The Adventure of the Devil's Foot: Part Two

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Welcome to Sherlock Holmes Short Stories.

I'm Hugh Bonneville and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, part two.

Last time, Holmes and Watson's peaceful retreat to the Cornish coast was interrupted when the local vicar, Mr.

Roundhay, and his lodger, Mortimer Tregenis, came to them with a chilling mystery.

The previous evening, Mortimer had played cards cards with his two brothers and sister at their family home, Tredanik Wartha.

When he returned the next day, he was greeted by a horrific scene.

His sister was dead, her face contorted in sheer terror, and his two brothers had seemingly gone mad from fright.

Holmes and Watson headed to Tredanikwatha to investigate.

Everything was exactly as it had been left.

The cards were still on the table, the candles had burned down to the stump, and there was no sign of an intruder.

Their elderly housekeeper, Mrs.

Porter, hadn't heard any sign of struggle and was so terrified by the discovery that she was leaving her position that very day.

While Holmes searched for clues, Mortimer revealed that just before he left, his brother, George, had stared intently at the window behind him.

When Mortimer turned around to see what he was looking at, he thought he saw some movement in the bushes.

Holmes examined the flower bed outside the window, but could find no sign that anyone or anything had been there.

Holmes and Watson left the scene feeling baffled.

Then came an unexpected development.

The famous explorer, Dr.

Leon Sterndale, appeared, having abandoned his most recent expedition to Africa upon receiving a telegram about the tragedy.

His intense interest in the case and his supposed connection to the family aroused Holmes's suspicion.

But after following up on Sterndale's story, he found he was telling the truth.

The investigation reached a standstill, but a frantic visitor is about to arrive with news that will change the course of Holmes and Watson's investigation.

I was shaving at my window in the morning when I heard the rattle of hooves and, looking up, saw a dog cart coming at a gallop down the road.

It pulled up at our door, and our friend, the vicar, sprang from it, and rushed up our garden path.

Holmes was already dressed, and we hastened down to meet him.

Our visitor was so excited that he could hardly articulate, but at last, in gasps and bursts, his his tragic story came out of him.

We are devil-ridden, Mr.

Holmes.

My poor parish is devil-ridden, he cried.

Satan himself is loose in it.

We are given over into his hands.

He danced about in his agitation, a ludicrous object if it were not for his ashy face and startled eyes.

Finally, he shot out his terrible news.

Mr.

Mortimer Tregenis died during the night, and with exactly the same symptoms as the rest of his family.

Holmes sprang to his feet, all energy in an instant.

Can you fit us both into your dog cart?

Yes, I can.

Then, Watson, we will postpone our breakfast.

Mr.

Roundhead, we are entirely at your disposal.

Hurry.

Hurry before things get disarranged.

The lodger occupied two rooms at the Vicarage, which were in an angle by themselves, the one above the other.

Below was a large sitting-room, above his bedroom.

They looked out upon a croquet lawn which came up to the windows.

We had arrived before the doctor or the police, so that everything was absolutely undisturbed.

Let me describe exactly the scene as we saw it upon that misty March morning.

It has left an impression which can never be effaced from my mind.

The atmosphere of the room was of a horrible and depressing stuffiness.

The servant who had first entered had thrown up the window, or it would have been even more intolerable.

This might partly be due to the fact that a lamp stood flaring and smoking on the center table.

Beside it sat the dead man, leaning back in his chair, his thin beard projecting, his spectacles pushed up onto his forehead, and his lean, dark face turned towards the window and twisted into the same distortion of terror which had marked the features of his dead sister.

His limbs were convulsed and his fingers contorted as though he had died in a very paroxysm of fear.

He was fully clothed, though there were signs that his dressing had been done in a hurry.

We had already learned that his bed had been slept in and that the tragic end had come to him in the early morning.

One realized the red-hot energy which underlay Holmes's phlegmatic exterior when one saw the sudden change which came over him from the moment that he entered the fatal apartment.

In an instant, he was tense and alert, his eyes shining, his face set, his limbs quivering with eager activity.

He was out on the lawn, in through the window, round the room, and up into the bedroom, for all the world like a dashing foxhound drawing a cover.

In the bedroom, he made a rapid cast around and ended by throwing open the window, which appeared to give him some fresh cause for excitement, for he leaned out of it with loud ejaculations of interest and delight.

Then he rushed down the stair, out through the open window, threw himself upon his face on the lawn, sprang up and into the room once more, all with the energy of the hunter who is at the very heels of his quarry.

The lamp, which was an ordinary standard, he examined with minute care, making certain measurements upon its bowl.

He carefully scrutinized with his lens the talc shield which covered the top of the chimney, and scraped off some ashes which adhered to its upper surface, putting some of them into an envelope which he placed in his pocket book.

Finally, just as the doctor and the official police put in an appearance, he beckoned to the vicar, and we all three went out upon the lawn.

I am glad to say that my investigation has not been entirely barren, he remarked.

I cannot remain to discuss the matter with the police, but I should be exceedingly obliged, Mr.

Roundhay, if you would give the inspector my compliments and direct his attention to the bedroom window and to the sitting-room lamp.

Each is suggestive, and together they are almost conclusive.

If the police would desire further information, I shall be happy to see any of them at the cottage.

And now, Watson, I think that perhaps we shall be better employed elsewhere.

It may be that the police resented the intrusion of an amateur, or that they imagined themselves to be upon some hopeful line of investigation, but it is certain that we heard nothing from from them for the next two days.

During this time, Holmes spent some of his time smoking and dreaming in the cottage, but a greater portion in country walks, which he undertook alone, returning after many hours without remark as to where he had been.

One experiment served to show me the line of his investigation.

He had bought a lamp which was the duplicate of the one which had burned in the room of Mortimer Tregenis on the morning of the tragedy.

This he filled with the same oil as that used at the vicarage, and he carefully timed the period which it would take to be exhausted.

Another experiment which he made was of a more unpleasant nature and one which I am not likely ever to forget.

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You will remember, Watson, he remarked one afternoon, that there is a single common point of resemblance in the varying reports which have reached us.

This concerns the effect of the atmosphere of the room in each case upon those who have first entered it.

You will recollect that Mortimer Tregenis, in describing the episode of his last visit to his brother's house, remarked that the doctor on entering the room fell into a chair.

You had forgotten?

Well, I can answer for it that it was so.

Now you will remember also that Mrs.

Porter, the housekeeper, told us that she herself fainted upon entering the room and had afterwards opened the window.

In the second case, that of Mortimer Tregenis himself, you cannot have forgotten the horrible stuffiness of the room when we arrived, though the servant had thrown open the window.

That servant, I found upon inquiry, was so ill that she had gone to her bed.

You will admit, Watson, that these facts are very suggestive.

In each case, there is evidence of a poisonous atmosphere.

In each case also there is a combustion going on in the room.

In the one case a fire, in the other a lamp.

The fire was needed, but the lamp was lit, as a comparison of the oil consumed will show, long after it was broad daylight.

Why?

Surely because there is some connection between three things: the burning, the stuffy atmosphere, and finally, the madness

death of those unfortunate people.

That is clear, is it not?

It would appear so.

At least we may accept it as a working hypothesis.

We will suppose, then, that something was burned in each case which produced an atmosphere causing strange toxic effects.

Very good.

In the first instance, that of the Trugenis family, this substance was placed in the fire.

Now, the window was shut, but the fire would naturally carry fumes to some extent up the chimney, hence one would expect the effects of the poison to be less than in the second case, where there was less escape for the vapour.

The result seems to indicate that it was so, since in the first case only the woman, who had presumably the more sensitive organism, was killed, the others exhibiting that temporary or permanent lunacy which is evidently the first effect of the drug.

In the second case the result was complete.

The facts, therefore, seem to bear out the theory of a poison which worked by combustion.

With this train of reasoning in my head, I naturally looked about in Mortimer Treginis' room to find some remains of this substance.

The obvious place to look was the talc shelf or smoke guard of the lamp.

There, sure enough, I perceived a number of flaky ashes, and round the edges a fringe of brownish powder which had not yet been consumed.

Half of this I took, as you saw, and I placed it in an envelope.

Why half, Holmes?

It is not for me, my dear Watson, to stand in the way of the official police force.

I leave them all the evidence which I found.

The poison still remained upon the talc, had they the wit to find it.

Now, Watson, we will light our lamp.

We will, however, take the precaution to open our window to avoid the premature decease of two deserving members of society, and you will seat yourself near that open window in an armchair, unless, like a sensible man, you determine to have nothing to do with the affair.

Oh, you will see it out, will you?

I thought I knew my Watson.

This chair I will place opposite yours, so that we may be the same distance from the poison and face to face.

The door we will leave ajar.

Each is now in a position to watch the other and to bring the experiment to an end, should the symptoms seem alarming.

Is that all clear?

Well then, I take our powder, or what remains of it, from the envelope, and I lay it above the burning lamp.

So,

now, Watson, let us sit down and await developments.

They were not long in coming.

I had hardly settled in my chair before I was conscious of a thick, musky odor, subtle and nauseous.

At the very first whiff of it, my brain and my imagination were beyond all control.

A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe.

Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming.

The advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul.

A freezing horror took possession of me.

I felt that my hair was rising, that my eyes were protruding, that my mouth was opened and my tongue like leather.

The turmoil within my brain was such that something must surely snap.

I tried to scream and was vaguely aware of some hoarse croak, which was my own voice, but distant and detached from myself.

At the same moment, in some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes' face, white, rigid and drawn with horror, the very look which I had seen upon the features of the dead.

It was that vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength.

I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in.

Slowly it rose from our souls like the mists from a landscape until peace and reason had returned.

and we were sitting upon the grass, wiping our clammy foreheads and looking with apprehension at each other to mark the last traces of that terrific experience which we had undergone.

Upon my word, Watson, said Holmes at last, with an unsteady voice, I owe you both my thanks and

an apology.

It was an unjustifiable experiment even for oneself, and doubly so for a friend.

I am really very sorry.

You know, I I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen so much of Holmes's heart before, that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.

He relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein which was his habitual attitude to those about him.

It would be superfluous to drive us mad, my dear Watson, said he.

A candid observer would certainly declare that we were so already before we embarked upon so wild an experiment.

I confess that I never imagined that the effect could be so sudden and so severe.

He dashed into the cottage, and, reappearing with the burning lamp held at full arm's length, he threw it among a bank of brambles.

We must give the room a little time to clear.

I take it, Watson, that you have no longer a shadow of a doubt as to how these tragedies were produced.

None whatsoever.

But the cause remains as obscure as before.

Come into the arbor here and let us discuss it together.

That villainous stuff seems still to linger round my throat.

I think we must admit that all the evidence points to this man, Mortimer Tregennis, having been the criminal in the first tragedy, though he was the victim in the second one.

We must remember, in the first place, that there is some story of a family quarrel, followed by a reconciliation.

How bitter that quarrel may have been or how hollow the reconciliation we cannot tell.

When I think of Mortimer Tregenis with the foxy face and the small, shrewd, beady eyes behind the spectacles, he is not a man whom I should judge to be of a particularly forgiving disposition.

Well, in the next place, you'll remember that this idea of someone moving in the garden, which took our attention for a moment from the real cause of the tragedy, emanated from him.

He had a motive in misleading us.

Finally, if he did not throw the substance into the fire at the moment of leaving the room, who did do so?

The affair happened immediately after his departure.

Had anyone else come in?

The family would certainly have risen from the table.

Besides, in peaceful Cornwall, visitors did not arrive after ten o'clock at night.

We may take it, then, that all the evidence points to Mortimer Tregenis as the culprit.

Then his own death was suicide?

Well, Watson, it is on the face of it a not impossible supposition.

The man who had the guilt upon his soul of having brought such a fate upon his own family might well be driven by remorse to inflict it upon himself.

There are, however, some cogent reasons against it.

Fortunately, there is one man in England who knows all about it, and I have made arrangements by which which we shall hear the facts this afternoon from his own lips.

Ah, he is a little before his time.

Perhaps you would kindly step this way, Dr.

Leon Sterndale.

We have been conducting a chemical experiment indoors which has left our little room hardly fit for the reception of so distinguished a visitor.

I had heard the click of the garden gate, and now the majestic figure of the great African explorer appeared upon the path.

He turned in some surprise towards the rustic arbour in which we sat.

You sent for me, Mr.

Holmes.

I had your note about an hour ago, and I have come, though I really do not know why I should obey your summons.

Perhaps we can clear the point up before we separate, said Holmes.

Meanwhile, I am much obliged to you for your courteous acquiescence.

You will excuse this informal reception in the open air, but my friend Watson and I have nearly furnished an additional chapter to what the papers call the Cornish horror, and we prefer a clear atmosphere for the present.

Perhaps, since the matters which we have to discuss will affect you personally in a very intimate fashion, it is as well that we should talk where there can be no eavesdropping.

The explorer took his cigar from his lips and gazed sternly at my companion.

I am at a loss to know, sir, he said, what you can have to speak about which affects me personally in a very intimate fashion?

The killing of Mortimer Tregennis, said Holmes.

For a moment I wished that I were armed.

Sterndale's fierce face turned to a dusky red, his eyes glared and the knotted, passionate veins started out in his forehead, while he sprang forward with clenched hands towards my companion.

Then he stopped, and with a violent effort he resumed a cold, rigid calmness, which was perhaps more suggestive of danger than than his hot-headed outburst.

I have lived so long beyond the law, said he, that I have got into the way of being a law to myself.

You would do well, Mr.

Holmes, not to forget it, for I have no desire to do you an injury.

Nor have I any desire to do you an injury, Dr.

Sterndale.

Surely the clearest proof of it is that, knowing what I know, I have sent for you and not for the police.

Sterndale sat down with a gasp, overawed for, perhaps, the first time in his adventurous life.

There was a calm assurance of power in Holmes' manner, which could not be withstood.

Our visitor stammered for a moment, his great hands opening and shutting in his agitation.

What do you mean?

he asked at last.

If this is bluff upon your part, Mr.

Holmes, you have chosen a bad man for your experiment.

Let us have no more beating about the bush.

What do you mean?

I will tell you, said Holmes.

And the reason why I tell you is that I hope frankness may beget frankness.

What my next step may be will depend entirely upon the nature of your own defense.

My defence?

Yes, sir.

My defence against what?

Against the charge of killing Mortimer Tregennis.

Sterndale mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

Upon my word, you are getting on, said he.

Do all your successes depend upon this prodigious power of bluff?

The bluff, said Holmes sternly, is upon your side, Dr.

Leon Sterndale, and not upon mine.

As a proof, I will tell you some of the facts upon which my conclusions are based.

Of your return from Plymouth, allowing much of your property to go on to Africa, I will say nothing save that it first informed me that you were one of the factors which had to be taken into account in reconstructing this drama.

I came back.

I have heard your reasons and regard them as unconvincing and inadequate.

We will pass that.

You came down here to ask me whom I suspected.

I refused to answer you.

You then went to the vicarage, waited outside it for some time, and finally returned to your cottage.

How do you know that?

I followed you.

I saw no one?

That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.

You spent a restless night at your cottage and you formed certain plans, which in the early morning you proceeded to put into execution.

Leaving your door just as day was breaking, you filled your pocket with some reddish gravel that was lying heaped beside your gate.

Sterndale gave a violent start and looked at Holmes in amazement.

You then walked swiftly for the mile which separated you from the vicarage.

You were wearing, I may remark, the same pair of ribbed tennis shoes which are at the present moment upon your feet.

At the vicarage, you passed through the orchard and the side hedge, coming out under the window of the lodger Tregenis.

It was now daylight, but the household was not yet stirring.

You drew some of the gravel from your pocket, and you threw it up at the window above you.

Sterndale sprang to his feet.

I believe that you are the devil himself, he cried.

Holmes smiled at the compliment.

It took two or possibly three handfuls before the lodger came to the window.

You beckoned him to come down.

He dressed hurriedly and ascended to his sitting-room.

You entered by the window.

There was an interview, a short one, during which you walked up and down the room.

Then you passed out and closed the window, standing on the lawn outside, smoking a cigar and watching what occurred.

Finally, after the death of Tregenis, you withdrew as you had come.

Now, Dr.

Sterndale, how do you justify such conduct?

And what were the motives for your actions?

If you prevaricate or trifle with me, I give you my assurance that the matter will pass out of my hands forever.

Our visitor's face had turned ashen grey as he listened to the words of his accuser.

Now he sat for some time in thought with his face sunk in his hands.

Then, with a sudden impulsive gesture, he plucked a photograph from his breast pocket and threw it on the rustic table before us.

That is why I have done it, said he.

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It showed the bust and face of a very beautiful woman.

Holmes stooped over it.

Brenda Tregenis, said he.

Yes,

Brenda Tregennis, repeated our visitor.

For years I have loved her.

For years she has loved me.

There is the secret of the Cornish seclusion which people have marveled at.

It has brought me close to the one thing on earth that was dear to me.

I could not marry her, for I have a wife who has left me for years, and yet whom, by the deplorable laws of England, I could not divorce.

For years, Brenda waited, for years I waited, and this is what we have waited for.

A terrible sob shook his great frame, and he clutched his throat under his brindled beard.

Then, with an effort, he mastered himself and spoke on.

The vicar knew.

He was in our confidence.

He would tell you that she was an angel upon earth.

That was why he telegraphed to me and I returned.

What was my baggage or Africa to me when I learned that such a fate had come upon my darling?

There, you have the missing clue to my action, Mr.

Holmes.

Proceed, said my friend.

Dr.

Sterndale drew from his pocket a paper packet and laid it upon the table.

On the outside was written, Radix Pedis Diaboli, with a red poison label beneath it.

He pushed it towards me.

I understand that you are a doctor, sir.

Have you ever heard of this preparation?

Devil's foot root?

No, I have never heard of it.

It is no reflection upon your professional knowledge, said he, for I believe that save for one sample in a laboratory at Buda, there is no other specimen in Europe.

It has not yet found its way either into the pharmacopoeia or into the literature of toxicology.

The root is shaped like a foot, half human, half goat-like, hence the fanciful name given by a botanical missionary.

It is used as an ordeal poison by the medicine men in certain districts of West Africa and is kept as a secret among them.

This particular specimen I obtained under very extraordinary circumstances in the Ubangi country.

He opened the paper as he spoke and disclosed a heap of reddish-brown snuff-like powder.

Well, sir, asked Holmes sternly.

I am about to tell you, Mr.

Holmes, all that actually occurred, for you already know so much that it is clearly to my interest that you should know all.

I have already explained the relationship in which I stood to the Tregennis family.

For the sake of the sister, I was friendly with the brothers.

There was a family quarrel about money which estranged this man Mortimer, but it was supposed to be made up, and I afterwards met him as I did the others.

He was a sly, subtle, scheming man, and several things arose which gave me a suspicion of him, but I had no cause for any positive quarrel.

One day, only a couple of weeks ago, he came down to my cottage and I showed him some of my African curiosities.

Among other things, I exhibited this powder, and I told him of its strange properties, how it stimulates those brain centers which control the emotion of fear, and how either madness or death is the fate of the unhappy native who is subjected to the ordeal by the priest of his tribe.

I told him also how powerless European science would be to detect it.

How he took it, I cannot say, for I never left the room, but there is no doubt that it was then, while I was opening cabinets and stooping to boxes, that he managed to abstract some of the devil's foot root.

I will remember how he plied me with questions as to the amount and the time that was needed for its effect, but I little dreamed that he could have a personal reason for asking.

I thought no more of the matter until the Vicar's telegram reached me at Plymouth.

This villain had thought that I would be at sea before the news could reach me, and that I should be lost for years in Africa.

But I returned at once.

Of course, I could not listen to the details without feeling assured that my poison had been used.

I came round to see you on the chance that some other explanation had suggested itself to you, but there could be none.

I was convinced that Mortimer Tregennis was the murderer, murderer, that for the sake of money, and with the idea perhaps that if the other members of his family were all insane, he would be the sole guardian of their joint property, he had used the devil's foot powder upon them, driven two of them out of their senses, and killed his sister, Brenda,

the one human being whom I have ever loved,

or who has ever loved me.

There was his crime.

What was to be his punishment?

Should I appeal to the law?

Where were my proofs?

I knew that the facts were true, but could I help to make a jury of countrymen believe so fantastic a story?

I might,

or I might not.

But I could not afford to fail.

My soul cried out for revenge.

I have said to you once before, Mr.

Holmes, that I have spent much of my life outside the the law, and that I have come at last to be a law to myself.

So it was even now.

I determined that the fate which he had given to others should be shared by himself.

Either that, or I would do justice upon him with my own hand.

In all England, there can be no man who sets less value upon his own life than I do at the present moment.

Now I have told you all.

You have yourself supplied the rest.

I did, as you say, after a restless night, set off early from my cottage.

I foresaw the difficulty of arousing him, so I gathered some gravel from the pile which you have mentioned, and I used it to throw up to his window.

He came down and admitted me through the window of the sitting-room.

I laid his offence before him.

I told him that I had come both as judge and executioner.

The wretch sank into a chair, paralyzed at the sight of my revolver.

I lit the lamp, put the powder above it, and stood outside the window, ready to carry out my threat to shoot him should he try to leave the room.

In five minutes, he died.

God,

how he died.

But my heart was flint, for he endured nothing which my innocent darling had not felt before him.

There is my story, Mr.

Holmes.

Perhaps if you loved a woman, you would have done as much yourself.

At any rate, I am in your hands.

You can take what steps you like.

As I have already said, there is no man living who can fear death less than I do.

Holmes sat for some little time in silence.

What were your plans?

he asked at last.

I had intended to bury myself in Central Africa.

My work there is but half finished.

Go and do the other half, said Holmes.

I, at least, am not prepared to prevent you.

Dr.

Sterndale raised his giant figure, bowed gravely, and walked from the arbor.

Holmes lit his pipe and handed me his pouch.

Some fumes which are not poisonous would be a welcome change, said he.

I think you must agree, Watson, that it is not a case in which we are called upon to interfere.

Our investigation has been independent, and our action shall be so also.

You would not denounce the man?

Certainly not, I answered.

I have never loved, Watson.

But if I did, and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion hunter has done.

Who knows?

Well, Watson, I will not offend your intelligence by explaining what is obvious.

The gravel upon the windowsill was, of course, the starting point of my research.

It was unlike anything in the Vicarage garden, only when my attention had been drawn to Dr.

Sterndale and his cottage did I find its counterpart?

The lamp shining in broad daylight and the remains of powder upon the shield were successive links in a fairly obvious chain.

And now, my dear Watson, I think we may dismiss the matter from our mind and go back with a clear conscience to the study of those Chaldean roots which are surely to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech.

Next time, on Sherlock Holmes short stories, we follow Holmes and Watson into the treacherous world of high finance in The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet.

When one of England's most treasured crown jewels is put in the care of a well-respected London banker, he believes it will be safe in his family home.

But in the dead of night, the precious relic is damaged and some of its gems stolen.

The banker immediately blames his wayward son, but Holmes suspects there's more to the case than meets the eye.

And as he investigates, he uncovers something far more sinister than simple theft.

From the grand halls of London to the snowy grounds of a country estate, the great detective will follow a trail of clues that leads him to the heart of a wickedly deceptive conspiracy that threatens to shake the foundations of British high society.

That's next time.

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