"Hardly, Miss Caston."

"Then whom must I suspect? My poor servants? The affair with Lucy was nothing. She was too pa.s.sionate and not clever enough. Vine was a dunce. They were better parted."

"Aside from your servants, some other may be at work here."

Just at that moment the most astonishing and unearthly screech burst through the chamber. It was loud and close and seemed to rock the very table. Holmes started violently and I sprang to my feet. Miss Caston gave a cry and the gla.s.s almost dropped from her hand. The shriek then came again, yet louder and more terribly. The hair rose on my head. I looked wildly about, and even as I did so, a scratching and scrabbling, incorporeal yet insistent, rushed as it seemed through thin air itself, ascending until high above our heads in the beamed ceiling, where it ended.

I stood transfixed, until I heard Holmes's rare dry laughter.

"Well, Watson, and have you never heard such a noise?"

Miss Caston in her turn also suddenly began laughing, although she seemed quite shaken.

"A fox, Watson. It was a fox."

"But in G.o.d's name, Holmes-it seemed to go up through the air-"

"Through the wall, no doubt, and up into the roof."

I sat and poured myself another gla.s.s of brandy. Holmes, as almost always, was quite right. A fox has an uncanny, ghastly cry, well known to country dwellers. "But then the creature exists?"

"Why not?" said Holmes. "White foxes sometimes occur hereabouts, so we have learnt from Mrs. Castle, and from Derwent's book. Besides, in this case, someone has made sure a white fox is present. Before we left London, I made an inquiry of Messrs Samps and Brown, the eccentric furriers in Kempton Street, who deal in such rarities. They advised me that a live albino fox had been purchased through them, a few months ago."

"By whom?" I asked.

"By a man who was clearly the agent of another, a curious gentleman, very much m.u.f.fled up and, alas, so far untraceable." Holmes looked directly at Miss Caston. "I think you can never have read all the papers which your aunt left you. Or you would be aware of three secret pa.s.sages which run through this house. None is very wide or high, but they were intended to conceal men at times of religious or political unrest, and are not impa.s.sable."

"Mr. Holmes, I have said, I never bothered much with the papers. Do you mean that someone is hiding-in my very walls?"

"Certainly the white fox has made its earth there. No doubt encouraged to do so by a trail of meat stolen from the larder."

"What is this persecutor's aim?" she demanded fiercely. "To frighten me away?"

"Rather more than that, I think," said Holmes, laconically.

"And there is a man involved?"

"It would seem so, Miss Caston, would you not say?"

She rose and moved slowly to the hearth. There she stood in graceful profile, gazing at the shield above the fireplace.

"Am I," she said at last, "surrounded by enemies?"

"No, Miss Caston," I replied. "We are here."

"What should I do?"

Holmes said, "Perhaps you should think very clearly, Miss Caston, delve into the library of your mind, and see what can be found there."

"Then I will." She faced him. She was not beseeching, more proud. "But you mean to save me, Mr. Holmes?"

He showed no expression. His eyes had turned black as two jets in the lamplight. "I will save whomever I can, Miss Caston, that deserves it. But never rate me too highly. I am not infallible."

She averted her head suddenly, as if at a light blow. "But you are one of the greatest men living."

So saying, and without bidding us good night, she gathered her skirts and left the room. Holmes got up, and walked to the fire, into which he cast the b.u.t.t of his cigar.

"Watson, did you bring your revolver?"

"Of course I did."

"That is just as well."

"Tomorrow is Christmas Eve," I said, "according to the story, the last day of the Gall."

"Hmm." He knocked lightly on the wall, producing a hollow note. "One of the pa.s.sages runs behind this wall, Watson, and up into the attics, I am sure. The other two I have not yet been able to locate, since the plans are old and hardly to be deciphered. Just like the postmark on the letter sent to Miss Caston. Did you notice, by the by, Watson, that although the envelope had been wetted and so conveniently smudged, no moisture penetrated to the letter itself?"

I too tossed my cigar b.u.t.t into the flames.

"Fires have the look of h.e.l.l, do you think, Watson? Is h.e.l.l cheerful after all, for the malign ones cast down there?"

"You seem depressed. And you spoke to her as if the case might be beyond you."

"Did I, old man? Well, there must be one or two matches I lose. I am not, as I said, infallible."

Leaving me amazed, he vacated the room, and soon after I followed him. In my well-appointed bedchamber, I fell into a restless sleep, and woke with first light, uneasy and perplexed.

5.

I now acknowledged that Holmes was keeping back from me several elements of the puzzle he was grappling with. This was not the first occasion when he had done so, nor would it be the last. Though I felt the exclusion sharply, I knew he would have reasons for it, which seemed wise to him, at least.

However, I checked my revolver before breakfast. Going downstairs, I found I would eat my toast and drink my coffee alone. Miss Caston, as yesterday, was above, and Holmes had gone off, Vine grudgingly told me, on his own errands.

I amused myself as I could, examining the old swords, and finding a distinct lack of newspapers, tried the books in the library. They proved too heavy for my present scope of concentration.

About noon, Holmes returned, shaking the snow off his coat and hat. A blizzard was blowing up, the white flakes whirling, hiding the lawns, trees and fields beyond the windows. We went into the dining room.

"Read this," said Holmes, thrusting a telegram into my hands. I read it. It came from the firm of Samps and Brown, Furriers to the Discerning. A white fox had been purchased through their auspices on 15th October, and delivered to the care of a Mr. Smith.

"But Holmes, this was the very information you relayed last night."

"Just so. It was the information I expected to get today. But the telegram was kept for me at Chislehurst Village."

"Then why-"

"I gambled for once on its being a fact. I dearly wanted to see how Miss Caston would take it."

"It frightened her, Holmes, I have no doubt. What else?"

"Oh, did it frighten her? She kept a cool head."

"She is brave and self-possessed."

"She is a schemer."

He shocked me. I took a moment to find words. "Why on earth do you say so?"

"Watson, I despair of you. A lady's charms can disarm you utterly. And she well knows that, I think."

"She speaks more highly of you," I angrily a.s.serted.

"I am sure that she does, which is also a way of disarming you, my dear fellow. Sit down, and listen to me. No, not there, this chair, I suggest, away from the fire."

I obeyed him. "You believe someone listens in the secret pa.s.sage behind the wall there?"

"I think it possible. But this is a peculiar business and certainly its heroine has got me into a mode of distrust."

We sat down, and Holmes began to talk: "Miss Caston came to us, Watson, well-versed in all your tales of my work, inaccurate and embellished as they are. She brought with her the legend of the Caston Gall, which legend seems to be real enough, in as much as it exists in Derwent and elsewhere. Four Caston women, widows or spinsters, have apparently died here on one of the five days before Christmas. But the causes of Miss Caston's recent alarm-the writing in the snow, the number on the wall, the warning letter, the white fox-all these things have been achieved, I now suppose, by the lady herself."

"You will tell me how."

"I will. She had easy access to the letters and doc.u.ments of her aunt, and herself cut out the words, using different implements, and pasting them on a sheet of cheap paper which may be come on almost anywhere. She was impatient, it is true, and used the word 'our' where 'out' eluded her. In her impatience, too, she hired some low person of no imagination to procure the fox and bring it here-Mr. Smith, indeed. Then she herself took cold meat from the larder to lure the animal to a tenancy inside the pa.s.sageway, where it has since been heard scratching and running about. The door of the kitchen was found-not forced, nor tampered with, I have checked-but unlocked, twice. And if unlocked from the outside, why not from the inside? Again, her impatience perhaps, led her to this casualness. She would have done better to have left some sign of more criminal work, but then again, she may have hoped it would be put down to the carelessness of her staff. The letters in the snow she scratched there herself, then stood over them exclaiming. Hence her footsteps mark the snow, but no others. The abbreviation of her name and the use of the Roman five are not uningenious, I will admit-she has been somewhat heavy-handed elsewhere. In the study, she herself wrote the number five upon the wall. Standing on the librarian's steps, I had to lean down some way, the exact distance needed for a woman of her height, on those same steps, to form the number. You noticed the five, though drawn carefully, was also three times abruptly smeared, particularly on the lower curve. This was where her blue topaz ring, which at that time did not properly fit her, slipped down and pulled the ink, just as it had on her note to me. The ivy she herself disarranged from the window, with an almost insolent lack of conviction."

"Holmes, it seems to me that this once you a.s.sume a great deal too much-"

"At Baker Street I watched her in the window as she looked at me. My back was turned to her, and in her obvious unease, she forgot I might see her lamplit reflection on the night outside. Her face, Watson, was as predatory as that of any hawk. I fancied then she was not to be trusted. And there is too much that fits my notion."

"When the fox screamed, I thought she would faint."

"It is a frightful cry, and she had not antic.i.p.ated it. That one moment was quite genuine."

"Vine," I said, "and Lucy."

"I have not decided on their role in this, save that the boy is obviously disgruntled and the girl maybe was not sensible. As for the letter Lucy is said to have written to Miss Caston, that first warning which so unfortunately was thrown away, being thought at the time of no importance-it never existed. Why should Lucy, dismissed from her employment and her lover, desire to warn the inventor of her loss?"

"Perhaps Lucy meant to frighten her."

"An interesting deduction, Watson, on which I congratulate you. However, you must look at the other side of the coin. If the inventor of Lucy's loss received a sinister warning from her, would she too not conclude it was an attempt to frighten?"

"Very well. But the deaths, Holmes. I too have read Derwent. The elder Miss Caston undeniably died here. The other three women certainly seem to have done."

"There is such a thing as coincidence, Watson. Mistress Hannah Castone choked on a chicken bone. The French lady slipped on the icy stair. Maria Caston was shot by a spurned and vengeful suitor. The aunt was apoplectic and terrified out of her wits by having to remain in the house at Christmas. You as a doctor will easily see the possibility of death in such a situation."

"She had left her bed and lay by the fireplace."

"In her agony, and finding herself alone, she struggled to reach the bell-rope and so summon help."

"And the bell-rope is by the fire."

"Phenomenal, Watson."

"By G.o.d, Holmes, for once I wish you might be in error."

"I seldom am in error. Think of our subject, Watson. She has come from a miserable life, which has toughened her almost into steel, to a great fortune. Now she thinks she may have anything she wants, and do as she wishes. She flies in the face of convention, as exemplified in her refusal to wear mourning for the old lady. She prefers, now she can afford better, an inferior writing-paper she likes-a little thing, but how stubborn, how wilful. And she has got us here by dint of her wiles and her lies."

"Then in G.o.d's name why?"

"Of that I have no definite idea. But she is in the grip of someone, we may be sure of it. Some powerful man who bears me a grudge. He has a honed and evil cast of mind, and works her strings like a master of marionettes. Certain women, and often the more strong among their s.e.x, are made slaves by the man who can subdue them. And now, old chap, I shall be delighted to see you later."

I was so downcast and irascible after our talk, I went up to my room, where I wrote out the facts of the case up to that point. These notes have a.s.sisted me now, in putting the story together at last.

When I went down to lunch, I found Holmes once more absent, and Miss Caston also. She sent me her compliments by Nettie, who said her mistress was suffering from a cruel headache to which she was p.r.o.ne. Naturally I asked if I could be of any help. I was rather relieved, things standing as now they did, when Nettie thanked me and declined.

Vine waited on me at lunch, in a slapdash manner. Afterwards I played Patience in the side parlour, and was soundly beaten, as it were, nothing coming out. Beyond the long windows which ran to the floor, as they did in the dining room, the snow swirled on with a leaden feverishness.

Finally I went upstairs again to dress for dinner. I had on me, I remember, that sensation I experienced in my army days when an action was delayed. Some great battle was imminent, but the facts of it obscured. I could only curb my fretfulness and wait, trusting to my commander, Sherlock Holmes.

Outside, night had thickened, and the snow still fell. Dressed, I kept my revolver by me. Tonight was the fifth night of the Caston curse, and despite Holmes's words, perhaps because of them, I still feared not only for my friend, but for Eleanor Caston.

As I went down the corridor, for some reason I paused to look out again, through a window there. Before me on the pale ground I saw something run glimmering, like a phantom. Despite what we had learned, I drew back, startled. It was the Caston fox, pure white, its eyes flashing green in the light of the windows.

"Yes, sir. The beast exists."

I turned, and there stood the footman, Vine. He was clad, not in his uniform, but in a decent farmer's best, and looked in it both older and more sober.

"The fox is not a myth," I said.

"No, sir."

"Why are you dressed in that way?"

"I am going home. I have given her my notice. I have no mind to stay longer. I will take up my life on the land, as I was meant to. There is a living to be made there, without bowing and sc.r.a.ping. And when I have enough put by, I shall bring Lucy home, and marry her."

From a bad-tempered boy he had become a man, I saw. My instinct was to respect him, but I said, "And what of your mistress, Miss Caston?"

"She may do as she pleases. There was love, but nothing improper between Lucy and me. That was her excuse. Miss Caston threw Lucy out on account of her reading-and I will say it now, on account of you, sir, and Mr. Holmes."

Dumbfounded, I asked what he meant.

"Why, sir, when Miss Caston came here, she would rather have read the coal-scuttle than anything of yours."

"Indeed."