The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF Page B

drive. Carriage-rugs flew wide. Lady Mayo, thoroughly roused,
    called sharp instructions to a group of nervous servants.
    Then Holmes and I were hurrying after Miss Forsythe up a series of staircases, from a broad
    and carpeted oak stairway in the hall to a set of narrow steps which were little more than a
    ladder to the roof. At the foot of these, Holmes paused for a moment to lay his fingers on Miss
    Forsythe's arm.
    "You will stay here," he said quietly.
    There was a metallic click as he put his hand into his pocket, and for the first time I knew
    that Holmes was armed too.
    "Come, Watson," said he.
    I followed him up the narrow steps while he softly lifted the trap-door to the roof.
    "Not a sound, on your life!" he whispered. "Fire if you catch sight of him."
    "But how are we to find him?"
    The cold air again blew in our faces. We crept cautiously forward across the flat roof. All
    about us were chimneys, tall ghostly stacks and clusters of squat smoke-blackened pots,
    surrounding a great leaden cupola shining like silver under the moon. At the far end, where
    the roof-tree of an old gable rose against the sky, a dark shape seemed to crouch above a
    single moon-washed chimney.
    A sulphur-match flared blue, then burned with a cedar yellow glow and, an instant later,
    came the hissing of an ignited fuse followed by a clattering sound in the chimney. Holmes
    ran forward, twisting and turning through the maze of stacks and parapets, toward the
    hunched figure now hastily clawing away.
    "Fire, Watson! Fire!"
    Our pistols rang out together. I saw Trepoff's pale face jerk round toward us, and then in the
    same instant the whole chimney-stack rose straight up into the air in a solid pillar of white
    fire. The roof heaved beneath my feet, and I was dimly conscious of rolling over and over
    along the leads, while shards and splinters of broken brickwork whizzed overhead or clanged
    against the metal dome of the cupola.
    Holmes rose unsteadily to his feet. "Are you hurt, Watson?" he gasped.
    "Only a trifle winded," I replied. "But it was fortunate we were thrown on our faces.
    Otherwise—" I gestured toward the slashed and scarred stacks that rose about us.
    We had advanced only a few yards through a mist of gritty dust when we came upon the man
    whom we were seeking.
    "He must now answer to a greater tribunal," said Holmes, looking down at the dreadful
    object sprawled on the leads. "Our shots made him hesitate for that fatal second, and he took
    the full blast of the bomb up the chimney." My friend turned away. "Come," he added, and
    his voice was bitter with self-reproach. "We have been both too slow to save our client,
    and too late to avenge him through the machinery of human justice."
    Suddenly his expression altered, and he clutched my arm.
    "By Jove, Watson! A single chimney-stack saved our lives!" he cried. "What was the word
    the woman used! Hooded! That was it, hooded! Quickly; there's not a moment to lose!"
    We raced through the trap-door, and down the stairway to the main landing. At the far
    end, through a haze of acrid smoke, we could discern the ruins of a splintered door. An instant
    later we had rushed into the bedroom of the Grand Duke. Holmes groaned aloud at the scene
    which met our eyes.
    What was once a stately fireplace now yawned in a great jagged hole beneath the remnants
    of a heavy stone hood. The fire from the grate had been blasted into the room, and the air was
    foul with the stench of the carpet smouldering under its powder of red-hot ashes. Holmes darted
    forward through the smoke, and a moment later I saw him stoop behind the wreckage of
    a piano.
    "Quick, Watson!" he cried. "There is life in him yet! This is where I can do nothing, and
    you can do everything."
    But it was touch and go. For the remainder of the night the young Duke hovered between
    life and death in the old wainscotted bedroom to which we had carried him. Yet, as the sun
    rose above the trees in the park, I noted with satisfaction