the danger would be as pressing in one house as in another.


“It was in January, ’85, that my poor father met his end, and two

years and eight months have elapsed since then. During that time I have lived

happily at Horsham, and I had begun to hope that this curse had passed away

from the family, and that it had ended with the last generation. I had begun to

take comfort too soon, however; yesterday morning the blow fell in the very

shape in which it had come upon my father.”


The young man took from his waistcoat a crumpled envelope, and turning to the

table he shook out upon it five little dried orange pips.


“This is the envelope,” he continued. “The postmark is

London—eastern division. Within are the very words which were upon my

father’s last message: ‘K. K. K.’; and then ‘Put the

papers on the sundial.’”


“What have you done?” asked Holmes.


“Nothing.”


“Nothing?”


“To tell the truth”—he sank his face into his thin, white

hands—“I have felt helpless. I have felt like one of those poor

rabbits when the snake is writhing towards it. I seem to be in the grasp of

some resistless, inexorable evil, which no foresight and no precautions can

guard against.”


“Tut! tut!” cried Sherlock Holmes. “You must act, man, or you

are lost. Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for despair.”


“I have seen the police.”


“Ah!”


“But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the

inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and

that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and

were not to be connected with the warnings.”


Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible

imbecility!” he cried.


“They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in the house

with me.”


“Has he come with you to-night?”


“No. His orders were to stay in the house.”


Again Holmes raved in the air.