The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - By John Joseph Adams Page 0,260

before Christmas, staying with friends in London, and returning three days after St. Stevens. But this year she fell ill on the very day she was to leave. She was too unwell to travel, and remained so. I heard all this, you understand, from the servants, when once I had read the papers in the box, and questioned my staff firmly."

"How did she die?"

"She was asleep in her bed, and rallying, the doctor believed. The maid slipped out for a moment, and coming back found my aunt had risen as if much frightened, and was now lying by the fireplace. Her face was congested and full of horror. She was rigid, they told me, as a stone."

"The cause?"

"It was determined as a seizure of the heart."

"Could it not have been?"

"Of course her heart may have been the culprit."

Holmes glanced at me. His face was haughty and remote but his eyes had in them that dry mercurial glitter I connect with his interest.

"Mr. Holmes," said Eleanor Caston, standing up as if to confront him, "when I had questioned my servants, I put the story away with the papers. I engaged a new maid to replace Lucy. I went on with my improved life. But the months passed, and late in November, Lucy wrote to me. It was she who found my aunt lying dead, and now the girl told me she herself had also that day seen a white fox in the fields. It would be, of course, an albino, and our local hunt, I know, would think it unsporting to destroy such a creature. No, no. You must not think for a moment any of this daunted me."

"What has?"

"Three days ago, another letter came."

"From your maid?"

"Possibly. I can hardly say."

On the table near the fire she now let fall a thin, pinkish paper. Holmes bent over it. He read aloud, slowly, "'Go you out and live, or stay to die.'" He added, "Watson, come and look at this."

The paper was cheap, of a type that might be found in a thousand stationers who catered to the poor. Upon it every word had been pasted. These words were not cut from a book or newspaper, however. Each seemed to have been taken from a specimen of handwriting, and no two were alike. I remarked on this.

"Yes, Watson. Even the paper on which each word is written is of a different sort. The inks are different. Even the implement used to cut them out, unless I am much mistaken, is different." He raised the letter, and held it close to his face, and next against the light of a lamp. "A scissors here, for example, and there a small knife. And see, this edge—a larger, blunter blade. And there, the trace of a water-mark. And this one is very old. Observe the grain, and how the ink has faded, a wonder it withstood the paste—Hallo, this word is oddly spelled."

I peered more closely and saw that what had been read as 'out' was in fact 'our.' "Some error," said Holmes, "or else they could not find the proper word and substituted this. Miss Caston, I trust you have kept the envelope."

"Here it is."

"What a pity! The postmark is smudged and unreadable—from light snow or rain, perhaps."

"There had been sleet."

"But a cheap envelope, to coincide with the note-paper. The writing on the envelope is unfamiliar to you, or you would have drawn some conclusion from it. No doubt it is disguised. It looks malformed." He tossed the envelope down and rounded on her like an uncoiling snake.

"Mr. Holmes—I assure you, I was no more than mildly upset by this. People can be meddlesome and malicious."

"Do you think that you have enemies, Miss Caston?"

"None I could name. But then, I have been struck by fortune. It is sometimes possible to form a strong passion concerning another, only by reading of them say, in a newspaper. I gained my good luck suddenly, and without any merit on my part. Someone may be envious of me, without ever having met me."

"I see your studies include the human mystery, Miss Caston."

Her colour rose. One was not always certain with Holmes, if he complimented or scorned. She said, rather low, "Other things have occurred since this letter."

"Please list them."

She had gained all his attention, and now she did not falter.

"After the sleet, there was snow in our part of the country, for some days. In this snow, letters were written, under the terrace yesterday. An E, an N