he sets his grip there they’ve got to squeal, and don’t you forget it.”
“Boys, I ain’t sorry, now, that he wasn’t here to roust out the child;
this is a bigger thing, by a long sight. Yes, sir, and more tangled up
and scientific and intellectual.”
“I reckon we’re all of us glad it’s turned out this way. Glad? ‘George!
it ain’t any name for it. Dontchuknow, Archy could ‘ve learnt something
if he’d had the nous to stand by and take notice of how that man works
the system. But no; he went poking up into the chaparral and just missed
the whole thing.”
“It’s true as gospel; I seen it myself. Well, Archy’s young. He’ll know
better one of these days.”
“Say, boys, who do you reckon done it?”
That was a difficult question, and brought out a world of unsatisfying
conjecture. Various men were mentioned as possibilities, but one by one
they were discarded as not being eligible. No one but young Hillyer had
been intimate with Flint Buckner; no one had really had a quarrel with
him; he had affronted every man who had tried to make up to him, although
not quite offensively enough to require bloodshed. There was one name
that was upon every tongue from the start, but it was the last to get
utterance–Fetlock Jones’s. It was Pat Riley that mentioned it.
“Oh, well,” the boys said, “of course we’ve all thought of him, because
he had a million rights to kill Flint Buckner, and it was just his plain
duty to do it. But all the same there’s two things we can’t get around:
for one thing, he hasn’t got the sand; and for another, he wasn’t
anywhere near the place when it happened.”
“I know it,” said Pat. “He was there in the billiard-room with us when
it happened.”
“Yes, and was there all the time for an hour before it happened.”
“It’s so. And lucky for him, too. He’d have been suspected in a minute
if it hadn’t been for that.”
III
The tavern dining-room had been cleared of all its furniture save one
six-foot pine table and a chair. This table was against one end of the
room; the chair was on it; Sherlock Holmes, stately, imposing,
impressive, sat in the chair. The public stood. The room was full. The
tobacco-smoke was dense, the stillness profound.
The Extraordinary Man raised his hand to command additional silence; held
it in the air a few moments; then, in brief, crisp terms he put forward
question after question, and noted the answers with “Um-ums,” nods of the
head, and so on. By this process he learned all about Flint Buckner,
his character, conduct, and habits, that the people were able to tell
him. It thus transpired that the Extraordinary Man’s nephew was the only
person in the camp who had a killing-grudge against Flint Buckner.
Mr. Holmes smiled compassionately upon the witness, and asked, languidly:
“Do any of you gentlemen chance to know where the lad Fetlock Jones was
at the time of the explosion?”
A thunderous response followed:
“In the billiard-room of this house!”
“Ah. And had he just come in?”
“Been there all of an hour!”
“Ah. It is about–about–well, about how far might it be to the scene of
the explosions”
“All of a mile!”
“Ah. It isn’t much of an alibi, ’tis true, but–”
A storm-burst of laughter, mingled with shouts of “By jiminy, but he’s
chain-lightning!” and “Ain’t you sorry you spoke, Sandy?” shut off the
rest of the sentence, and the crushed witness drooped his blushing face
in pathetic shame. The inquisitor resumed:
“The lad Jones’s somewhat distant connection with the case” (laughter)
“having been disposed of, let us now call the eye-witnesses of the
tragedy, and listen to what they have to say.”
He got out his fragmentary clues and arranged them on a sheet of
cardboard on his knee. The house held its breath and watched.
“We have the longitude and the latitude, corrected for magnetic
variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have
the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing–
inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision the