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"I fell to the ground and refused to rise, no matter how much Hawkins screamed that he would blow my brains out with his pistol. I said I was dying, that his pistol would be a mercy. He would offer me no mercy. I was counting on that. Instead, he forced me to translate the map for him and make notes as best I could. There was nothing to write with by a thorn and my own blood, but I wrote, and when he was satisfied, he laughed, folded the map into his pocket, took all our remaining supplies, and left me to my fate on the trackless, endless plain.
"And so we parted. I hoped I had sent him to Hell, deliberately mixing up the directions so he'd end up only the Devil knew where. He, of course, assumed I would be vulture's meat before another day or two.
"But I did not die. Mad with fever and privation, my mind filled with fantastic and horrible hallucinations, I wandered for what might have been days or even weeks, until, by the kindness of providence alone, I stumbled into the camp of some nomads, who, seeing that I was a white man, bore me on camel-back into the Chinese province of Sinkiang and there turned me over to a trader, who brought me to a missionary.
"This proved to be my salvation, both physical and otherwise. I married the missionary's daughter, Abigail's mother, and largely through the influence of her family I later found a place on a much more respectable Anglo-French expedition to Angkor. That was the true begi
At this point Sir Humphrey paused. The only sound was the slow ticking of a great clock in some other room. Abigail Thurston's face was white from the shock of what she had heard. She scarcely seemed to breathe. Holmes sat very still, his chin held in his hand, staring into space.
I was the one who broke the silence.
"Surely, Sir Humphrey, there is more to the story than that. I don't see how your luckless expedition or whatever fate the rascal Hawkins must have met has anything to do with the here and now."
Thurston's reaction was explosive.
"Damn it, man! It has everything to do with my predicament and what may well be my inevitable fate. But… you are right. There is more to tell. After many years of roving the world, giving lectures, publishing books, after I was knighted by the Queen-after my past life seemed a bad dream from which I had finally awakened-I thought I was safe. But it was not to be. This past fortnight I began to receive communications from the fiend Hawkins!"
"Communications?" said Holmes. "How so?"
"There. On the desk."
Holmes reached over and opened an ornately carven, lacquered box, removing a sheaf of papers. He glanced at them briefly and gave them to me.
"What do you make of them, Watson?"
"I ca
Sir Humphrey spoke. "The language is an archaic-some would say degenerate-form of Burmese, the script a kind of code used by criminals in the Far East. Between these two elements, I am perhaps the only living man who can read what is written here, for Wendall Hawkins is not alive, if his words are to be believed."
"Surely if he is dead," said Holmes, "your troubles are at an end."
"No, Mr. Holmes, they are not, for all of these letters were written after Hawkins's death-long after it. It seems that he reached the Plateau of Leng, which I saw only in visions. There the almost sub-human priests of the Chan-Tzo murdered him after what might have been years of indescribable tortures, then brought him back into a kind of half-life as an animate corpse at their command, hideously disfigured, the skin flayed from his face, his heart ripped out, the cavity in his chest filled with inextinguishable fire. He is implacable now, driven both by the will of his masters and his own rage for revenge against me, whom he blames for his unending agony. He knows all the secrets of the Chan-Tzo priests, and the conjuring of death-fetches is easily within his power."
"He says all that in these letters?" I asked.
"That and more, Dr. Watson, and if it is true, I am defenseless. My only hope is that Mr. Holmes and yourself can prove me to be deluded, the victim of a hoax perpetrated by the vile Hawkins who has no doubt returned, but returned, I still dare to hope, as no more than a mortal villain. If you can do this, I certainly have the means to reward you handsomely for your services."
"My services are charged on a fixed scale," said Holmes, "but let us not concern ourselves with the monetary details now. I shall indeed collar this Hawkins for you and unmask his devices-which I am sure would make the tricks of our English spirit mediums child's play in comparison-but they are devices none the less. For what else can they be?"
"Mr. Holmes, I will be forever in your debt."
"We shall watch and wait until Hawkins is forced to show his hand. But first, I think Dr. Watson should escort Miss Abigail to a safer place, my own rooms, which I shall not be needing until this affair is concluded." When Thurston's daughter made to protest, Holmes turned to her and said, "You have been a heroine, but now that the battle is actually joined, I think it best that you remove yourself from the field. Will you go with Dr. Watson?"
"Whatever you say, Mr. Holmes."
"Splendid. Now I must busy myself examining the house inside and out, to discover any way our enemy might use to gain entrance."
Thurston picked up the elephant gun and lay it across his lap, then began idly polishing the barrel with a cloth.
"I've survived five days like this. I think I shall be safe here behind the locked door for a little while longer yet. Your plan makes excellent sense, Mr. Holmes."
We left Sir Humphrey alone in the room. As Holmes and I escorted Miss Thurston down the stairs, the detective asked me, "Well, Watson, what do you think?"
"A unique case, Holmes. One worthy of your talents."
"About Sir Humphrey. What about him?"
"I judge him to be of fundamentally sound mind, but what superstitious fears he may harbor are being played upon by the murderous Hawkins, who sounds himself to be completely mad."
"Mad or not, he shall have to manifest himself in a decidedly material form before long, at which point he will be susceptible to capture by mundane means."
"One thing doesn't fit, Holmes. Who, or what, did we see upon our arrival here? Sir Humphrey hadn't been out of the room."
"An impostor, possibly a trained actor in league with Hawkins. I agree that all the pieces of the puzzle are not yet in place. But have patience. You know my methods."
"I am so glad that you and Dr. Watson will help Father," Miss Thurston said softly as we reached the base of the stairs. "You are sent from Heaven, both of you."
Holmes smiled indulgently. "Not from nearly so far, but we shall do what we can."
Alas, we could do but little. As we stood there at the base of the stairs and I helped Miss Thurston on with her coat, she turned and chanced to look back up the stairs. Suddenly she screamed.
"Good God!" I exclaimed.
Near the top of the stairs was a figure who appeared to be Sir Humphrey, but dressed for the outside, in coat and top hat, as we had seen him before. He could not have gotten past us.
"You! Stop!" Holmes was already in pursuit, bounding up the steps three at a time.
The figure moved so swiftly the eye could hardly follow, and soft-footedly. I heard only Holmes's boots pounding on the wooden stairs. Then there came a cry from within the study. Sir Humphrey shouted something in a foreign language, his tone that of abject terror, his words broken off in a gurgling scream. The elephant gun went off with a thunderous roar.