“The woman rapidly became very animated, gesticulating wildly with her hands. It appeared that she was speaking in a raised, angry voice, but the sound did not carry and I could hear nothing. For several minutes I watched this strange dumb show, then the woman’s tirade appeared to draw a response from the occupant of the chair, for she paused for a moment, her mouth open, and I saw the chair’s occupant close the book and extend his arm, as if gesturing as he spoke. If only I could get a clearer view into the room. I glanced up. Immediately above my head was a spreading tree of some kind. Perhaps from a branch of the tree I should have a better angle of vision, and my view of the drawing room and its occupants would be unimpeded!
“I slipped out backwards from my hiding place, pushed my brown-paper parcel under a bush, and surveyed the trunk of the tree. I suppose the last time I climbed a tree was thirty-odd years ago, but there were plenty of little side branches, and it did not appear too difficult a prospect. The daylight had almost gone now, and the garden was in deep shadow, so I thought it unlikely that I would be seen. Quietly, and with an ease that surprised me, I shinned up the tree, until I was upon a stout branch almost directly above where I had been crouching. My view into the drawing room was now as clear as could be, and as my own position was shielded by a screen of leaves, I was confident that I would not be seen. I watched as the woman in the drawing room lit a lamp, and then another, and the room became ablaze with light. Then, for the first time, I had the impression that there was a third person in the room, for the woman paused, half-turned, and appeared to be listening to someone who was out of my sight, to the right. All at once, the occupant of the armchair near the window stood up and appeared to be speaking rapidly. I had a very clear view of him. There was not a shadow of a doubt: the man I was looking at was Dr Kennett, my literary acquaintance of six weeks ago. Hardly had I absorbed this fact, however, when, to my very great surprise, the woman raised her hands and, with an expression of anger upon her face, pushed him roughly back down into his chair. For a moment, then, she disappeared from my sight, to the right-hand side of the room. When she reappeared she was holding in her hand a large stick or cudgel of some kind, which she brandished menacingly in Dr Kennett’s face.
“You will appreciate how astonished and distressed I was by what I was witnessing. But I had little time to dwell upon it, for just then a very strange and disturbing thing occurred. I had heard a rustling sound on the ground beneath the tree, and I glanced down, thinking it might be a cat or a hedgehog, or even possibly a fox. Imagine my shock and horror when I saw beneath me a man, crouching in the very position in which I had been but a short time earlier. It was now so dark that I could make out practically nothing of him, other than that he had on his head a wide-brimmed, low-crowned sort of hat. For several minutes I held myself absolutely motionless, scarcely even daring to breathe, my gaze alternating between the bright rectangle of the drawing-room window with its strange dumb show, and the dark, shadowed figure beneath my feet.”
Mr Rhodes Harte paused, cleared his throat and asked if he could have a glass of water.
“Your story is a singular one,” remarked Holmes, as I poured out some water from a carafe. “It is quite the most intriguing little problem to come my way for some time.”
“There is yet more,” returned the solicitor, sipping the water.
“Excellent! Pray, continue then!”
“You have perhaps experienced that awful physical sensation of nausea which can suddenly sweep over one in certain illnesses. Now, in my precarious perch in the tree, I was assailed by a sort of mental nausea, which overwhelmed my brain like a wave, so that I feared for a moment that I would pass out. There was I, at forty-three years of age, a respected solicitor of twenty-odd years’ standing, halfway up a tree like a schoolboy, in the dark, in a stranger’s private garden, with some other stranger skulking about in the shrubbery beneath my feet. What had I been thinking of to get myself into such a dreadful predicament? What would my friends and neighbours at home think of me, were they to learn what I had been doing? I should be ruined, both professionally and privately, and should be obliged to leave the district in disgrace! Such thoughts flooded my brain as I clung on desperately to the gently swaying branches, closed my eyes and prayed that I would not fall.
“When I opened my eyes again, the grey-haired woman was standing by the French windows, staring out into the garden with a rigid expression upon her face. Abruptly, she drew the curtains across the window. From beneath me in the darkness came the sound of movement, and as I strained my eyes to pierce the black void below, I heard the mysterious figure push his way through the bushes, back towards the cart track outside the garden, then I heard his rapid footsteps on the track as he made his way down to the road. A dizzying wave of relief passed over me. Now I, too, would be able to get away from this terrible, alarming place. I would wait for two minutes to ensure that the other man was well out of the way, and then climb down and make my way back to the village. I did not know what the time was, but thought that if I hurried I might still be able to catch the last train.
“I had waited a little while, and was about to feel my way down to a lower branch when I heard a sound that brought my heart into my mouth. The front door of the house had been opened. I pressed myself to the trunk of the tree, as someone stepped out into the garden carrying a lantern, and made his way across the lawn towards me. I could not think what to do. Like a little creature fascinated into immobility by the eye of a snake, I stared with a perfectly blank and useless mind at that little swinging light as it approached ever closer to the tree in which I was hiding. But whatever those in the house thought they had seen or heard outside, it was not me. The figure holding the lantern passed slowly along the edge of the shrubbery. It sounded as if he was poking about carefully in the bushes with a stick, but he never, so far as I could tell, looked up into the tree. As to who it was, I had no idea. I had the impression that it was a man rather than a woman, but more than that I could not say. Presently, he gave up his search, and the light of the lantern moved slowly away again, across the lawn towards the front door of the house. I waited in an agony of tension – I had scarcely moved an inch in five minutes – until I saw the light vanish and heard the front door bang shut, then I lowered myself as carefully as I could down through the branches of the tree to the ground.
“As I was scrabbling about in the darkness beneath a bush, groping blindly for my parcel, I thought I heard a slight noise, like a furtive footstep, from over near the front door of the house. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as it struck me with the force of a thunderbolt that if the man with the lantern had suspected there was someone hiding in the garden, he might have only feigned to enter the house. For all I could tell to the contrary, he might have opened the front door, put the lantern inside and extinguished the flame, then closed the front door with a bang while remaining outside upon the step. He might even now be standing there in the darkness, listening as I searched for the parcel. For a second I remained perfectly still. I could hear nothing, but I knew from earlier that footsteps upon the lawn would make very little sound. Then my fingers touched the parcel, and in a wild panic I seized it in my hand, pushed my way between two prickly bushes and set off down the cart track.
“The clouds were low and heavy, and the night was now a very black one, so that I could scarcely see where I was going, but frankly, I did not care where I went, so long as I could get away without delay from that dreadful place. At the foot of the track I turned into the road and hurried onwards through the darkness.