the problem which are never imparted to the reader.
Now, at present I am in the position of these same
readers, for I hold in this hand several threads of
one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a
man's brain, and yet I lack the one or two which are
needful to complete my theory. But I'll have them,
Watson, I'll have them!" His eyes kindled and a
slight flush sprang into his thin cheeks. For an
instant only. When I glanced again his face had
resumed that red-Indian composure which had made so
many regard him as a machine rather than a man.
"The problem presents features of interest," said he.
"I may even say exceptional features of interest. I
have already looked into the matter, and have come, as
I think, within sight of my solution. If you could
accompany me in that last step you might be of
considerable service to me."
"I should be delighted."
"Could you go as far as Aldershot to-morrow?"
"I have no doubt Jackson would take my practice."
"Very good. I want to start by the 11.10 from
Waterloo."
"That would give me time."
"Then, if you are not too sleepy, I will give you a
sketch of what has happened, and of what remains to be
done."
"I was sleepy before you came. I am quite wakeful
now."
"I will compress the story as far as may be done
without omitting anything vital to the case. It is
conceivable that you may even have read some account
of the matter. It is the supposed murder of Colonel
Barclay, of the Royal Munsters, at Aldershot, which I
am investigating."
"I have heard nothing of it."
"It has not excited much attention yet, except
locally. The facts are only two days old. Briefly
they are these:
"The Royal Munsters is, as you know, one of the most
famous Irish regiments in the British army. It did
wonders both in the Crimea and the Mutiny, and has
since that time distinguished itself upon every
possible occasion. It was commanded up to Monday
night by James Barclay, a gallant veteran, who started
as a full private, was raised to commissioned rank for
his bravery at the time of the Mutiny, and so lived to
command the regiment in which he had once carried a
musket.
"Colonel Barclay had married at the time when he was a
sergeant, and his wife, whose maiden name was Miss
Nancy Devoy, was the daughter of a former
color-sergeant in the same corps. There was,
therefore, as can be imagined, some little social
friction when the young couple (for they were still
young) found themselves in their new surroundings.
They appear, however, to have quickly adapted
themselves, and Mrs. Barclay has always, I understand,
been as popular with the ladies of the regiment as her
husband was with his brother officers. I may add that
she was a woman of great beauty, and that even now,
when she has been married for upwards of thirty years,
she is still of a striking and queenly appearance.
"Colonel Barclay's family life appears to have been a
uniformly happy one. Major Murphy, to whom I owe most
of my facts, assures me that he has never heard of any
misunderstanding between the pair. On the whole, he
thinks that Barclay's devotion to his wife was greater
than his wife's to Barclay. He was acutely uneasy if
he were absent from her for a day. She, on the other
hand, though devoted and faithful, was less
obtrusively affectionate. But they were regarded in
the regiment as the very model of a middle-aged
couple. There was absolutely nothing in their mutual
relations to prepare people for the tragedy which was
to follow.
"Colonel Barclay himself seems to have had some
singular traits in his character. He was a dashing,
jovial old solder in his usual mood, but there were
occasions on which he seemed to show himself capable
of considerable violence and vindictiveness. This
side of his nature, however, appears never to have
been turned towards his wife. Another fact, which had
struck Major Murphy and three out of five of the other
officers with whom I conversed, was the singular sort
of depression which came upon him at times. As the
major expressed it, the smile had often been struck
from his mouth, as if by some invisible hand, when he
has been joining the gayeties and chaff of the
mess-table. For days on end, when the mood was on
him, he has been sunk in the deepest gloom. This and
a certain tinge of superstition were the only unusual
traits in his character which his brother officers had
observed. The latter peculiarity took the form of a
dislike to being left alone, especially after dark.
This puerile feature in a nature which was
conspicuously manly had often given rise to comment
and conjecture.
"The first battalion of the Royal Munsters (which is
the old 117th) has been stationed at Aldershot for
some years. The married officers live out of
barracks, and the Colonel has during all this time
occupied a villa called Lachine, about half a mile
from the north camp. The house stands in its own
grounds, but the west side of it is not more than
thirty yards from the high-road. A coachman and two
maids form the staff of servants. These with their
master and mistress were the sole occupants of
Lachine, for the Barclays had no children, nor was it
usual for them to have resident visitors.
"Now for the events at Lachine between nine and ten on
the evening of last Monday."
"Mrs. Barclay was, it appears, a member of the Roman
Catholic Church, and had interested herself very much
in the establishment of the Guild of St. George, which
was formed in connection with the Watt Street Chapel
for the purpose of supplying the poor with cast-off
clothing. A meeting of the Guild had been held that
evening at eight, and Mrs. Barclay had hurried over
her dinner in order to be present at it. When leaving
the house she was heard by the coachman to make some
commonplace remark to her husband, and to assure him
that she would be back before very long. She then
called for Miss Morrison, a young lady who lives in
the next villa, and the two went off together to their
meeting. It lasted forty minutes, and at a
quarter-past nine Mrs. Barclay returned home, having
left Miss Morrison at her door as she passed.
"There is a room which is used as a morning-room at
Lachine. This faces the road and opens by a large
glass folding-door on to the lawn. The lawn is thirty
yards across, and is only divided from the highway by
a low wall with an iron rail above it. It was into
this room that Mrs. Barclay went upon her return. The
blinds were not down, for the room wa
s seldom used in
the evening, but Mrs. Barclay herself lit the lamp and
then rang the bell, asking Jane Stewart, the
house-maid, to bring her a cup of tea, which was quite
contrary to her usual habits. The Colonel had been
sitting in the dining-room, but hearing that his wife
had returned he joined her in the morning-room. The
coachman saw him cross the hall and enter it. He was
never seen again alive.
"The tea which had been ordered was brought up at the
end of ten minutes; but the maid, as she approached
the door, was surprised to hear the voices of her
master and mistress in furious altercation. She
knocked without receiving any answer, and even turned
the handle, but only to find that the door was locked
upon the inside. Naturally enough she ran down to
tell the cook, and the two women with the coachman
came up into the hall and listened to the dispute
which was still raging. They all agreed that only two
voices were to be heard, those of Barclay and of his
wife. Barclay's remarks were subdued and abrupt, so
that none of them were audible to the listeners. The
lady's, on the other hand, were most bitter, and when
she raised her voice could be plainly heard. 'You
coward!' she repeated over and over again. 'What can
be done now? What can be done now? Give me back my
life. I will never so much as breathe the same air
with you again! You coward! You Coward!' Those were
scraps of her conversation, ending in a sudden
dreadful cry in the man's voice, with a crash, and a
piercing scream from the woman. Convinced that some
tragedy had occurred, the coachman rushed to the door
and strove to force it, while scream after scream
issued from within. He was unable, however, to make
his way in, and the maids were too distracted with
fear to be of any assistance to him. A sudden thought
struck him, however, and he ran through the hall door
and round to the lawn upon which the long French
windows open. One side of the window was open, which
I understand was quite usual in the summer-time, and
he passed without difficulty into the room. His
mistress had ceased to scream and was stretched
insensible upon a couch, while with his feet tilted
over the side of an arm-chair, and his head upon the
ground near the corner of the fender, was lying the
unfortunate soldier stone dead in a pool of his own
blood.
"Naturally, the coachman's first thought, on finding
that he could do nothing for his master, was to open
the door. But here an unexpected and singular
difficulty presented itself. The key was not in the
inner side of the door, nor could he find it anywhere
in the room. He went out again, therefore, through
the window, and having obtained the help of a
policeman and of a medical man, he returned. The
lady, against whom naturally the strongest suspicion
rested, was removed to her room, still in a state of
insensibility. The Colonel's body was then placed
upon the sofa, and a careful examination made of the
scene of the tragedy.
"The injury from which the unfortunate veteran was
suffering was found to be a jagged cut some two inches
long at the back part of his head, which had evidently
been caused by a violent blow from a blunt weapon.
Nor was it difficult to guess what that weapon may
have been. Upon the floor, close to the body, was
lying a singular club of hard carved wood with a bone
handle. The Colonel possessed a varied collection of
weapons brought from the different countries in which
he had fought, and it is conjectured by the police
that his club was among his trophies. The servants
deny having seen it before, but among the numerous
curiosities in the house it is possible that it may
have been overlooked. Nothing else of importance was
discovered in the room by the police, save the
inexplicable fact that neither upon Mrs. Barclay's
person nor upon that of the victim nor in any part of
the room was the missing key to be found. The door
had eventually to be opened by a locksmith from
Aldershot.
"That was the state of things, Watson, when upon the
Tuesday morning I, at the request of Major Murphy,
went down to Aldershot to supplement the efforts of
the police. I think that you will acknowledge that
the problem was already one of interest, but my
observations soon made me realize that it was in truth
much more extraordinary than would at first sight
appear.
"Before examining the room I cross-questioned the
servants, but only succeeded in eliciting the facts
which I have already stated. One other detail of
interest was remembered by Jane Stewart, the
housemaid. You will remember that on hearing the
sound of the quarrel she descended and returned with
the other servants. On that first occasion, when she
was alone, she says that the voices of her master and
mistress were sunk so low that she could hear hardly
anything, and judged by their tones rather tan their
words that they had fallen out. On my pressing her,
however, she remembered that she heard the word David
uttered twice by the lady. The point is of the utmost
importance as guiding us towards the reason of the
sudden quarrel. The Colonel's name, you remember, was
James.
"There was one thing in the case which had made the
deepest impression both upon the servants and the
police. This was the contortion of the Colonel's
face. It had set, according to their account, into
the most dreadful expression of fear and horror which
a human countenance is capable of assuming. More than
one person fainted at the mere sight of him, so
terrible was the effect. It was quite certain that he
had foreseen his fate, and that it had caused him the
utmost horror. This, of course, fitted in well enough
with the police theory, if the Colonel could have seen
his wife making a murderous attack upon him. Nor was
the fact of the wound being on the back of his head a
fatal objection to this, as he might have turned to
avoid the blow. No information could be got from the
lady herself, who was temporarily insane from an acute
attack of brain-fever.
"From the police I learned that Miss Morrison, who you
remember went out that evening with Mrs. Barclay,
denied having any knowledge of what it was which had
caused the ill-humor in which her companion had
returned.
"Having gathered these facts, Watson, I smoke several
pipes over them, trying to separate those which were
crucial from others which were merely incidental.
There could be no question that the most distinctive
and suggestive point in the case was the singular
disappearance of
the door-key. A most careful search
had failed to discover it in the room. Therefore it
must have been taken from it. But neither the Colonel
nor the Colonel's wife could have taken it. That was
perfectly clear. Therefore a third person must have
entered the room. And that third person could only
have come in through the window. It seemed to me that
a careful examination of the room and the lawn might
possibly reveal some traces of this mysterious
individual. You know my methods, Watson. There was
not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry.
And ones from those which I had expected. There had
been a man in the room, and he had crossed the lawn
coming from the road. I was able to obtain five very
clear impressions of his foot-marks: one in the
roadway itself, at the point where he had climbed the
low wall, two on the lawn, and two very faint ones
upon the stained boards near the window where he had
entered. He had apparently rushed across the lawn,
for his toe-marks were much deeper than his heels.
But it was not the man who surprised me. It was his
companion."
"His companion!"
Holmes pulled a large sheet of tissue-paper out of his
pocket and carefully unfolded it upon his knee.
"What do you make of that?" he asked.
The paper was covered with he tracings of the
foot-marks of some small animal. It had five
well-marked foot-pads, an indication of long nails,
and the whole print might be nearly as large as a
dessert-spoon.
"It's a dog," said I.
"Did you ever hear of a dog running up a curtain? I
found distinct traces that this creature had done so."
"A monkey, then?"
"But it is not the print of a monkey."
"What can it be, then?"
"Neither dog nor cat nor monkey nor any creature that
we are familiar with. I have tried to reconstruct it
from the measurements. Here are four prints where the
beast has been standing motionless. You see that it
is no less than fifteen inches from fore-foot to hind.
Add to that the length of neck and head, and you get a
creature not much less than two feet long--probably
more if there is any tail. But now observe this other
measurement. The animal has been moving, and we have
the length of its stride. In each case it is only
about three inches. You have an indication, you see,
of a long body with very short legs attached to it.
It has not been considerate enough to leave any of its
hair behind it. But its general shape must be what I
have indicated, and it can run up a curtain, and it is
carnivorous."
"How do you deduce that?"
"Because it ran up the curtain. A canary's cage was
hanging in the window, and its aim seems to have been
to get at the bird."
"Then what was the beast?"
"Ah, if I could give it a name it might go a long way
towards solving the case. On the whole, it was
probably some creature of the weasel and stoat
tribe--and yet it is larger than any of these that I
have seen."
"But what had it to do with the crime?"
"That, also, is still obscure. But we have learned a
good deal, you perceive. We know that a man stood in
the road looking at the quarrel between the
Barclays--the blinds were up and the room lighted. We
know, also, that he ran across the lawn, entered the
room, accompanied by a strange animal, and that he
either struck the Colonel or, as is equally possible,
that the Colonel fell down from sheer fright at the
sight of him, and cut his head on the corner of the
fender. Finally, we have the curious fact that the
intruder carried away the key with him when he left."
"You discoveries seem to have left the business more
obscure that it was before," said I.
"Quite so. They undoubtedly showed that the affair
was much deeper than was at first conjectured. I
thought the matter over, and I came to the conclusion
that I must approach the case from another aspect.
But really, Watson, I am keeping you up, and I might
just as well tell you all this on our way to Aldershot
to-morrow."
"Thank you, you have gone rather too far to stop."
"It is quite certain that when Mrs. Barclay left the
house at half-past seven she was on good terms with
her husband. She was never, as I think I have said,