Search is not available for this dataset
text
stringlengths 0
149M
|
---|
himself.
|
“‘Why, what on earth does this mean, John?’ he stammered.
|
“My heart had turned to lead. ‘It is K. K. K.,’ said I.
|
“He looked inside the envelope. ‘So it is,’ he cried. ‘Here are the
|
very letters. But what is this written above them?’
|
“‘Put the papers on the sundial,’ I read, peeping over his shoulder.
|
“‘What papers? What sundial?’ he asked.
|
“‘The sundial in the garden. There is no other,’ said I; ‘but the
|
papers must be those that are destroyed.’
|
“‘Pooh!’ said he, gripping hard at his courage. ‘We are in a civilised
|
land here, and we can’t have tomfoolery of this kind. Where does the
|
thing come from?’
|
“‘From Dundee,’ I answered, glancing at the postmark.
|
“‘Some preposterous practical joke,’ said he. ‘What have I to do with
|
sundials and papers? I shall take no notice of such nonsense.’
|
“‘I should certainly speak to the police,’ I said.
|
“‘And be laughed at for my pains. Nothing of the sort.’
|
“‘Then let me do so?’
|
“‘No, I forbid you. I won’t have a fuss made about such nonsense.’
|
“It was in vain to argue with him, for he was a very obstinate man. I
|
went about, however, with a heart which was full of forebodings.
|
“On the third day after the coming of the letter my father went from
|
home to visit an old friend of his, Major Freebody, who is in command
|
of one of the forts upon Portsdown Hill. I was glad that he should go,
|
for it seemed to me that he was farther from danger when he was away
|
from home. In that, however, I was in error. Upon the second day of his
|
absence I received a telegram from the major, imploring me to come at
|
once. My father had fallen over one of the deep chalk-pits which abound
|
in the neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, with a shattered skull.
|
I hurried to him, but he passed away without having ever recovered his
|
consciousness. He had, as it appears, been returning from Fareham in
|
the twilight, and as the country was unknown to him, and the chalk-pit
|
unfenced, the jury had no hesitation in bringing in a verdict of ‘death
|
from accidental causes.’ Carefully as I examined every fact connected
|
with his death, I was unable to find anything which could suggest the
|
idea of murder. There were no signs of violence, no footmarks, no
|
robbery, no record of strangers having been seen upon the roads. And
|
yet I need not tell you that my mind was far from at ease, and that I
|
was well-nigh certain that some foul plot had been woven round him.
|
“In this sinister way I came into my inheritance. You will ask me why I
|
did not dispose of it? I answer, because I was well convinced that our
|
troubles were in some way dependent upon an incident in my uncle’s
|
life, and that the danger would be as pressing in one house as in
|
another.
|
“It was in January, ’85, that my poor father met his end, and two years
|
and eight months have elapsed since then. During that time I have lived
|
happily at Horsham, and I had begun to hope that this curse had passed
|
away from the family, and that it had ended with the last generation. I
|
had begun to take comfort too soon, however; yesterday morning the blow
|
fell in the very shape in which it had come upon my father.
|
The young man took from his waistcoat a crumpled envelope, and turning
|
to the table he shook out upon it five little dried orange pips.
|
“This is the envelope, he continued. “The postmark is London—eastern
|
division. Within are the very words which were upon my father’s last
|
message: ‘K. K. K.’; and then ‘Put the papers on the sundial.’
|
“What have you done? asked Holmes.
|
“Nothing.
|
“Nothing?
|
“To tell the truth —he sank his face into his thin, white hands—“I have
|
felt helpless. I have felt like one of those poor rabbits when the
|
snake is writhing towards it. I seem to be in the grasp of some
|
resistless, inexorable evil, which no foresight and no precautions can
|
guard against.
|
“Tut! tut! cried Sherlock Holmes. “You must act, man, or you are lost.
|
Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for despair.
|
“I have seen the police.
|
“Ah!
|
“But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the
|
inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical
|
jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as
|
the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.
|
Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility! he
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.