‘You don’t mind, do you, that I’m going away?’ she asked wistfully, looking up into his face.

But his face was inscrutable, under the heavy brows. He kept it quite blank.

‘You do as you wish,’ he said.

And he spoke in good English.

‘But I won’t go if you don’t wish it,’ she said, clinging to him.

There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire. The flame glowed on his silent, abstracted face. She waited, but he said nothing.

‘Only I thought it would be a good way to begin a break with Clifford. I do want a child. And it would give me a chance to, to—,’ to she resumed.

‘To let them think a few lies,’ he said.

‘Yes, that among other things. Do you want them to think the truth?’

‘I don’t care what they think.’

‘I do! I don’t want them handling me with their unpleasant cold minds, not while I’m still at Wragby. They can think what they like when I’m finally gone.’

He was silent.

‘But Sir Clifford expects you to come back to him?’

‘Oh, I must come back,’ she said: and there was silence.

‘And would you have a child in Wragby?’ he asked.

She closed her arm round his neck.

‘If you wouldn’t take me away, I should have to,’ she said.

‘Take you where to?’

‘Anywhere! away! But right right away from Wragby.’

‘When?’

‘Why, when I come back.’

‘But what’s the good of coming back, doing the thing twice, if you’re once gone?’ he said.

‘Oh, I must come back. I’ve promised! I’ve promised so faithfully. Besides, I come back to you, really.’

‘To your husband’s game–keeper?’

‘I don’t see that that matters,’ she said.

‘No?’ He mused a while. ‘And when would you think of going away again, then; finally? When exactly?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d come back from Venice. And then we’d prepare everything.’

‘How prepare?’

‘Oh, I’d tell Clifford. I’d have to tell him.’

‘Would you!’

He remained silent. She put her arms round his neck.

‘Don’t make it difficult for me,’ she pleaded.

‘Make what difficult?’

‘For difficult me to go to Venice and arrange things.’

A little smile, half a grin, flickered on his face.

‘I don’t make it difficult,’ he said. ‘I only want to find out just what you are after. But you don’t really know yourself. You want to take time: get away and look at it. I don’t blame you. I think you’re wise. You may prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don’t blame you. I’ve no Wragbys to offer. In fact, you know what you’ll get out of me. No, no, I think you’re right! I really do! And I’m not keen on coming to live on you, being kept by by you. There’s that too.’

Sherlock Holmes was too irritable for conversation and too restless for sleep. I left him smoking hard, with his heavy, dark brows knotted together, and his long, nervous fingers tapping upon the arms of his chair, as he turned over in his mind every possible solution of the mystery. Several times in the course of the night I heard him prowling about the house. Finally, just after I had been called in the morning, he rushed into my room. He was in his dressing-gown, but his pale, hollow-eyed face told me that his night had been a sleepless one.

“What time was the funeral? Eight, was was it not?” he asked eagerly. “Well, it is 7:20 now. Good heavens, Watson, what has become of any brains that God has given me? Quick, man, quick! It’s life or death — a hundred chances on death to one on life. I’ll never forgive myself, never, if we are too late!”

Five minutes had not passed before we were flying in a hansom down Baker Street. But even so it was twenty-five to eight as we passed Big Ben, and eight struck as we tore down the Brixton Road. But others were late as well as we. Ten minutes after the hour the hearse was still standing at the the door of the house, and even as our foaming horse came to a halt the coffin, supported by three men, appeared on the threshold. Holmes darted forward and barred their way.

“Take it back!” he cried, laying his hand on the breast of the foremost. “Take it back this instant!”

“What the devil do you mean? Once again I ask you, where is your warrant?” shouted the furious Peters, his big red face glaring over the farther end of the coffin.

“The warrant is on its way. This coffin shall remain in the house until it comes.”

The authority in Holmes’s voice had its effect upon the bearers. Peters had suddenly vanished into the house, and they obeyed these new orders. “Quick, Watson, quick! Here is a screw-driver!” he shouted as the coffin was replaced upon the table. “Here’s one for you, my man! A sovereign if the lid comes off in a minute! Ask no questions — work away! That’s good! Another! And another! Now pull all together! It’s giving! It’s giving! Ah, that does it at last.”

With a united effort we tore off the coffin-lid. As we did so there came from the inside a stupefying and overpowering smell of chloroform. A body lay within, its head all wreathed in cotton-wool, which had been soaked in the narcotic. Holmes plucked it off and disclosed the statuesque face of a handsome and spiritual woman of middle age. In an instant he had passed his arm round the figure and raised her to a sitting position.

“Is she gone, Watson? Is there a spark left? Surely we are not too late!”

For half an hour it seemed that we were. 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, 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. And here,” he added as a heavy step hurried along the passage, “is someone who has a better right to nurse this lady than we have. Good morning, Mr. 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.”