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buried in Rucastle’s throat, while he writhed and screamed upon the
ground. Running up, I blew its brains out, and it fell over with its
keen white teeth still meeting in the great creases of his neck. With
much labour we separated them and carried him, living but horribly
mangled, into the house. We laid him upon the drawing-room sofa, and
having dispatched the sobered Toller to bear the news to his wife, I
did what I could to relieve his pain. We were all assembled round him
when the door opened, and a tall, gaunt woman entered the room.
“Mrs. Toller! cried Miss Hunter.
“Yes, miss. Mr. Rucastle let me out when he came back before he went up
to you. Ah, miss, it is a pity you didn’t let me know what you were
planning, for I would have told you that your pains were wasted.
“Ha! said Holmes, looking keenly at her. “It is clear that Mrs. Toller
knows more about this matter than anyone else.
“Yes, sir, I do, and I am ready enough to tell what I know.
“Then, pray, sit down, and let us hear it for there are several points
on which I must confess that I am still in the dark.
“I will soon make it clear to you, said she; “and I’d have done so
before now if I could ha’ got out from the cellar. If there’s
police-court business over this, you’ll remember that I was the one
that stood your friend, and that I was Miss Alice’s friend too.
“She was never happy at home, Miss Alice wasn’t, from the time that her
father married again. She was slighted like and had no say in anything,
but it never really became bad for her until after she met Mr. Fowler
at a friend’s house. As well as I could learn, Miss Alice had rights of
her own by will, but she was so quiet and patient, she was, that she
never said a word about them but just left everything in Mr. Rucastle’s
hands. He knew he was safe with her; but when there was a chance of a
husband coming forward, who would ask for all that the law would give
him, then her father thought it time to put a stop on it. He wanted her
to sign a paper, so that whether she married or not, he could use her
money. When she wouldn’t do it, he kept on worrying her until she got
brain-fever, and for six weeks was at death’s door. Then she got better
at last, all worn to a shadow, and with her beautiful hair cut off; but
that didn’t make no change in her young man, and he stuck to her as
true as man could be.
“Ah, said Holmes, “I think that what you have been good enough to tell
us makes the matter fairly clear, and that I can deduce all that
remains. Mr. Rucastle then, I presume, took to this system of
imprisonment?
“Yes, sir.
“And brought Miss Hunter down from London in order to get rid of the
disagreeable persistence of Mr. Fowler.
“That was it, sir.
“But Mr. Fowler being a persevering man, as a good seaman should be,
blockaded the house, and having met you succeeded by certain arguments,
metallic or otherwise, in convincing you that your interests were the
same as his.
“Mr. Fowler was a very kind-spoken, free-handed gentleman, said Mrs.
Toller serenely.
“And in this way he managed that your good man should have no want of
drink, and that a ladder should be ready at the moment when your master
had gone out.
“You have it, sir, just as it happened.
“I am sure we owe you an apology, Mrs. Toller, said Holmes, “for you
have certainly cleared up everything which puzzled us. And here comes
the country surgeon and Mrs. Rucastle, so I think, Watson, that we had
best escort Miss Hunter back to Winchester, as it seems to me that our
locus standi now is rather a questionable one.
And thus was solved the mystery of the sinister house with the copper
beeches in front of the door. Mr. Rucastle survived, but was always a
broken man, kept alive solely through the care of his devoted wife.
They still live with their old servants, who probably know so much of
Rucastle’s past life that he finds it difficult to part from them. Mr.
Fowler and Miss Rucastle were married, by special license, in
Southampton the day after their flight, and he is now the holder of a
government appointment in the island of Mauritius. As to Miss Violet
Hunter, my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no
further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of
one of his problems, and she is now the head of a private school at
Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success.
This sounds silly. At half past three on a Tuesday afternoon, in
broad daylight, Professor Hallowell of the Midland University physics
department left Jurnegan Hall, walked down a campus path clogged to the
gutters with students and disappeared into thin air.
This sounds even sillier. At nine-fifteen the next Friday morning,
Travis Tomkins, chief technician of Midland's new observatory, stepped
to the platform of Old Main to speak before an attentive crowd of
twelve hundred undergraduates and vanished before their eyes!
But this sounds silliest. H. Logan MacDowell, fat, fifty, feverish,