“Yes, a provisional one. But I shall be surprised if “The cottage is still tenanted,” it said.
it does not turn out to be correct. This woman’s first “Have seen the face again at the window.
husband is in that cottage.” Will meet the seven o’clock train, and will
“Why do you think so?” take no steps until you arrive.”
“How else can we explain her frenzied anxiety He was waiting on the platform when we stepped that her second one should not enter it? The facts, out, and we could see in the light of the station lamps as I read them, are something like this: This woman that he was very pale, and quivering with agitation.
was married in America. Her husband developed
some hateful qualities; or shall we say that he con- “They are still there, Mr. Holmes,” said he, laying tracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper his hand hard upon my friend’s sleeve. “I saw lights or an imbecile? She flies from him at last, returns in the cottage as I came down. We shall settle it now to England, changes her name, and starts her life, as once and for all.” she thinks, afresh. She has been married three years, “What is your plan, then?” asked Holmes, as he and believes that her position is quite secure, having walked down the dark tree-lined road. shown her husband the death certificate of some man “I am going to force my way in and see for myself whose name she has assumed, when suddenly her who is in the house. I wish you both to be there as whereabouts is discovered by her first husband; or, witnesses.”
we may suppose, by some unscrupulous woman who “You are quite determined to do this, in spite of has attached herself to the invalid. They write to the your wife’s warning that it is better that you should wife, and threaten to come and expose her. She asks not solve the mystery?” for a hundred pounds, and endeavors to buy them off.
They come in spite of it, and when the husband men- “Yes, I am determined.” tions casually to the wife that there are new-comers “Well, I think that you are in the right. Any truth in the cottage, she knows in some way that they are is better than indefinite doubt. We had better go up her pursuers. She waits until her husband is asleep, at once. Of course, legally, we are putting ourselves and then she rushes down to endeavor to persuade hopelessly in the wrong; but I think that it is worth them to leave her in peace. Having no success, she it.”
goes again next morning, and her husband meets her, It was a very dark night, and a thin rain began to as he has told us, as she comes out. She promises him fall as we turned from the high road into a narrow then not to go there again, but two days afterwards lane, deeply rutted, with hedges on either side. Mr.
the hope of getting rid of those dreadful neighbors Grant Munro pushed impatiently forward, however, was too strong for her, and she made another attempt, and we stumbled after him as best we could. taking down with her the photograph which had “There are the lights of my house,” he murmured,
probably been demanded from her. In the midst of
pointing to a glimmer among the trees. “And here is
this interview the maid rushed in to say that the mas-
the cottage which I am going to enter.”
ter had come home, on which the wife, knowing that
he would come straight down to the cottage, hurried We turned a corner in the lane as he spoke, and the inmates out at the back door, into the grove of there was the building close beside us. A yellow bar fir-trees, probably, which was mentioned as standing falling across the black foreground showed that the near. In this way he found the place deserted. I shall door was not quite closed, and one window in the be very much surprised, however, if it still so when upper story was brightly illuminated. As we looked, he reconnoitres it this evening. What do you think of we saw a dark blur moving across the blind. my theory?” “There is that creature!” cried Grant Munro. “You “It is all surmise.” can see for yourselves that some one is there. Now follow me, and we shall soon know all.”
“But at least it covers all the facts. When new facts
come to our knowledge which cannot be covered by We approached the door; but suddenly a woman it, it will be time enough to reconsider it. We can appeared out of the shadow and stood in the golden do nothing more until we have a message from our track of the lamp-light. I could not see her face in the friend at Norbury.” darkness, but her arms were thrown out in an attitude of entreaty.
But we had not a very long time to wait for that.
It came just as we had finished our tea. “For God’s sake, don’t Jack!” she cried. “I had a presentiment that you would come this evening.