By the table, in a wooden arm-chair, 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-grained stick, with a stone head like a hammer, rudely lashed on with coarse twine. Beside it was a torn sheet of note-paper with some words scrawled 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 four.”
“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 finger 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 puncture had been.
“This is all an insoluble mystery to me,” said I. “It grows darker 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 door-way, the very picture of terror, wringing his hands and moaning to himself. Suddenly, however, he broke out into a sharp, querulous cry.
“The treasure is gone!” he said. “They have robbed him of the treasure! There is the hole through which we lowered it. I helped him to do 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 down-stairs.”
“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 had a hand in it. Oh, yes, I am sure I shall. But you don’t think so, gentlemen? Surely you don’t think that it was I? Is it likely that I would have brought you here if it were 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. Sholto,” said Holmes, 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 assist them in every way. We shall wait here until your return.”
The little man obeyed in a half-stupefied fashion, and we heard him stumbling down the stairs in the dark.
CHAPTER SIX
Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, rubbing his hands, “we have half an hour to ourselves. Let us make good use of it. My case is, as I have told you, almost complete; but we must not err on the side of over-confidence. Simple as the case seems now, there may be something deeper underlying it.”
“Simple!” I ejaculated.
“Surely,” said he, with something of the air of a clinical professor expounding to his class. “Just sit in the corner there, that your footprints may not complicate matters. Now to work! In the first place, how did these folk come, and how did they go? The door has not been opened since last night. How of the window?” He carried the lamp across to it, muttering his observations aloud the while, but addressing them to himself rather than to me. “Window is snibbed on the inner side. Framework is solid. No hinges at the side. Let us open it. No water-pipe near. Roof quite out of reach. Yet a man has mounted by the window. It rained a little last night. Here is the print of a foot in mould upon the sill. And here is a circular muddy mark, and here again upon the floor, and here again by the table. See here, Watson! This is really a very pretty demonstration.”
I looked at the round, well-defined muddy discs. “This is not a footmark,” said I.
“It is something much more valuable to us. It is the impression of a wooden stump. You see here on the sill is the boot-mark, a heavy boot with the broad metal heel, and beside it is the mark of the timber-toe.”
“It is the wooden-legged man.”
“Quite so. But there has been some one else,—a very able and efficient ally. Could you scale that wall, doctor?”
I looked out of the open window. The moon still shone brightly on that angle of the house. We were a good sixty feet from the round, and, look where I would, I could see no foothold, nor as much as a crevice in the brick-work.
“It is absolutely impossible,” I answered.
“Without aid it is so. But suppose you had a friend up here who lowered you this good stout rope which I see in the corner, securing one end of it to this great hook in the wall. Then, I think, if you were an active man, You might swarm up, wooden leg and all. You would depart, of course, in the same fashion, and your ally would draw up the rope, untie it from the hook, shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get away in the way that he originally came. As a minor point it may be noted,” he continued, fingering the rope, “that our wooden-legged friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor. His hands were far from horny. My lens discloses more than one blood-mark, especially towards the end of the rope, from which I gather that he slipped down with such velocity that he took the skin off his hand.”
“This is all very well,” said I, “but the thing becomes more unintelligible than ever. How about this mysterious ally? How came he into the room?”
“Yes, the ally!” repeated Holmes, pensively. “There are features of interest about this ally. He lifts the case from the regions of the commonplace. I fancy that this ally breaks fresh ground in the annals of crime in this country,—though parallel cases suggest themselves from India, and, if my memory serves me, from Senegambia.”
“How came he, then?” I reiterated. “The door is locked, the window is inaccessible. Was it through the chimney?”
“The grate is much too small,” he answered. “I had already considered that possibility.”
“How then?” I persisted.
“You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. Whence, then, did he come?”
“He came through the hole in the roof,” I cried.
“Of course he did. He must have done so. If you will have the kindness to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our researches to the room above,—the secret room in which the treasure was found.”
He mounted the steps, and, seizing a rafter with either hand, he swung himself up into the garret. Then, lying on his face, he reached down for the lamp and held it while I followed him.
The chamber in which we found ourselves was about ten feet one way and six the other. The floor was formed by the rafters,