                                      1924
                                SHERLOCK HOLMES
                      THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE
                           by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Holmes had read carefully a note which the last post had brought
him. Then, with the dry chuckle which was his nearest approach to a
laugh, he tossed it over to me.
  "For a mixture of the modern and the mediaeval, if the practical and
of the wildly fanciful, I think this is surely the limit," said he.
"What do you make of it, Watson?"
  I read as follows:

                                          46, OLD JEWRY,
                                                 Nov. 19th.
                       Re Vampires
  SIR:
  Our client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of Ferguson and Muirhead, tea
brokers, of Mincing Lane, has made some inquiry from us in a
communication of even date concerning vampires. As our firm
specializes entirely upon the assessment of machinery the matter
hardly comes within our purview, and we have therefore recommended Mr.
Ferguson to call upon you and lay the matter before you. We have not
forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.
  We are, sir,
                                        Faithfully yours,
                                  MORRISON, MORRISON, AND DODD.
                                           per E. J. C.

  "Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson," said
Holmes in a reminiscent voice. "It was a ship which is associated with
the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet
prepared. But what do we know about vampires? Does it come within
our purview either? Anything is better than stagnation, but really
we seem to have been switched on to a Grimms' fairy tale. Make a
long arm, Watson, and see what V has to say."
  I leaned back and took down the great index volume to which he
referred. Holmes balanced it on his knee, and his eyes moved slowly
and lovingly over the record of old cases, mixed with the
accumulated information of a lifetime.
  "Voyage of the Gloria Scott," he read. "That was a bad business. I
have some recollection that you made a record of it, Watson, though
I was unable to congratulate you upon the result. Victor Lynch, the
forger. Venomous lizard or gila. Remarkable case, that! Vittoria,
the circus belle. Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the
Hammersmith wonder. Hullo! Hullo! Good old index. You can't beat it.
Listen to this, Watson. Vampirism in Hungary. And again, Vampires in
Transylvania." He turned over the pages with eagerness, but after a
short intent perusal he threw down the great book with a snarl of
disappointment.
  "Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses
who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their
hearts? It's pure lunacy."
  "But surely," said I, "the vampire was not necessarily a dead man? A
living person might have the habit. I have read, for example, of the
old sucking the blood of the young in order to retain their youth."
  "You are right, Watson. It mentions the legend in one of these
references. But are we to give serious attention to such things?
This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must
remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply. I fear
that we cannot take Mr. Robert Ferguson very seriously. Possibly
this note may be from him and may throw some light upon what is
worrying him."
  He took up a second letter which had lain unnoticed upon the table
while he had been absorbed with the first. This he began to read
with a smile of amusement upon his face which gradually faded away
into an expression of intense interest and concentration. When he
had finished he sat for some little time lost in thought with the
letter dangling from his fingers. Finally, with a start, he aroused
himself from his reverie.
  "Cheeseman's, Lamberley. Where is Lamberley, Watson?"
  "It is in Sussex, south of Horsham."
  "Not very far, eh? And Cheeseman's?"
  "I know that country, Holmes. It is full of old houses which are
named after the men who built them centuries ago. You get Odley's
and Harvey's and Carriton's- the folk are forgotten but their names
live in their houses.
  "Precisely," said Holmes coldly. It was one of the peculiarities
of his proud, self-contained nature that though he docketed any
fresh information very quietly and accurately in his brain, he
seldom made any acknowledgment to the giver. "I rather fancy we
shall know a good deal more about Cheeseman's, Lamberley, before we
are through. The letter is, as I had hoped, from Robert Ferguson. By
the way, he claims acquaintance with you."
  "With me!"
  "You had better read it."
  He handed the letter across. It was headed with the address quoted.

  DEAR MR. HOLMES [it said]:
  I have been recommended to you by my lawyers, but indeed the
matter is so extraordinarily delicate that it is most difficult to
discuss. It concerns a friend for whom I am acting. This gentleman
married some five years ago a Peruvian lady, the daughter of a
Peruvian merchant, whom he had met in connection with the
importation of nitrates. The lady was very beautiful, but the fact
of her foreign birth and of her alien religion always caused a
separation of interests and of feelings between husband and wife, so
that after a time his love may have cooled towards her and he may have
come to regard their union as a mistake. He felt there were sides of
her character which he could never explore or understand. This was the
more painful as she was as loving a wife as a man could have- to all
appearance absolutely devoted.
  Now for the point which I will make more plain when we meet. Indeed,
this note is merely to give you a general idea of the situation and to
ascertain whether you would care to interest yourself in the matter.
The lady began to show some curious traits quite alien to her
ordinarily sweet and gentle disposition. The gentleman had been
married twice and he had one son by the first wife. This boy was now
fifteen, a very charming and affectionate youth, though unhappily
injured through an accident in childhood. Twice the wife was caught in
the act of assaulting this poor lad in the most unprovoked way. Once
she struck him with a stick and left a great weal on his arm.
  This was a small matter, however, compared with her conduct to her
own child, a dear boy just under one year of age. On one occasion
about a month ago this child had been left by its nurse for a few
minutes. A loud cry from the baby, as of pain, called the nurse
back. As she ran into the room she saw her employer, the lady, leaning
over the baby and apparently biting his neck. There was a small
wound in the neck from which a stream of blood had escaped. The
nurse was so horrified that she wished to call the husband, but the
lady implored her not to do so and actually gave her five pounds as
a price for her silence. No explanation was ever given, and for the
moment the matter was passed over.
  It left, however, a terrible impression upon the nurse's mind, and
from that time she began to watch her mistress closely and to keep a
closer guard upon the baby, whom she tenderly loved. It seemed to
her that even as she watched the mother, so the mother watched her,
and that every time she was compelled to leave the baby alone the
mother was waiting to get at it. Day and night the nurse covered the
child, and day and night the silent, watchful mother seemed to be
lying in wait as a wolf waits for a lamb. It must read most incredible
to you, and yet I beg you to take it seriously, for a child's life and
a man's sanity may depend upon it.
  At last there came one dreadful day when the facts could no longer
be concealed from the husband. The nurse's nerve had given way; she
could stand the strain no longer, and she made a clean breast of it
all to the man. To him it seemed as wild a tale as it may now seem
to you. He knew his wife to be a loving wife, and, save for the
assaults upon her stepson, a loving mother. Why, then, should she
wound her own dear little baby? He told the nurse that she was
dreaming, that her suspicions were those of a lunatic, and that such
libels upon her mistress were not to be tolerated. While they were
talking a sudden cry of pain was heard. Nurse and master rushed
together to the nursery. Imagine his feelings, Mr. Holmes, as he saw
his wife rise from a kneeling position beside the cot and saw blood
upon the child's exposed neck and upon the sheet. With a cry of
horror, he turned his wife's face to the light and saw blood all round
her lips. It was she- she beyond all question- who had drunk the
poor baby's blood.
  So the matter stands. She is now confined to her room. There has
been no explanation. The husband is half demented. He knows, and I
know, little of vampirism beyond the name. We had thought it was
some wild tale of foreign parts. And yet here in the very heart of the
English Sussex- well, all this can be discussed with you in the
morning. Will you see me? Will you use your great powers in aiding a
distracted man? If so, kindly wire to Ferguson, Cheeseman's,
Lamberley, and I will be at your rooms by ten o'clock.

                                             Yours faithfully,
                                              ROBERT FERGUSON.
  P. S. I believe your friend Watson played Rugby for Blackheath
when I was three-quarter for Richmond. It is the only personal
introduction which I can give.

  "Of course I remembered him," said I as I laid down the letter. "Big
Bob Ferguson, the finest three-quarter Richmond ever had. He was
always a good-natured chap. It's like him to be so concerned over a
friend's case."
  Holmes looked at me thoughtfully and shook his head.
  "I never get your limits, Watson," said he. "There are unexplored
possibilities about you. Take a wire down, like a good fellow. 'Will
examine your case with pleasure.'"
  "Your case!"
  "We must not let him think that this agency is a home for the
weak-minded. Of course it is his case. Send him that wire and let
the matter rest till morning."
  Promptly at ten o'clock next morning Ferguson strode into our
room. I had remembered him as a long, slab-sided man with loose
limbs and a fine turn of speed which had carried him round many an
opposing back. There is surely nothing in life more painful than to
meet the wreck of a fine athlete whom one has known in his prime. This
great frame had fallen in, his flaxen hair was scanty, and his
shoulders were bowed. I fear that I roused corresponding emotions in
him.
  "Hullo, Watson," said he, and his voice was still deep and hearty.
"You don't look quite the man you did when I threw you over the
ropes into the crowd at the Old Deer Park. I expect I have changed a
bit also. But it's this last day or two that has aged me. I see by
your telegram, Mr. Holmes, that it is no use my pretending to be
anyone's deputy."
  "It is simpler to deal direct," said Holmes.
  "Of course it is. But you can imagine how difficult it is when you
are speaking of the one woman whom you are bound to protect and
help. What can I do? How am I to go to the police with such a story?
And yet the kiddies have got to be protected. Is it madness, Mr.
Holmes? Is it something in the blood? Have you any similar case in
your experience? For God's sake, give me some advice, for I am at my
wit's end."
  "Very naturally, Mr. Ferguson. Now sit here and pull yourself
together and give me a few clear answers. I can assure you that I am
very far from being at my wit's and, and that I am confident we
shall find some solution. First of all, tell me what steps you have
taken. Is your wife still near the children?"
  "We had a dreadful scene. She is a most loving woman, Mr. Holmes. If
ever a woman loved a man with all her heart and soul, she loves me.
She was cut to the heart that I should have discovered this
horrible, this incredible, secret. She would not even speak. She
gave no answer to my reproaches, save to gaze at me with a sort of
wild, despairing look in her eyes. Then she rushed to her room and
locked herself in. Since then she has refused to see me. She has a
maid who was with her before her marriage, Dolores by name- a friend
rather than a servant. She takes her food to her."
  "Then the child is in no immediate danger?"
  "Mrs. Mason, the nurse, has sworn that she will not leave it night
or day. I can absolutely trust her. I am more uneasy about poor little
Jack, for, as I told you in my note, he has twice been assaulted by
her."
  "But never wounded?"
  "No, she struck him savagely. It is the more terrible as he is a
poor little inoffensive cripple." Ferguson's gaunt features softened
as he spoke of his boy. "You would think that the dear lad's condition
would soften anyone's heart. A fall in childhood and a twisted
spine, Mr. Holmes. But the dearest, most loving heart within."
  Holmes had picked up the letter of yesterday and was reading it
over. "What other inmates are there in your house, Mr. Ferguson?"
  "Two servants who have not been long with us. One stable-hand,
Michael, who sleeps in the house. My wife, myself, my boy Jack,
baby, Dolores, and Mrs. Mason. That is all."
  "I gather that you did not know your wife well at the time of your
marriage?"
  "I had only known her a few weeks."
  "How long had this maid Dolores been with her?"
  "Some years."
  "Then your wife's character would really be better known by
Dolores than by you?"
  "Yes, you may say so."
  Holmes made a note.
  "I fancy," said he, "that I may be of more use at Lamberley than
here. It is eminently a case for personal investigation. If the lady
remains in her room, our presence could not annoy or inconvenience
her. Of course, we would stay at the inn."
  Ferguson gave a gesture of relief.
  "It is what I hoped, Mr. Holmes. There is an excellent train at
two from Victoria if you could come."
  "Of course we could come. There is a lull at present. I can give you
my undivided energies. Watson, of course, comes with us. But there are
one or two points upon which I wish to be very sure before I start.
This unhappy lady, as I understand it, has appeared to assault both
the children, her own baby and your little son?"
  "That is so."
  "But the assaults take different forms, do they not? She has
beaten your son."
  "Once with a stick and once very savagely with her hands."
  "Did she give no explanation why she struck him?"
  "None save that she hated him. Again and again she said so."
  "Well, that is not unknown among stepmothers. A posthumous jealousy,
we will say. Is the lady jealous by nature?"
  "Yes, she is very jealous- jealous with all the strength of her
fiery tropical love."
  "But the boy- he is fifteen, I understand, and probably very
developed in mind, since his body has been circumscribed in action.
Did he give you no explanation of these assaults?"
  "No, he declared there was no reason."
  "Were they good friends at other times?"
  "No, there! was never any love between them."
  "Yet you say he is affectionate?"
  "Never in the world could there be so devoted a son. My life is
his life. He is absorbed in what I say or do."
  Once again Holmes made a note. For some time he sat lost in thought.
  "No doubt you and the boy were great comrades before this second
marriage. You were thrown very close together, were you not?"
  "Very much so."
  "And the boy, having so affectionate a nature, was devoted, no
doubt, to the memory of his mother?"
  "Most devoted."
  "He would certainly seem to be a most interesting lad. There is
one other point about these assaults. Were the strange attacks upon
the baby and the assaults upon your son at the same period?"
  "In the first case it was so. It was is if some frenzy had seized
her, and she had vented her rage upon both. In the second case it
was only Jack who suffered. Mrs. Mason had no complaint to make
about the baby."
  "That certainly complicates matters."
  "I don't quite follow you, Mr. Holmes."
  "Possibly not. One forms provisional theories and waits for time
or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but
human nature is weak. I fear that your old friend here has given an
exaggerated view of my scientific methods. However, I will only say at
the present stage that your problem does not appear to me to be
insoluble, and that you may expect to find us at Victoria at two
o'clock."
  It was evening of a dull, foggy November day when, having left our
bags at the Chequers, Lamberley, we drove through the Sussex clay of a
long winding lane and finally reached the isolated and ancient
farmhouse in which Ferguson dwelt. It was a large, straggling
building, very old in the centre, very new at the wings with
towering Tudor chimneys and a lichen-spotted, high-pitched roof of
Horsham slabs. The doorsteps were worn into curves, and the ancient
tiles which lined the porch were marked with the rebus of a cheese and
a man after the original builder. Within, the ceilings were corrugated
with heavy oaken beams, and the uneven floors sagged into sharp
curves. An odour of age and decay pervaded the whole crumbling
building.
  There was one very large central room into which Ferguson led us.
Here, in a huge old-fashioned fireplace with an iron screen behind
it dated 1670, there blazed and spluttered a splendid log fire.
  The room, as I gazed round, was a most singular mixture of dates and
of places. The half-panelled walls may well have belonged to the
original yeoman farmer of the seventeenth century. They were
ornamented, however, on the lower part by a line of well-chosen modern
water-colours; while above, where yellow plaster took the place of
oak, there was hung a fine collection of South American utensils and
weapons, which had been brought, no doubt, by the Peruvian lady
upstairs. Holmes rose, with that quick curiosity which sprang from his
eager mind, and examined them with some care. He returned with his
eyes full of thought.
  "Hullo!" he cried. "Hullo!"
  A spaniel had lain in a basket in the corner. It came slowly forward
towards its master, walking with difficulty. Its hind legs moved
irregularly and its tail was on the ground. It licked Ferguson's hand.
  "What is it, Mr. Holmes?"
  "The dog. What's the matter with it?"
  "That's what puzzled the vet. A sort of paralysis. Spinal
meningitis, he thought. But it is passing. He'll be all right soon-
won't you, Carlo?"
  A shiver of assent passed through the drooping tail. The dog's
mournful eyes passed from one of us to the other. He knew that we were
discussing his case.
  "Did it come on suddenly?"
  "In a single night."
  "How long ago?"
  "It may have been four months ago."
  "Very remarkable. Very suggestive."
  "What do you see in it, Mr. Holmes?"
  "A confirmation of what I had already thought."
  "For God's sake, what do you think, Mr. Holmes? It may be a mere
intellectual puzzle to you, but it is life and death to me! My wife
a would-be murderer- my child in constant danger! Don't play with
me, Mr. Holmes. It is too terribly serious."
  The big Rugby three-quarter was trembling all over. Holmes put his
hand soothingly upon his arm.
  "I fear that there is pain for you, Mr. Ferguson, whatever the
solution may be," said he. "I would spare you all I can. I cannot
say more for the instant, but before I leave this house I hope I may
have something definite."
  "Please God you may! If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I will go
up to my wife's room and see if there has been any change."
  He was away some minutes, during which Holmes resumed his
examination of the curiosities upon the wall. When our host returned
it was clear from his downcast face that he had made no progress. He
brought with him a tall, slim, brownfaced girl.
  "The tea is ready, Dolores," said Ferguson. "See that your
mistress has everything she can wish."
  "She verra ill," cried the girl, looking with indignant eyes at
her master. "She no ask for food. She verra ill. She need doctor. I
frightened stay alone with her without doctor."
  Ferguson looked at me with a question in his eyes.
  "I should be so glad if I could be of use."
  "Would your mistress see Dr. Watson?"
  "I take him. I no ask leave. She needs doctor."
  "Then I'll come with you at once."
  I followed the girl, who was quivering with strong emotion, up the
staircase and down an ancient corridor. At the end was an iron-clamped
and massive door. It struck me as I looked at it that if Ferguson
tried to force his way to his wife he would find it no easy matter.
The girl drew a key from her pocket, and the heavy oaken planks
creaked upon their old hinges. I passed in and she swiftly followed,
fastening the door behind her.
  On the bed a woman was lying who was clearly in a high fever. She
was only half conscious, But as I entered she raised a pair of
frightened but beautiful eyes and glared at me in apprehension. Seeing
a stranger, she appeared to be relieved and sank back with a sigh upon
the pillow. I stepped up to her with a few reassuring words, and she
lay still while I took her pulse and temperature. Both were high,
and yet my impression was that the condition was rather that of mental
and nervous excitement than of any actual seizure.
  "She lie like that one day, two day. I 'fraid she die," said the
girl.
  The woman turned her flushed and handsome face towards me.
  "Where is my husband?"
  "He is below and would wish to see you."
  "I will not see him. I will not see him." Then she seemed to
wander off into delirium. "A fiend! A fiend! Oh, what shall I do
with this devil?"
  "Can I help you in any way?"
  "No. No one can help. It is finished. All is destroyed. Do what I
will, all is destroyed."
  The woman must have some strange delusion. I could not see honest
Bob Ferguson in the character of fiend or devil.
  "Madame," I said, "your husband loves you dearly. He is deeply
grieved at this happening."
  Again she turned on me those glorious eyes.
  "He loves me. Yes. But do I not love him? Do I not love him even
to sacrifice myself rather than break his dear heart? That is how I
love him. And yet he could think of me- he could speak of me so."
  "He is full of grief, but he cannot understand."
  "No, he cannot understand. But he should trust."
  "Will you not see him?" I suggested.
  "No, no, I cannot forget those terrible words nor the look upon
his face. I will not see him. Go now. You can do nothing for me.
Tell him only one thing. I want my child. I have a right to my
child. That is the only message I can send him." She turned her face
to the wall and would say no more.
  I returned to the room downstairs, where Ferguson and Holmes still
sat by the fire. Ferguson listened moodily to my account of the
interview.
  "How can I send her the child?" he said. "How do I know what strange
impulse might come upon her? How can I ever forget how she rose from
beside it with its blood upon her lips?" He shuddered at the
recollection. "The child is safe with Mrs. Mason, and there he must
remain."
  A smart maid, the only modern thing which we had seen in the
house, had brought in some tea. As she was serving it the door
opened and a youth entered the room. He was a remarkable lad,
pale-faced and fair-haired, with excitable light blue eyes which
blazed into a sudden flame of emotion and joy as they rested upon
his father. He rushed forward and threw his arms round his neck with
the abandon of a loving girl.
  "Oh, daddy," he cried, "I did not know that you were due yet. I
should have been here to meet you. Oh, I am so glad to see you!"
  Ferguson gently disengaged himself from the embrace with some little
show of embarrassment.
  "Dear old chap," said he, patting the flaxen head with a very tender
hand. "I came early because my friends, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson,
have been persuaded to come down and spend an evening with us."
  "Is that Mr. Holmes, the detective?"
  "Yes."
  The youth looked at us with a very penetrating and, as it seemed
to me, unfriendly gaze.
  "What about your other child, Mr. Ferguson?" asked Holmes. "Might we
make the acquaintance of the baby?"
  "Ask Mrs. Mason to bring baby down," said Ferguson. The boy went off
with a curious, shambling gait which told my surgical eyes that he was
suffering from a weak spine. Presently he returned, and behind him
came a tall, gaunt woman bearing in her arms a very beautiful child,
dark-eyed, golden-haired, a wonderful mixture of the Saxon and the
Latin. Ferguson was evidently devoted to it, for he took it into his
arms and fondled it most tenderly.
  Fancy anyone having the heart to hurt him," he muttered as he
glanced down at the small, angry red pucker upon the cherub throat.
  It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Holmes and saw a
most singular intentness in his expression. His face was as set as
if it had been carved out of old ivory, and his eyes, which had
glanced for a moment at father and child, were now fixed with eager
curiosity upon something at the other side of the room. Following
his gaze I could only guess that he was looking out through the window
at the melancholy, dripping garden. It is true that a shutter had half
closed outside and obstructed the view, but none the less it was
certainly at the window that Holmes was fixing his concentrated
attention. Then he smiled, and his eyes came back to the baby. On
its chubby neck there was this small puckered mark. Without
speaking, Holmes examined it with care. Finally he shook one of the
dimpled fists which waved in front of him.
  "Good-bye, little man. You have made a strange start in life. Nurse,
I should wish to have a word with you in private."
  He took her aside and spoke earnestly for a few minutes. I only
heard the last words, which were: "Your anxiety will soon, I hope,
be set at rest." The woman, who seemed to be a sour, silent kind of
creature, withdrew with the child.
  "What is Mrs. Mason like?" asked Holmes.
  "Not very prepossessing externally, as you can see, but a heart of
gold, and devoted to the child."
  "Do you like her, Jack?" Holmes turned suddenly upon the boy. His
expressive mobile face shadowed over, and he shook his head.
  "Jacky has very strong likes and dislikes," said Ferguson, putting
his arm round the boy. "Luckily I am one of his likes."
  The boy cooed and nestled his head upon his father's breast.
Ferguson gently disengaged him.
  "Run away, little Jacky," said he, and he watched his son with
loving eyes until he disappeared. "Now, Mr. Holmes," he continued when
the boy was gone, "I really feel that I have brought you on a fool's
errand, for what can you possibly do save give me your sympathy? It
must be an exceedingly delicate and complex affair from your point
of view."
  "It is certainly delicate," said my friend with an amused smile,
"but I have not been struck up to now with its complexity. It has been
a case for intellectual deduction, but when this original intellectual
deduction is confirmed point by point by quite a number of independent
incidents, then the subjective becomes objective and we can say
confidently that we have reached our goal. I had, in fact, reached
it before we left Baker Street, and the rest has merely been
observation and confirmation."
  Ferguson put his big hand to his furrowed forehead.
  "For heaven's sake, Holmes," he said hoarsely; "if you can see the
truth in this matter, do not keep me in suspense. How do I stand? What
shall I do? I care nothing as to how you have found your facts so long
as you have really got them."
  "Certainly I owe you an explanation, and you shall have it. But
you will permit me to handle the matter in my own way? Is the lady
capable of seeing us, Watson?"
  "She is ill, but she is quite rational."
  "Very good. It is only in her presence that we can clear the
matter up. Let us go up to her."
  "She will not see me," cried Ferguson.
  "Oh, yes, she will," said Holmes. He scribbled a few lines upon a
sheet of paper. "You at least have the entree, Watson. Will you have
the goodness to give the lady this note?"
  I ascended again and handed the note to Dolores, who cautiously
opened the door. A minute later I heard a cry from within, a cry in
which joy and surprise seemed to be blended. Dolores looked out.
  "She will see them. She will leesten," said she.
  At my summons Ferguson and Holmes came up. As we entered the room
Ferguson took a step or two towards his wife, who had raised herself
in the bed, but she held out her hand to repulse him. He sank into
an armchair, while Holmes seated himself beside him, after bowing to
the lady, who looked at him with wide-eyed amazement.
  "I think we can dispense with Dolores," said Holmes. "Oh, very well,
madame, if you would rather she stayed I can see no objection. Now,
Mr. Ferguson, I am a busy man with many calls, and my methods have
to be short and direct. The swiftest surgery is the least painful. Let
me first say what will ease your mind. Your wife is a very good, a
very loving, and a very ill-used woman."
  Ferguson sat up with a cry of joy.
  "Prove that, Mr. Holmes, and I am your debtor forever."
  "I will do so, but in doing so I must wound you deeply in another
direction."
  "I care nothing so long as you clear my wife. Everything on earth is
insignificant compared to that."
  "Let me tell you, then, the train of reasoning which passed
through my mind in Baker Street. The idea of a vampire was to me
absurd. Such things do not happen in criminal practice in England. And
yet your observation was precise. You had seen the lady rise from
beside the child's cot with the blood upon her lips."
  "I did."
  "Did it not occur to you that a bleeding wound may be sucked for
some other purpose than to draw the blood from it? Was there not a
queen in English history who sucked such a wound to draw poison from
it?"
  "Poison!"
  "A South American household. My instinct felt the presence of
those weapons upon the wall before, my eyes ever saw them. It might
have been other poison, but that was what occurred to me. When I saw
that little empty quiver beside the small bird-bow, it was just what I
expected to see. If the child were pricked with one of those arrows
dipped in curare or some other devilish drug, it would mean death if
the venom were not sucked out.
  "And the dog! If one were to use such a poison, would one not try it
first in order to see that it had not lost its power? I did not
foresee the dog, but at least I understand him and he fitted into my
reconstruction.
  "Now do you understand? Your wife feared such all attack. She saw it
made and saved the child's life, and yet she shrank from telling you
all the truth, for she knew how you loved the boy and feared lest it
break your heart."
  "Jacky!"
  "I watched him as you fondled the child just now. His face was
clearly reflected in the glass of the window where the shutter
formed a background. I saw such jealousy, such cruel hatred, as I have
seldom seen in a human face."
  "My Jacky!"
  "You have to face it, Mr. Ferguson. It is the more painful because
it is a distorted love, a maniacal exaggerated love for you, and
possibly for his dead mother, which has prompted his action. His
very soul is consumed with hatred for this splendid child, whose
health and beauty are a contrast to his own weakness."
  "Good God! It is incredible!"
  "Have I spoken the truth, madame?"
  The lady was sobbing, with her face buried in the pillows. Now she
turned to her husband.
  "How could I tell you, Bob? I felt the blow it would be to you. It
was better that I should wait and that it should come from some
other lips than mine. When this gentleman, who seems to have powers of
magic, wrote that he knew all, I was glad."
  "I think a year at sea would be my prescription for Master Jacky,"
said Holmes, rising from his chair. "Only one thing is still
clouded, madame. We can quite understand your attacks upon Master
Jacky. There is a limit to a mother's patience. But how did you dare
to leave the child these last two days?"
  "I had told Mrs. Mason. She knew."
  "Exactly. So I imagined."
  Ferguson was standing by the bed, choking, his hands outstretched
and quivering.
  "This, I fancy, is the time for our exit, Watson," said Holmes in
a whisper. "If you will take one elbow of the too faithful Dolores,
I will take the other. There, now," he added as he closed the door
behind him, "I think we may leave them to settle the rest among
themselves."
  I have only one further note of this case. It is the letter which
Holmes wrote in final answer to that with which the narrative
begins. It ran thus:

                                             BAKER STREET,
                                                    Nov. 21st.
                       Re Vampires
  SIR:
  Referring to your letter of the 19th, I beg to state that I have
looked into the inquiry of your client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of
Ferguson and Muirhead, tea brokers, of Mincing Lane, and that the
matter has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. With thanks
for your recommendation, I am, sir,
                                            Faithfully yours,
                                             SHERLOCK HOLMES.
                             -THE END-
