“We chose this house as it was the most isolated place we could find, and here we have lived peacefully for several years. Now, it seems, we must move again, for there are men in the shrubbery with murder in their hearts. Are they Czech? Are they German? Are they even Austrian, perhaps? Who can say? It makes no difference: they all hate me, and for things I did not even do.”
As Kraus finished speaking, he shook his head in a gesture of weary resignation, and at that moment his wife and son returned.
“Do not be downcast, Adolf!” cried his wife, as she saw his forlorn countenance. “Do not despair! Have strength once again and we shall make a new home somewhere else, even better than this one. Consider also your work,” she continued, as he showed no sign of responding to her encouragement. “The research in which you are engaged cannot be done so well by any other man in Europe. You must not yield to these murderers.”
“If you are all ready,” said Holmes, consulting his watch, “we had best be off. You do not keep a pony and trap?”
Frau Kraus shook her head. “We have had no need of one,” said she. “It takes only twelve minutes to walk to the village, and fifteen to the railway station. If you gentlemen will help us with our bags, we shall manage perfectly well.”
In a minute we were in the road, and Kraus and his family had turned their backs on the house that had been their home. The little serving girl, Emily Jane, was in a state of great agitation and fear. Although she did not fully understand what was afoot, she understood enough to know that danger was pressing. I took her bag and spoke a few words of encouragement to her. I hoped that I sounded calm, but in truth any calmness I displayed was almost entirely an act. Within, my heart beat with just the same agitation as hers, I am sure, for I knew only too well the peril of our situation.
We made a strange, and oddly assorted party upon that quiet country road that evening: the striking, almost comic figure of Herr Kraus, his top hat wedged crookedly upon his unruly mane of snow-white hair; his wife beside him, tall and queenly in her poise; Harte and I following behind, two vaguely professional-looking gentlemen, quite out of place on that dusty country road, and the pretty little servant girl, Emily Jane, her eyes wide with fear, keeping close to my side; beside us, guarding the right and left flank respectively, Holmes and Kraus’s son, the latter lean and tense as a coiled spring, his sharp eyes darting this way and that in constant vigilance. What might a chance onlooker have made of this singular group? Could anyone possibly have divined the strange and fearful business that was taking us along that deserted road on that pleasant spring evening?
Above us, the pale blue sky was streaked with bands of red. The sun had been sinking below the horizon just as we left the house. Now, the deepening shadows within the woods and the purplish light upon the tree tops spoke eloquently of the fleeting time that is twilight. A few unseen birds still twittered fitfully among the trees as they settled down to roost for the night, but save only these soft sounds, the countryside had already slipped into the deep silence of evening.
As we approached the brow of the hill, a pony and trap came over the crest, appearing as a black silhouette against the pale sky behind. Down the hill towards us it came, at a slow, unhurried trot, and we moved in slightly to the side of the road to let it pass. Two men were on the seat, I observed, clad in overcoats and soft hats.
“Why it’s my acquaintance, Mr Bradbury, the farm-machinery man from the Fox and Goose,” cried Harte. He raised his arm and called a greeting as the trap drew level with us.
There are moments in a man’s life that stay for ever in his memory, good moments and bad moments, and moments which seemed at the time neither conspicuously good or bad, but which are still lodged firmly in one’s mind. Good, bad or indifferent, all can be brought into one’s conscious thoughts at any moment, at the very slightest of bidding. You glance for a moment at the fire, and you are once again the five-year-old boy, gazing into the nursery fire and wondering what causes the little spurts of flame upon the sides of the black coals; you see a woman riding in the park and you are translated at once to a chilly schoolroom of long ago, where a nursery-rhyme illustration hangs on the wall, of “a fine lady upon a white horse”.
There are other moments, too, dark, terrible moments, which need no bidding to emerge from the mysterious shaded recesses of memory, but which appear periodically of their own volition, for no apparent reason, often in the long drowsy watches of the night. The result is always the same: a sickening, jarring sensation, a frightening jolt to the mind, and in an instant one is fully awake and living again through that dreadful moment, the blood throbbing in one’s veins, the beads of perspiration breaking out upon one’s brow. It was a moment of this latter type that followed Mr Harte’s friendly wave to the men on the trap. I cannot count the many times the scene has been replayed upon the stage of my memory, where each second of time occupies a minute, and each minute seems an eternity.
The echo of Mr Harte’s greeting still hung in the air as the driver of the trap reined in his horse and drew it to a halt just in front of us. The man to the right of the driver seemed to grunt a response to the greeting and, as he did so, he drew back with his left hand the front of his overcoat, which was unfastened, and with his right brought out a heavy shotgun, which had been concealed beneath the coat, and began to raise it towards us. Mesmerized though I was by the strange, silent elevation of the deadly muzzle, I was conscious too of other movement, from Holmes on my right and Kraus’s son on my left. Then, as the shotgun reached the horizontal and pointed straight at us, my eyes for an instant met those of the man holding it, and I read there his evil, remorseless intent, even as his finger tightened on the trigger. The girl beside me was gripping my right arm so tightly that I could not move it. Then came a flash of fire from either side of me, and the simultaneous reports of two pistols. The man holding the shotgun let out a blood-curdling cry as the two shots struck home, I saw blood spring from his breast as he reeled over backwards, and as he did so, the gun in his hand discharged with a flash like lightning and a roar like thunder, and the deadly shot passed mere inches above our heads. Frau Kraus screamed, the horse in the shafts reared up in terror, and the young girl beside me slumped senseless upon my arm. Even as all these things were happening, the driver of the trap had dropped the reins and pulled out a large revolver from within his coat. Again, two shots rang out in unison from beside me, and the man on the trap pitched sideways from his seat and fell in a heap to the ground.
Holmes stepped forward quickly and seized the reins, as the horse whinnied and made to bolt, his eyes bulging with fear. I carried the young girl to the side of the road and laid her down on a grassy bank, then quickly examined the two strangers who had come with such murderous intent into our lives. They were both dead.
I looked round. The sound of the explosions was still ringing in my ears, and the air was thick with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. Rhodes Harte was standing in perfect stillness in the middle of the road, as if stunned into senselessness by the terrible rapidity of the events. “But, Mr Bradbury . . .” he began in a tone of stupefaction. “I thought . . .”
“It was almost certainly he you saw hiding in the garden of Owl’s Hill yesterday,” said Holmes. “He was no machinery salesman, but must in reality have been the advance scout for the assassination party. No doubt he wired his confederates with the information this morning. They would have killed us all without a thought, Mr Harte. Here,” he continued, thrusting his pistol back into his pocket, “help me turn the trap round and get the other man aboard. We have no time to lose!”