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Page 87
"Well, there's no need for me to dwell on that part of
it. You know now what James Barclay was capable of.
Bhurtee was relieved by Neill next day, but the rebels
took me away with them in their retreat, and it was
many a long year before ever I saw a white face again.
I was tortured and tried to get away, and was captured
and tortured again. You can see for yourselves the
state in which I was left. Some of them that fled
into Nepaul took me with them, and then afterwards I
was up past Darjeeling. The hill-folk up there
murdered the rebels who had me, and I became their
slave for a time until I escaped; but instead of going
south I had to go north, until I found myself among
the Afghans. There I wandered about for many a year,
and at last came back to the Punjab, where I lived
mostly among the natives and picked up a living by the
conjuring tricks that I had learned. What use was it
for me, a wretched cripple, to go back to England or
to make myself known to my old comrades? Even my wish
for revenge would not make me do that. I had rather
that Nancy and my old pals should think of Harry Wood
as having died with a straight back, than see him
living and crawling with a stick like a chimpanzee.
They never doubted that I was dead, and I meant that
they never should. I heard that Barclay had married
Nancy, and that he was rising rapidly in the regiment,
but even that did not make me speak.
"But when one gets old one has a longing for home.
For years I've been dreaming of the bright green
fields and the hedges of England. At last I
determined to see them before I died. I saved enough
to bring me across, and then I came here where the
soldiers are, for I know their ways and how to amuse
them and so earn enough to keep me."
"Your narrative is most interesting," said Sherlock
Holmes. "I have already heard of your meeting with
Mrs. Barclay, and your mutual recognition. You then,
as I understand, followed her home and saw through the
window an altercation between her husband and her, in
which she doubtless cast his conduct to you in his
teeth. Your own feelings overcame you, and you ran
across the lawn and broke in upon them."
"I did, sir, and at the sight of me he looked as I
have never seen a man look before, and over he went
with his head on the fender. But he was dead before
he fell. I read death on his face as plain as I can
read that text over the fire. The bare sight of me
was like a bullet through his guilty heart."
"And then?"
"Then Nancy fainted, and I caught up the key of the
door from her hand, intending to unlock it and get
help. But as I was doing it it seemed to me better to
leave it alone and get away, for the thing might look
black against me, and any way my secret would be out
if I were taken. In my haste I thrust the key into my
pocket, and dropped my stick while I was chasing
Teddy, who had run up the curtain. When I got him
into his box, from which he had slipped, I was off as
fast as I could run."
"Who's Teddy?" asked Holmes.
The man leaned over and pulled up the front of a kind
of hutch in the corner. In an instant out there
slipped a beautiful reddish-brown creature, thin and
lithe, with the legs of a stoat, a long, thin nose,
and a pair of the finest red eyes that ever I saw in
an animal's head.
"It's a mongoose," I cried.
"Well, some call them that, and some call them
ichneumon," said the man. "Snake-catcher is what I
call them, and Teddy is amazing quick on cobras. I
have one here without the fangs, and Teddy catches it
every night to please the folk in the canteen.
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