Lady Carfax

“ Wraythwaite knows it or not, his meeting with Harborough on the moors that particular night was witnessed."
[Pg 268] "Capital—capital!" exclaimed Carfax. "By a credible—and creditable—witness?"
"An old woman of exceptional character," answered Brereton, "except that she indulges herself in a little night-poaching now and then."
"Ah, well, we needn't tell that when she goes into the witness-box," said Carfax. "But that's most satisfactory. My dear young lady!" he added, turning to Avice, "your father will be released like—like one o'clock! ”

“ Froggy was to be the medium of his communication also.
She made no mention of Carfax to her father. He had hurt her far too deeply for any confidence to be possible. Moreover, it seemed to her that she had no right to speak until Carfax himself gave her leave.
She did not see her stepmother till the following day. The greeting between them was of the coolest, though Lady Raffold, being triumphant, sought to infuse a little sentiment into hers.
"I am really worn out, Priscilla," she said. "It is my turn now to have a little rest. I am going to leave all the hard work to you. ”

“ The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax ”

“ Two days later found me at the Hotel National at Lausanne, where I received every courtesy at the hands of M. Moser, the well-known manager. Lady Frances, as he informed me, had stayed there for several weeks. She had been much liked by all who met her. Her age was not more than forty. She was still handsome and bore every sign of having in her youth been a very lovely woman. M. Moser knew nothing of any valuable jewellery, but it had been remarked by the servants that the heavy trunk in the lady's bedroom was always scrupulously locked. Marie Devine, the maid, was as popular as her mistress. ”

“ Dr. Shlessinger, of Baden and South America. I am as sure of that as that my own name is Sherlock Holmes."
Peters, as I will now call him, started and stared hard at his formidable pursuer. "I guess your name does not frighten me, Mr. Holmes," said he coolly. "When a man's conscience is easy you can't rattle him. What is your business in my house?"
"I want to know what you have done with the Lady Frances Carfax, whom you brought away with you from Baden." ”

“ She is the most harmless and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter of crime in others. She is helpless. She is migratory. She has sufficient means to take her from country to country and from hotel to hotel. She is lost, as often as not, in a maze of obscure pensions and boardinghouses. She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed. I much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax."
I was relieved at this sudden descent from the general to the particular. Holmes consulted his notes. ”

“ So murder is their only solution."
"That seems very clear."
"Now we will take another line of reasoning. When you follow two separate chains of thought, Watson, you will find some point of intersection which should approximate to the truth. We will start now, not from the lady but from the coffin and argue backward. That incident proves, I fear, beyond all doubt that the lady is dead. It points also to an orthodox burial with proper accompaniment of medical certificate and official sanction. Had the lady been obviously murdered, they would have buried her in a hole in the back garden. ”

“ With a quick movement Holmes pushed the fellow to one side and passed into the hall. A door half opened stood immediately before us. We entered. It was the dining-room. On the table, under a half-lit chandelier, the coffin was lying. Holmes turned up the gas and raised the lid. Deep down in the recesses of the coffin lay an emaciated figure. The glare from the lights above beat down upon an aged and withered face. By no possible process of cruelty, starvation, or disease could this worn-out wreck be the still beautiful Lady Frances. Holmes's face showed his amazement, and also his relief. ”

“ You are in the habit of doing up your boots in a certain way. I see them on this occasion fastened with an elaborate double bow, which is not your usual method of tying them. You have, therefore, had them off. ”

“ These villains have coaxed this unhappy lady to London, after first alienating her from her faithful maid. If she has written any letters they have been intercepted. Through some confederate they have engaged a furnished house. Once inside it, they have made her a prisoner, and they have become possessed of the valuable jewellery which has been their object from the first. Already they have begun to sell part of it, which seems safe enough to them, since they have no reason to think that anyone is interested in the lady's fate. ”

“ Why? Then in an instant I remembered the deep sides, and the little wasted figure at the bottom. Why so large a coffin for so small a body? To leave room for another body. Both would be buried under the one certificate. It had all been so clear, if only my own sight had not been dimmed. At eight the Lady Frances would be buried. Our one chance was to stop the coffin before it left the house. ”

“ Green; I think that the sooner we can move the Lady Frances the better. Meanwhile, the funeral may proceed, and the poor old woman who still lies in that coffin may go to her last resting-place alone."
"Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson," said Holmes that evening, "it can only be as an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed. Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognize and repair them. ”

“ What with actual suffocation, and what with the poisonous fumes of the chloroform, the Lady Frances seemed to have passed the last point of recall. And then, at last, with artificial respiration, with injected ether, and with every device that science could suggest, some flutter of life, some quiver of the eyelids, some dimming of a mirror, spoke of the slowly returning life. A cab had driven up, and Holmes, parting the blind, looked out at it. "Here is Lestrade with his warrant," said he. "He will find that his birds have flown. ”

“ Could the good people who were her companions not screen her from his violence or his blackmail? What horrible purpose, what deep design, lay behind this long pursuit? There was the problem which I had to solve.
To Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly and surely I had got down to the roots of the matter. In reply I had a telegram asking for a description of Dr. Shlessinger's left ear. Holmes's ideas of humour are strange and occasionally offensive, so I took no notice of his ill-timed jest--indeed, I had already reached Montpellier in my pursuit of the maid, Marie, before his message came. ”

“ Finally we found our way to Scotland Yard. There had been difficulties of procedure in regard to the warrant. Some delay was inevitable. The magistrate's signature might not be obtained until next morning. If Holmes would call about nine he could go down with Lestrade and see it acted upon. So ended the day, save that near midnight our friend, the sergeant, called to say that he had seen flickering lights here and there in the windows of the great dark house, but that no one had left it and none had entered. We could but pray for patience and wait for the morrow. ”

“ Shlessinger," said Holmes.
"There is no such person here," she answered, and tried to close the door, but Holmes had jammed it with his foot.
"Well, I want to see the man who lives here, whatever he may call himself," said Holmes firmly.
She hesitated. Then she threw open the door. "Well, come in!" said she. "My husband is not afraid to face any man in the world." She closed the door behind us and showed us into a sitting-room on the right side of the hall, turning up the gas as she left us. "Mr. Peters will be with you in an instant," she said. ”

“ And yet how strange that they should ever let a doctor approach her unless he were a confederate, which is hardly a credible proposition."
"Could they have forged a medical certificate?"
"Dangerous, Watson, very dangerous. No, I hardly see them doing that. Pull up, cabby! This is evidently the undertaker's, for we have just passed the pawnbroker's. Would you go in, Watson? Your appearance inspires confidence. Ask what hour the Poultney Square funeral takes place to-morrow." ”

“ "I cannot at the moment recall any possible blunder which you have omitted. ”

“ The last letter was from the Hotel National at Lausanne. Lady Frances seems to have left there and given no address. The family are anxious, and as they are exceedingly wealthy no sum will be spared if we can clear the matter up."
"Is Miss Dobney the only source of information? Surely she had other correspondents?"
"There is one correspondent who is a sure draw, Watson. That is the bank. Single ladies must live, and their passbooks are compressed diaries. ”

“ They, at least, were real. Had he really found a spot where the terrific gale had shifted the sand and laid bare a treasure and tragedy of long ago? Such things might be. I had seen dead men in the dunes myself, and the overwrought state of Carfax, due to his sufferings, would account for the rest. If only he could find his way back when he came to his proper senses again.
"Thus musing I paced up and down outside the tent in the bright moonlight. Carfax was still sleeping, but uneasily, and muttering a lot in his sleep. There across the dunes the diamonds must be there somewhere. ”

“ There was a pause, and then with a sudden surprising force, Craven almost appealed—
"Dune, you can help me. You can make a great difference. I am ill; it's quite true. I'm not myself a bit and I'm tortured by imaginations—awful things. I suppose Carfax has got on my nerves and I've had absurd fancies. You can help me if you'll just answer me one question—only one. I don't want to know anything else, I'll never ask you anything else—only this. Where were you on the afternoon that Carfax was murdered?" ”

“ In form it was like a great coffee-mill, such as I had seen in London, only a thousand times larger, and with heavy windlass to work it.
'Put in a barrow-load of the smoulder,' said Uncle Ben to Carfax, 'and let them work the crank, for John to understand a thing or two.'
'At this time of day!' cried Simon Carfax; 'and the watching as has been o' late!'
However, he did it without more remonstrance; pouring into the scuttle at the top of the machine about a basketful of broken rock; and then a dozen men went to the wheel, and forced it round, as sailors do. ”

“ In Which Carfax Enlists ON the broad veranda of the administration building at Highmount, which looked down sidewise upon the twinkling light or two of Coalville and faced on even terms an opposing shoulder of the mountain where the newly erected drill derrick stood, Carfax was holding Miss Farron and four privileged members of the senior class at bay, while Tregarvon contentedly monopolized Miss Richardia Birrell. ”

“ And now Craven had been unusual—"Where's Carfax?" . . . What a dreadful thing to say and how tactless! The note, moreover, in Craven's voice sounded a danger. There was something in the air as though the fellow might, at any moment, burst into tears, fire a pistol into the air, or jump out of the window! So unpleasant, and Carfax was much more real, even now, than an abstract rabbit.
"Dear boy," said Cardillac, easily, "Carfax is dead. We all miss him—it was a beastly, horrible affair, but there's no point in dwelling on things; one only gets morbid, and morbidity isn't what we're here for." ”

“ It was five years ago that Crosby took his first holiday. He came to this very inn, "The Dog and Duck," and when they asked him his name he replied "Geoffrey Carfax." It had been an inspiration in the train. To be Geoffrey Carfax for three weeks seemed to cut him off more definitely from the Fenchurch Street office and the Islington boarding-house. George Crosby was in prison, working a life sentence; Geoffrey Carfax was a free man in search of the woman. Romance might come to Geoffrey, but it could never come to George. They were two different persons; then let them be two different persons. ”

“ Tregarvon, fighting for the up-hill inches with a load a ton or so heavier than his pulling power, became immune to the gentler leadings. Why should a promise, made to a woman who had taken it serenely as a conventional matter of course, stand in the way of a passion so vital that it laid hold upon the very well-springs of life? Why should he stand aside and let Carfax, under a fantastic sense of duty, mar three lives, or possibly four, in a foolish attempt to preserve the conventional unities? ”

“ It’s no disloyalty to you, or to Elizabeth. You had no business to leave me alone with her when Doctor Caswell asked you to go and look over the gymnasium things.”
Carfax chuckled softly.
[197] “You are a wild ass of the plains, Vance. It is borne in upon me that I shall have to marry her out of hand to bring you to your senses.”
“The quicker the better,” said Tregarvon gloomily. “There is no use in prolonging the agony.”
“Then you’ll admit that it is an agony?”
“I can’t joke about it, Poictiers. I have made the one crowning blunder that spoils a man’s life. Don’t look at me that way. ”

“ These things Olva liked in him, and had the boy not been so intimate with Cardillac and Carfax, Olva might have made advances, Craven took a man of the Carfax type with extreme simplicity; he thought his geniality and physical strength excused much coarseness and vulgarity. He was still young enough to have the Public School code—the most amazing thing in the history of the British nation—and because Carfax bruised his way as a forward through many football matches, and fought a policeman on Parker's Piece one summer evening, Rupert Craven thought him a jolly good fellow. ”