The addition of a P and a D completed a message which showed me
that the rascal was proceeding from persuasion to threats, and my
knowledge of the crooks of Chicago prepared me to find that he
might very rapidly put his words into action. I at once came to
Norfolk with my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, but, unhappily,
only in time to find that the worst had already occurred.”
“It is a privilege to be associated with you in the handling of a
case,” said the inspector, warmly. “You will excuse me, however,
if I speak frankly to you. You are only answerable to yourself,
but I have to answer to my superiors. If this Abe Slaney, living
at Elrige’s, is indeed the murderer, and if he has made his
escape while I am seated here, I should certainly get into
serious trouble.”
“You need not be uneasy. He will not try to escape.”
“How do you know?”
“To fly would be a confession of guilt.”
“Then let us go arrest him.”
“I expect him here every instant.”
“But why should he come?”
“Because I have written and asked him.”
“But this is incredible, Mr. Holmes! Why should he come because
you have asked him? Would not such a request rather rouse his
suspicions and cause him to fly?”
“I think I have known how to frame the letter,” said Sherlock
Holmes. “In fact, if I am not very much mistaken, here is the
gentleman himself coming up the drive.”
A man was striding up the path which led to the door. He was a
tall, handsome, swarthy fellow, clad in a suit of grey flannel,
with a Panama hat, a bristling black beard, and a great,
aggressive hooked nose, and flourishing a cane as he walked. He
swaggered up the path as if the place belonged to him, and we
heard his loud, confident peal at the bell.
“I think, gentlemen,” said Holmes, quietly, “that we had best
take up our position behind the door. Every precaution is
necessary when dealing with such a fellow. You will need your
handcuffs, Inspector. You can leave the talking to me.”
We waited in silence for a minute—one of those minutes which one
can never forget. Then the door opened and the man stepped in. In
an instant Holmes clapped a pistol to his head, and Martin
slipped the handcuffs over his wrists. It was all done so swiftly
and deftly that the fellow was helpless before he knew that he
was attacked. He glared from one to the other of us with a pair
of blazing black eyes. Then he burst into a bitter laugh.
“Well, gentlemen, you have the drop on me this time. I seem to
have knocked up against something hard. But I came here in answer
to a letter from Mrs. Hilton Cubitt. Don’t tell me that she is in
this? Don’t tell me that she helped to set a trap for me?”
“Mrs. Hilton Cubitt was seriously injured, and is at death’s
door.”
The man gave a hoarse cry of grief, which rang through the house.
“You’re crazy!” he cried, fiercely. “It was he that was hurt, not
she. Who would have hurt little Elsie? I may have threatened
her—God forgive me!—but I would not have touched a hair of her
pretty head. Take it back—you! Say that she is not hurt!”
“She was found badly wounded, by the side of her dead husband.”
He sank with a deep groan on the settee and buried his face in
his manacled hands. For five minutes he was silent. Then he
raised his face once more, and spoke with the cold composure of
despair.
“I have nothing to hide from you, gentlemen,” said he. “If I shot
the man he had his shot at me, and there’s no murder in that. But
if you think I could have hurt that woman, then you don’t know
either me or her. I tell you, there was never a man in this world
loved a woman more than I loved her. I had a right to her. She
was pledged to me years ago. Who was this Englishman that he
should come between us? I tell you that I had the first right to
her, and that I was only claiming my own.”
“She broke away from your influence when she found the man that
you are,” said Holmes, sternly. “She fled from America to avoid
you, and she married an honourable gentleman in England. You
dogged her and followed her and made her life a misery to her, in
order to induce her to abandon the husband whom she loved and
respected in order to fly with you, whom she feared and hated.
You have ended by bringing about the death of a noble man and
driving his wife to suicide. That is your record in this
business, Mr. Abe Slaney, and you will answer for it to the law.”
“If Elsie dies, I care nothing what becomes of me,” said the
American. He opened one of his hands, and looked at a note
crumpled up in his palm. “See here, mister,” he cried, with a
gleam of suspicion in his eyes, “you’re not trying to scare me
over this, are you? If the lady is hurt as bad as you say, who
was it that wrote this note?” He tossed it forward on to the
table.
“I wrote it, to bring you here.”
“You wrote it? There was no one on earth outside the Joint who
knew the secret of the dancing men. How came you to write it?”
“What one man can invent another can discover,” said Holmes.
“There is a cab coming to convey you to Norwich, Mr. Slaney. But
meanwhile, you have time to make some small reparation for the
injury you have wrought. Are you aware that Mrs. Hilton Cubitt
has herself lain under grave suspicion of the murder of her
husband, and that it was only my presence here, and the knowledge
which I happened to possess, which has saved her from the
accusation? The least that you owe her is to make it clear to the
whole world that she was in no way, directly or indirectly,
responsible for his tragic end.”
“I ask nothing better,” said the American. “I guess the very best
case I can make for myself is the absolute naked truth.”
“It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,”
cried the inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the
British criminal law.
Slaney shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll chance that,” said he. “First of all, I want you gentlemen
to understand that I have known this lady since she was a child.
There were seven of us in a gang in Chicago, and Elsie’s father
was the boss of the Joint. He was a clever man, was old Patrick.
It was he who invented that writing, which would pass as a
child’s scrawl unless you just happened to have the key to it.
Well, Elsie learned some of our ways, but she couldn’t stand the
business, and she had a bit of honest money of her own, so she
gave us all the slip and got away to London. She had been engaged
to me, and she would have married me, I believe, if I had taken
over another profession, but she would have nothing to do with
anything on the cross. It was only after her marriage to this
Englishman that I was able to find out where she was. I wrote to
her, but got no answer. After that I came over, and, as letters
were no use, I put my messages where she could read them.
“Well, I have been here a month now. I lived in that farm, where
I had a room down below, and could get in and out every night,
and no one the wiser. I tried all I could to coax Elsie away. I
knew that she read the messages, for once she wrote an answer
under one of them. Then my temper got the better of me, and I
began to threaten her. She sent me a letter then, imploring me to
go away, and saying that it would break her heart if any scandal
should come upon her husband. She said that she would come down
when her husband was asleep at three in the morning, and speak
with me through the end window, if I would go away afterwards and
leave her in peace. She came down and brought money with her,
trying to bribe me to go. This made me mad, and I caught her arm
and tried to pull her through the window. At that moment in
rushed the husband with his revolver in his hand. Elsie had sunk
down upon the floor, and we were face to face. I was heeled also,
and I held up my gun to scare him off and let me get away. He
fired and missed me. I pulled off almost at the same instant, and
down he dropped. I made away across the garden, and as I went I
heard the window shut behind me. That’s God’s truth, gentlemen,
every word of it, and I heard no more about it until that lad
came riding up with a note which made me walk in here, like a
jay, and give myself into your hands.”
A cab had driven up whilst the American had been talking. Two
uniformed policemen sat inside. Inspector Martin rose and touched
his prisoner on the shoulder.
“It is time for us to go.”
“Can I see her first?”
“No, she is not conscious. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I only hope that
if ever again I have an important case, I shall have the good
fortune to have you by my side.”
We stood at the window and watched the cab drive away. As I
turned back, my eye caught the pellet of paper which the prisoner
had tossed upon the table. It was the note with which Holmes had
decoyed him.
“See if you can read it, Watson,” said he, with a smile.
It contained no word, but this little line of dancing men: