The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF Page A

language."
    "I cannot think. I don't know."
    "Then endeavour to remember what you do know. Shortly before Miss Forsythe first called
    upon us, I read aloud certain items from the daily press which at the time seemed tediously
    unimportant. One item stated that the Nihilists, that dangerous band of anarchists who would
    crush Imperial Russia to nothingness, were suspected of plotting against the life of the Grand
    Duke Alexei at Odessa. The Grand Duke Alexei, you perceive. Now Lady Mayo's
    nickname for 'Mr. Charles Hendon' was—"
    "Alec!" cried I.
    "It might have been the merest coincidence," observed Holmes, shrugging his shoulders.
    "However, when we reflect upon recent history, we recall that in an earlier attempt on the life
    of the late Tsar of all the Russias— who was blown to pieces in '81, by the explosion of a
    dynamite bomb—the ticking of the bomb was drowned beneath the playing of a piano.
    Dynamite bombs, Watson, are of two kinds. One, iron-sheathed and fairly light, may be
    ignited on a short fuse and thrown. The other, also of iron, is exploded by means of a clockwork
    mechanism whose loud ticking alone betrays its presence."
    Crack went the coachman's whip, and the hedgerows seemed to unreel as in a dream.
    Holmes and I sat with our backs to the driver, vis-à-vis the moon-whitened faces of Lady Mayo
    and Celia Forsythe.
    "Holmes, all this is becoming as clear as crystal! That is why the young man cannot bear
    the sight of a clock!"
    "No, Watson. No! The sound of a clock!"
    "The sound?"
    "Precisely. When I attempted to tell you as much, your native impatience cut me short at the
    first letter. On the two occasions when he destroyed a clock in public, bear in mind that in
    neither case could he actually see the clock. In one instance, as Miss Forsythe informed us, it
    was hidden inside a screen of greenery; in the other, it was behind a curtain. Hearing only that
    significant ticking, he struck before he had time to take thought. His purpose, of course, was to
    smash the clockwork and draw the fangs of what he believed to be a bomb."
    "But surely," I protested, "those blows of a stick might well have ignited and exploded a
    bomb?"
    Again Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
    "Had it been a real bomb, who can tell? Yet, against an iron casing, I think the matter
    doubtful. In either event, we deal with a very courageous gentleman, haunted and hounded, who
    rushed and struck blindly. It is not unnatural that the memory of his father's death and the
    knowledge that the same organization was on his own trail should tend toward hasty action."
    "And then?"
    Yet Sherlock Holmes remained uneasy. I noticed that he glanced round more than once
    at the lonely sweep of the grey rolling country-side.
    "Well," said he, "having determined so much in my first interview with Miss Forsythe, it
    seemed clear that the forged letter was bait to draw the Grand Duke to Odessa, urging on him
    the pluck to face these implacable men. But, as I have told you, he must have suspected.
    Therefore he would go—where?" .
    "To England," said I. "Nay, more! To Groxton Low Hall, with the added inducement of
    an attractive young lady whom I urge to leave off weeping and dry her tears."
    Holmes looked exasperated.
    "At least I could say," replied he, "that the balance of probability lay in that direction.
    Surely it was obvious from the beginning that one in the position of Lady Mayo would
    never have entered so casually into railway-carriage conversation with a young man unless
    they had been, in Miss Forsythe's unwitting but illuminating phrase, 'old friends.' "
    "I underestimated your powers, Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Lady Mayo, who had been patting
    Celia's hand, spoke harshly. "Yes, I knew Alexei when he was a little boy in a sailor-suit
    at St. Petersburg."
    "Where your husband, I discovered, was First Secretary at the British Embassy. In
    Odessa I learned another fact of great interest."
    "Eh? What was that?"
    "The name of the Nihilists' chief