The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF

agent, a daring, mad, and fanatical spirit who has been
    very close to the Grand Duke for some time."
    "Impossible!"
    "Yet true."
    For a moment Lady Mayo sat looking at him, her countenance far less stony, while the
    carriage bumped over a rut and veered.
    "Attend to me, Mr. Holmes. My own dear Alec has already written to the police, in the
    person of Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner."
    "Thank you; I have seen the letter. I have also seen the Imperial Russian Arms on the
    seal."
    "Meanwhile," she continued, "I repeat that the park is patrolled, the house guarded—"
    "Yet a fox may escape the hounds none the less."
    "It is not only a question of guards! At this minute, Mr. Holmes, poor Alec sits in an
    old, thick-walled room, with its door double-locked on the inside. The windows are so
    closely barred that none could so much as stretch a hand inside. The chimney-piece is
    ancient and hooded, yet with so narrow an aperture that no man could climb down; and a
    fire burns there. How could an enemy attack him?"
    "How?" muttered Holmes, biting his lip and tapping his fingers on his knee. "It is true
    he may be safe for one night, since—"
    Lady Mayo made a slight gesture of triumph.
    "No precaution has been neglected," said she. "Even the roof is safeguarded. Alec's
    manservant, Trepley, after delivering the letter in London with commendable quickness,
    returned by an earlier train than yours, and borrowed a horse at the village. At this moment he
    is on the roof of the Hall, faithfully guarding his master."
    The effect of this speech was extraordinary. Sherlock Holmes leaped to his feet in the
    carriage, his cape rising in grotesque black silhouette as he clutched at the box-rail for
    balance.
    "On the roof?" he echoed. "On the roof?"
    Then he turned round, seizing the shoulders of the coachman.
    "Whip up the horses!" he shouted. "For God's sake, whip up the horses! We have not a
    second to lose!"
    Crack! Crack! went the whip over the ears of the leader. The horses, snorting, settled
    down to a gallop and plunged away. In the confusion, as we were all thrown together, rose Lady
    Mayo's angry voice.
    "Mr. Holmes, have you taken leave of your senses?"
    "You shall see whether I have. Miss Forsythe! Did you ever actually hear the Grand
    Duke address his man as Trepley?"
    "I—no!" faltered Celia Forsythe, shocked to alertness. "As I informed you, Char—oh,
    heaven help me!—the Grand Duke called him 'Trep.' I assumed—"
    "Exactly! You assumed. But his true name is Trepoff. From your first description I knew
    him to be a liar and a traitor."
    The hedgerows flashed past; bit and harness jingled; we flew with the wind.
    "You may recall," pursued Holmes, "the man's consummate hypocrisy when his master
    smashed the first clock? It was a heavy look of embarrassment and shame, was it not? He
    would have you think Mr. Charles Hendon insane. How came you to know of the other five
    clocks, which were purely imaginary? Because Trepoff told you. To hide a clock or a live bomb
    in a cupboard would really have been madness, if in fact the Grand Duke Alexei had ever done
    so."
    "But, Holmes," I protested. "Since Trepoff is his personal servant—"
    "Faster, coachman! Faster! Yes, Watson!"
    "Surely Trepoff must have had a hundred opportunities to kill his master, by knife or poison
    perhaps, without this spectacular addition of a bomb?"
    "This spectacular addition, as you call it, is the revolutionaries' stock-in-trade. They will
    not act without it. Their victim must be blown up in one fiery crash of ruin, else the world may
    not notice them or their power."
    "But the letter to Sir Charles Warren?" cried Lady Mayo.
    "Doubtless it was dropped down the nearest street drain. Ha! I think that must be Groxton
    Low Hall just ahead."
    The ensuing events of that night are somewhat confused in my mind. I recall a long, low-
    built Jacobean house, of mellow red brick with mullioned windows and a flat roof, which
    seemed to rush at us up a gravel