PART I

“Well, Mrs. Warren, I cannot see that you have any particular cause for

uneasiness, nor do I understand why I, whose time is of some value,

should interfere in the matter. I really have other things to engage

me.” So spoke Sherlock Holmes and turned back to the great scrapbook in

which he was arranging and indexing some of his recent material.

But the landlady had the pertinacity and also the cunning of her sex.

She held her ground firmly.

“You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year,” she said—“Mr.

Fairdale Hobbs.”

“Ah, yes—a simple matter.”

“But he would never cease talking of it—your kindness, sir, and the way

in which you brought light into the darkness. I remembered his words

when I was in doubt and darkness myself. I know you could if you only

would.”

Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, and also, to do him

justice, upon the side of kindliness. The two forces made him lay down

his gum-brush with a sigh of resignation and push back his chair.

“Well, well, Mrs. Warren, let us hear about it, then. You don’t object

to tobacco, I take it? Thank you, Watson—the matches! You are uneasy,

as I understand, because your new lodger remains in his rooms and you

cannot see him. Why, bless you, Mrs. Warren, if I were your lodger you

often would not see me for weeks on end.”

“No doubt, sir; but this is different. It frightens me, Mr. Holmes. I

can’t sleep for fright. To hear his quick step moving here and moving

there from early morning to late at night, and yet never to catch so

much as a glimpse of him—it’s more than I can stand. My husband is as

nervous over it as I am, but he is out at his work all day, while I get

no rest from it. What is he hiding for? What has he 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 the woman’s

shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished.

The scared look faded from her eyes, and her agitated features smoothed

into their usual commonplace. She sat down in the chair which he had

indicated.

“If I take it up I must understand every detail,” said he. “Take time

to consider. The smallest point may be the most essential. You say that

the man came ten days ago and paid you for a fortnight’s board and

lodging?”

“He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week. There is a

small sitting-room and bedroom, and all complete, at the top of the

house.”

“Well?”

“He said, ‘I’ll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my own

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 same every fortnight for a

long time to come if you keep the terms,’ he said. ‘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. That was

all right. Lodgers often have them. Also, that he was to be left

entirely 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 been there

for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set

eyes upon him. We can hear that quick step of his pacing up and down,

up and down, night, morning, and noon; but except on that first night

he had 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. He told me

after he had taken the rooms that he would do so and asked me not to

bar the door. I heard him come up the stair after midnight.”

“But his meals?”

“It was his particular direction that we should always, when he rang,

leave his meal upon a chair, outside his door. Then he rings again when

he has finished, and we take it down from the same chair. If he wants

anything else he prints it on a slip of paper and leaves it.”

“Prints it?”

“Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here’s the

one I brought to show you—SOAP. Here’s another—MATCH. This is one he

left the first morning—DAILY GAZETTE. I leave that paper with his

breakfast every morning.”

“Dear me, Watson,” said Homes, staring with great curiosity at the

slips of foolscap which the landlady had handed to him, “this is

certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can understand; but why print?

Printing is a clumsy process. Why not write? What would it suggest,

Watson?”

“That he desired to conceal his handwriting.”

“But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady should have 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 words are

written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not unusual

pattern. You will observe that the paper is torn away at the 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, and bearded. 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 a foreigner 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 you say

nothing has come out of that room—absolutely nothing?”

The landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shook out two

burnt matches and a cigarette-end upon the table.

“They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because I had 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 shortness of the

burnt end. Half the match is consumed in lighting a pipe or cigar. But,

dear me! this cigarette stub is certainly remarkable. The gentleman was

bearded and moustached, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t understand that. I should say that only a clean-shaven man

could have smoked this. Why, Watson, even your modest moustache would

have been singed.”

“A holder?” I suggested.

“No, no; the end is matted. I suppose there could not be two people in

your rooms, Mrs. Warren?”

“No, sir. He eats so little that I often wonder it can keep life in

one.”

“Well, I think we must wait for a little more material. After all, you

have nothing to complain of. You have received your rent, and he is not

a troublesome lodger, though he is certainly an unusual one. He pays

you well, and if he chooses to lie concealed it is no direct business

of yours. We have no excuse for an intrusion upon his privacy until we

have some reason to think that there is a guilty reason 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 assistance if 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, of course, be

trivial—individual eccentricity; or it may be very much deeper than

appears on the surface. The first thing that strikes one is the obvious

possibility that the person now in the rooms may be entirely different

from the one who engaged them.”

“Why should you think so?”

“Well, apart from this cigarette-end, was it not suggestive that the

only time the lodger went out was immediately after his taking the

rooms? He came back—or someone came back—when all witnesses were out of

the way. We have no proof that the person who came back was the person

who went out. Then, again, the man who took the rooms spoke English

well. This other, however, prints ‘match’ when it should have been

‘matches.’ I can imagine that the word was taken out of a dictionary,

which would give the noun but not the plural. The laconic style may be

to conceal the absence of knowledge of English. Yes, Watson, there are

good reasons 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 of

investigation.” He took down the great book in which, day by day, he

filed the agony columns of the various London journals. “Dear me!” said

he, turning over the pages, “what a chorus of groans, cries, and

bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! But surely the most

valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to a student of the

unusual! This person is alone and cannot be approached by letter

without a breach of that absolute secrecy which is desired. How is any

news or any message to reach him from without? Obviously by

advertisement through a newspaper. There seems no other way, and

fortunately we need concern ourselves with the one paper only. Here are

the _Daily Gazette_ extracts of the last fortnight. ‘Lady with a black

boa at Prince’s Skating Club’—that we may pass. ‘Surely Jimmy will not

break his mother’s heart’—that appears to be irrelevant. ‘If the lady

who fainted on Brixton bus’—she does not interest me. ‘Every day my

heart longs—’ Bleat, Watson—unmitigated bleat! Ah, this is a little

more possible. Listen to this: ‘Be patient. Will find some sure means

of communications. Meanwhile, this column. G.’ That is two days after

Mrs. Warren’s lodger arrived. It sounds plausible, does it not? The

mysterious one could understand English, even if he could not print it.

Let us see if we can pick up the trace again. Yes, here we are—three

days later. ‘Am making successful arrangements. Patience and prudence.

The clouds will pass. G.’ Nothing for a week after that. Then comes

something much more definite: ‘The path is clearing. If I find chance

signal message remember code agreed—One A, two B, and so on. You will

hear soon. G.’ That was in yesterday’s paper, and there is nothing in

to-day’s. It’s all very appropriate to Mrs. Warren’s lodger. If we wait

a little, Watson, I don’t doubt that the affair will grow more

intelligible.”

So it proved; for in the morning I found my friend standing on the

hearthrug with his back to the fire and a smile of complete

satisfaction upon his face.

“How’s this, Watson?” he cried, picking up the paper from the table.

“‘High red house with white stone facings. Third floor. Second window

left. After dusk. G.’ That is definite enough. I think after breakfast

we must make a little reconnaissance of Mrs. Warren’s neighbourhood.

Ah, Mrs. Warren! what news do you bring us this morning?”

Our client had suddenly burst into the room with an explosive energy

which told of some new and momentous development.

“It’s a police matter, Mr. Holmes!” she cried. “I’ll have no more of

it! He shall pack out of there with his baggage. I would have gone

straight up and told him so, only I thought it was but fair to you to

take your opinion first. But I’m at the end of my patience, and when it

comes to knocking my old man about—”

“Knocking Mr. Warren about?”

“Using him roughly, anyway.”

“But who used him roughly?”

“Ah! that’s what we want to know! It was this morning, sir. Mr. Warren

is a timekeeper at Morton and Waylight’s, in Tottenham Court Road. He

has to be out of the house before seven. Well, this morning he had not

gone ten paces down the road when two men came up behind him, threw a

coat over his head, and bundled him into a cab that was beside the

curb. They drove him an hour, and then opened the door and shot him

out. He lay in the roadway so shaken in his wits that he never saw what

became of the cab. When he picked himself up he found he was on

Hampstead Heath; so he took a bus home, and there he lies now on his

sofa, while I came straight round to tell you what had happened.”

“Most interesting,” said Holmes. “Did he observe the appearance of

these men—did he hear them talk?”

“No; he is clean dazed. He just knows that he was lifted up as if by

magic and dropped as if by magic. Two at least were in it, and maybe

three.”

“And you connect this attack with your lodger?”

“Well, we’ve lived there fifteen years and no such happenings ever came

before. I’ve had enough of him. Money’s not everything. I’ll have him

out of my house before the day is done.”

“Wait a bit, Mrs. Warren. Do nothing rash. I begin to think that this

affair may be very much more important than appeared at first sight. It

is clear now that some danger is threatening your lodger. It is equally

clear that his enemies, lying in wait for him near your door, mistook

your husband for him in the foggy morning light. On discovering their

mistake they released him. What they would have done had it not been a

mistake, we can only conjecture.”

“Well, what am I to do, Mr. Holmes?”

“I have a great fancy to see this lodger of yours, Mrs. Warren.”

“I don’t see how that is to be managed, unless you break in the door. I

always hear him unlock it as I go down the stair after I leave the

tray.”

“He has to take the tray in. Surely we could conceal ourselves and see

him do it.”

The landlady thought for a moment.

“Well, sir, there’s the box-room opposite. I could arrange a

looking-glass, maybe, and if you were behind the door—”

“Excellent!” said Holmes. “When does he lunch?”

“About one, sir.”

“Then Dr. Watson and I will come round in time. For the present, Mrs.

Warren, good-bye.”

At half-past twelve we found ourselves upon the steps of Mrs. Warren’s

house—a high, thin, yellow-brick edifice in Great Orme Street, a narrow

thoroughfare at the northeast side of the British Museum. Standing as

it does near the corner of the street, it commands a view down Howe

Street, with its more pretentious houses. Holmes pointed with a chuckle

to one of these, a row of residential flats, which projected so that

they could not fail to catch the eye.

“See, Watson!” said he. “‘High red house with stone facings.’ There is

the signal station all right. We know the place, and we know the code;

so surely our task should be simple. There’s a ‘to let’ card in that

window. It is evidently an empty flat to which the confederate has

access. Well, Mrs. Warren, what now?”

“I have it all ready for you. If you will both come up and leave your

boots below on the landing, I’ll put you there now.”

It was an excellent hiding-place which she had arranged. The mirror was

so placed that, seated in the dark, we could very plainly see the door

opposite. We had hardly settled down in it, and Mrs. Warren left us,

when a distant tinkle announced that our mysterious neighbour had rung.

Presently the landlady appeared with the tray, laid it down upon a

chair beside the closed door, and then, treading heavily, departed.

Crouching together in the angle of the door, we kept our eyes fixed

upon the mirror. Suddenly, as the landlady’s footsteps died away, there

was the creak of a turning key, the handle revolved, and two thin hands

darted out and lifted the tray from the chair. An instant later it was

hurriedly replaced, and I caught a glimpse of a dark, beautiful,

horrified face glaring at the narrow opening of the box-room. Then the

door crashed to, the key turned once more, and all was silence. Holmes

twitched my sleeve, and together we stole down the stair.

“I will call again in the evening,” said he to the expectant landlady.

“I think, Watson, we can discuss this business better in our own

quarters.”

“My surmise, as you saw, proved to be correct,” said he, speaking from

the depths of his easy-chair. “There has been a substitution of

lodgers. What I did not foresee is that we should find a woman, and no

ordinary woman, Watson.”

“She saw us.”

“Well, she saw something to alarm her. That is certain. The general

sequence of events is pretty clear, is it not? A couple seek refuge in

London from a very terrible and instant danger. The measure of that

danger is the rigour of their precautions. The man, who has some work

which he must do, desires to leave the woman in absolute safety while

he does it. It is not an easy problem, but he solved it in an original

fashion, and so effectively that her presence was not even known to the

landlady who supplies her with food. The printed messages, as is now

evident, were to prevent her sex being discovered by her writing. The

man cannot come near the woman, or he will guide their enemies to her.

Since he cannot communicate with her direct, he has recourse to the

agony column of a paper. So far all is clear.”

“But what is at the root of it?”

“Ah, yes, Watson—severely practical, as usual! What is at the root of

it all? Mrs. Warren’s whimsical problem enlarges somewhat and assumes a

more sinister aspect as we proceed. This much we can say: that it is no

ordinary love escapade. You saw the woman’s face at the sign of danger.

We have heard, too, of the attack upon the landlord, which was

undoubtedly meant for the lodger. These alarms, and the desperate need

for secrecy, argue that the matter is one of life or death. The attack

upon Mr. Warren further shows that the enemy, whoever they are, are

themselves not aware of the substitution of the female lodger for the

male. It is very curious and complex, Watson.”

“Why should you go further in it? What have you to gain from it?”

“What, indeed? It is art for art’s sake, Watson. I suppose when you

doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?”

“For my education, Holmes.”

“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the

greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither

money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up. When dusk

comes we should find ourselves one stage advanced in our

investigation.”

When we returned to Mrs. Warren’s rooms, the gloom of a London winter

evening had thickened into one grey curtain, a dead monotone of colour,

broken only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows and the blurred

haloes of the gas-lamps. As we peered from the darkened sitting-room of

the lodging-house, one more dim light glimmered high up through the

obscurity.

“Someone is moving in that room,” said Holmes in a whisper, his gaunt

and eager face thrust forward to the window-pane. “Yes, I can see his

shadow. There he is again! He has a candle in his hand. Now he is

peering across. He wants to be sure that she is on the lookout. Now he

begins to flash. Take the message also, Watson, that we may check each

other. A single flash—that is A, surely. Now, then. How many did you

make it? Twenty. So did I. That should mean T. AT—that’s intelligible

enough. Another T. Surely this is the beginning of a second word. Now,

then—TENTA. Dead stop. That can’t be all, Watson? ATTENTA gives no

sense. Nor is it any better as three words AT, TEN, TA, unless T. A.

are a person’s initials. There it goes again! What’s that? ATTE—why, it

is the same message over again. Curious, Watson, very curious. Now he

is off once more! AT—why he is repeating it for the third time. ATTENTA

three times! How often will he repeat it? No, that seems to be the

finish. He has withdrawn from the window. What do you make of it,

Watson?”

“A cipher message, Holmes.”

My companion gave a sudden chuckle of comprehension. “And not a very

obscure cipher, Watson,” said he. “Why, of course, it is Italian! The A

means that it is addressed to a woman. ‘Beware! Beware! Beware!’ How’s

that, Watson?

“I believe you have hit it.”

“Not a doubt of it. It is a very urgent message, thrice repeated to

make it more so. But beware of what? Wait a bit, he is coming to the

window once more.”

Again we saw the dim silhouette of a crouching man and the whisk of the

small flame across the window as the signals were renewed. They came

more rapidly than before—so rapid that it was hard to follow them.

“PERICOLO—pericolo—eh, what’s that, Watson? ‘Danger,’ isn’t it? Yes, by

Jove, it’s a danger signal. There he goes again! PERI. Halloa, what on

earth—”

The light had suddenly gone out, the glimmering square of window had

disappeared, and the third floor formed a dark band round the lofty

building, with its tiers of shining casements. That last warning cry

had been suddenly cut short. How, and by whom? The same thought

occurred on the instant to us both. Holmes sprang up from where he

crouched by the window.

“This is serious, Watson,” he cried. “There is some devilry going

forward! Why should such a message stop in such a way? I should put

Scotland Yard in touch with this business—and yet, it is too pressing

for us to leave.”

“Shall I go for the police?”

“We must define the situation a little more clearly. It may bear some

more innocent interpretation. Come, Watson, let us go across ourselves

and see what we can make of it.”