The Three Gables 5	The Three Gables 6	The Sussex Vampire 1

It did – with amazing celerity. A minute later we were in an Arabian Nights drawing-room, vast and wonderful, in a half gloom, picked out with an occasional pink electric light. The lady had come, I felt, to that time of life when even the proudest beauty finds the half light more welcome. She rose from a settee as we entered: tall, queenly, a perfect figure, a lovely mask-like face, with two wonderful Spanish eyes which looked murder at us both.

“What is this intrusion – and this insulting message?” she asked, holding up the slip of paper.

“I need not explain, madame. I have too much respect for your intelligence to do so – though I confess that intelligence has been surprisingly at fault of late.”

“How so, sir?”

“By supposing that your hired bullies could frighten me from my work. Surely no man would take up my profession if it were not that danger attracts him. It was you, then, who forced me to examine the case of young Maberley.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about. What have I to do with hired bullies?”

Holmes turned away wearily.

“Yes, I have underrated your intelligence. Well, good-afternoon!”

“Stop! Where are you going?”

“To Scotland Yard.”

We had not got halfway to the door before she had overtaken us and was holding his arm. She had turned in a moment from steel to velvet.

“Come and sit down, gentlemen. Let us talk this matter over. I feel that I may be frank with you, Mr. Holmes. You have the feelings of a gentleman. How quick a woman’s instinct is to find it out. I will treat you as a friend.”

“I cannot promise to reciprocate, madame. I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go. I am ready to listen, and then I will tell you how I will act.”

“No doubt it was foolish of me to threaten a brave man like yourself.”

“What was really foolish, madame, is that you have placed yourself in the power of a band of rascals who may blackmail or give you away.”

“No, no! I am not so simple. Since I have promised to be frank, I may say that no one, save Barney Stockdale and Susan, his wife, have the least idea who their employer is. As to them, well, it is not the first– –” She smiled and nodded with a charming coquettish intimacy.

“I see. You’ve tested them before.”

“They are good hounds who run silent.”

“Such hounds have a way sooner or later of biting the hand that feeds them. They will be arrested for this burglary. The police are already after them.”

“They will take what comes to them. That is what they are paid for. I shall not appear in the matter.”

“Unless I bring you into it.”

“No, no, you would not. You are a gentleman. It is a woman’s secret.”

“In the first place, you must give back this manuscript.”

She broke into a ripple of laughter and walked to the fireplace. There was a calcined mass which she broke up with the poker. “Shall I give this back?” she asked. So roguish and exquisite did she look as she stood before us with a challenging smile that I felt of all Holmes’s criminals this was the one whom he would find it hardest to face. However, he was immune from sentiment.

“That seals your fate,” he said coldly. “You are very prompt in your actions, madame, but you have overdone it on this occasion.”

She threw the poker down with a clatter.

“How hard you are!” she cried. “May I tell you the whole story?”

“I fancy I could tell it to you.”

“But you must look at it with my eyes, Mr. Holmes. You must realize it from the point of view of a woman who sees all her life’s ambition about to be ruined at the last moment. Is such a woman to be blamed if she protects herself?”

“The original sin was yours.”

“Yes, yes! I admit it. He was a dear boy, Douglas, but it so chanced that he could not fit into my plans. He wanted marriage – marriage, Mr. Holmes – with a penniless commoner. Nothing less would serve him. Then he became pertinacious. Because I had given he seemed to think that I still must give, and to him only. It was intolerable. At last I had to make him realize it.”

“By hiring ruffians to beat him under your own window.”

“You do indeed seem to know everything. Well, it is true. Barney and the boys drove him away, and were, I admit, a little rough in doing so. But what did he do then? Could I have believed that a gentleman would do such an act? He wrote a book in which he described his own story. I, of course, was the wolf; he the lamb. It was all there, under different names, of course; but who in all London would have failed to recognize it? What do you say to that, Mr. Holmes?”

“Well, he was within his rights.”

“It was as if the air of Italy had got into his blood and brought with it the old cruel Italian spirit. He wrote to me and sent me a copy of his book that I might have the torture of anticipation. There were two copies, he said – one for me, one for his publisher.”

“How did you know the publisher’s had not reached him?”

“I knew who his publisher was. It is not his only novel, you know. I found out that he had not heard from Italy. Then came Douglas’s sudden death. So long as that other manuscript was in the world there was no safety for me. Of course, it must be among his effects, and these would be returned to his mother. I set the gang at work. One of them got into the house as servant. I wanted to do the thing honestly. I really and truly did. I was ready to buy the house and everything in it. I offered any price she cared to ask. I only tried the other way when everything else had failed. Now, Mr. Holmes, granting that I was too hard on Douglas – and, God knows, I am sorry for it! – what else could I do with my whole future at stake?”

Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, well,” said he, “I suppose I shall have to compound a felony as usual. How much does it cost to go round the world in first-class style?”

The lady stared in amazement.

“Could it be done on five thousand pounds?”

“Well, I should think so, indeed!”

“Very good. I think you will sign me a check for that, and I will see that it comes to Mrs. Maberley. You owe her a little change of air. Meantime, lady” – he wagged a cautionary forefinger – “have a care! Have a care! You can’t play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands.”

The Three Gables 5	The Three Gables 6	The Sussex Vampire 1