"This is intolerable, sir," said I. "I came here to do you a favour,
and not to be examined as if I were a schoolboy. My knowledge on these
subjects may be second only to your own, but I certainly shall not
answer questions which have been put in so offensive a way."
He looked at me steadily. The languor had gone from his eyes. They
suddenly glared. There was a gleam of teeth from between those cruel
lips.
"What is the game? You are here as a spy. You are an emissary of
Holmes. This is a trick that you are playing upon me. The fellow is
dying, I hear, so he sends his tools to keep watch upon me. You've
made your way in here without leave, and, by God! you may find it
harder to get out than to get in."
He had sprung to his feet, and I stepped back, bracing myself for an
attack, for the man was beside himself with rage. He may have
suspected me from the first; certainly this cross-examination had shown
him the truth; but it was clear that I could not hope to deceive him.
He dived his hand into a side-drawer and rummaged furiously. Then
something struck upon his ear, for he stood listening intently.
"Ah!" he cried. "Ah!" and dashed into the room behind him.
Two steps took me to the open door, and my mind will ever carry a clear
picture of the scene within. The window leading out to the garden was
wide open. Beside it, looking like some terrible ghost, his head girt
with bloody bandages, his face drawn and white, stood Sherlock Holmes.
The next instant he was through the gap, and I heard the crash of his
body among the laurel bushes outside. With a howl of rage the master
of the house rushed after him to the open window.
And then! It was done in an instant, and yet I clearly saw it. An
arm--a woman's arm--shot out from among the leaves. At the same
instant the Baron uttered a horrible cry--a yell which will always ring
in my memory. He clapped his two hands to his face and rushed round
the room, beating his head horribly against the walls. Then he fell
upon the carpet, rolling and writhing, while scream after scream
resounded through the house.
"Water! For God's sake, water!" was his cry.
I seized a carafe from a side-table and rushed to his aid. At the same
moment the butler and several footmen ran in from the hall. I remember
that one of them fainted as I knelt by the injured man and turned that
awful face to the light of the lamp. The vitriol was eating into it
everywhere and dripping from the ears and the chin. One eye was
already white and glazed. The other was red and inflamed. The
features which I had admired a few minutes before were now like some
beautiful painting over which the artist has passed a wet and foul
sponge. They were blurred, discoloured, inhuman, terrible.
In a few words I explained exactly what had occurred, so far as the
vitriol attack was concerned. Some had climbed through the window and
others had rushed out on to the lawn, but it was dark and it had begun
to rain. Between his screams the victim raged and raved against the
avenger. "It was that hell-cat, Kitty Winter!" he cried. "Oh, the
she-devil! She shall pay for it! She shall pay! Oh, God in heaven,
this pain is more than I can bear!"
I bathed his face in oil, put cotton wadding on the raw surfaces, and
administered a hypodermic of morphia. All suspicion of me had passed
from his mind in the presence of this shock, and he clung to my hands
as if I might have the power even yet to clear those dead-fish eyes
which gazed up at me. I could have wept over the ruin had I not
remembered very clearly the vile life which had led up to so hideous a
change. It was loathsome to feel the pawing of his burning hands, and
I was relieved when his family surgeon, closely followed by a
specialist, came to relieve me of my charge. An inspector of police
had also arrived, and to him I handed my real card. It would have been
useless as well as foolish to do otherwise, for I was nearly as well
known by sight at the Yard as Holmes himself. Then I left that house
of gloom and terror. Within an hour I was at Baker Street.
Holmes was seated in his familiar chair, looking very pale and
exhausted. Apart from his injuries, even his iron nerves had been
shocked by the events of the evening, and he listened with horror to my
account of the Baron's transformation.
"The wages of sin, Watson--the wages of sin!" said he. "Sooner or
later it will always come. God knows, there was sin enough," he added,
taking up a brown volume from the table. "Here is the book the woman
talked of. If this will not break off the marriage, nothing ever
could. But it will, Watson. It must. No self-respecting woman could
stand it."
"It is his love diary?"
"Or his lust diary. Call it what you will. The moment the woman told
us of it I realized what a tremendous weapon was there, if we could but
lay our hands on it. I said nothing at the time to indicate my
thoughts, for this woman might have given it away. But I brooded over
it. Then this assault upon me gave me the chance of letting the Baron
think that no precautions need be taken against me. That was all to
the good. I would have waited a little longer, but his visit to
America forced my hand. He would never have left so compromising a
document behind him. Therefore we had to act at once. Burglary at
night is impossible. He takes precautions. But there was a chance in
the evening if I could only be sure that his attention was engaged.
That was where you and your blue saucer came in. But I had to be sure
of the position of the book, and I knew I had only a few minutes in
which to act, for my time was limited by your knowledge of Chinese
pottery. Therefore I gathered the girl up at the last moment. How
could I guess what the little packet was that she carried so carefully
under her cloak? I thought she had come altogether on my business, but
it seems she had some of her own."
"He guessed I came from you."
"I feared he would. But you held him in play just long enough for me
to get the book, though not long enough for an unobserved escape. Ah,
Sir James, I am very glad you have come!"
Our courtly friend had appeared in answer to a previous summons. He
listened with the deepest attention to Holmes's account of what had
occurred.
"You have done wonders--wonders!" he cried, when he had heard the
narrative. "But if these injuries are as terrible as Dr. Watson
describes, then surely our purpose of thwarting the marriage is
sufficiently gained without the use of this horrible book."
Holmes shook his head.
"Women of the de Merville type do not act like that. She would love
him the more as a disfigured martyr. No, no. It is his moral side,
not his physical, which we have to destroy. That book will bring her
back to earth--and I know nothing else that could. It is in his own
writing. She cannot get past it."
Sir James carried away both it and the precious saucer. As I was
myself overdue, I went down with him into the street. A brougham was
waiting for him. He sprang in, gave a hurried order to the cockaded
coachman, and drove swiftly away. He flung his overcoat half out of
the window to cover the armorial bearings upon the panel, but I had
seen them in the glare of our fanlight none the less. I gasped with
surprise. Then I turned back and ascended the stair to Holmes's room.
"I have found out who our client is," I cried, bursting with my great
news. "Why, Holmes, it is----"
"It is a loyal friend and a chivalrous gentleman," said Holmes, holding
up a restraining hand. "Let that now and for ever be enough for us."
I do not know how the incriminating book was used. Sir James may have
managed it. Or it is more probable that so delicate a task was
entrusted to the young lady's father. The effect, at any rate, was all
that could be desired. Three days later appeared a paragraph in _The
Morning Post_ to say that the marriage between Baron Adelbert Gruner
and Miss Violet de Merville would not take place. The same paper had
the first police-court hearing of the proceedings against Miss Kitty
Winter on the grave charge of vitriol-throwing. Such extenuating
circumstances came out in the trial that the sentence, as will be
remembered, was the lowest that was possible for such an offence.
Sherlock Holmes was threatened with a prosecution for burglary, but
when an object is good and a client is sufficiently illustrious, even
the rigid British law becomes human and elastic. My friend has not yet
stood in the dock.