The police had brought a cab with them, and in this I escortedMiss Morstan back to her home. After the angelic fashion ofwomen, she had borne trouble with a calm face as long as therewas someone weaker than herself to support, and I had found herbright and placid by the side of the frightened housekeeper. lnthe cab, however, she first turned faint and then burst into apassion of weeping -- so sorely had she been tried by the adven-tures of the night. She has told me since that she thought me coldand distant upon that journey. She little guessed the strugglewithin my breast, or the effort of self-restraint which held meback. My sympathies and my love went out to her, even as myhand had in the garden. I felt that years of the conventionalitiesof life could not teach me to know her sweet, brave nature as hadthis one day of strange experiences. Yet there were two thoughtswhich sealed the words of affection upon my lips. She was weakand helpless, shaken in mind and nerve. It was to take her at adisadvantage to obtrude love upon her at such a time. Worsestill, she was rich. If Holmes's researches were successful, shewould be an heiress. Was it fair, was it honourable, that ahalf-pay surgeon should take such advantage of an intimacywhich chance had brought about? Might she not look upon me asa mere vulgar fortune-seeker? I could not bear to risk that such athought should cross her mind. This Agra treasure intervenedlike an impassable barrier between us.

It was nearly two o'clock when we reached Mrs. CecilForrester's. The servants had retired hours ago, but Mrs. Forresterhad been so interested by the strange message which Miss Morstanhad received that she had sat up in the hope of her return. Sheopened the door herself, a middle-aged, graceful woman, and itgave me joy to see how tenderly her arm stole round the other'swaist and how motherly was the voice in which she greeted her.She was clearly no mere paid dependant but an honoured friend.I was introduced, and Mrs. Forrester earnestly begged me to stepin and tell her our adventures. I explained, however, the impor-tance of my errand and promised faithfully to call and report anyprogress which we might make with the case. As we drove awayI stole a glance back, and I still seem to see that little group onthe step -- the two graceful, clinging figures, the half-openeddoor, the hall-light shining through stained glass, the barometer,and the bright stair-rods. It was soothing to catch even thatpassing glimpse of a tranquil English home in the midst of thewild, dark business which had absorbed us.

And the more I thought of what had happened, the wilder anddarker it grew. I reviewed the whole extraordinary sequence ofevents as I rattled on through the silent, gas-lit streets. There wasthe original problem: that at least was pretty clear now. Thedeath of Captain Morstan, the sending of the pearls, the adver-tisement, the letter -- we had had light upon all those events.They had only led us, however, to a deeper and far more tragicmystery. The Indian treasure, the curious plan found amongMorstan's baggage, the strange scene at Major Sholto's death,the rediscovery of the treasure immediately followed by themurder of the discoverer, the very singular accompaniments tothe crime, the footsteps, the remarkable weapons, the words uponthe card, corresponding with those upon Captain Morstan's chart --here was indeed a labyrinth in which a man less singularlyendowed than my fellow-lodger might well despair of ever find-ing the clue.

Pinchin Lane was a row of shabby, two-storied brick houses inthe lower quarter of Lambeth. I had to knock for some time atNo. 3 before I could make any impression. At last, however,there was the glint of a candle behind the blind, and a facelooked out at the upper window.

"Go on, you drunken vagabond," said the face. "If you kickup any more row, I'll open the kennels and let out forty-threedogs upon you."

"If you'll let one out, it's just what I have come for," said I.

"Go on!" yelled the voice. "So help me gracious, I have awiper in this bag, and I'll drop it on your 'ead if you don't hookit!"

"But I want a dog," I cried.

"I won't be argued with!" shouted Mr. Sherman. "Now standclear, for when I say 'three,' down goes the wiper."

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes " I began; but the words had a mostmagical effect, for the window instantly slammed down, andwithin a minute the door was unbarred and open. Mr. Shermanwas a lanky, lean old man, with stooping shoulders, a stringyneck, and blue-tinted glasses.

"A friend of Mr. Sherlock is always welcome," said he."Step in, sir. Keep clear of the badger, for he bites. Ah,naughty, naughty; would you take a nip at the gentleman?" Thisto a stoat which thrust its wicked head and red eyes between thebars of its cage. "Don't mind that, sir; it's only a slowworm. Ithain't got no fangs, so I gives it the run o' the room, for it keepsthe beetles down. You must not mind my bein' just a little shortwi' you at first, for I'm guyed at by the children, and there'smany a one just comes down this lane to knock me up. Whatwas it that Mr. Sherlock Holmes wanted, sir?"

"He wanted a dog of yours."

"Ah! that would be Toby."

"Yes, Toby was the name."

"Toby lives at No. 7 on the left here."

He moved slowly forward with his candle among the queeranimal family which he had gathered round him. In the uncer-tain, shadowy light I could see dimly that there were glancing,glimmering eyes peeping down at us from every cranny andcorner. Even the rafters above our heads were lined by solemnfowls, who lazily shifted their weight from one leg to the otheras our voices disturbed their slumbers.

Toby proved to be an ugly, long-haired, lop-eared creature,half spaniel and half lurcher, brown and white in colour, with avery clumsy, waddling gait. It accepted, after some hesitation, alump of sugar which the old naturalist handed to me, and, havingthus sealed an alliance, it followed me to the cab and made nodifficulties about accompanying me. It had just struck three onthe Palace clock when I found myself back once more atPondicherry Lodge. The ex-prize-fighter McMurdo had, I found,been arrested as an accessory, and both he and Mr. Sholto hadbeen marched off to the station. Two constables guarded thenarrow gate, but they allowed me to pass with the dog on mymentioning the detective's name.

Holmes was standing on the doorstep with his hands in hispockets, smoking his pipe.

"Ah, you have him there!" said he. "Good dog, then! AthelneyJones has gone. We have had an immense display of energysince you left. He has arrested not only friend Thaddeus but thegatekeeper, the housekeeper, and the Indian servant. We havethe place to ourselves but for a sergeant upstairs. Leave the doghere and come up."

We tied Toby to the hall table and reascended the stairs. Theroom was as we had left it, save that a sheet had been drapedover the central figure. A weary-looking police-sergeant reclinedin the corner.

"Lend me your bull's eye, Sergeant," said my companion."Now tie this bit of card round my neck, so as to hang it in frontof me. Thank you. Now I must kick off my boots and stockings.Just you carry them down with you, Watson. I am going to do alittle climbing. And dip my handkerchief into the creosote. Thatwill do. Now come up into the garret with me for a moment."

We clambered up through the hole. Holmes turned his lightonce more upon the footsteps in the dust.

"I wish you particularly to notice these footmarks," he said."Do you observe anything noteworthy about them?"

"They belong," I said, "to a child or a small woman."

"Apart from their size, though. Is there nothing else?"

"They appear to be much as other footmarks."

"Not at all. Look here! This is the print of a right foot in thedust. Now I make one with my naked foot beside it. What is thechief difference?"

"Your toes are all cramped together. The other print has eachtoe distinctly divided."

"Quite so. That is the point. Bear that in mind. Now, wouldyou kindly step over to that flap-window and smell the edge ofthe woodwork? I shall stay over here, as I have this handkerchiefin my hand."

I did as he directed and was instantly conscious of a strongtarry smell.

"That is where he put his foot in getting out. If you can tracehim, I should think that Toby will have no difficulty. Now rundownstairs, loose the dog, and look out for Blondin."

By the time that I got out into the grounds Sherlock Holmeswas on the roof, and I could see him like an enormous glow-worm crawling very slowly along the ridge. I lost sight of himbehind a stack of chimneys, but he presently reappeared and thenvanished once more upon the opposite side. When I made myway round there I found him seated at one of the corner eaves.

"That you, Watson?" he cried.

"Yes."

"This is the place. What is that black thing down there?"

"A water-barrel."

"Top on it?"

"Yes."

"No sign of a ladder?"

"No."

"Confound the fellow! It's a most breakneck place. I ought tobe able to come down where he could climb up. The water-pipefeels pretty firm. Here goes, anyhow."

There was a scuffling of feet, and the lantern began to comesteadily down the side of the wall. Then with a light spring hecame on to the barrel, and from there to the earth.

"It was easy to follow him," he said, drawing on his stock-ings and boots. "Tiles were loosened the whole way along, andin his hurry he had dropped this. It confirms my diagnosis, asyou doctors express it."

The object which he held up to me was a small pocket orpouch woven out of coloured grasses and with a few tawdrybeads strung round it. In shape and size it was not unlike acigarette-case. Inside were half a dozen spines of dark wood,sharp at one end and rounded at the other, like that which hadstruck Bartholomew Sholto.

"They are hellish things," said he. "Look out that you don'tprick yourself. I'm delighted to have them, for the chances arethat they are all he has. There is the less fear of you or mefinding one in our skin before long. I would sooner face aMartini bullet, myself. Are you game for a six-mile trudge,Watson?"

"Certainly," I answered.

"Your leg will stand it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Here you are, doggy! Good old Toby! Smell it, Toby, smellit!" He pushed the creosote handkerchief under the dog's nose,while the creature stood with its fluffy legs separated, and with amost comical cock to its head, like a connoisseur sniffing thebouquet of a famous vintage. Holmes then threw the handker-chief to a distance, fastened a stout cord to the mongrel's collar,and led him to the foot of the water-barrel. The creature instantlybroke into a succession of high, tremulous yelps and, with hisnose on the ground and his tail in the air, pattered off upon thetrail at a pace which strained his leash and kept us at the top ofour speed.

The east had been gradually whitening, and we could now seesome distance in the cold gray light. The square, massive house,with its black, empty windows and high, bare walls, towered up,sad and forlorn, behind us. Our course led right across thegrounds, in and out among the trenches and pits with which theywere scarred and intersected. The whole place, with its scattereddirt-heaps and ill-grown shrubs, had a blighted, ill-omened lookwhich harmonized with the black tragedy which hung over it.

On reaching the boundary wall Toby ran along, whining ea-gerly, underneath its shadow, and stopped finally in a cornerscreened by a young beech. Where the two walls joined, severalbricks had been loosened, and the crevices left were worn downand rounded upon the lower side, as though they had frequentlybeen used as a ladder. Holmes clambered up, and taking the dogfrom me he dropped it over upon the other side.

"There's the print of Wooden-leg's hand," he remarked as Imounted up beside him. "You see the slight smudge of bloodupon the white plaster. What a lucky thing it is that we have hadno very heavy rain since yesterday! The scent wili lie upon theroad in spite of their eight-and-twenty hours' start."

I confess that I had my doubts myself when I reflected uponthe great traffic which had passed along the London road in theinterval. My fears were soon appeased, however. Toby neverhesitated or swerved but waddled on in his peculiar rollingfashion. Clearly the pungent smell of the creosote rose highabove all other contending scents.

"Do not imagine," said Holmes, "that I depend for mysuccess in this case upon the mere chance of one of these fellowshaving put his foot in the chemical. I have knowledge nowwhich would enable me to trace them in many different ways.This, however, is the readiest, and, since fortune has put it intoour hands, I should be culpable if I neglected it. It has, howeverprevented the case from becoming the pretty little intellectuaiproblem which it at one time promised to be. There might havebeen some credit to be gained out of it but for this too palpableclue."

"There is credit, and to spare," said I. "I assure you, Holmes,that I marvel at the means by which you obtain your results inthis case even more than I did in the Jefferson Hope murder. Thething seems to me to be deeper and more inexplicable. How, forexample, could you describe with such confidence the wooden-legged man?"

"Pshaw, my dear boy! it was simplicity itself. I don't wish tobe theatrical. It is all patent and above-board. Two officers whoare in command of a convict-guard learn an important secret asto buried treasure. A map is drawn for them by an Englishmannamed Jonathan Small. You remember that we saw the nameupon the chart in Captain Morstan's possession. He had signed itin behalf of himself and his associates -- the sign of the four, ashe somewhat dramatically called it. Aided by this chart, theofficers -- or one of them -- gets the treasure and brings it toEngland, leaving, we will suppose, some condition under whichhe received it unfulfilled. Now, then, why did not JonathanSmall get the treasure himself? The answer is obvious. The chartis dated at a time when Morstan was brought into close associa-tion with convicts. Jonathan Small did not get the treasurebecause he and his associates were themselves convicts andcould not get away."

"But this is mere speculation," said I.

"It is more than that. It is the only hypothesis which coversthe facts. Let us see how it fits in with the sequel. Major Sholtoremains at peace for some years, happy in the possession of histreasure. Then he receives a letter from India which gives him agreat fright. What was that?"

"A letter to say that the men whom he had wronged had beenset free."

"Or had escaped. That is much more likely, for he wouldhave known what their term of imprisonment was. It would nothave been a surprise to him. What does he do then? He guardshimself against a wooden-legged man -- a white man, mark you,for he mistakes a white tradesman for him and actually fires apistol at him. Now, only one white man's name is on the chart.The others are Hindoos or Mohammedans. There is no otherwhite man. Therefore we may say with confidence that thewooden-legged man is identical with Jonathan Small. Does thereasoning strike you as being faulty?"

"No: it is clear and concise."

"Well, now, let us put ourselves in the place of JonathanSmall. Let us look at it from his point of view. He comes toEngland with the double idea of regaining what he would con-sider to be his rights and of having his revenge upon the manwho had wronged him. He found out where Sholto lived, andvery possibly he established communications with someone in-side the house. There is this butler, Lal Rao, whom we have notseen. Mrs. Bernstone gives him far from a good character. Smallcould not find out, however, where the treasure was hid, for noone ever knew save the major and one faithful servant who haddied. Suddenly Small learns that the major is on his deathbed. lna frenzy lest the secret of the treasure die with him, he runs thegauntlet of the guards, makes his way to the dying man's win-dow, and is only deterred from entering by the presence of histwo sons. Mad with hate, however, against the dead man, heenters the room that night, searches his private papers in thehope of discovering some memorandum relating to the treasure,and finally leaves a memento of his visit in the short inscriptionupon the card. He had doubtless planned beforehand that, shouldhe slay the major, he would leave some such record upon thebody as a sign that it was not a common murder but, from thepoint of view of the four associates, something in the nature ofan act of justice. Whimsical and bizarre conceits of this kind arecommon enough in the annals of crime and usually afford valu-able indications as to the criminal. Do you follow all this?"

"Very clearly."

"Now what could Jonathan Small do? He could only continueto keep a secret watch upon the efforts made to find the treasure.Possibly he leaves England and only comes back at intervals.Then comes the discovery of the garret, and he is instantlyinformed of it. We again trace the presence of some confederatein the household. Jonathan, with his wooden leg, is utterlyunable to reach the lofty room of Bartholomew Sholto. He takeswith him, however, a rather curious associate, who gets over thisdifficulty but dips his naked foot into creosote, whence comeToby, and a six-mile limp for a half-pay officer with a damagedtendo Achillis."

"But it was the associate and not Jonathan who committed thecrime."

"Quite so. And rather to Jonathan's disgust, to judge by theway he stamped about when he got into the room. He bore nogrudge against Bartholomew Sholto and would have preferred ifhe could have been simply bound and gagged. He did not wishto put his head in a halter. There was no help for it, however: thesavage instincts of his companion had broken out, and the poisonhad done its work: so Jonathan Small left his record, lowered thetreasure-box to the ground, and followed it himself. That was thetrain of events as far as I can decipher them. Of course, as to hispersonal appearance, he must be middle-aged and must be sun-burned after serving his time in such an oven as the Andamans.His height is readily calculated from the length of his stride, andwe know that he was bearded. His hairiness was the one pointwhich impressed itself upon Thaddeus Sholto when he saw himat the window. I don't know that there is anything else."

"The associate?"

"Ah, well, there is no great mystery in that. But you willknow all about it soon enough. How sweet the morning air is!See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from somegigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself overthe London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but onnone, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I.How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in thepresence of the great elemental forces of Nature! Are you wellup in your Jean Paul?"

"Fairly so. I worked back to him through Carlyle."

"That was like following the brook to the parent lake. Hemakes one curious but profound remark. It is that the chief proofof man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own small-ness. It argues, you see, a power of comparison and of apprecia-tion which is in itself a proof of nobility. There is much food forthought in Richter. You have not a pistol, have you?"

"I have my stick."

"It is just possible that we may need something of the sort ifwe get to their lair. Jonathan I shall leave to you, but if the otherturns nasty I shall shoot him dead."

He took out his revolver as he spoke, and, having loaded twoof the chambers, he put it back into the right-hand pocket of hisjacket.

We had during this time been following the guidance of Tobydown the half-rural villa-lined roads which lead to the metropolis.Now, however, we were beginning to come among continuousstreets, where labourers and dockmen were already astir, andslatternly women were taking down shutters and brushing door-steps. At the square-topped corner public-houses business wasjust beginning, and rough-looking men were emerging, rubbingtheir sleeves across their beards after their morning wet. Strangedogs sauntered up and stared wonderingly at us as we passed,but our inimitable Toby looked neither to the right nor to the leftbut trotted onward with his nose to the ground and an occasionaleager whine which spoke of a hot scent.

We had traversed Streatham, Brixton, Camberwell, and nowfound ourselves in Kennington Lane, having borne away throughthe side streets to the east of the Oval. The men whom wepursued seemed to have taken a curiously zigzag road, with theidea probably of escaping observation. They had never kept tothe main road if a parallel side street would serve their turn. Atthe foot of Kennington Lane they had edged away to the leftthrough Bond Street and Miles Street. Where the latter streetturns into Knight's Place, Toby ceased to advance but began torun backward and forward with one ear cocked and the otherdrooping, the very picture of canine indecision. Then he waddledround in circles, looking up to us from time to time, as if to askfor sympathy in his embarrassment.

"What the deuce is the matter with the dog?" growled Holmes."They surely would not take a cab or go off in a balloon."

"Perhaps they stood here for some time," I suggested.

"Ah! it's all right. He's off again," said my companion in atone of relief.

He was indeed off, for after sniffing round again he suddenlymade up his mind and darted away with an energy and determi-nation such as he had not yet shown. The scent appeared to bemuch hotter than before, for he had not even to put his nose onthe ground but tugged at his leash and tried to break into a run. Icould see by the gleam in Holmes's eyes that he thought we werenearing the end of our journey.

Our course now ran down Nine Elms until we came to Broderickand Nelson's large timber-yard just past the White Eagle tavern.Here the dog, frantic with excitement, turned down through theside gate into the enclosure, where the sawyers were already atwork. On the dog raced through sawdust and shavings, down analley, round a passage, between two wood-piles, and finally,with a triumphant yelp, sprang upon a large barrel which stillstood upon the hand-trolley on which it had been brought. Withlolling tongue and blinking eyes Toby stood upon the cask,looking from one to the other of us for some sign of apprecia-tion. The staves of the barrel and the wheels of the trolley weresmeared with a dark liquid, and the whole air was heavy with thesmell of creosote.

Sherlock Holmes and I looked blankly at each other and thenburst simultaneously into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.