The Adventure of the Red Circle | Page 4

smoothed into their usual commonplace. She sat down in
the chair which he had indicated.
"If I take it up I must understand every detail," said he. "Take time to consider. The
smallest point may be the most essential. You say that the man came ten days ago and
paid you for a fortnight's board and lodging?"
"He asked my terms, sir. I said fifty shillings a week. There is a small sitting-room and
bedroom, and all complete, at the top of the house."
"Well?"
"He said, 'I'll pay you five pounds a week if I can have it on my own terms.' I'm a poor
woman, sir, and Mr. Warren earns little, and the money meant much to me. He took out a
ten-pound note, and he held it out to me then and there. 'You can have the same every
fortnight for a long time to come if you keep the terms,' he said. 'If not, I'll have no more
to do with you.'
"What were the terms?"
"Well, sir, they were that he was to have a key of the house. That was all right. Lodgers
often have them. Also, that he was to be left entirely to himself and never, upon any
excuse, to be disturbed."
"Nothing wonderful in that, surely?"
"Not in reason, sir. But this is out of all reason. He has been there for ten days, and
neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set eyes upon him. We can hear that quick
step of his pacing up and down, up and down, night, morning, and noon; but except on
that first night he had never once gone out of the house."
"Oh, he went out the first night, did he?"
"Yes, sir, and returned very late--after we were all in bed. He told me after he had taken
the rooms that he would do so and asked me not to bar the door. I heard him come up the
stair after midnight."

"But his meals?"
"It was his particular direction that we should always, when he rang, leave his meal upon
a chair, outside his door. Then he rings again when he has finished, and we take it down
from the same chair. If he wants anything else he prints it on a slip of paper and leaves
it."
"Prints it?"
"Yes, sir; prints it in pencil. Just the word, nothing more. Here's the one I brought to
show you--soap. Here's another-- match. This is one he left the first morning--daily
gazette. I leave that paper with his breakfast every morning."
"Dear me, Watson," said Homes, staring with great curiosity at the slips of foolscap
which the landlady had handed to him, "this is certainly a little unusual. Seclusion I can
understand; but why print? Printing is a clumsy process. Why not write? What would it
suggest, Watson?"
"That he desired to conceal his handwriting."
"But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady should have a word of his writing?
Still, it may be as you say. Then, again, why such laconic messages?"
"I cannot imagine."
"It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The words are written with a
broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a not unusual pattern. You will observe that the
paper is torn away at the side here after the printing was done, so that the 's' of 'soap' is
partly gone. Suggestive, Watson, is it not?"
"Of caution?"
"Exactly. There was evidently some mark, some thumbprint, something which might give
a clue to the person's identity. Now. Mrs. Warren, you say that the man was of middle
size, dark, and bearded. What age would he be?"
"Youngish, sir--not over thirty."
"Well, can you give me no further indications?"
"He spoke good English, sir, and yet I thought he was a foreigner by his accent."
"And he was well dressed?"
"Very smartly dressed, sir--quite the gentleman. Dark clothes-- nothing you would note."
"He gave no name?"
"No, sir."

"And has had no letters or callers?"
"None."
"But surely you or the girl enter his room of a morning?"
"No, sir; he looks after himself entirely."
"Dear me! that is certainly remarkable. What about his luggage?"
"He had one big brown bag with him--nothing else."
"Well, we don't seem to have much material to help us. Do you say nothing has come out
of that room--absolutely nothing?"
The landlady drew an envelope from her bag; from it she shook out two burnt matches
and a cigarette-end upon the table.
"They were on his tray this morning. I brought them because I had heard that you can
read great things out of small ones."
Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"There is nothing here," said he. "The matches have, of course, been used to light
cigarettes. That is obvious