“Excuse me, sir,” said he, “but am I addressing Dr. Watson?”
I bowed with a coldness which showed, I dare say, very plainlythe impression which had been produced upon my mind.
“We thought that it was probably you, as your friendship withMr. Sherlock Holmes is so well known. Would you mind comingover and speaking to Mrs. Douglas for one instant?”
I followed him with a dour face. Very clearly I could see in mymind’s eye that shattered figure on the floor. Here within a fewhours of the tragedy were his wife and his nearest friend laughingtogether behind a bush in the garden which had been his. I greetedthe lady with reserve. I had grieved with her grief in the diningroom. Now I met her appealing gaze with an unresponsive eye.
“I fear that you think me callous and hard-hearted,” said she.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It is no business of mine,” said I.
“Perhaps some day you will do me justice. If you only realized—”
“There is no need why Dr. Watson should realize,” said Barkerquickly. “As he has himself said, it is no possible business of his.”
“Exactly,” said I, “and so I will beg leave to resume my walk.”
“One moment, Dr. Watson,” cried the woman in a pleadingvoice. “There is one question which you can answer with moreauthority than anyone else in the world, and it may make a verygreat difference to me. You know Mr. Holmes and his relationswith the police better than anyone else can. Supposing thata matter were brought confidentially to his knowledge, is itabsolutely necessary that he should pass it on to the detectives?”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Barker eagerly. “Is he on his own or is heentirely in with them?”
“I really don’t know that I should be justified in discussing sucha point.”
“I beg—I implore that you will, Dr. Watson! I assure you thatyou will be helping us—helping me greatly if you will guide us onthat point.”
There was such a ring of sincerity in the woman’s voice that forthe instant I forgot all about her levity and was moved only to doher will.
“Mr. Holmes is an independent investigator,” I said. “He is hisown master, and would act as his own judgment directed. At thesame time, he would naturally feel loyalty towards the officialswho were working on the same case, and he would not concealfrom them anything which would help them in bringing a criminalto justice. Beyond this I can say nothing, and I would refer you toMr. Holmes himself if you wanted fuller information.”
So saying I raised my hat and went upon my way, leaving themstill seated behind that concealing hedge. I looked back as Irounded the far end of it, and saw that they were still talking veryearnestly together, and, as they were gazing after me, it was clearthat it was our interview that was the subject of their debate.
“I wish none of their confidences,” said Holmes, when I reportedto him what had occurred. He had spent the whole afternoon at theManor House in consultation with his two colleagues, and returnedabout five with a ravenous appetite for a high tea which I hadordered for him. “No confidences, Watson; for they are mightyawkward if it comes to an arrest for conspiracy and murder.”
“You think it will come to that?”
He was in his most cheerful and debonair humour. “My dearWatson, when I have exterminated that fourth egg I shall be readyto put you in touch with the whole situation. I don’t say that wehave fathomed it—far from it—but when we have traced themissing dumb-bell—”
“The dumb-bell!”
“Dear me, Watson, is it possible that you have not penetratedthe fact that the case hangs upon the missing dumb-bell? Well,well, you need not be downcast; for between ourselves I don’tthink that either Inspector Mac or the excellent local practitionerhas grasped the overwhelming importance of this incident. Onedumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell!
Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminentdanger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!”
He sat with his mouth full of toast and his eyes sparkling withmischief, watching my intellectual entanglement. The mere sightof his excellent appetite was an assurance of success; for I had veryclear recollections of days and nights without a thought of food,when his baffled mind had chafed before some problem while histhin, eager features became more attenuated with the asceticismof complete mental concentration. Finally he lit his pipe, andsitting in the inglenook of the old village inn he talked slowly andat random about his case, rather as one who thinks aloud than asone who makes a considered statement.
“A lie, Watson—a great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromisinglie—that’s what meets us on the threshold! There is our startingpoint. The whole story told by Barker is a lie. But Barker’s story iscorroborated by Mrs. Douglas. Therefore she is lying also. Theyare both lying, and in a conspiracy. So now we have the clearproblem. Why are they lying, and what is the truth which they aretrying so hard to conceal? Let us try, Watson, you and I, if we canget behind the lie and reconstruct the truth.
“How do I know that they are lying? Because it is a clumsyfabrication which simply could not be true. Consider! Accordingto the story given to us, the assassin had less than a minute afterthe murder had been committed to take that ring, which wasunder another ring, from the dead man’s finger, to replace theother ring—a thing which he would surely never have done—andto put that singular card beside his victim. I say that this wasobviously impossible.