Артур Дойл - Приключения Шерлока Холмса / The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (сборник)

“Whom do you suspect?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you later. There are several points in this problem which I haven’t explained to you yet. But I think it will be better if we wait a bit, and then I’ll explain everything.”

“As you wish, Mr. Holmes, but we must catch the murderer.”

“I don’t want to make mysteries, but it is impossible at the moment to start long and difficult explanations. I have the threads of this affair all in my hand [134]. Even if this lady should never recover we can still reconstruct the events of last night. First of all I’d like to know whether there is a hotel in this neighbourhood, called ‘Elrige’s’?”

We asked the servants, but none of them had heard of such a place. Only the stable-boy remembered that a farmer of that name lived some miles in the direction of East Ruston.

“Is it a lonely farm?”

“Very lonely, sir.”

“Perhaps they have not heard yet of all that happened here during the night?”

“Maybe not, sir.”

Holmes thought for a little and then he suddenly smiled.

“Saddle a horse, boy,” he said. “Take a note to Elrige’s Farm.”

He took out from his pocket all the pieces of paper with the dancing men. He worked with them for some time at the table. Finally he gave a note to the boy. He said to put it into the hands of the person to whom it was addressed, and especially not to answer any questions. I saw the note – it was addressed to Mr. Abe Slaney, Elrige’s Farm, East Ruston, Norfolk.

“I think, inspector,” Holmes said, “if my calculations are correct, you should telegraph for an escort. We may catch a very dangerous prisoner. The boy who takes this note could help with your telegram. If there is an afternoon train to town, Watson, I think we should take it, because I have to finish my chemical analysis, and this investigation comes to an end.”

When the boy with the note left, Sherlock Holmes gave some instructions to the servants. If any visitor came to Mrs. Cubitt, they shouldn’t tell him anything about what had happened. And he should be led right to the living-room. He said it was very important. Finally he seated in the living-room and said that we must wait until we could see what would happen. The doctor left to his patients, and only the inspector and I remained.

“I think that now I can help you to spend this hour in an interesting way,” said Holmes. He came up to the table and spread out in front of him the various papers on which were drawn the dancing men.

“As to you, my friend Watson, I should finally satisfy your curiosity. To you, inspector, the whole story may seem remarkable. I must tell you how I met Mr. Hilton Cubitt in Baker Street.” He shortly told the facts which have already been mentioned.

“So who knew that these childish symbols could lead to such a tragedy! I know all forms of secret writings and I am the author of some, by the way [135]. But this is new to me. The man who invented this one, tried to conceal that these symbols could have a meaning and presented them as drawings of children.”

“However, when I understood that the symbols stood for the letters, the solution was easy enough. The first message was so short that it was impossible for me to read it. But I guessed that the symbol

meant E. As all we know, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and even in a short sentence we could find it most often [136]. There were fifteen symbols in the first message, four were the same. So it was reasonable to mark them as E. In some cases the figure was with a flag in his hands and in some cases not. And I came to an idea that the flags were used to break the sentence up into words.”

“And that’s it. It would be an endless task to try all the letters until the message was meaningful. That’s why I waited for fresh material. In my second interview with Mr. Hilton Cubitt he gave me two other short sentences and one message, which was (there was no flag) a single word. Here are the symbols. Now, in the single word I have already got the two E’s: the second and the fourth letter in a word of five letters. It might be ‘sever’, or ‘lever’ or… ‘never’. There is no doubt [137]the latter as a reply is the most probable. And we can assume that it was a reply written by the lady. Now we can say that these symbols mean N, V and R.”

“Even now I was in some difficulty [138], but suddenly it occurred to me [139]that if this person, who drew these dancing men, had been close with the lady in her past, a combination which contained two E’s with three letters between might mean the name ‘ELSIE’. It was certainly some appeal to ‘Elsie’. In this way I had got my L, S, and I. But what appeal could it be? There were only four letters in the word before ‘Elsie,’ and it ended in E. Surely the word must be ‘COME. ‘ I tried all other words ending in E, but ‘COME’ was the most appropriate. So now I had C, O, and M. And I started reading the first message once more. It was like this:

M.ERE..E SL.NE.

“Now the first letter can only be A, which repeats three times in this short sentence. And the H is also obvious in the second word. Now it becomes:

AM HERE A.E SLANE.

Or, if we fill the rest in the name:

AM HERE ABE SLANEY.

I had so many letters now that I could read the second message, which was:

A. ELRI.ES.

Here I could only put T and G for the missing letters. I thought it was the name of some house or hotel atwhich the man was staying [140].”

Inspector Martin and I had listened with interest to the full story how our friend managed to solve this riddle of the dancing men.

“What did you do then, sir?” asked the inspector.

“I guessed that this Slaney was an American, because Abe is an American name, and because a letter from America gave a start of all the trouble. I was sure that there was some criminal secret here. The way the lady spoke about her past helped me to think so. I called my friend from New York, Wilson Hargreave, policeman. I asked him whether the name of Abe Slaney was known to him. Here is his reply: ‘The most dangerous cheater in Chicago’. That evening Hilton Cubitt sent me the last message from Slaney. It took this form:

ELSIE.RE.ARE TO MEET THY [141]GO.

I completed the message with a P and a D which showed me that this man was now threatening. I at once came to Norfolk with my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, but, unfortunately, the worst had already happened.”

“It is great to work with you, Mr. Holmes,” said the inspector, warmly. “You will excuse me, however, if I speak frankly to you. I’m responsible for this case. If this Abe Slaney is really the murderer and if he has escaped while I’m sitting here, I’ll get into serious trouble [142].”

“Don’t worry. He will not escape.”

“How do you know?”

“To escape would be a confession of guilt.”

“Then let us go to arrest him.”

“No, we expect him here every minute.”

“But why should he come?”

“Because I have written to him and asked him.”

“But this is incredible, Mr. Holmes! Why should he come because you have asked him? Isn’t it suspicious?”

“I think I have written the letter correctly,” said Sherlock Holmes. “In fact, if I am not mistaken [143], here he comes.”