You are uneasy, as I understand, because your new lodger remainsin his rooms and you cannot see him. Why, bless you, Mrs.
Warren, if I were your lodger you often would not see me forweeks on end.”
“No doubt, sir; but this is different. It frightens me, Mr. Holmes.
can’t sleep for fright. To hear his quick step moving here andmoving there from early morning to late at night, and yet never tocatch so much as a glimpse of him—it’s more than I can stand. Myhusband is as nervous over it as I am, but he is out at his work allday, while I get no rest from it. What is he hiding for? What hashe done? Except for the girl, I am all alone in the house with him,and it’s more than my nerves can stand.”
Holmes leaned forward and laid his long, thin fingers upon thewoman’s shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothingwhen he wished. The scared look faded from her eyes, and heragitated features smoothed into their usual commonplace. She satdown in the chair which he had indicated.
“If I take it up I must understand every detail,” said he. “Taketime to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential.
You say that the man came ten days ago and paid you for afortnight’s board and lodging?”
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
“He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week. There is asmall sitting-room and bedroom, and all complete, at the top ofthe house.”
“Well?”
“He said, ‘I’ll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on myown terms.’ I’m a poor woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little,and the money meant much to me. He took out a ten-pound note,and he held it out to me then and there. ‘You can have the sameevery fortnight for a long time to come if you keep the terms,’ hesaid. ‘If not, I’ll have no more to do with you.’
“What were the terms?”
“Well, sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house. Thatwas all right. Lodgers often have them. Also, that he was to be leftentirely to himself and never, upon any excuse, to be disturbed.”
“Nothing wonderful in that, surely?”
“Not in reason, sir. But this is out of all reason. He has beenthere for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl hasonce set eyes upon him. We can hear that quick step of his pacingup and down, up and down, night, morning, and noon; but excepton that first night he has never once gone out of the house.”
“Oh, he went out the first night, did he?”
“Yes, sir, and returned very late—after we were all in bed. Hetold me after he had taken the rooms that he would do so andasked me not to bar the door. I heard him come up the stair aftermidnight.”
“But his meals?”
“It was his particular direction that we should always, when herang, leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he ringsagain when he has finished, and we take it down from the samechair. If he wants anything else he prints it on a slip of paper andleaves it.”
“Prints it?”
“Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here’sthe one I brought to show you—SOAP. Here’s another—MATCH.
This is one he left the first morning—DAILY GAZETTE. I leavethat paper with his breakfast every morning.”
“Dear me, Watson,” said Homes, staring with great curiosity atthe slips of foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, “thisis certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can understand; but whyprint? Printing is a clumsy process. Why not write? What would itsuggest, Watson?”
“That he desired to conceal his handwriting.”
“But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady shouldhave a word of his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then, again,why such laconic messages?”
1132 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“I cannot imagine.”
“It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The wordsare written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a notunusual pattern. You will observe that the paper is torn away atthe side here after the printing was done, so that the ‘s’ of ‘SOAP’
partly gone. Suggestive, Watson, is it not?”
“Of caution?”
“Exactly. There was evidently some mark, some thumbprint,something which might give a clue to the person’s identity. Now.
Mrs. Warren, you say that the man was of middle size, dark, andbearded. What age would he be?”
“Youngish, sir—not over thirty.”
“Well, can you give me no further indications?”
“He spoke good English, sir, and yet I thought he was aforeigner by his accent.”
“And he was well dressed?”
“Very smartly dressed, sir—quite the gentleman. Dark clothes—nothing you would note.”
“He gave no name?”
“No, sir.”
“And has had no letters or callers?”
“None.”
“But surely you or the girl enter his room of a morning?”
“No, sir; he looks after himself entirely.”
“Dear me! that is certainly remarkable. What about his luggage?”
“He had one big brown bag with him—nothing else.”
“Well, we don’t seem to have much material to help us. Do yousay nothing has come out of that room—absolutely nothing?”
The landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shookout two burnt matches and a cigarette-end upon the table.
“They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because Ihad heard that you can read great things out of small ones.”
Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
“There is nothing here,” said he. “The matches have, of course,been used to light cigarettes. That is obvious from the shortnessof the burnt end. Half the match is consumed in lighting a pipe orcigar. But, dear me! this cigarette stub is certainly remarkable. Thegentleman was bearded and moustached, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t understand that. I should say that only a clean-shavenman could have smoked this. Why, Watson, even your modestmoustache would have been singed.”
“A holder?” I suggested.
“No, no; the end is matted. I suppose there could not be twopeople in your rooms, Mrs. Warren?”
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge 1133
“No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life inone.”