"Dear me! Are you the mother of Douglas Maberley? I knew him slightly. But of course all London knew him. What a magnificent creature he was! Where is he now?"
"Dead, Mr. Holmes, dead! He was attache at Rome, and he died there of pneumonia last month."
"I am sorry. One could not connect death with such a man. I have never known anyone so vitally alive. He lived intensely every fibre of him!"
"Too intensely, Mr. Holmes. That was the ruin of him. You remember him as he was debonair and splendid. You did not see the moody, morose, brooding creature into which he developed. His heart was broken. In a single month I seemed to see my gallant boy turn into a worn-out cynical man."
"A love affair a woman?"
"Or a fiend. Well, it was not to talk of my poor lad that I asked you to come, Mr. Holmes."
"Dr. Watson and I are at your service."
"There have been some very strange happenings. I have been in this house more than a year now, and as I wished to lead a retired life I have seen little of my neighbors. Three days ago I had a call from a man who said that he was a house agent. He said that this house would exactly suit a client of his, and that if I would part with it money would be no object. It seemed to me very strange as there are several empty houses on the market which appear to be equally eligible, but naturally I was interested in what he said. I therefore named a price which was five hundred pounds more than I gave. He at once closed with the offer, but added that his client desired to buy the furniture as well and would I put a price upon it. Some of this furniture is from my old home, and it is, as you see, very good, so that I named a good round sum. To this also he at once agreed. I had always wanted to travel, and the bargain was so good a one that it really seemed that I should be my own mistress for the rest of my life.
"Yesterday the man arrived with the agreement all drawn out. Luckily I showed it to Mr. Sutro, my lawyer, who lives in Harrow. He said to me, 'This is a very strange document. Are you aware that if you sign it you could not legally take anything out of the house not even your own private possessions?' When the man came again in the evening I pointed this out, and I said that I meant only to sell the furniture.
" 'No, no, everything,' said he.
" 'But my clothes? My jewels?'
" 'Well, well, some concession might be made for your personal effects. But nothing shall go out of the house unchecked. My client is a very liberal man, but he has his fads and his own way of doing things. It is everything or nothing with him.'
" 'Then it must be nothing,' said I. And there the matter was left, but the whole thing seemed to me to be so unusual that I thought "
Here we had a very extraordinary interruption.
Holmes raised his hand for silence. Then he strode across the room, flung open the door, and dragged in a great gaunt woman whom he had seized by the shoulder. She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.
"Leave me alone! What are you a-doin' of?" she screeched.
"Why, Susan, what is this?"
"Well, ma'am, I was comin' in to ask if the visitors was stayin' for lunch when this man jumped out at me."
"I have been listening to her for the last five minutes, but did not wish to interrupt your most interesting narrative. Just a little wheezy, Susan, are you not? You breathe too heavily for that kind of work."
Susan turned a sulky but amazed face upon her captor. "Who be you, anyhow, and what right have you a-pullin' me about like this?"
"It was merely that I wished to ask a question in your presence. Did you, Mrs. Maberley, mention to anyone that you were going to write to me and consult me?"
"No, Mr. Holmes, I did not."
"Who posted your letter?"
"Susan did."
"Exactly. Now, Susan, to whom was it that you wrote or sent a message to say that your mistress was asking advice from me?"
"It's a lie. I sent no message."
"Now, Susan, wheezy people may not live long, you know. It's a wicked thing to tell fibs. Whom did you tell?"
"Susan!" cried her mistress, "I believe you are a bad, treacherous woman. I remember now that I saw you speaking to someone over the hedge."
"That was my own business," said the woman sullenly.
"Suppose I tell you that it was Barney Stockdale to whom you spoke?" said Holmes.
"Well, if you know, what do you want to ask for?"
"I was not sure, but I know now. Well now, Susan, it will be worth ten pounds to you if you will tell me who is at the back of Barney."
"Someone that could lay down a thousand pounds for every ten you have in the world."
"So, a rich man? No; you smiled a rich woman. Now we have got so far, you may as well give the name and earn the tenner."
"I'll see you in hell first."
"Oh, Susan! Language!"
"I am clearing out of here. I've had enough of you all. I'll send for my box tomorrow." She flounced for the door.
"Good-bye, Susan. Paregoric is the stuff. Now," he continued, turning suddenly from lively to severe when the door had closed behind the flushed and angry woman, "this gang means business. Look how close they play the game. Your letter to me had the 10 P.M. postmark. And yet Susan passes the word to Barney. Barney has time to go to his employer and get instructions; he or she I incline to the latter from Susan's grin when she thought I had blundered forms a plan. Black Steve is called in, and I am warned off by eleven o'clock next morning. That's quick work, you know."
"But what do they want?"
"Yes, that's the question. Who had the house before you?"
"A retired sea captain called Ferguson."
"Anything remarkable about him?"
"Not that ever I heard of."
"I was wondering whether he could have buried something. Of course, when people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank. But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them. At first I thought of some buried valuable. But why, in that case, should they want your furniture? You don't happen to have a Raphael or a first folio Shakespeare without knowing it?"
"No, I don't think I have anything rarer than a Crown Derby tea-set."
"That would hardly justify all this mystery. Besides, why should they not openly state what they want? If they covet your tea-set, they can surely offer a price for it without buying you out, lock, stock, and barrel. No, as I read it, there is something which you do not know that you have, and which you would not give up if you did know."
"That is how I read it," said I.
"Dr. Watson agrees, so that settles it."
"Well, Mr. Holmes, what can it be?"
"Let us see whether by this purely mental analysis we can get it to a finer point. You have been in this house a year."
"Nearly two."
"All the better. During this long period
no one wants anything from you. Now suddenly within three or four days you have urgent demands. What would you gather from that?"
"It can only mean," said I, "that the object, whatever it may be, has only just come into the house."
"Settled once again," said Holmes. "Now, Mrs. Maberley has any object just arrived?"
"No, I have bought nothing new this year."
"Indeed! That is very remarkable. Well, I think we had best let matters develop a little further until we have clearer data. Is that lawyer of yours a capable man?"
"Mr. Sutro is most capable."