Alighting at the small wayside station, we drove for some milesthrough the remains of widespread woods, which were once partof that great forest which for so long held the Saxon invaders atbay—the impenetrable “weald,” for sixty years the bulwark ofBritain. Vast sections of it have been cleared, for this is the seat ofthe first iron-works of the country, and the trees have been felledto smelt the ore. Now the richer fields of the North have absorbedthe trade, and nothing save these ravaged groves and great scars inthe earth show the work of the past. Here, in a clearing upon thegreen slope of a hill, stood a long, low, stone house, approached bycurving drive running through the fields. Nearer the road, andsurrounded on three sides by bushes, was a small outhouse, onewindow and the door facing in our direction. It was the scene ofthe murder.
Stanley Hopkins led us first to the house, where he introducedus to a haggard, gray-haired woman, the widow of the murderedman, whose gaunt and deep-lined face, with the furtive look ofterror in the depths of her red-rimmed eyes, told of the years ofhardship and ill-usage which she had endured. With her was herdaughter, a pale, fair-haired girl, whose eyes blazed defiantly at usas she told us that she was glad that her father was dead, and thatshe blessed the hand which had struck him down. It was a terriblehousehold that Black Peter Carey had made for himself, and it waswith a sense of relief that we found ourselves in the sunlight againand making our way along a path which had been worn across thefields by the feet of the dead man.
The outhouse was the simplest of dwellings, wooden-walled,shingle-roofed, one window beside the door and one on thefarther side. Stanley Hopkins drew the key from his pocket andhad stooped to the lock, when he paused with a look of attentionand surprise upon his face.
“Someone has been tampering with it,” he said.
There could be no doubt of the fact. The woodwork was cut,and the scratches showed white through the paint, as if they hadbeen that instant done. Holmes had been examining the window.
“Someone has tried to force this also. Whoever it was has failedto make his way in. He must have been a very poor burglar.”
“This is a most extraordinary thing,” said the inspector, “I couldswear that these marks were not here yesterday evening.”
“Some curious person from the village, perhaps,” I suggested.
“Very unlikely. Few of them would dare to set foot in theThe Return of Sherlock Holmes 957
grounds, far less try to force their way into the cabin. What doyou think of it, Mr. Holmes?”
“I think that fortune is very kind to us.”
“You mean that the person will come again?”
“It is very probable. He came expecting to find the door open.
He tried to get in with the blade of a very small penknife. Hecould not manage it. What would he do?”
“Come again next night with a more useful tool.”
“So I should say. It will be our fault if we are not there to receivehim. Meanwhile, let me see the inside of the cabin.”
The traces of the tragedy had been removed, but the furniturewithin the little room still stood as it had been on the night of thecrime. For two hours, with most intense concentration, Holmesexamined every object in turn, but his face showed that his questwas not a successful one. Once only he paused in his patientinvestigation.
“Have you taken anything off this shelf, Hopkins?”
“No, I have moved nothing.”
“Something has been taken. There is less dust in this corner ofthe shelf than elsewhere. It may have been a book lying on its side.
It may have been a box. Well, well, I can do nothing more. Let uswalk in these beautiful woods, Watson, and give a few hours to thebirds and the flowers. We shall meet you here later, Hopkins, andsee if we can come to closer quarters with the gentleman who haspaid this visit in the night.”
It was past eleven o’clock when we formed our little ambuscade.
Hopkins was for leaving the door of the hut open, but Holmes wasof the opinion that this would rouse the suspicions of the stranger.
The lock was a perfectly simple one, and only a strong blade wasneeded to push it back. Holmes also suggested that we shouldwait, not inside the hut, but outside it, among the bushes whichgrew round the farther window. In this way we should be able towatch our man if he struck a light, and see what his object was inthis stealthy nocturnal visit.
It was a long and melancholy vigil, and yet brought with itsomething of the thrill which the hunter feels when he lies besidethe water-pool, and waits for the coming of the thirsty beast ofprey. What savage creature was it which might steal upon us outof the darkness? Was it a fierce tiger of crime, which could onlybe taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw, or would itprove to be some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the weak andunguarded?
In absolute silence we crouched amongst the bushes, waiting forwhatever might come. At first the steps of a few belated villagers,or the sound of voices from the village, lightened our vigil, but one958 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
by one these interruptions died away, and an absolute stillness fellupon us, save for the chimes of the distant church, which told usof the progress of the night, and for the rustle and whisper of afine rain falling amid the foliage which roofed us in.
Half-past two had chimed, and it was the darkest hour whichprecedes the dawn, when we all started as a low but sharp clickcame from the direction of the gate. Someone had entered thedrive. Again there was a long silence, and I had begun to fearthat it was a false alarm, when a stealthy step was heard upon theother side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping andclinking. The man was trying to force the lock. This time his skillwas greater or his tool was better, for there was a sudden snapand the creak of the hinges. Then a match was struck, and nextinstant the steady light from a candle filled the interior of thehut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted upon thescene within.