman
had told her story. Then Holmes stretched out his long arm
and patted her hand with such a show of sympathy as I had
seldom known him to exhibit.
“Poor girl!” he said. “Poor girl! The ways of fate are indeed
hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter,
then the world is a cruel jest. But what of this man Leonardo?”
“I never saw him or heard from him again. Perhaps I have
been wrong to feel so bitterly against him. He might as soon
have loved one of the freaks whom we carried round the country as the thing which the lion had left. But a woman’s love is
not so easily set aside. He had left me under the beast’s claws,
he had deserted me in my need, and yet I could not bring
myself to give him to the gallows. For myself, I cared nothing
what became of me. What could be more dreadful than my
actual life? But I stood between Leonardo and his fate.”
“And he is dead?”
“He was drowned last month when bathing near Margate.
I saw his death in the paper.”
“And what did he do with this fi ve-clawed club, which is
the most singular and ingenious part of all your story?”
114
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES • X
“I cannot tell, Mr. Holmes. There is a chalk-pit by the
camp, with a deep green pool at the base of it. Perhaps in the
depths of that pool —”
“Well, well, it is of little consequence now. The case is
closed.”
“Yes,” said the woman, “the case is closed.”
We had risen to go, but there was something in the woman’s voice which arrested Holmes’s attention. He turned swiftly upon her.
“Your life is not your own,” he said. “Keep your hands off it.”
“What use is it to anyone?”
“How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in
itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.”
The woman’s answer was a terrible one. She raised her veil
and stepped forward into the light.
“I wonder if you would bear it,” she said.
It was horrible. No words can describe the framework of
a face when the face itself is gone. Two living and beautiful
brown eyes looking sadly out from that grisly ruin did but
make the view more awful. Holmes held up his hand in a gesture of pity and protest, and together we left the room.
Two days later, when I called upon my friend, he pointed
with some pride to a small blue bottle upon his mantelpiece. I
picked it up. There was a red poison label. A pleasant almondy
odour rose when I opened it.
“Prussic acid?” said I.
“Exactly. It came by post. ‘I send you my temptation. I will
follow your advice.’ That was the message. I think, Watson, we
can guess the name of the brave woman who sent it.”
XII. THE ADVENTURE
OF SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE
Sherlock Holmes had been bending for a long time over a
low-power microscope. Now he straightened himself up and
looked round at me in triumph.
“It is glue, Watson,” said he. “Unquestionably it is glue.
Have a look at these scattered objects in the fi eld!”
I stooped to the eyepiece and focussed for my vision.
“Those hairs are threads from a tweed coat. The irregular
grey masses are dust. There are epithelial scales on the left.
Those brown blobs in the centre are undoubtedly glue.”
“Well,” I said, laughing, “I am prepared to take your word
for it. Does anything depend upon it?”
“It is a very fi ne demonstration,” he answered. “In the St.
Pancras case you may remember that a cap was found beside
the dead policeman. The accused man denies that it is his. But
he is a picture-frame maker who habitually handles glue.”
“Is it one of your cases?”
“No; my friend, Merivale, of the Yard, asked me to look
into the case. Since I ran down that coiner by the zinc and
copper fi lings in the seam of his cuff they have begun to realize the importance of the microscope.” He looked impatiently
at his watch. “I had a new client calling, but he is overdue. By
the way, Watson, you know something of racing?”
116
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES • X
“I ought to. I pay for it with about half my wound pension.”
“Then I’ll make you my ‘Handy Guide to the Turf.’ What
about Sir Robert Norberton? Does the name recall anything?”
“Well, I should say so. He lives at Shoscombe Old Place,
and I know it well, for my summer quarters were down there
once. Norberton nearly came within your province once.”
“How was that?”
“It was when he horsewhipped Sam Brewer, the wellknown Curzon Street money-lender, on Newmarket Heath.
He nearly killed the man.”
“Ah, he sounds interesting! Does he often indulge in that
way?”
“Well, he has the name of being a dangerous man. He is
about the most daredevil rider in England — second in the
Grand National a few years back. He is one of those men who
have overshot their true generation. He should have been
a buck in the days of the Regency — a boxer, an athlete, a
plunger on the turf, a lover of fair ladies, and, by all account,
so far down Queer Street that he may never fi nd his way back
again.”
“Capital, Watson! A thumb-nail sketch. I seem to know
the man. Now, can you give me some idea of Shoscombe Old
Place?”
“Only that it is in the centre of Shoscombe Park, and that
the famous Shoscombe stud and training quarters are to be
found there.”
“And the head trainer,” said Holmes, “is John Mason. You
need not look surprised at my knowledge, Watson, for this is
117
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
a letter from him which I am unfolding. But let us have some
more about Shoscombe. I seem to have struck a rich vein.”
“There are the Shoscombe spaniels,” said I. “You hear of
them at every dog show. The most exclusive breed in England.
They are the special pride of the lady of Shoscombe Old Place.”
“Sir Robert Norberton’s wife, I presume!”
“Sir Robert has never married. Just as well, I think, considering his prospects. He lives with his widowed sister, Lady
Beatrice Falder.”
“You mean that she lives with him?”
“No, no. The place belonged to her late husband, Sir James.
Norberton has no claim on it at all. It is only a life interest
and reverts to her husband’s brother. Meantime, she draws
the rents every year.”
“And brother Robert, I suppose, spends the said rents?”
“That is about the size of it. He is a devil of a fellow and
must lead her a most uneasy life. Yet I have heard that she is
devoted to him. But what is amiss at Shoscombe?”
“Ah, that is just what I want to know. And here, I expect, is
the man who can tell us.”
The door had opened and the page had shown in a tall,
clean-shaven man with the fi rm, austere expression which is
only seen upon those who have to control horses or boys. Mr.
John Mason had many of both under his sway, and he looked
equal to the task. He bowed with cold self-possession and seated himself upon the chair to which Holmes had waved him.
“You had my note, Mr. Holmes?”
“Yes, but it explained nothing.”
118
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES • X
“It was too delicate a thing for me to put the details on paper. And too complicated. It was only face to face I could do it.”
“Well, we are at your disposal.”
“First of all, Mr. Holmes, I think that my employer, Sir
Robert, has gone mad.”
Holmes raised his eyebrows. “This is Baker Street, not Harley Street,” said he. “But why do you say so?”
“Well, sir, when a man does one queer thing, or two queer
things, there may be a meaning to it, but when everything he
does is queer, then you begin to wonder. I believe Shoscombe
Prince and the Derby have turned his brain.”
“That is a colt you are running?”
“The best in England, Mr. Holmes. I should know, if anyone does. Now, I’ll be plain with you, for I know you are gentlemen of honour and that it won’t go beyond the room. Sir
Robert has got to win this Derby. He’s up to the neck, and it’s
his last chance. Everything he could raise or borrow is on the
horse — and at fi ne odds, too! You can get forties now, but it
was nearer the hundred when he began to back him.”
“But how is that if the horse is so good?”
“The public don’t know how good he is. Sir Robert has
been too clever for the touts. He has the Prince’s half-brother out for spins. You can’t tell ‘em apart. But there are two
lengths in a furlong between them when it comes to a gallop.
He thinks of nothing but the horse and the race. His whole
life is on it. He’s holding off the Jews till then. If the Prince
fails him he is done.”
“It seems a rather desperate gamble, but where does the
madness come in?”
119
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
“Well, fi rst of all, you have only to look at him. I don’t believe he sleeps at night. He is down at the stables at all hours.
His eyes are wild. It has all been too much for his nerves. Then
there is his conduct to Lady Beatrice!”
“Ah! What is that?”
“They have always been the best of friends. They had the
same tastes, the two of them, and she loved the horses as much
as he did. Every day at the same hour she would drive down to
see them — and, above all, she loved the Prince. He would
prick up his ears when he heard the wheels on the gravel,
and he would trot out each morning to the carriage to get his
lump of sugar. But that’s all over now.”
“Why?”
“Well, she seems to have lost all interest in the horses.
For a week now she has driven past the stables with never so
much as ‘Good-morning’!”
“You think there has been a quarrel?”
“And a bitter, savage, spitelful quarrel at that. Why else
would he give away her pet spaniel that she loved as if he were
her child? He gave it a few days ago to old Barnes, what keeps
the Green Dragon, three miles off, at Crendall.”
“That certainly did seem strange.”
“Of course, with her weak heart and dropsy one couldn’t
expect that she could get about with him, but he spent two
hours every evening in her room. He might well do what he
could, for she has been a rare good friend to him. But that’s
all over, too. He never goes near her. And she takes it to heart.
She is brooding and sulky and drinking, Mr. Holmes — drinking like a fi sh.”
120
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]