“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?”
“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’
is 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?”
“No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life inone.”
“Well, I think we must wait for a little more material. After all,you have nothing to complain of. You have received your rent, andhe is not a troublesome lodger, though he is certainly an unusualone. He pays you well, and if he chooses to lie concealed it is nodirect business of yours. We have no excuse for an intrusion uponhis privacy until we have some reason to think that there is a guiltyreason for it. I’ve taken up the matter, and I won’t lose sight of it.
Report to me if anything fresh occurs, and rely upon my assistanceif it should be needed.
“There are certainly some points of interest in this case,Watson,” he remarked when the landlady had left us. “It may, ofcourse, be trivial—individual eccentricity; or it may be very muchdeeper than appears on the surface. The first thing that strike oneis the obvious possibility that the person now in the rooms may beentirely different from the one who engaged them.”
“Why should you think so?”
“Well, apart form this cigarette-end, was it not suggestive thatthe only time the lodger went out was immediately after his takingthe rooms? He came back—or someone came back—when allwitnesses were out of the way. We have no proof that the personwho came back was the person who went out. Then, again, theman who took the rooms spoke English well. This other, however,prints ‘match’ when it should have been ‘matches.’ I can imaginethat the word was taken out of a dictionary, which would give thenoun but not the plural. The laconic style may be to conceal theabsence of knowledge of English. Yes, Watson, there are goodreasons to suspect that there has been a substitution of lodgers.”
“But for what possible end?”
“Ah! there lies our problem. There is one rather obvious line ofinvestigation.” He took down the great book in which, day by day,he filed the agony columns of the various London journals. “Dearme!” said he, turning over the pages, “what a chorus of groans,cries, and bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! Butsurely the most valuable hunting-ground that ever was givento a student of the unusual! This person is alone and cannot beapproached by letter without a breach of that absolute secrecywhich is desired. How is any news or any message to reach himfrom without? Obviously by advertisement through a newspaper.